Star Force: Nexus (SF57) (9 page)

The nearby
mechbay
, which
was little more than an open field with a few support structures at this point,
began showing considerable activity as the units he’d ordered to get moving
towards the target began walking over to the dropships in the spaceport and
loading up for the flight out. They’d land well away from the base and walk the
rest of the distance, but it would take far too long to cross on foot from
here. In fact he had so many dropships at his disposal he couldn’t imagine what
it would be like to fight a war without them. They were literally the glue that
held Star Force’s military together, and he didn’t have a clue how many
millions there were in service, but from his experience he knew he could never
have too many in play.

Most of the people he saw outside were workers, with
the Calavari troops waiting inside of prefab buildings or transports. There was
nothing for them to do outside other than make nice targets, so they bided
their time in various ways indoors and left the thousands of Kiritak free to
roam without interference as they quickly put together new infrastructure for
Vlad to use.

Up in the sky there were constant Valerie patrols, both
the original version that the Protovic used and the Star Force upgraded model
that he Calavari preferred. He knew they’d keep his base safe, and the lizards
had long since lost the last of their cruisers. All they had left were wisps
and
kirbies
, and there was no way even a suicide run
was going to get them past his air cover.

Everything was buttoned up tight here and proceeding
smoothly, with Vlad about to go the opposite direction and head up the
expedition into the unknown. Where there was danger an Archon would be, if only
to shield others from it, but to be honest Vlad could never just sit by and
watch, even if he wasn’t needed. He was warrior and warriors fought, which put
the Archons at odds with almost every other military philosophy in the galaxy
that had their valuable leaders well protected and hidden from the enemy.

Archons dove straight in, for they weren’t just the
leaders, they were also the strongest…and the place of the strong was in the
front taking the worst of assignments and finding a way to carry the others to
victory, or at least survival when things went bad. That was one reason why
Vlad hated the game of chess, because it had the weak pawns up front as
sacrificial minions.

The ranger put his helmet back on and sealed it in
place, still tasting the outside air but with a bit of a twinge as it passed
through the filters. Time to get moving so he could arrive on site with the
mechs and make sure everything was suitable for the ground troops to come in.

The Archon walked to the edge of the roof and stepped
off, falling several stories and cushioning his landing with his jump pack
while scaring the crap out of a nearby Kiritak.

“Sorry,” he offered, heading off towards the
spaceport.

9

The Calavari mechs ceased firing on the main doors of
the lizard base, having burnt a good-sized hole in them that was now beginning
to cool and lose its trim glow, then repositioned off to other locations
leaving one of the four-armed machines in place to cover the entrance as the
infantry began to move forward. Vlad was ahead of them, looking inside with his
psionics as he moved up to the doors and the opening that was a meter up from
the ground.

After getting a quick glimpse he hopped through,
sidestepping to the left and finding a deserted hangar. There were several
tanks sitting nearby, but Vlad knew they were empty and no threat. He didn’t
like there not being anyone here, for it wasn’t like the lizards to just give
up and run, and his
spidey
sense began tingling. With
a quick
comm
to the troops outside he told them to
hold off for the moment, then he moved further inside to scout out the area.

He pulled heavily on his limited Ikrid and Pefbar,
sensing a trap and not sure where it would come from. The tanks alone should
have been put to use strafing whatever troops would come in, and the fact that
the lizards were abandoning them was totally wrong. The Archon ran over to one,
looking inside it with his Pefbar and expecting explosives…but he found none.
He transitioned to the other tanks and likewise found them clean.

It wasn’t until he moved to the exits of the hangar
did he finally find the traps he feared. The narrow hallway entrances had
det
packs inside the walls, completely invisible to anyone
passing through, but Vlad could see them with his Pefbar. There were also links
to proximity detectors, tiny pinprick devices in the walls that wouldn’t be
noticed without scrutiny…and the type of scrutiny that would put you in the
blast radius before you saw them.

Vlad retreated back to one of the tanks and went
inside, grabbing the first loose item he could find and bringing the hand-sized
thingamajig with him over to one of the hallways. He wasn’t sure what the yield
was on these
det
packs, but he made sure to stay well
back as he chucked the object into the entrance. He guided it as much as he
could telekinetically until it was out of range, then it dropped towards the
floor but never made. The left side of the hallway blew out and shot debris all
the way back to Vlad with some small bits and pieces bouncing off his shields.

“Sneaky bastards,” he commented, getting on the
comm
and calling the infantry in as he picked up a small
chunk of wall and headed over to another of the hangar exits. He detonated that
one and three others as the first of the Calavari Knights came through the now
mostly cool hole in the main doors. Each of them wore the telltale orange,
four-armed armor and was carrying an array of weapons on their back racks,
along with some that had physical shields made famous by the mainline Knights.

They moved in quickly and held back as Vlad commanded,
then he began to probe deeper into the base, sniffing out more traps and
detonating them. The Calavari knew well how dangerous the lizards could be so
they heeded his warnings and kept back, even as some lizards came out to engage
them then ran, trying to draw them back into ambushes. When that didn’t work
small groups of them ran out, obscuring a single individual carrying a
det
pack that was trying to get to the Calavari.

Vlad hit them with Fornax and toppled the suicide
bomber far enough that when he did detonate a few moments later none of the
energy shields on his infantry were taken down…though a few meters more and
that wouldn’t have been the case.

With plasma fire the Calavari suppressed others
running out at them, some of which tried ambushes out of side doors as they
moved further and further into the subsurface facility. As they did Vlad began
picking up more and more minds nearby, with them eventually getting the
telltale horde rush once they were three levels down. Vlad tried not to fight
too much, worrying about
det
packs in the mix and
trying to pick them out, and getting one early enough that he was able to snipe
him down before he detonated.

The Calavari meanwhile took to the standard variant
lizards like they were toys, shooting them at range then knocking them around
almost effortlessly in hand to hand. Their size, strength, extra arms, and the
thickness of armor they were able to carry were over powering, with only the
det
packs a true threat. Vlad kept his troops with him
rather than having them spread out, but as they took levels he had to leave
some behind to hold regions they’d taken, with some of the suicide bombers
getting through in places where Vlad wasn’t.

Fortunately the Calavari took them down before they
got within touching range, diminishing the intensity of the blasts enough that
their shields and armor protected them, though several had to be evacuated with
injuries. Had they been Human troops they would have been dead, but the extra
armor had been enough to save them, and for that Vlad was grateful as he
pressed on, knowing that the faster he killed these bastards the less
opportunity they would have to be devious.

But he couldn’t move too fast, for he had to scan all
the walls in front of him, both for
det
packs and
minds, for there were also hidden compartments with troops in them. Had he not
been there the Calavari would have walked right by, then the lizards would have
popped out behind them and in front, catching them from both sides. He still
would have put credits on the Calavari winning out, but the more armor damage
they took the greater the chance that others would deliver the finishing blows
later.

The
det
pack threat didn’t
disappear early, with Vlad having to deal with them up until the very end, but
after some 7 hours of fighting and him thoroughly searching the facility with
his psionics the task was done and the base was now in Calavari hands. He met
up with the Protovic on the far side, with them having come in only a few
levels and engaged in a brutal firefight. Apparently they hadn’t had any
explosives in the walls around the hidden base entrances, but they’d been
committed to doing whatever damage they could, with the last few stragglers
making useless attack runs, sometimes solo, which the Protovic easily mowed
down after taking a few injuries.

With their allies pulling out of the base and leaving,
Vlad ordered some of his troops to remain to babysit the facility to make sure
the lizards didn’t sneak back in, then took the rest and headed back to base
where he would begin planning the next attack and readjusting his troop
disposition accordingly. He had more than enough assets to do the job, but his
primary task was to safeguard the Calavari while retaking the planet. So far
he’d managed to do that, putting aside the injuries, but there had been a few
deaths in other areas of the planet, and more so with the Protovic than the
Calavari.

A few days later when there was a lull in activity he
took a dropship back up to orbit and one of the Star Force jumpships so he
could get a few decent workouts in its sanctum, for while the combat on the
ground was intense at times it was no substitute for training and Vlad was
already feeling squishy after so many days missed. He knew he had to get a few
workouts in here and there to minimize the damage, so he took the opportunity
now, not knowing when he’d get another chance in the future.

The dropship shot him up to orbit, passing by the
Calavari drone fleet. Unlike the standard Star Force drones these were
elongated in typical Calavari design, looking like fat spears and docking with
specialized jumpships that accommodated their shapes into a crate-like lattice
that would expand out from the jumpship hull rather than having a cut out
section premade. It was a variation that allowed the jumpships to be more
compact when empty, but it made them overly fat when full.

The jumpship he went to was one of three varieties and
the largest, with all Calavari ships being built with a small segment of their
training facilities as Archon sanctums on the off chance that they might be
needed, and this was one such occasion given that there were no mainline ships
in the system, only Calavari and Protovic.

It was still a Star Force ship though, and he felt at
home inside it when he finally arrived. The hallways were a bit bigger, but all
Star Force ships were designed to accommodate all the Star Force races,
including the quarters Vlad had been assigned, not to mention the food. He had
to have his own ambrosia stores, for the backup supplies for all the other
races wouldn’t be enough for him and the others over the long haul of this
campaign, but about half of what the Calavari ate he could also digest…with a
few other Human items added to the cargo stores prior to his coming on this
assignment.

As of now there were three races that had specialized
ambrosia within Star Force, the Calavari, the Kiritak, and the Elarioni. The
latter was originally designed for Ariel, and easily applied to the newer Star
Force members. Most of the Elarioni population was still independent, such as
the Kiritas were, but a good faction of them had crossed over and joined Star
Force, establishing their own colonies while maintaining close ties with the
other Elarioni.

Ambrosia research was currently in play for the Bsidd
and the recently annexed Scionate, but those wouldn’t be widely available for
at least another couple of decades, for Star Force didn’t take any chance with
the concoction that was still lightyears ahead of their current tech level.
Copying the original
Zen’zat
formula was one thing,
but modifying it for other races was quite another and it required a lot of
work to just make feasible, but like with everything else Star Force did they
chipped away at the problem until they finally got a solution, with it serving
the Calavari and Kiritak well to date.

All of Vlad’s troops were on ambrosia, though most of
the civilian Calavari were not, just like the Human population. The Kiritak
all
were, given that they were workers
and anyone born into the Kiritak that did not want to be such went back to the
Kiritas or into Axius, leaving the entire Kiritak population as energetic
little busybodies, made all the more so with their ambrosia that was geared
more towards endurance and stamina than the general balance than the
Zen’zat
variety, which had the same with considerable
‘burst’ added that allowed it to be depleted quite quickly with activity or
specialized psionics that directly consumed it.

The Kiritak didn’t have psionics and they weren’t
physically strong combat troops, with their strength being in their workload
and aversion to sedation. The ambrosia amped that up even more, with the
Kiritak always being assigned to doing something and their personal training
filling up the balance of their time.

The Calavari were the reverse, with great physical
strength that their ambrosia heavily amped up along with a speed burst, giving
their muscles compounds to increase contraction speed and endurance, letting
the big guys overcome some of their clumsiness, though they were still no match
against a Human when it came to agility.

The Elarioni were the most radical, given that they
were swimmers. Ariel’s compound had simply been a standard transition from the
Zen’zat
compound to fit her physiology without Star Force
trying to meddle with it. Now that the Elarioni as a race were part of Star
Force that hadn’t changed, with their ambrosia formula most notably upping
their self-sufficiency rates heavily simply by making it easier to attain.

That boost was also the reason why the Kiritak were
growing by leaps and bounds…for their death rate was almost non-existent.

The
Calavari’s
sluggishness
was a hindrance to self-sufficiency, making it harder for them to attain but
still feasible with proper training. Some races were simply more energetic than
others by default, which got them closer without trying, but all could attain
self-sufficiency if they wanted to work at it…but unfortunately a lot didn’t.

Vlad’s troops were all self-sufficient, but the
Calavari civilians were not. At present it was estimated that some 12% were,
based on those reaching an age that those without typically would not. Aside
from the medical devices in the pyramid there was no way to test for
self-sufficiency, other than to keep living and not growing old.

Then there were some who attained self-sufficiency
early on and grew tired of the training and chose not to continue. The body
adapted to everything you did and did not do, meaning that if you wanted
greater strength you had to keep using it. It wasn’t an attainment that would
last forever, and necessarily so for that ‘loss’ allowed you to customize your
body in new ways by undoing what you’d previously done.

That’s why stagnation was so dangerous, for you were
undoing your strength but not building up any new ones. Granted, it would take
Vlad a very long time to lose the amount of strength he’d gained from centuries
of training, but getting in a good workout now would start to reverse the
downward slide he was already experiencing, which was why he headed straight to
the tiny sanctum and got to work right away with a good long run.

He was alone in the sanctum, for there were no other
Archons up here at the moment, but that didn’t bother Vlad for he was well
accustomed to solo training. Some others preferred having training partners but
this Archon felt it was a distraction, a healthy one at times, but when you
transitioned from a partner back to solo you often were left with a lackluster
period of time until you readjusted. Because of that Vlad preferred to always
train solo and focus on pressing his own limits rather than comparing himself
to others.