by Aer-ki Jyr
“It won’t last,” Chad said knowingly. “They didn’t have much of a head start on us the first time.”
“We’ll see,” Kara said, sizing up their odds. There were thousands of acolytes, but only 100 trailblazers…most of whom were out fighting the war.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” David asked her.
“I say it’s on…us against them.”
“What…” Riona asked, wide-eyed. “You’re serious?”
“If Kara only trains with us…”
“Oh…I like where your head’s at, boy.”
Chad rubbed his hands together, building up a little friction-based heat. “They do like doing things on their own…and they claim to always be up for a challenge.”
“Kara, get to work,” David said, exchanging glances with Riona. “We’ll get our team up to speed.”
Archon-111 smiled. Having been only a couple of months shy of being a trailblazer herself, Riona had always resented the divide between the first 2 classes, which had been of the trailblazers’ making. Now it was time for a little payback…or at the very least, push them into another round of greatness, from which everyone else could pattern off of and learn from. Either way, the Archons as a whole would be better off for it.
“I’m in. Let’s get going. We can’t waste a minute against these guys.”
“Not a word from you,” David said, pointing to the techs as the rest of the Archons made their way out, leaving Kara alone with them.
“What was that all about?” one of them asked with a confused expression on his face.
“It’s an Archon thing,” Kara said dismissively. “Come on over here and start taking notes.”
5
November 14, 2409
Solar System
Earth
A mantis landed on the snowy rooftop of the foodstuff production facility in Antarctica and disembarked 12 Archons, including Paul, then just as quickly took off again and disappeared into the sky heading back to one of the nearby spaceports on the southern continent. The twelve men walked across to the nearby, hut-like entrance and descended down into the facility and made their way to the covert access shaft that led down into the V’kit’no’sat pyramid underneath.
As they walked down the catwalk Paul reached a hand out and stroked his fingers against the smooth green/black stone, finding it warm to the touch. It’d been a very long time since he’d visited this place, and once again the sheer magnitude of the construct reminded him of the terrible power their enemy wielded…a power that still dwarfed their own, despite how impressive Star Force was becoming and their growing role in the Alliance.
The two-front war they were fighting was showing mixed results. Taryn’s and Morgan’s fleets were continuing to harass the Nestafar as they pounded the Calavari. Even with support from the other races in the Alliance, limited as that support was, the Calavari were losing the fight at a snail’s pace. Both sides were grinding it out, both in terms of ships and personnel being lost, the benefits of which were obvious to the lizards as they continued their part of the war with campaigns against the other races on multiple fronts.
The Calavari weren’t lost, not by a long shot, but the Nestafar had prepared well and were hitting the Calavari where they were weak while suffering through their air superiority with sheer numbers until they ground down their fighter core…essentially taking the Calavari’s best shot to the face and still standing. It was gutsy and, in Paul’s opinion, sloppy strategy, but it was proving effective none the less.
Star Force’s two fleets were breaking up the Nestafar onslaught, hitting their supply lines, backwater planets, and other areas that the Nestafar either had to abandon to them or devote more resources to defending…resources that would have to be pulled from elsewhere. Ship to ship, Taryn and Morgan’s forces were proving superior, but the vast scale of the warfront made whatever gains they earned seem inconsequential, given that the entire Nestafar and Calavari civilizations were going at it, with populations in the hundreds of trillions and militaries greater in size than the entire population of Earth and its colonies.
Such wars did not occur quickly, even if it had been a rout. The war against the lizards had been going on for centuries, and that was with them steadily winning. The dynamics of interstellar warfare dictated as much, given the distances between star systems and the inherent advantage of the defender when one was assaulting a homeworld or other major population center, making kings of those who could plan strategy years in advance…and those who could coordinate such massive fleets with little or no communications between the various pieces on the galactic chess board.
To that end Paul’s part of the war on the lizard front was proceeding well, with Star Force having eradicated the enemy presence on a total of 8 worlds. Despite several attempts to negotiate surrenders the lizards still battled to the last individual, and the Archons were willing to oblige them after a point.
Their largest conquest to date was in the Eritath System, where they’d eventually been able to clear the third planet of all lizard habitation…but at a cost of massive devastation to the surface. There had been so many lizard bases and full blown cities that they’d had to eradicate most of them through orbital bombardment, with millions of rail gun slugs falling down in spurts whenever the orbiting fleets received additional ammunition shipments.
There had been some ground fighting to mop up the remnants, which the trailblazers had wisely kept to a minimum, though it had netted them access to a number of structures that were semi-intact. Nothing new to discover, however, because Star Force already had the lizard tech tree at their disposal and had built a full-fledged base/city of their own on Corneria using the captured equipment, from which they were studying the enemy tech for weaknesses or strengths to copy.
Greg had taken some of the last lizards left on the planet captive, around 100 or so, and had worked on them for more than three months before Jason had come back and replaced Paul, but the last word he had from the trailblazer indicated that the lizards were fully non-compliant, as if their individuality had been hardwired out of them. He’d told Paul he was going to stick with it a bit longer and see if he could get them to show any cracks in their fanaticism, then as planned they were going to release them in a captured lizard cruiser in another star system so they could convey a properly insulting message back to their superiors.
Even though the lizards might prefer killing themselves, Paul and the others weren’t going to put up with that. The lizards might be barbaric, but they weren’t going to return the favor. The handful of trailblazers assigned to the lizard front had decided amongst themselves to keep pressing the surrender option whenever applicable and not assuming that all the lizards would be so intractable, though thus far they hadn’t encountered any more reasonable…not that they were a talkative lot. All transmissions to the lizards were summarily ignored, making for a determined and illusive enemy that honestly wanted nothing more than to kill every Human they came across.
Fortunately that wasn’t happening and Star Force was busy setting up a significant foothold in the region, recently off Namek as well. Kyler had begun the construction of a second major base in the Retari System on a waterworld they’d named Atlantica. At present it was uninhabited by the lizards or any other race…just a big, wet playground for the aquatics division of Star Force to play with, though given the size of the world and the nearly encompassing ocean, which covered 98% of the planet, they couldn’t be sure it was totally lifeless, but the most recent report from Kyler indicated that they hadn’t discovered so much as a minnow to date.
Paul knew the lizards had the capability to fight under water, but if they wanted to counterattack Star Force there they’d have to fight them fully on that front, which was an area of warfare that neither side had seen the other active in, though from Ariel Paul had learned a great deal about their capabilities…and he’d stopped by Corneria on his way back to Earth to further confer with her.
All in
all, things were progressing well on the lizard front, but Paul knew the blowback would be coming eventually, and the more time they had to prepare the better. Right now Greg, Sara, and the others were out hunting for more lizard-occupied planets, essentially cleaning out the region around Namek while Jason continued Paul’s development plans there, further building up the planetary infrastructure and defenses while he and other Archons rotated home from field assignments so they could get their heads realigned prior to any developmental difficulties like Jason had gone through.
The eleven with Paul now weren’t from the group he’d traveled back with. Those had come on ahead of him while he stayed on Corneria for more than a month dealing with duties that he’d had to entrust to others while he was way out on Namek. Duke Hightower had done well with continuing to grow both the planet and the system, but there were some things that Paul had to see to himself, as well as laying out future development plans for planetary defense, underground weapon stores, and other things that administrators had no strategic sense for.
Paul knew, as well as the other Archons did, that every planet they settled on would more than likely become a warfront at some point in the future…whether it be against lizards or V’kit’no’sat, so with that in mind Paul was laying out the infrastructure in a way that would give them a defensive advantage. One way to do that, he knew, was to make the streets and hallways small enough that the larger V’kit’no’sat races couldn’t physically enter, forcing either aerial bombardment or sending in the Zen’zat and other smaller races, which Paul felt that the Archons could more or less stand toe to toe with.
Building underground would shield them from some of the aerial bombardment and force the V’kit’no’sat to come down at them…unless they had their big guns with them, at which point it was more a question of how you wanted to die rather than mounting a proper defense. The lizards were another story entirely, and he’d already seen firsthand in Corneria Prime how city layout affected their surface warfare.
Building and training had occupied Paul in recent years, while the others were out actively fighting the lizards. He envied them, but knew how important the setup efforts on Namek were and didn’t hesitate to take that responsibility on himself. Now, as he walked down the catwalk staring at the still mostly buried pyramid beside and beneath him, he grudgingly admitted that as good as he’d gotten in the ‘master builder’ department, he still had a long way to go. This pyramid could take a kamikaze starship strike head on and barely show a scratch…and that’s the type of dug-in, hard hitting infrastructure that Paul dreamed about building.
But, like all things, a change of routine could be beneficial and Paul was eager to spend some time solely on training…not to mention getting the force powers that Jason had been none too hesitant to show off when he’d returned to the front. He had a couple of years head start on Paul, not to mention now outranking him as a level 17 acolyte, given the reset in rankings they’d all suffered. Their original scores were still there, waiting to be utilized, but with each level ranking there came prerequisite scores in a number of areas, of which psionics were now included.
It was those scores that were holding the rest back, so while the Archons were still training to increase their strength, speed, agility, etc, it was those who were progressing through the psionics skills the fastest that now held the highest ranks…with Kara now number 1 with an acolyte level 85 ranking.
Paul had mixed feelings about that, because she was a Saber, but he and the other trailblazers didn’t like getting beat out of anything, let alone their overall ranks. It was true that Kara had a cheat, but that didn’t do anything to quell their competitiveness. Not only had Kara advanced ahead of everyone, several other second geners were pacing the trailblazers as well…and at the moment they were all ahead of Paul, given that he was officially a level 1 acolyte, or would be after he got his psionics turned on.
That was the reason he and the others were here. Most of the psionics training was happening in the main sanctum alongside Atlantis, which was the only fully-refitted sanctum where all the psionic abilities could be trained for…and as a result it was packed full of acolytes working on their skills while construction crews busily worked to upgrade the other sanctums in the system, as well as across interstellar Star Force territory, including those on the jumpships.
While the Archons walking down the long catwalk with Paul would only be staying in the pyramid a day or two at most, he would be staying for a longer period of time and training with the elites in the interior sanctum…that, and doing some research of his own into the unmapped portions of the database.
When they finally reached the personnel entrance, higher up the pyramid than the main one the dragon had come in through not so long ago, a dark blue uniformed attendant met the Archons on the platform outside and led them through what was now a well-choreographed procedure. Paul let them go and stayed outside for a moment, letting the view of the enclosed pyramid sink into his bones.
There were scattered flood lights providing illumination to the otherwise blackness, but the pyramid almost seemed to soak them up, offering little reflective glare. The air was warm and moist, as usual. The pyramid gave off enough heat to pull moisture out of the surrounding soil, most of which still covered the green/black stone. The foodstuff factory set atop of it rather than burrowing down all the way to set on top of the pyramid itself. For security reasons and structural ones…because no support struts could reach the bedrock that the pyramid was blocking…most of the dirt/rock mix that had buried the pyramid remained in place, and Paul could almost feel the millennia in the smell of the chamber they’d hollowed out.
It also reminded him that they weren’t supposed to be here, for the catwalks, flood lights, and underside of the structure overhead clashed with the pyramid’s seemingly omnipotent construction.
“We have so far to go,” he whispered, kneeling down and pressing his fingertips against the tiny symbolic grooves in the ‘floor’ that led to the entrance. “And there’s no way of knowing how far you’ve come since this was built. If I didn’t like a challenge I’d be scared out of my mind.”
Paul stood up and blew out a breath. “Fortunately, we do like challenges,” he told the pyramid. “And though I don’t know how yet, we are so going to kick your ass.”
On that note the trailblazer walked inside the ovoid-shaped hallway and joined the casual flow of personnel wandering about the pyramid…far more than he’d been expecting. There were techs everywhere, with a scattering of security personnel that he’d never seen on sight before. As Paul moved through the halls and down some of the ramps the number of people increased, then as he finally got down to the command deck his jaw nearly dropped when he saw the small city of Star Force structures and the hundreds of mongooses zipping about between them.
“Davis, what have you been up to?” he said aloud as he stared up at the spire in the center of it all that was part of the Archon sanctum.
“Excuse me?” a nearby tech said.
“Nothing,” Paul said, waving him off. The man shrugged and continued walking on along with a group of three others, all of which boarded a nearby passenger-sized mongoose and drove off around the corner of one of the enormous dinosaur pads.
Paul shook his head at the spectacle around him, feeling like he was in a giant Star Force themed amusement park, and walked over to the mongoose corral and grabbed one of the traditional smaller ones…not the tech version, but one of the Archon’s, of which there were currently three in waiting. He flicked it on and drove off on the whisper-quiet engine with the oversized wheels seeming to turn over an infinite number of times to even gain a few meters on the gigantic plain of a room, though he knew it was only a trick of perception.
Paul took a long half lap around the command deck until he found a pad that was unused…one of the Voro’nam ones, otherwise known as Pachycephalosaurus. He parked near the foot of the staircase and jogged up, then found a single tech working the Zen’zat co
ntrols.
“Archon,” she said at seeing his white with silver stripe uniform. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Just need a console,” Paul said, walking up to one of the positions beside her. “What are you working on?”
“Deciphering the social codex. There are lots of racial logs depicting the interactions between the V’kit’no’sat races, written from their own point of view. I’m sifting through them looking for anything of interest. You?”
“Going where no one has gone before,” Paul said, only half paying attention to her. “Kara gave me some translations and this is the first chance I’ve had to look them up.”
“Kara…the Archon with the neural download?”
“The same,” Paul answered as he typed in Menonga’fil and executed a search.
“It’s a pity she didn’t stay longer. We really need her expertise here.”
“She has several types of expertise,” Paul said as entries popped up in a hexagonal grid. “I have need of her elsewhere, but I assume she’s still sending back her homework assignments?”
“We’re getting back translation requests, yes, but the lag time is unbearable. Pardon me if I ask, but what’s your name?”
“Paul,” he said, bringing up one database entry in particular.
“Number?” she prompted.
“024,” he said, reading intently.
The tech’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think…your uniform isn’t a ranger uniform.”
“We made some adjustments to our ranks, given the psionics…son of a bitch,” he said, emphasizing the last word.
“What’s wrong…if I might ask?”
“Just found something…really clever. A way to mine material from a star using an anti-grav syphon.”
“Is that something we can use?”
“They didn’t exactly leave one laying around,” Paul scoffed, still scrolling through the details. “It’s way too advanced for us to build, for now, but long term it’ll be very useful in planet-less star systems.”