by Jyr, Aer-ki
Larissa dragged her duffle along the wall until they got past the knot of heavy traffic, then moved back out on Ben’s left as they headed on through the enormous building, eventually coming to a lift terminal and grabbing one of the waiting elevator cars and descending down the spire to a subsurface nexus that connected directly with the trams that ran underground, one line of which ran to the spaceport Larissa would be leaving from.
The two Archons continued to chitchat on the way over, covering some business matters and some personal. Ben had been her right hand on the planet for the past 27 years and was going to be her replacement leading the Bsidd, with him taking the training wheels off bit by bit as she directed from afar, meaning the two were still going to be in regular contact but probably not seeing each other again for years to come.
That was another aspect of Archon life. You were always around people but those faces were constantly changing. Every Archon was a rogue, or had to be able to be given the situation, but given that they were trained to be masters of all areas it was good to rotate around and keep things fresh, although long term assignments like the one she was just finishing were necessary from time to time. Randy’s logs had helped her a lot in the beginning, and she’d filed her own for use by the others if/when they had to go through a similar assignment.
They all shared information, knowledge, skills, and even now psionics where they were able, but in the end each Archon had their own path to walk and needed to be enough of a free spirit to embrace that…which was why Larissa was already able to start mentally walking away from Char even before she’d made it to the spaceport.
When she finally boarded the dropship she dropped her duffle into the passenger seat beside her, feeling the heavy weight of her armor bundle inside bounce a bit on the cushions, and sat down blowing out a deep breath that felt like she’d been holding it for the past 5 decades. Other than a few tweaks here and there the Bsidd were no longer her responsibility. They were growing into their own and becoming part of Star Force…and a self-sufficient part, capable of contributing rather than needing attention given to them.
True, they were still a long way from being on the level of the Calavari, but the ball was rolling in that direction and Larissa had no doubt they’d get there eventually. It was just a matter of getting the necessary experience, and she didn’t need to be there for that. Her task was done and now she was back to just being Larissa, one person with one life rather than having billions to worry about.
A little tingle of energy shot through her as the dropship lifted off, which surprised her. She was actually excited to leave where she had expected it to just be a normal trip. Larissa had left before and never felt this way, and with a decent amount of self-analysis during the flight up to orbit she realized it was because of the disconnect occurring and how, despite the need for it, she really didn’t care for administrative duties.
The trailblazer didn’t regret the Bsidd assignment, nor hold any ill will against them or Davis, for it had been at his request she’d taken it on. No, it wasn’t that. She was just ready to move on and get back to being, like Ben had been discussing with her, a rogue and ready to jump at whatever problem showed up next.
Fortunately most of the big problems were relegated to the past. The interior of the ADZ was more or less quiet, though there was always something going on. The big problems were outside their borders and battling each other in what had once been Nestafar territory, with the conflict spreading out as more and more of the lizard and Skarron expansions ran into one another. The ADZ was soon to become encompassed by both, with talks ongoing with the Voku about how to possibly counter that.
Given the 3D nature of the starmap they lived on there wasn’t a specific line that could be drawn against the enemy, and the lizards tended to hold more systems above the galactic middle line than below, giving the ADZ with many borders where they and the Skarrons didn’t yet threaten. Star Force didn’t want to get to the point where the ADZ was swallowed up on all sides, so they were working with the Voku for extremely long term contingencies, given that they were already fighting the Skarrons in their own territory and it wasn’t impossible that the lizards might work their way down to them as well someday.
But for the moment the two big powers were so consumed with countering each other they weren’t paying a lot of attention to the ADZ, and probably because they’d taken up a defensive mindset rather than an aggressive expansion. Star Force, the Protovic, and the Hycre weren’t taking Skarron worlds from them, so they probably saw the pesky ADZ as something they could deal with later at their leisure.
For the lizards there was a few of their worlds coming into Star Force possession, but not enough to truly matter. On that front Star Force was mainly being defensive and not threatening the lizards in any major way, leaving them a threat they could deal with later as well…though they were never completely left alone. There was still continuous fighting going on, but the bulk of the lizard fleet was headed elsewhere, leaving only their second line for Star Force and the Hycre to contend with.
It wasn’t a golden age by far, but compared to what they had been facing the ADZ was doing well and more or less stable. Larissa knew that was only temporary, but it was giving everyone a much needed respite to catch their breath and rebuild, with the fronts being flooded with Sentinels and the new Ma'kri patrol ships, though those were still more or less a secret that Star Force was keeping from public knowledge.
But the ADZ was huge, and most of the ‘border’ was unsecured. Most of it lay in areas where the lizards or Skarrons hadn’t been pressing them, and huge swaths of Epsilon, Gamma, and Delta Regions were Star Force territory on map only, with many more outposts and colonies needing to be built to get a firm grip on the spherical region they’d laid claim to. In those ‘wild’ regions there were other races that weren’t part of the ADZ Alliance that had to be dealt with, either left alone or fought when they took actions against their neighbors.
Freeing of slaves or hunting down pirates had become a common practice for some of the other Archons, with them slowly weeding the wild areas and making them more civilized…not to mention scouting out the areas beyond the ADZ, including their every growing line of bread crumbs headed in the direction of the galactic Rim.
There was a lot going on and Larissa didn’t know where she’d end up eventually, but as the dropship rendezvoused with a transport in orbit she had no doubts about where the next few years would take her, barring an emergency. The cargo ship would be taking her to a nearby system where she’d get on the ADZ transit grid and make her way back to Earth rather than tying up a warship with the unnecessary trip. Once she got back to her first home she’d be joining the other 54 trailblazers and a host of second gen in the long running advanced training group that had already spawned several mages.
Larissa was only a level 58 padawan and was still missing a few psionics whose triggers had been unlocked since her last brief visit. She intended to stay with the group permanently and make up for lost time, as well as reconnect with her brothers and sisters who’d she’d been apart from for what seemed like forever.
She and the other trailblazers might be rogues, but they still preferred operating as a team…and when they got together good things always happened, often in unexpected ways, and it was high time Larissa got back to pure training and see what she and the others could accomplish together.
That, and she was just sick of falling so far behind in her levels.
10
February 2, 2633
Solar System
Earth
It was late, but Davis was finishing up some planning files for a theoretical program to be implemented in the Lacvamat colonies that he was going to shoot off to the trailblazers for some feedback tomorrow at the latest, so he was spending an extra hour or so watching the stars come out through his panoramic office windows when an update icon flashed on a holographic display to his left.
It was the 19th update in the past 1
0 minutes, but it was flagged with a selective tag that Davis had put on it earlier, reminding himself that he wanted to see it as soon as it came in. The Director paused the planning and set it aside for a moment as he read through the Bsidd population statistics.
Another 1.3% increase in the past 6 weeks, as far as egg hatchings were concerned. Included in the batch of statistics were the graduation rates from the maturias and the number of personnel attaining ranks in the various disciplines within their society…including a breakdown as to which were which variants. More and more they were mixing as a talent pool formed, still very inexperienced but now at the point where Star Force could really ramp up their population numbers to the amount he needed.
That didn’t happen overnight, nor without the proper infrastructure in place, but ever since Larissa had given him the green light he’d been pumping resources and construction crews into Char to flash build more colonies than they’d previously had…all with the intent of utilizing the Bsidd’s population growth potential to add some additional stability to the ADZ, among other things.
The original Bsidd leaving had been welcome news, but the rest of the races were growing at such a rate that Star Force’s hold on their percentage of the ADZ’s population was mainly due to the Kiritas/Kiritak. Davis was stoking Human growth as much as he could, with a great imbalance still existing on Earth, which had too many, and the rest of the Human colonies outside of Sol that had too few to fuel the expansive growth that he wanted.
That he needed. Star Force was large, far larger than he’d ever imagined it becoming back when he’d begun the organization in what seemed like an altogether different world, but it was still tiny compared to the major players out there, and the more reports he got from the lizard/Skarron war the more he realized just how outclassed they were in terms of resources and population. Star Force needed to get larger, and Human reproduction rates weren’t enough.
He was still continuing to surge Kiritak expansion, but their small size made them ill-suited to some tasks. On the contrary, the different variants of Bsidd made them skilled in just about everything, relatively speaking. That was judging them based on their race’s default attributes and not the skills of the individuals, which Star Force based its entire structure on, but he knew there was a great deal more potential in the Bsidd than the Kiritak, though he doubted the larger race would ever outwork the energetic little guys to whom Star Force owed a lot.
Davis didn’t want to replace them, at all, but he wanted to add to them and with the Bsidd he could add a number of different aspects to Star Force…but only if their population grew to similar levels. Right now it was only a few billion, but as the new facilities came online Char was going to be seeing a population boom like no other. Even now there was an army of more than 150 million Star Force engineers and construction workers on the planet and a never-ending flow of cargo ships coming in and out of the system delivering the raw materials they required for the sudden and massive expansion.
He knew that such growth was dangerous, which was why he was monitoring every little fluctuation in the numbers as they filtered in through the relay network. As he skimmed through the report the recent batch looked to be right on with what he expected, including the construction rates which were still staying ahead of projections. Cargo shipments were growing a surplus of foodstuffs and other materials on planet which he intended to add to, having had prefab warehouses built across two large plains on the planet.
Those were increasing as the need arose and were now easily visible from orbit as a flat sheet of artificial construct standing in stark contrast to the harsh landscape. The various colonies stood out as small dots, underscoring the size of the warehouse facilities and the scope of the project that Davis was rushing along. So far everything was proceeding as planned, but he intended to keep it that way by overseeing it from afar rather than relying on his staff. He trusted them and their skills, but something of this size he needed to handle himself just to be safe.
Once he saw that everything was in order he set the update aside and returned to his planning for the Lacvamat. They’d not taken to annexation well, and even the younglings that had been born and raised in maturias didn’t acclimate as they should after graduation. There was something significantly lacking in the structure of their new society and Davis was brainstorming what that was and how to make adjustments.
Part of the problem was that the Lacvamat were flyers and that most of Star Force was made up of groundpounders. They weren’t the only flying race, for Star Force had several as wards, but those had been adapted to Human-style colonies in a hybridized form that the Lacvamat just weren’t taking to. They were becoming very stagnant, more so than other civilian aspects of races. It was always assumed that there would be slackers, just as a byproduct of individual choice, but the percentages were sky high in the Lacvamat. So much so that Star Force was pretty much having to babysit them with very few in terms of their overall population actually working to assist in their own survival.
Davis had spent considerable time researching other flying races and trying to get inside their heads…literally in some cases, and had thought he had a solution that involved a mix of infrastructure changes as well as a societal restructuring that involved the creation of what he was loosely calling ‘flocks,’ something that he’d tried to discourage in other races. It seemed the Lacvamat needed a group mentality, at least in some small part, to provide them motivation to act and Davis was intent on giving it to them in a Star Force fashion.
Like the Clans, he knew that beneficial competition was the answer, but he had to craft it in such a way to stoke their energy without inducing resentment and the kind of blind hatred that had seen the former Lacvamat tear into the Scionate. It was a delicate balancing act, but again something that wasn’t new to Davis. The competitive aspects he wanted the Archons to tweak, as well as troubleshoot the rest and maybe come up with some additional or better ideas.
He was feeling the need to sleep dragging on him, but got the gist of his ideas down and did a little streamlining before going ahead and sending it off through the relay network to all 100 of the trailblazers, knowing they’d vet and discuss it amongst themselves and send back something to him in a few months. With that task done he left the rest of the incoming updates till tomorrow morning to deal with.
Davis took a casual glance out his window, seeing the nighttime lights of the city and the normal traffic flows in the sky. Yawning out of reflex he realized he was a bit more tired than he thought and put aside any thoughts of doing anything other than going straight to bed once he got back to his quarters, else he’d regret it when he got up for his morning workout.
He headed for the spiral staircase and worked his way down through his staff control level, which was always active with rotating crews, and informed them that he was going dark…meaning that he’d be off comm until further notice. With a few last instructions he was off on a casual walk through the city and lift system back towards his waiting bed.
Davis was nearly to his quarters when a security officer came running up to him in the hallway, brushing past two other people and nearly knocking them over in the process. The Director sensed him coming before he got to him, as well as his mental state, and turned to face the slightly taller man.
“What is it?”
“Unidentified ships have entered the system. A lot of them.”
A spike of fear shot through Davis’s body, but he didn’t let it show as he turned around and headed back to his office, accelerating up into a run with the security officer rushing ahead and playing blocker, clearing his path when necessary.
“Earpiece,” Davis said on the run.
The security officer took his out and tossed it to Davis, who telekinetically plucked it out of the air and inserted it into his left ear, then went through the rerouting process so it would register his ID, after which he contacted defense command.
“Talk to me,” he said to the Archon on the othe
r end while still running through the moderately crowded hallways en route to the nearest lift terminal.
“Director, we have at present 126 ships of unknown origin in stellar orbit. Their hull configurations do not match any known profiles and as of yet there has been no attempt at communication.
“Not V’kit’no’sat?”
“Not unless their tech got a whole lot crappier, no,” the striker said.
Davis felt a huge relief flow through him in a wave of goosebumps, but he still kept running. “Why kind of ships?”
“Warships…and another two just came out of the braking maneuvers. They’re about half the size of our jumpships, but we don’t have close enough eyes on them to determine what type of weaponry.”
“Where do we stand?”
“Defense fleets are moving to contain or engage, and the trailblazers are being notified. I think this warrants interrupting their training.”
“Let’s hope not. Civilian traffic?”
“Rerouting. They came in on an odd jumpline, so there’s not much in the immediate vicinity.”
“Which?”
“Westley.”
Davis frowned. That star system was on the other side of a thin nebula that Star Force always routed around. Their shields were strong enough now to go through if needed, but there was no sense in taking the chance other than in emergency situations…and that suggested that whoever this was didn’t have accurate star maps of the region, not to mention strong enough shields to survive the trip, making Davis wonder exactly how advanced they were.
“Define crappy.”
“None of the really sweet toys we know the V’kit’no’sat swear by. Right now my best guess is plasma variant weapons with some others thrown in. Maybe some missile racks. I’m looking at the updating sensor feeds now.”