Star Force: Phoenix (Star Force Universe Book 62)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “I’ll have to guess on their final speed.”

  “Just make sure you overshoot it.”

  “Alright,” the helmsman said, moving them even closer to the star to get a bigger push off it. The destination star was smaller, so they had to scale down anyway, but this would save a little fuel and navigators always wanted to save fuel when possible, because they never knew when they’d need it later, and the warship was far away from any resupply out here on its own.

  They had to wait for the drones to dock on the ship, and the Captain decided to leave behind several that were too far away. They’d remain here operating on programming and could be picked up later, but time was burning and they had to make the jump soon or they risked not catching the hunter or having to move so fast to overtake it that they’d pass it in a blink of an eye.

  “Here we go,” the helmsman said, kicking in the anti-grav that turned the pull of the star against itself, then enhanced it further. The ship shot out of the gravity well like a slingshot along the very narrow arc that would put it on the jumpline for a neighboring system Star Force had not charted, but they could sense its gravity from here and knew its approximate location, thus determining its gravity well and how much braking power they could get out of it despite never having been there before.

  “Overcharge the forward shields. I don’t want to run into a deathtrap out here baited by a robot,” he said, recognizing the possibility that was exactly what the Caretaker wanted to do to avoid intercept, and perhaps as well to destroy the witnesses to its existence.

  Sensors on the warship were blaring full intensity forward and jumping out ahead of the ship, giving them some visibility of what was ahead, but the hunter was too far out to see yet. It took several hours before it finally showed up and the closing rate could be calculated.

  “Good work,” Alvarez said, seeing that it was going to be a manageable catch, though not a comfortable one.

  “Not good enough for capture,” he noted.

  “I’ll take the kill,” the Captain said, only to be denied his quarry as the hunter suddenly exploded ahead of them.

  “Oh shit,” the helmsman said as small bits of debris began impacting the shields, but they weren’t from the explosion. They were still minutes behind where it had happened.

  “It was a trap,” Alvarez said, cursing his stupidity. This jumpline wasn’t safe, and they’d just been led into a kinetic minefield. “Barry?”

  “Gotta burn the drones.”

  “Do it.”

  The Iron Rise 7 suddenly started bleeding off drones, but they didn’t go anywhere other than laterally. Each had to use mooring beams to get any movement beyond the ship, because there was no useful gravity out here to pull on. A few inches of movement was all you could get from the distant lateral stars, and that wasn’t going to be enough to dodge debris.

  The drones spread out in a halo around the coasting ship, each with their own shields on full ahead, leaving their rear arcs exposed, for no ramming would occur from that side. All the shields were stretched out to needle points, including those of the warship, as mooring beams activated and locked onto each drone and vice versa, making a giant web with glowing blue lines intersecting between them.

  The helmsman blew out a slow breath, then as the smaller debris ahead started to pop up on sensors he pushed and pulled against various drones to get some lateral movement from the warship. He also used the gravity drives for those few extra inches, getting as much sideways drift as he could, missing the first small debris chunk.

  More followed, and he was about to avoid them, but a few minutes in one of the drones got hit and disintegrated, for the debris was not moving at jump speeds, it was lazily drifting through space, meaning the collision speeds were thousands of times lightspeed.

  And with that loss of a drone, the warship now dodged a little bit slower.

  Alvarez gripped the back of the helmsman’s chair as he waited helpless. More bits of debris popped up, but he was waiting for a large one…and was not disappointed. Fortunately it was not in line with them and they sailed by it cleanly, along with several others, until one showed up that they were not going to miss.

  The mooring beams swung the drones around the ship all in one direction, with their momentum moving the warship the other way and narrowly missing the 15 mile wide chunk of rock that turned out to be multiple pieces overlapping in their silhouette. How many there was impossible to tell at the speed they were moving, but the warship moved past as three quarters of their drones could not be saved and disappeared simultaneously from the battlemap.

  Several impacts from debris too small to pick up on sensors until the last moment peppered off the shields, with energy draining rapidly from each hit. Even grains of sand at this speed would stress the shields, and rocks the size of baseballs did far more damage, but so far none had gotten through to the hull.

  Then there was a moment of silence, for both the shields and the sensors, and everyone was holding their breath.

  “I think that’s the last of it…for now,” the helmsman said, visibly sweating.

  “Wishful thinking,” Alvarez reminded them. “This is why we don’t explore new jumplanes at this speed.”

  “You think?” the helmsman agreed.

  “If the hunter knew of obstruction, there might be a lot more. Then again maybe it didn’t know and those floaters were just passing through our line of transit.”

  “It’s toast either way, so mission accomplished there,” another crewmember noted.

  “Even if we get through,” the helmsman noted, “we’re off the maps.”

  “We’ll limp our way back on other jumplanes and go as slow as necessary. We know there’s trash here. I’d rather take our chances on other routes,” he said as an isolated blip hit the shields and sucked a little more power out of them. “Remote pilots will double up with helm. I want at least three sets of eyes and hands on the controls at all times. We’ll take shifts as needed.”

  “Thanks, Cap. I’m good for now, but there’s no way I can make 19 more hours of this.”

  “Just get us through the next 19 minutes and I’ll be happy,” Alvarez said, knowing this could go really well or really bad, depending on how much more debris there was on this jumpline.

  9

  March 12, 128556

  Caretaker Shadow Network

  Foothold One

  Jason-025 now had his foot in the door. He’d gotten some very slow moving transports in through the micro-gravity wells that made up the shadow network to one of the space whale harvesting bases, and with the badly needed supplies he had established an outpost on the exterior of the structure.

  That outpost was fully Star Force infrastructure welded to a position on the frame of the Caretaker facility where Jason had cut a hole into it, and through that hole his teams of techs were in the process of retrofitting the enemy structure bit by bit, like a virus taking over its host, into what would eventually be a fully Star Force facility that the trailblazers would begin waging his war against the Caretakers from and out through the shadow network.

  He’d left the facility multiple times, as had the others, going out on missions and cycling back to Beta in order to get supplies and training time in up until a warship had managed to get into the network. It had taken 18 months for it to make it just 3 jumps in, but it was now holding position as a mobile base of operations with others spreading out the same slow way, giving Jason’s numerous assault teams jumping off points as they explored further.

  The transports had entered the same way, for there was no chance of setting up a mag jump or even gravity jump this far out without a constant stream of supplies. So the only way in and out were the micro-wells, which meant very slow traveling until Tennisonne got him the new pulse engines. He’d been promised they were coming, but getting ships outfitted with them took time. Plus, the Mastertech told him he wouldn’t be able to get them fully calibrated to the shadow network anytime soon, because the network used
an 8 times multiplier and Star Force tech just wasn’t there yet.

  That meant the refitted ships would get a speed boost, but not nearly equal to what the Caretakers had. Jason couldn’t chase them down with it, but he could move supplies faster and extend the range of his warship mobile bases. He needed any advantage that he could get right now, and that included using the captured facilities to produce Caretaker ships that could move at full speed in the network.

  The trouble was, he hadn’t found the birthplace of any of the larger ones yet. He had captured a few and currently there were techs working on hacking them into reliable conscripts, but Jason didn’t want to count on them until every facet of their coding was deemed safe, and given its complexity it was easier to yank out components and replace them with Star Force ones…which is what most of the conversion work had been focused on.

  Right now Jason had two hunter ships with scout teams on them trying to map the network as much as possible, as well as rescue space whales whenever they encountered them. The rescues were more important than the mapping, but he needed both more than he needed cargo transfer, though he had been tempted to use them to run to the nearest system, load up, and hurry back, but the ships simply weren’t that big compared to the 30 mile long Star Force Monolith-class transports.

  He now had four of them working their way through the shadow network and one already here. They were bringing with them an army of techs as well, in addition to a few more troops. Anything that was Caretaker that they came across got shot, when capable, though many were spooked early enough that they got away. No heavy military response had come back at them, and Jason thought that was because the Founders didn’t think anyone else could operate out here. If that was the case, then he’d found a major blind spot in their support structure.

  This war was just getting started, and the insane scope of how much the Founders had built out here still perplexed him. What did their home galaxies look like if they put this much effort into enemy territory? Were they actively using these networks, or was it all remotely run? Who were those people that Paul and Sara had found being moved into the black hole?

  The answer to the last one had a team on it currently, and Jason was eager to hear back from them, though that wasn’t in his department right now. He was on ‘save the whales’ duty while others were out exploring the Mag Grid and the connecting facilities while more teams were now able to hack the backdoor portals the Caretakers used and supply them with Essence directly, allowing them to go where they want when they wanted in their own ships rather than having to hitch a ride.

  That was a major help getting into and out of the Temples, but with the big portals now opened up it wasn’t very useful with the ongoing wars there. But it did allow the Star Force teams to jump from the clandestine network to the Temples and back again, meaning every Temple where Star Force had a colony put down was now a reliable base of operations in the galaxy-spanning support grid exploration.

  And then the Founders had gone and made a shadow network on top of that one. Jason often wondered if there wasn’t a third network out there somewhere too. The further he went down this rabbit hole the more weird everything got, but one thing was for sure. The Founders had insane building skills, Star Force or better technology, and a serious lack of ethics. He was glad they were a galaxy away and only left their robots behind, at least out here anyway. He and the other trailblazers weren’t totally convinced there wasn’t some of them lurking around pulling the strings, but so far they hadn’t found them…and the popsicles didn’t count, because they were passing through as cargo.

  Jason had more questions than answers, but finally he had a foothold in the shadow network and was going to be able to use the captured facility to build far faster than just putting tech out in space near the micro-wells. He was going to repurpose the internal areas here and recycle the unwanted technology into base materials that he could eventually use with the proper factories set up to build what he needed on site rather than have to order it via the long route back to the stars.

  Things were going to scale nicely from here on out, and with Sanctums available in the large Star Force ships, he wouldn’t be leaving the shadow network again in the foreseeable future. His war was out here, and now with a little base to work out of, he wasn’t going anywhere other than down the Caretakers’ throats.

  10,388 lightyears away…

  Cal-com watched as the spire rose, a little each day, out of the center of one of the largest uninhabited regions in Kappa Temple. The Paladin were constructing it for him, and when finished it would be both a city and a space elevator, reaching so high it surpassed the upper levels of the atmosphere and even went further, beyond the artificial gravity field hugging the inner surface of the Temple landscape.

  It was only 13 miles high now, but would be 327 when finished. That would make it by far the tallest structure in the Temple, and out around it the city would expand over time. He’d named it ‘Redemption,’ and it was going to be the conduit through which he reclaimed the Vargemma.

  Doing so was going to be tricky, for these were not young minds that were impressionable. Most Vargemma were very experienced and set in their ways…but only in some areas. By exposing them to new things they would have to reassess themselves in order to calibrate to the challenges placed before them.

  And those challenges were the only way they were going to be allowed to leave the Temple.

  Most did not want to leave. They wanted to stay here and have Star Force leave, but the underlying and immutable foundation of the Vargemma was that they had been put here to train to one day fight the Hadarak, and in order to do that they had to leave the Temple…else the Hadarak come here, at which point all was pretty much lost.

  The Temples were supposed to be the hidden bases from which the Vargemma would strike out at the Hadarak under the leadership of the Founders. Well, the Founders were not here, but the Hadarak were and on the way out to the edge of the Rim. If they found the Temples they’d destroy them, and no one was confident they would not when Cal-com showed them information about the ongoing purge.

  And beyond that, many of these Vargemma were bored. They’d attacked Star Force not so much out of fear of rousing the Hadarak, but because it would interfere with the promise made to them about the Founders returning to lead them in battle…but just as much because it gave them a chance to use the Temple weapons and test the skills they’d developed. Many here simply wanted to do something other than just wait and train, and Cal-com could understand that…as well as the fact that the boredom could be twisted into casual murder as easily as it could be used to incentivize people to do the right thing.

  Star Force had a well-documented history of using boredom as a tool in their indoctrination centers and prisons, giving the people contained total freedom to do what they wanted, never forcing them to do anything, but limiting their options to only constructive things. Over time many would try out what was available even if they didn’t like it, just to stave off the boredom.

  Cal-com was calculating the same was true here, and even as his new city grew there were willing individuals coming to the proving grounds set up across the Temple, with at least one per race, though many in the case where there were higher populations, for the ‘equality’ of the Vargemma had not been well coordinated and some races far outnumbered others here.

  Cal-com had decreed that the war with the Hadarak was not waiting for the Founders to return, and if the Vargemma needed leadership then the next best thing to waiting on the Founders was following those who had defeated the Caretakers into battle against their sworn enemy…but Star Force would not trust the Vargemma until they had proved themselves worthy and reliable. Thus the proving grounds were competitions and training, in which a few Vargemma each year would be chosen to travel to Redemption where they would begin crafting the Star Force-compatible skills necessary to fight alongside the dominate empire…as well as constructing the Temple technology and other assets needed
for a holy crusade against the enemy.

  Cal-com had made it clear that they were not in a position to win against the Hadarak, not yet, but the Vargemma could either wait here until the Founders return, or spend their time doing damage to the Hadarak…and as he had guessed, that option had immediately drawn the most bored and unsatisfied warriors amongst the Vargemma out, and now they were competing with each other for the first spots within Redemption.

  And not just warriors, for techs were needed as well, and they also had to compete with each other for slots. Most of the Vargemma were not going for this, but they had such a huge population that even a tiny fraction of a fraction would have flooded the proving grounds. Not that many had arrived, but more than enough had. For when they participated…which was the critical point of choosing to interact rather than being forced to…they would tell others what happened, support or criticize it, but regardless they would sanction it as a current event rather than something to be shunned. It would become familiar to them, and that familiarity would break down the resistance of those sitting on the fence.

  When those came over and tried to earn their way in, or even just compete for the sake of competing rather than endless training, that would spur more off the sidelines. When the proving grounds and the quest for Redemption become popular, a waterfall of wannabees would come forward, and out of them Cal-com was confident he could put together at least a small, reliable, fighting force…though he cautiously hoped for a great deal more than that.

  Trusting the Vargemma not to shoot you in the back when they got the chance beyond the monitoring of the Caretakers would be an issue, which was why he was not just going to let the Vargemma join in the war as is. They would have to go through a transformation, just as he had, and at the end of it he would be gaining soldiers with Essence skills far beyond anything that Star Force possessed…though that would do little in a naval war, and fighting the hordes of minions on planets was far easier with orbital bombardment than infantry combat.