Star Force: Resolution (SF89) (Star Force Origin Series)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  A few telekinetic pushes and pulls resulted in scrambled internal circuitry and two recently formed statues that she left in her wake carrying her sleeping cargo out to the main doors. When she got there the guards parted again, this time not knowing what to make of the situation but fearing what would happen if they dared to strike her.

  “Listen up,” she said, not bothering to stand still and give a speech, so she just talked with vocal amplification on her helmet as she walked out into the crowd and away from the building. “These interim leaders are no longer in command. They refused to follow my order and are now being taken to the prison planet. If you don’t want to end up doing your conversion training there then stop defying me. I’m looking out for the wellbeing of the younglings, not your egos, and I don’t care if I have to go around and stun every single one of you on this planet and the others personally, you will not be calling any of the shots from here on out. I give orders, you follow them. Anything else results in you becoming baggage like these three and a ticket to isolation to rethink the wisdom of your actions.”

  Oni didn’t say anything else, just continued to walk towards the landing zone she’d signaled the dropship to come get her at, but the crowd didn’t stay silent. They were hesitant to verbally poke at the Archon, but once a few started the others followed and soon there was a deafening roar of protest.

  She just ignored it and kept her focus on the area immediately around her, ready to knock down anyone that tried to interfere with her taking the three prisoners but ironically the crowd didn’t want to help them, for they were also on their black list for having been carrying out her other orders.

  Oni could tell that from their minds, which she sampled here and there as she walked. A bunch of ungrateful, egotistical bastards…rebels or not. These Trinx were Trinx no matter what their position concerning the ambush was, and it was probably better if she just called down the stun teams and started…

  The Archon stopped walking and looked into the crowd, which visibly jerked back when they thought she might be taking too much notice of them. Inside it was a single mind, wildly different from the others. It was angry, not at her, but at the crowd.

  “Come here,” she said out loud and telepathically as she used a bit more of her Lachka to make a pathway through the crowd up to the single Trinx that she’d taken notice of. When he froze in place she simply accessed his mind and forced him to walk out to her, then she released his body back to his own control.

  “Deervan, come with me please,” Oni said as she turned and started walking again, leaving the Trinx with a moment to make a choice.

  Fortunately he made the right one and after a twitch of hesitancy began walking behind her as she parted the crowds ahead as needed with her psionics. None of them were too eager to get close to her, but when they were massed together they got more reckless, thinking the numbers would insulate them from her wrath. One actually threw a rock at her, but it stopped in front of her helmet. She nearly walked into it, but a split second before her armor made contact it was shot back the way it’d come, curving through the air to hit the individual who’d throw it and put a good knot in his forehead.

  A few hundred meters later she saw the dropship coming down but didn’t revise her coordinates to bring it directly to her. She left another half mile of brisk walking and visible defiance of the crowds as Deervan quietly trailed behind her. Oni made sure he didn’t get hit by anything either, then when they got to the dropship she dumped the three sleeping Trinx into the air and held them aloft before shooting them like slow moving missiles into the cargo hold under the care of a Knight.

  “Do you see that?” Oni asked, standing beside Deervan a few meters away from the boarding ramp as she pointed back at the crowd that was still complaining loudly and in so many words that her armor couldn’t translate it all. “That is why I have to take the infants. So they don’t end up like them. If they raise them, they’re going to try and teach them to be like them, whether on purpose or just through association. The infants have to be separated at birth so they never know this stupidity.”

  “I do not disagree.”

  “I know you don’t. I know you dislike them as much as they dislike me. Take this moment to soak it in and remember their stupidity and ingratitude. From here on out you’re my liaison to this planet, and we’re going to figure out how many people down here need to be removed and how many can learn the easy way.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m inside your head,” she said, pointing an armored finger and gently touching his temple as she deactivated her helmet and locked eyes with him. “You have the best interest of your people in mind, therefore I can trust you. Come with me to orbit and we’ll get you situated somewhere that we can control before we send the collection teams in.”

  “For them or the infants?”

  “Both,” Oni said, placing a hand on his shoulder and directing him up the ramp. “If we stall, the infants lose precious days and they don’t deserve that.”

  4 weeks later…

  Deervan sat in a nearly empty building in a small sector of the largest city on Vikod as he read through another information packet from Star Force. It was for his personal instruction, and knowing that he’d have to pass various tests later on in order to remain here without having to go through indoctrination in isolation, he dedicated a significant portion of each day to study after attending to his newly minted duties as coordinator of the loyalist faction.

  At least that’s what he and some of the others were labeling his position, for there was no official title. Archon Oni had simply put him in charge and he’d been helping her to recruit likeminded, sane Trinx to bring into this sector in order that they could be put to work. Star Force apparently didn’t intend to permanently use the Trinx infrastructure, planning to replace it with their own sometime in the distant future, but they were not wasteful and wanted to salvage as much as they could during the transition process.

  They needed all kinds of civilization support going, but most important of all was assistance with understanding and assimilating Trinx science and technology. They were on a similar technological level but much was different between the tools the two empires used, hence Star Force wanted help in learning that they otherwise would have just done on their own from all the captured equipment and databases.

  But it was more than that. Foodstuffs had to be produced or shipped into the system, and right now the Trinx production facilities were being maintained to supply the planet’s needs as its population slowly dwindled as more and more ungrateful citizens were taken off the planet. Sadly there were many more left here that had yet to be sorted out from the rest, but within this isolated and protected sector there were only the faithful, and it was his job to pass orders from Oni to them and information back to her while keeping everyone accounted for and organized…most of whom far outranked him in Trinx society. He was but a simple factory worker before the invasion, though now he was liaison to the warlord that had mercifully conquered them.

  But he knew that his position would not last. It would disappear when no longer needed and the new generations of Trinx being raised in Star Force maturia would lead the way. He and the others could find a place with them if they proved themselves worthy and learned the Star Force ways, abandoning the past and embracing the future, which was why he was committed to his studies and training, the latter of which he did in the mornings before setting himself to the day’s tasks. He never knew for sure when a new order would come down from Oni, but the following morning was one such occasion.

  It didn’t come in the form of a hologram, but rather a text message still written in Trinx for it would take him and the others a long time to learn the Star Force language. In the brief message that followed she instructed him to ready more of the residential buildings to accept another 382 loyal individuals that had been rounded up and to incorporate them into the operational structure according to their skillsets…which he would have to determine and
then appoint their various appropriate positions.

  Attached were their identities and no more. The Trinx filing system was what his people were maintaining, and if Star Force needed something they’d come to him, not the other way around, so he took the list of names and began looking up their personal histories while seeing what available slots he needed filled and which ones he could expand upon. Priorities went first, but there was no structure in place to tell him where to appoint whom. It was all based on his judgement and he often wondered what about him had made the Archon give him this gigantic responsibility.

  He was curious but had never asked the question, gladly accepting it and paying as much attention to his duties as he could to prove Oni correct.

  “Coordinator,” an aide said, jolting him from his trance staring into the holographic panel before him.

  “What is it?” he asked, blinking his eyes twice.

  “I’ve just received word from the Hamoriti site. They report the construction will be complete within the week. They recommend we begin evacuating the area.”

  Deervan nodded solemnly, for there was no greater matter of importance within Trinx society than the Hamoriti, though it was soon to be taken from them to be put in the care of better hands.

  “I’ll inform Star Force,” he acknowledged, with the aide quietly returning to his duties and Deervan to his while getting a weird trepidation regarding that transfer…as if it was a monumental turning point in history that he was having the fortune to be present at.

  9

  April 3, 3297

  Nearkod System (Occupation Zone)

  Inner Zone

  The Excalibur came out of its jump into the former lizard core system at the head of a convoy…which wasn’t all that peculiar, given that many Star Force convoys passed through this system to get to the front, using it as a traffic nexus and supply depot. There were sixteen habitable planets that were still producing recycled materials from the lizard infrastructure that were feeding Star Force factories on the ground and in the captured ring shipyards, of which this system had the most known to exist.

  There were 9 here spread across seven planets, two of which had doubles, which was rare. The reason this system had them was due to the unbelievably high deposits of natural resources. In addition to the sixteen habitable planets, there were more than a hundred others that were barren lumps of rock full of precious ores. The lizards hadn’t been mining those worlds so much as consuming them, with three having visible chunks already taken out of them and a fourth that was barely a wedge and looked more like an ugly asteroid, for that was all that was left of it.

  Processing all that material locally was more viable than shipping it off to other core systems to handle the load so even while this system wasn’t the tops within the former lizard hierarchy it did have the most raw production value. That was all in the past now, and those shipyards were just ghosts of their former selves save for a few spots within them that had been converted to Star Force’s use.

  There were a few defensive forces in the system, which was usual to protect the recycling facilities and other sparse inhabitants. No full colonies had been built here as of yet. It was simply a work zone that sported several million people.

  A command ship arriving was a common enough sight for the warships meant to monitor and defend the system, but seeing that it was Paul’s command ship caught their eye as a message from him flashed across the comm systems telling them to stand down and allow him to assume command of system defense.

  That wasn’t necessary, but still his prerogative. The ship captains acknowledged the order just as their laggy sensors began registering the lizard ships jumping into the system behind the Excalibur…and the fact that Paul was tagging them as friendlies.

  The mastermind known as Thrawn entered the system in one of the many lizard jumpships, his identity not known to any outside observer nor logged within fleet systems. That was standard practice to keep him from being targeted and even now under the protection of Star Force he didn’t feel like breaking the habit. He received his orders from Paul via relays and did not even think the Archon knew which ship he was on, for he’d tried to hide that fact from him as well during the uploading in Krachnika.

  His fleet followed Paul’s command ship out to Miit orbit, which was one of the two planets with twin rings, one situated above the other with an interval of some 580 miles between them and connected via support struts just like the inner ring was connected to the surface. Paul signaled for him to meet him in person onboard the outer ring, providing the coordinates and no other explanation.

  Thrawn did as instructed and took a small transport over to the massive space station, finding no one present. He walked, alone, out of the hangar bay for a few minutes before he came to the compartment he was told to go to and waited there, finding it to be little more than an empty storage chamber several hundred meters long and high.

  A few minutes later a group of Humans entered, with Paul being the last in line. He walked quicker than them and got to Thrawn first with the others visibly questioning his presence here. The Archon gave him a translation piece of Human design and the mastermind slid it on over his head like a headband before they began talking, for to this day he still hadn’t bothered to learn the Star Force language.

  “This is Administrator Keery,” Paul began, gesturing to the Human nearest him, “Administrator Keller, Administrator Harvey, Baron Trew, and Tech Gregory Kotch. They run all operations in this system, and I felt it was best they met with you face to face as I explain the situation so there is no miscommunication.”

  “Wise,” Thrawn said, measuring up the shorter Humans.

  Paul turned to the Humans. “This is Thrawn, the only mastermind amongst the surrendered lizards and the reason any of them bothered to surrender in the first place. I can vouch for him, that he will not attempt any subterfuge, and that his ships will follow his orders. I know mine will, so there shouldn’t be a conflict here so long as we all know what’s going on.”

  “What is going on?” the Baron asked.

  “This outer ring is being returned to them so they can process the materials they will be mining from planets 43, 56, 58, and 62,” Paul said, indicating the ones that had been so heavily harvested they were no longer spheres. “That means their mining ships are going to be traveling across the system on a regular basis and they’ve already been rebuilt to register on our battlemap and vice versa without them having full access to it. If by some chance an enemy lizard ship showed up here you’ll be able to see which ones are ours and so will they,” he said, gesturing to the mastermind.

  “Will they be shipping material out of the system as well?”

  “No. Everything is staying local and a percentage of what they harvest will be turned over to you through the connecting columns. The rest they’re going to use to start building ships for me.”

  “Star Force or lizard tech?” Keery asked.

  “Lizard. New designs we’ve been working on.”

  “To what end?” he asked, looking at their former enemy questioningly.

  “A project of mine. I need you to leave them to work on their own. They’ve brought enough supplies to sustain themselves and I’ll bring in more as needed, but they’re going to be reworking this ring to provide a lot of stuff so don’t concern yourself with any odd construction activities. So long as they stay here and don’t cross over, just ignore them.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Take notice and inform me,” Thrawn said evenly. “I will be personally overseeing this operation until I am satisfied that it is stable enough for me to leave in other hands.”

  “What kind of resources will I be getting?” the Baron asked, but not to Paul.

  “A comprehensive load,” Thrawn answered. “We are not searching for individual materials, but will be collecting and harvesting bulk material and utilizing every part of it possible. Final manifests will be decided by what raw materials are recovered on a day t
o day basis.”

  “Are we open to trades?” Trew asked, this time looking at Paul.

  The Archon raised an eyebrow. “I had intended for you to each keep to your corners, but if you can find arrangements that are mutually advantageous I see no reason not to.”

  “Is there a security concern with contact?”

  “Possibly,” he admitted, “but usually they do as he instructs. Press them into an uncomfortable situation and they might revert to past habits. I assume you can avoid creating such a situation?”

  “If you trust him, then I think we can work something out.”

  “I’ll leave it to you two then. How soon can you evacuate this ring?”

  “Give me twelve hours,” Administrator Keery said. “I don’t have much here, which is why I assume you chose this ring. Do I need to post guards on the columns?”

  “Surveillance, but no guards. Aside from handing over materials there should be no travel up or down.”

  “My people will not explore on their own volition,” Thrawn promised. “And I will instruct them where the boundaries lie.”

  “Then I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to make this work. Are you going to keep bringing in more people periodically?”

  “We will grow what we need here.”

  All sets of Human eyes turned to Paul and he gave them a confirming nod.

  “Space traffic?” the Baron inquired.

  “We have access to your systems and will avoid your ships whenever prudent. Our patterns will become evident and not alter, making our movements predictable for your ships to also avoid.”

  “Are they armed?” Koch asked.

  “Their current ships aren’t, but the ones they’re going to build for me will be. Though it’s in its infancy, you can consider this operation to be under the Clan Saber mantle and these lizards to be contractors that I’ve hired, if that helps you mentally settle.”