Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (33-36)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  David shot one of the guards in the back, then the others dove for another part of the crate pile when they discovered they’d been flanked. Most of the hangar was flat and filled with ships, but at three points there were mountains of cargo either arriving or going out, stacked up in random segments to keep various shipments separate for easier handling later. That provided ample opportunities to shoot out of cover and a couple of plasma blasts came David’s way as he ignored the guards and hurried towards the Dragon-class dropship whose boarding ramp was still down, but no one was visible moving around it.

  Another plasma lance caught David in the leg, splashing off his shields before overloading and penetrating…leaving a tiny scar in the armor alongside another he’d gotten yesterday. While the patchwork of shields overtop the armor was certainly a defensive boost, it was more in longevity than sheer power, given that this was the same set of armor he’d been wearing since arrival and he only had a dozen or so scorch marks showing what otherwise would have been melty gashes.

  He risked getting a few of those now as he sprinted towards the massive dropship, only to see the boarding ramp begin to rise as he was halfway across the deck, angling underneath the wing of a falcon and shooting a pair of workers who didn’t get out of his way. David hurdled their bodies as they fell and sprinted on, knowing he wasn’t going to get there in time.

  As the wide ramp tilted up and began to decrease the opening into a sliver, the anti-grav powered up and the belly of the wing-shaped ship started to drift up off the deck even before the hatch was closed. David slowed to a stop still far from the ship as the landing gear began to retract, his mind racing as he tried desperately to think of something else to do…maybe get to a control panel and close the bay doors.

  But there was no time. The spaceport hangar deck was huge, and by the time he found the control room the dropship would be out of the containment shields holding in the atmosphere from escaping out to the airless moon’s surface. As the dropship slowly spun about, lining up for its run over to the center of the deck to align with the exit column, David resigned himself to finishing off the guards that were still shooting plasma at the Archons, along with however many others might be on their way in. The Word had beat them this time, but there was still a chance that they’d be able to intercept the shipment on the other end of wherever it was going if the beacon remained active.

  Just then half a dozen plasma lances flashed together in one direction, and David saw that Jet was drawing the fire as he sprinted across the deck, stepping up on top of a crate sitting on a lifter whose driver had fled once the shooting started, and using the large box as a stepping stone to jump up onto the wing of a parked falcon, though the impossibly long leap came up short and he had to pull a one handed smack/grab to stay on top. As he climbed up and got his feet under him David shot one of the guards that was coming out of cover to target him.

  “Jet, what are you doing?”

  “Shut up, I’m busy,” the Archon said as he got himself fully up onto the wingtip…then he stood up from his crouched position and sprinted down the length of the long wing.

  David ran up towards the crates, tracking down another pair of guards, but he kept throwing glances over towards Jet, unsure of what he was doing…then he saw him run and long jump off the other end of the dropship, crossing a gap of several meters to where he once again smack/grabbed the wing of the dragon as it passed by.

  He was going to ask him what he had in mind, but as Jet had pointed out he was busy, so David kept quiet and paid as much attention as he could while dealing with the guards.

  Jet climbed up over the wing’s edge, glad the Archon armor had grippy finger pads, and ran across the wide wing as the dropship eased its way into the ascension column, giving him a view of stars above his head through the slightly blue-tinted energy fields. As the ship settled into proper alignment, for the width of the dragon almost matched the width of the opening in the ceiling, Jet ran towards the bent forward portion of the flying wing and dropped to his knees over where he knew the cockpit was, though like all Star Force space ships there were no windows for him to look through.

  Fortunately for Archon acolytes that wasn’t a problem.

  As the dropship began its ascent, pushing Jet closer and closer to the energy field, his black/white Pefbar vision flicked on and he was suddenly able to see down through the hull plates and into the cockpit where the two pilots were seated. Seeing they were slightly behind him he slid across the dragon’s white exterior, knowing he needed to be as close as possible to make this work.

  As Jet’s head passed through the first of two containment fields it bumped him slightly, given that it had to maintain some pressure to keep the gasses inside, then he was into the airlock chamber that was little more than a short vertical tube that led to a second shield, on the outside of which was the city surface.

  Ignoring his ever changing location, Jet targeted both pilots’ minds and pumped a Fornax blast into each, with both men slumping in their chairs, one of which fell face forward into the control panel. Jet cringed but didn’t notice any change until he passed through the second shield and saw the city’s spires start to rotate slightly as the dropship began to twist as its port thruster was continuously firing.

  “Whoops,” he said, releasing the Fornax flow into that man while continuing to disrupt the other with repetitive hits that saw his slump tilt to the side and cause him to fall out of his seat. The other man got his motor control back for a moment, sitting up and switching off the thruster control that he’d hit before slumping and twitching again, this time with a gentle telekinetic bump to the side of his head that toppled him out of his seat and onto the floor.

  Jet released his barrage for a moment, using his Pefbar to study the control boards. He was about to activate the thruster control when the men started to get up, then he hit them with another blast, following by a quick tug of the controls.

  The gentle spin the slowly ascending dropship was in nulled out, then Jet got the anti-grav set into neutral, which stopped their rise. He risked a glance to the side and saw the city spires now beneath him, with only the more or less flat expanse of the city visible over the wing and the rocky landscape of the moon beyond that, otherwise there was just a mass of stars over his head and all around him…and he realized that if he fell from this height, low grav world or not, he was probably going to die.

  So when the pilots started to get up again he slammed another, more forceful Fornax blast into them, knowing that if they hit the main drive the momentum would slide him off the wing and down he would fall.

  Telekinetically using the pilots’ controls in between repeated Fornax blasts to keep them subdued, Jet got the ship descending very slowly, hoping that they were still more or less aligned with the entrance to the spaceport. With his Pefbar he couldn’t see any of the display screens within the cockpit, only the flat material of the screens that appeared like a blank wall section. So it wasn’t all that surprising when the right wing suddenly began to tip up and his grip on the dragon’s hull began to get dicey.

  He reacted quickly, killing the descent and stopping the dragon at a 35 degree angle…still enough to hold on to if he was careful. He twisted his head around as much as he dared, while still pounding the pilots with Fornax. He saw the inside lip of the spaceport ring to his left, along with the gap between it and the dipped wing, so he used the controls and slid the dragon over in that direction, eventually feeling the right wing drag loose.

  The anti-grav controls auto-righted the level of the dropship, which Jet was grateful for, so he only had to trigger another descent down into the spaceport. When the first containment field passed up over his head he felt a sense of relief, and when the second followed his armor switched over from self-contained reserve oxygen to environment draw, meaning he was no longer on the clock there.

  The dragon bottomed out before Jet could find the landing gear deployment button, crunching the hull slightly but otherwise leaving
the ship intact. When Jet turned off the anti-grav entirely the wings began to tip to the left as the ship started to roll over, so he quickly reactivated it at a low setting, just enough to balance the tilt out.

  “Jet, you are one badass nutcase,” David said with a laugh.

  “Will you shut up and get inside before it takes off again,” Jet said, searching for the boarding ramp cockpit release button while once again having to disrupt and subdue the pilots with a Fornax blast…along with a third individual that came up into the cockpit to see what the hell was going on.

  “Keep it down long enough for me to get the emergency panel off,” David said as he sprinted across the deck towards where it had come down, looking for a toolkit he could grab along the way. If he didn’t find one he’d just have to use his plasma rifle and armored knuckles to improvise, for the exterior release switch was buried under hull armor, meant only to be used as a last resort if some idiot triggered the ramp to seal up then jumped outside before it could fully close, leaving no one inside to open it again.

  “No need,” Jet said, smiling underneath his helmet at both the headache he was developing and the button he’d found. He used his Lachka and telekinetically pressed it, then focused his remaining mental strength on keeping the pilots away from the controls.

  “You’re getting a pay raise for this,” David joked as he continued to sprint forward, now seeing the boarding ramp start to lower, though it was all the way over on his left. He angled that way, goosing a little more speed out of his armored legs, not knowing how long it’d be down or who would be waiting inside.

  Assad got to it first, with David following him in 6 seconds later. Jet kept up his Fornax until he saw Assad’s mind come up to the cockpit and shoot the pilots unconscious, then Jet let his helmet hit the hull for a moment of rest. Eventually he got up and slid off the front of the dragon, dropping hard to the distant ground and rolling out of his fall as he’d done in training thousands of times before.

  He picked himself up then circled around to the ramp, running up it into the face of mountains of cargo. He picked his way through it, focusing on the minds he felt ahead, of which there were many. When he got out of the hold and up into the passenger section he found it packed with now unconscious people…all of which were wearing different, yet similarly styled clothing.

  Jet turned one over, looking at the man and shuffling around his paint-splattered shirt for an ID. He pulled it out and examined the small, flat rectangle, finding nothing out of place about it, but he still got the feeling these weren’t varied people catching a ride up to orbit.

  “Dropship secure,” David said over the teamcomm. “How’s the hangar look?”

  “Rounding up the strays now,” Nathan answered, shooting a random worker that was only now fleeing across the deck. He was probably harmless, but better not to take chances. Besides, Nathan was getting tired of playing nice when everyone in the city seemed to be coming after them…and if this guy ran into an incoming security detachment and told them exactly where they were, it could cost them a surprise attack or a few seconds head start, so the guy got a green splatter on the back and a face plant into the deck as he fell.

  Nathan ran along the row between parked dropships back towards the end where the dragon had originally been. Lio was doing the same only a few rows over, with both of them looking with their Ikrid senses for any minds still lurking around. Almost all of the dropships were empty, awaiting crew and cargo, but every now and then there’d be a worker who hadn’t left their post, figuring to ride out the ruckus and then get back to work…or maybe just being naïve enough not to realize the significance of plasma fire.

  The next guy Nathan came across had an excuse, for he was welding a patch inside a partially disassembled transport, this one not of Star Force make. He let him get finished with what he was working on, then tapped him on the shoulder. The man extinguished the torch and turned around, only to get a stinger to the chest. Nathan caught him before he could land on his equipment, then laid him out on the floor for a not so uncomfortable nap.

  From there on down to where the dragon had been was clear…save for one mind up in a crate stack where it shouldn’t have been. When Nathan got closer he realized it wasn’t actually in the crates, but behind them up high in the wall.

  Frowning, Nathan turned on his Pefbar and got the traditional spherical vision, then he narrowed it to a cone and shot it up towards the mind like a spotlight, seeing through the crates as he walked up to the closest ones. Back behind them there was an air duct, pumping in fresh and processed atmosphere into the bay…and just inside it was someone hiding. The grate was in place, but the person was definitely inside.

  Whoever it was, he wasn’t staying there, and Nathan began hopping up the crate stack and working his way around a few peaks to get over to near where the vent was, which the workers who’d stacked the crates up against the wall had wisely left an opening around.

  As Nathan got closer his Pefbar increased in detail, and he could make out the arms and legs of the person crunched down inside the shaft before he got into view, then when he came around from the side and stepped up to within a couple meters of the grate the person pulled something out of his sleeve, a tiny pebble from the Archon’s view, and moved it towards his mouth.

  On instinct Nathan telekinetically yanked it out of his hand and levitated it outside through the grating. The tiny object pulled a sharp right turn in the air outside and flew straight into Nathan’s hand as he walked up, keeping a close Pefbar eye on the person. One glance was all he needed, and the Archon knew he’d guessed right.

  He stepped up to the grate, slid his fingers in through the gaps and pulled, popping it off and tossing the metal net aside…then he knelt down so he could see straight into the face of the man hunkering down with a startled and also resigned look on his face.

  “Come out or I’ll drag you out,” Nathan said, knowing the man could decide to flee down the duct for as far as he could get, but apparently he wasn’t going to try that…or maybe already had. Nathan stretched out his Pefbar to see where it led just in case he did dart off, and found that about 10 meters back it dropped straight down well below floor level, meaning the man had cornered himself within his little hideout.

  “Now,” Nathan repeated when he didn’t move.

  The man sighed and crawled forward, sliding out and down half a meter to the crate floor where he rolled over his shoulders before standing up and brushing himself off. “That’s a neat trick…mind telling me how you did it?”

  The man was dressed casually, same as the others in the dropship, though Nathan didn’t know that, for it was his calm, almost disinterested demeanor that sent a warning flag up in the back of the Archon’s mind.

  “Would it matter if I did? You don’t have any cameras around here for your buddies to listen in on, do you?”

  The man smiled. “No, this is just a standard spaceport. Not one of our facilities, which I believe you breached the other day.”

  “Booby trapping prisoners is low,” Nathan growled.

  “They served a purpose, assuming we got at least one of you. I know you somehow managed to disable the door bomb, but there was no way we…”

  Two stingers at pointblank range to the chest cut off his sentence and dropped the man to the ground unconscious. Nathan shot him in the head a third time, just for good measure, then crunched the kill pill that was still in his hand and tossed aside the resulting dust as he knelt down and began searching the man’s pockets.

  “David, I got one.”

  “One what?” Green Team’s leader asked back over the comm.

  Nathan found a larger object in a chest pocket of the man’s loose shirt and pulled out a pair of what looked like ordinary sunglasses, though he knew they were anything but.

  “An Agent.”

  Deceit

  1

  May 18, 2430

  Alpha Centauri System

  Glasir

  Shannon-10344
5 rode in the back of the Falcon-G dropship along with two other Archon adepts and a team of Knights from Clan Tron as the silver-plated ship rose up through the planet’s atmosphere leading a swarm of conventional dropships in its wake, all of which contained Clan combat personnel scrounged from Glasir. Their small colony on the planet held only 55,000, but Red Team had requested all local combat assistance they could offer, so Shannon and the other Archons on station had been dispatched to lead the Knights and Regulars out to the nearby moon of Tyr.

  For Shannon, a level 34 adept, this was her first combat mission. She’d only recently been assigned to Alpha Centauri, having spent the past 83 years in Sol along with the other lower level Archons undergoing a slew of training missions and trials. She hadn’t progressed as fast as most of her original class, but she’d finally warranted a posting to another star system…one that was considered inconsequential and boring where she could be of limited use while she continued to train and upgrade her skills.

  Neither she nor anyone else had expected Alpha Centauri, let alone Glasir, to be a hotbed of activity, but that was the universe for you. Once you think you’ve got things figured out it goes and upends your carefully constructed fiction, reminding you to look, listen, and learn…not guess and predict.

  Shannon was ready, more than ready, and relished the chance to put her combat skills to use, despite not having much intel on the situation. She and the others were to report to the higher level Archons already on site and assist them with their current mission…and that was all she’d been told, though from the recent news stories making their way across planetary orbit and down to Glasir she knew there was at least some level of fighting already underway, with an Archon team being labeled as renegades to the general public.