Star Force: The Dinosaur War (Star Force Universe Book 45)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  This was a perfect example of a weakness in the V’kit’no’sat. Being a gritty fighter was one thing, but getting yourself killed out of pure rage was stupid. The Uvbor fleet could not win this fight, and if they were going to deliver Riona an easy win then she’d take it, but it disgusted her. The V’kit’no’sat were supposed to be so advanced and dominant, but right now they were attacking like spoiled brats who couldn’t handle not getting their way.

  Unless they knew something she didn’t. Riona wasn’t assuming there wasn’t another card in play here, but so far she didn’t see anything that could tip the scales and the Uvbor were losing ships at an alarming rate. The damage to her drones was significant, but the drones had the ability to fly around behind the Mach’nel for cover and she was losing less of them because of the availability of that tactic.

  Her Raptors were using it constantly, and not losing their heads like the Uvbor, though she could feel them seething. She didn’t even have to try and access their minds. They were emitting low level telepathic signals unconsciously. It’s what Star Force referred to as ‘telepathic bleed.’ If you weren’t paying attention you could tip your hand to what you were feeling, and right now her Raptors were out for blood.

  But they were doing so professionally. They weren’t making mistakes out of emotion and were obeying every order she gave, including those to break off small attacks on certain ships. The Raptors were not feral, but they were totally committed and Riona could sense the satisfaction they got as they tore apart the enemy ships that refused to run away.

  And they never did. Riona was amazed when the enemy fleet was down to only a dozen vessels and they refused to surrender or run. When the last four were left she ordered them disabled and boarded, then left the Mach’nel along with her best strike force in dropships to go onboard the enemy flagship…which she’d carefully let live to the end. Now it couldn’t run if it wanted to. Its weaponry was all destroyed, with the hull bathed with stun blasts around the entry points.

  It was time to go onboard and take some prisoners while a chunk of her fleet moved off and headed towards the planet to assist the Protovic in the ongoing ground war that they were losing badly.

  Riona dove through the tunnel that led to the interior of the Uvbor ship, choosing to drill through a random section than land in their hangar bays where they’d expect boarders. She flew a few meters before dropping to her feet gracefully on the other side in her orange/blue Goku armor as several Raptors ran through and dropped to the ground with soft thuds. They were fully armored in Star Force style fixed plates rather than the tiny nodules of the V’kit’no’sat armor that looked like sand.

  Those would allow holes to fill in by thinning other areas, but the Star Force hard plates would soak up more weaponsfire. You just had to make sure they didn’t shoot you in the same spot over and over again.

  The Raptors had adjusted to the change amicably, with the silver/white armor mimicking their likewise white bodies. The faceplate was over the top of their helmet, unlike Riona’s that was in front. Both were opaque, relying on holograms to allow them to see through. Otherwise it would have to be made of weaker material, but they’d kept the same design motif on the exterior so you couldn’t tell which helmet was full protection and which was less.

  All boarding teams were armed with heavy stun weapons, enough to weaken shields and get through to the armor that, in the case of the V’kit’no’sat, had not been designed to soak up stun energy. That had been on purpose, so the V’kit’no’sat could capture each other in disciplinary actions rather than being forced to nearly kill one to subdue them.

  Most of the V’kit’no’sat had not bothered to update their armor, allowing Star Force to disable them without having to blow through the armor itself. The stun energy would just soak through, unlike Star Force armor that was tailor made to soak it up, though deliver enough and Riona would still go down. She wasn’t worried about that, for she doubted she’d take a single stun weapon hit. These Uvbor would be using all lethal weapons.

  The Archon ran out through the dark room they’d entered, then opened a door into a lit corridor with a few Zen’zat passing by. Neither side had noticed the other, which meant there were dampeners in the walls to prevent psionic detection. That was odd, but as soon as she walked out in the hall she could sense them and them her, with Riona running after the pair to her left in a blur of motion.

  Two Raptors went the other way, with the next three following her up and gaining on her slightly before she reached the Zen’zat…who wisely backtracked around a corner. Riona couldn’t sense them, meaning the wall in between was blocking, so she decided to hit the far wall and bounce off it rather than try a normal turn.

  When she flew into view a hail of small arms fire washed by her, with a few hitting her shields, then she caught her feet on the wall and pushed back, launching herself at an angle into six Zen’zat and the two Uvbor behind them that were firing down over top of their heads.

  Riona shot herself into one of the Zen’zat, then let loose a Jumat blast to keep him from locking her up in a grapple hold as she dove underneath the nearest Uvbor…where she released her Ubven and froze everyone in place temporarily as she pushed through her own field and got behind the larger two V’kit’no’sat as her Raptors turned the corner and she shot them a quick telepathic update so they didn’t run into the edge of the field.

  They obeyed immediately, stopping and firing into the field with their stun weapons as the two Uvbor began to wiggle in place as they damaged the field. A few seconds later part of it collapsed early, but Riona was pouring stun energy into the shields of the Uvbor and took them down along with the Raptor’s weaponsfire before the Ubven field totally collapsed.

  She had to dance after that to keep from getting tail whipped, but with the head start and more Raptors coming around the corner the fight was short lived, though she took a stun blast to the helmet from a Raptor who missed his Zen’zat target.

  “Apologies, Archon,” Nimkli said as the Zen’zat dropped to the ground next to the Uvbor that Riona was now standing on top of, pumping additional stun shots into his body to make sure he stayed down.

  “I miss every now and then too,” she added, thumbing down the hall. “Get going. I’ll handle these.”

  The Raptors leapt over the fallen V’kit’no’sat with ease and enthusiasm, knowing that each capture was a victory in and of itself…and that the Archon wanted them all alive. No ‘accidents’ were permitted, nor would they try something like that. The Raptors were extremely loyal to Star Force, and she’d seen nothing to change that fact now that they were getting their claws into their former brethren…metaphorically speaking.

  Riona reached into her pack and pulled out a small device, setting it onto the armor of one of the Uvbor. Without a hole in the armor she wouldn’t be able to deactivate it, meaning it would be almost impossible to get the unconscious prisoner out of it. Either you blasted in and hacked their mind via touch to get them to deactivate it themselves, or you hacked the armor itself, which this little gismo was in the process of doing.

  About 20 seconds later the armor across the biped/quadruped began to melt and retract back down into the jewelry that draped over the spine of the Uvbor. Riona had to pushed to get the heavy torso up off the ground enough to pull it off, then she had a handful of long chords connecting large jewels in her hand and tossed it off to the side as she picked up her armor hacker and moved to the next one…after firing a couple more stun blasts into the exposed skin of the first Uvbor, just to be sure.

  9

  July 2, 4898

  Detention System (Dagran Region)

  Planet 7

  Tanu woke, feeling his body stiff as if he had been unconscious for a long time, but something else was wrong. He briefly looked around at the chamber he was in, recognizing the clean and rigid Star Force architecture immediately, but when he tried to reach out with his mind his Pefbar registered the wall and the psionic dampening in it…but noth
ing else would work.

  His Lachka wasn’t there, nor his Ikrid. Even his Rensiek was not responding. His mind was so numb he didn’t even notice the attachment to his head for more than a minute, then his fury grew as he realized he was a prisoner and Star Force had implanted something into his skull.

  “It’s a brain box,” a voice said in V’kit’no’sat as a hologram of a Human appeared in front of Tanu, only much larger than usual. It stood slightly taller than the Uvbor and wore the uniform of a Monarch. “Don’t try to dislodge it. We’ve placed countermeasures to insure you can’t even if you beat your head against the wall.”

  “Where am I?” Tanu demanded.

  “A prison system. We built it before you attacked and are bringing some of you here. Mainly the higher ranked ones, but we don’t have very many yet. You’re the first fleet commander I’ve got.”

  Tanu blinked multiple times, trying to work around the numbness in his mind to find the interface points Star Force was using to raid his mind for information.

  “There is no technological connection,” the Monarch assured him. “We searched your mind directly while you were unconscious. We already know what we want.”

  “Then why keep me here?”

  “Because we don’t like slaughtering all of you. We detest it, actually. But you’re not giving us many options to fight, and mercy is a luxury of the dominant. Be thankful that we were dominant in the engagement that led to your capture.”

  “You are not.”

  “Were you just being stupid then? I saw the battle records. You had no chance of victory against the Mach’nel. Was killing a few thousand drones worth your lives?”

  “We destroyed far more than that.”

  “Less than a million,” the Monarch specified, “thus it’s measured in thousands. Why didn’t you flee like the other fleets?”

  “We didn’t come to flee. We came to fight.”

  “Then you are a poor fleet commander. I might even have to send you back in shame. I’m not sure if I want you here with the capable warriors we’ve captured.”

  Tanu stood up and walked around the small chamber that was barely 4 times his length head to tail tip. He leaned forward and smacked his head against the wall, feeling the artificial head casing impact, then it sent a jab of pain into his head.

  “I said not to do that. The mechanism can fix itself and it’s bonded to your skull, so you’re not going to dislodge it.”

  Tanu smacked his head against the wall three more times, biting his teeth together against the induced pain and enduring it before he stopped in futility and looked back at the hologram.

  “Why are you speaking to me?”

  “I thought you could use the company. You’re not going to have access to any of the other prisoners, and my job is to look after you all. So this is me making greetings.”

  “Greetings received,” Tanu said angrily. “Now be gone.”

  “As you wish,” the Monarch said amicably, with his hologram disappearing shortly thereafter.

  Tanu growled in frustration, but refrained from hitting his head again. He twisted his neck to the side and reached up with his front leg/arm to scratch at the brain box. Nothing happened until he applied more pressure, then the jab of pain returned. He couldn’t see it with his Pefbar. There was a null zone around it. But at the rear of his cage was a mirror and he spun around to look at it, seeing his shackles for the first time.

  It was close fitting, barely rising above his skin level, but it covered most of his head and was firmly attached to his skull, blocking all his psionics except Pefbar.

  Tanu looked around, trying to come to grips with what had happened. He remembered being shot with the stun weapons, but he hadn’t expected to wake up in another star system. There was no such prison facility in the Skeeter System, unless the Monarch was lying and this was a small, specially built facility just for him, but the soreness in his body suggested a long time spent unconscious, so he didn’t doubt the length of journey that had taken him here…wherever here was. The Detention System didn’t proc his memory, so it was either a new designation or one that hadn’t been significant enough for him to remember.

  Tanu scratched at his brain box again, inciting the pain and finding it a little too intense to play with. He wanted to beat the thing until it broke, but if it was based on V’kit’no’sat technology it would not be easy to do so and would probably render him unconscious before he could succeed.

  The Uvbor stood up on his rear legs as high as he could, unable to touch the ceiling, and tilted his head back and yelled in frustration. The yell transitioned into a roar that left him drained when he finished, dropping back to all fours and walking in a circle as he tried to figure out what to do. He kept pacing for nearly half an hour before a small node appeared in the center of one of the walls.

  It got his attention instantly, for his Ikrid returned in a limited fashion, allowing him to connect to it, and it alone. Tanu felt the structured database it linked to, finding a teaching program, food schedule, training schedule, mental challenge system, a dozen other items he had no idea what they were, for they were locked but visible, and a battlemap link where he could watch the progress of the war. That map gave him the location of his prison world. The Detention System was in the Dagran Region, well away from the border, and it was unlikely that the V’kit’no’sat would get here any time soon…but he could see they were making gains. In fact, he had more information on the V’kit’no’sat warfront now than he had when he was free.

  They must have been piping in the feeds from their comm grid…an advantage the V’kit’no’sat did not share with no Urrtren links this far away from their territory. Nor did they have the ability to hack the Star Force relays and turn them to their own uses, meaning no one was going to be able to locate him here.

  Tanu knew he was in a bad situation. There was no escape, even if he managed to get outside the prison. Without a ship he couldn’t go anywhere, and the odds of him being able to die in battle were limited. He had no wish to die, but the idea of being a prisoner of the Humans was detestable. He wasn’t going to get used to it any time soon, but he’d gotten himself into this mess. The Monarch was right. He’d pressed the attack knowing the Uvbor fleet couldn’t win, but he hadn’t cared…nor had the others. The Raptors had to be killed, and if he couldn’t get to them directly then he would break their ships first.

  But that hadn’t been enough, and now he was regretting not fleeing and coming back to hit them under better circumstances. He couldn’t fight the traitors in here, and that helplessness coupled with his failure burnt him up. Over the next few days he’d go through fits of rage, beating his head against the wall and enduring the pain trying to knock the device loose or even just return his psionics to him for a brief moment…but he only succeed in overloading himself to the point where the brain box knocked him out. Then he’d wake on the floor sometime later and start all over again.

  It took more than a week before he took advantage of the training option and was allowed out of his cage. He didn’t want to cooperate with the enemy at all, but the stagnation was gnawing on him and the ability to run around an obstacle course was too inviting. He needed to do something, and watching the slowly updating battlemap was not enough.

  When he finished more than an hour of running and jumping, Tanu returned to his cell feeling better physically but broken inside. He was cooperating and he hated it, but he had few options other than sitting and letting his strength slip away. If he was ever going to have a chance to get back into the fight, or even just kill one Human before they finally killed him, he was going to need his physical skills…for right now that was all the infuriating brain box allowed him. He couldn’t even eat with his Lachka, though he’d found a promise to restore that function if he completed a long series of tasks set out by his captors.

  He wasn’t so far gone to comply with that, and his workouts would be of his own making, but given time that would change and the solitude w
ould wear on him. Eventually he’d be digging through the entire database Star Force provided him just to fight off the boredom, but first he had to get past his pride, and the victories the V’kit’no’sat were racking up helped to sustain it further…though most were temporary ones as the Uriti moved back and forth across the warfront evicting the new tenants from their captured worlds…and Tanu could see where each and every one of them was and how effective they were at blunting the V’kit’no’sat advances.

  But damage was being done, and if that continued Star Force would eventually fall…but not before he spent decades, if not centuries, in this prison. And Tanu had to deal with that in whatever way he could, even if it meant cooperating with the enemy in completing their challenges in exchange for limited bits of freedom.

  10

  July 19, 4899

  Vardivor System (Coreward of Star Force border)

  Stellar Orbit

  Virokor stood amongst the other Hjar’at military leadership inside Chodro, one of their 4 Mach’nel along with Irrin, Jor’wek, and Breenko, which were also both here. The Hjar’at had brought all here to this system only a few jumps away from the border to lock down a headquarters. Not on any planet, but simply a huge fleet location in stellar orbit with courier ships jumping in and out constantly to keep Virokor up to date on what was happening across the warfront. If Star Force wanted to bring a Uriti here to evict them, they were going to have to suffer the damage from 4 Tar’vem’jic plus a full third of the entire Hjar’at fleet that numbered better than 600,000 attack vessels spread across the galaxy that were all gradually making their way here.

  The other two thirds were split up into smaller attack groups and actively engaged in a variety of positions along the line or still in transit. They were 6 years into the resumed war and less than a quarter of the V’kit’no’sat combined fleet had arrived. That was partly due to distances involved, but also part of Virokor’s plan. They needed to poke and adapt to how Star Force responded rather than just trying to amass overwhelming numbers and blast through them.