Blood on the Stars

by Aer-ki Jyr

  The other trailblazers had admitted to similar urges as they tried to figure out their new biology and abilities. For Kent he hadn’t changed color like some of the others had, though his size had increased. He now stood 7’9 inches tall and his body mass had increased by 43%. He’d been ungainly in the beginning, but had gradually regained his poise and easy of movement. After that he had worked on developing his new abilities, unique among them was a tissue in his hands that the others did not possess. So far it did nothing, no matter what he tried, and it was the most obvious of the lingering questions he had regarding himself, but not the most important.

  All of them were grappling with questions, and none had answers to all of them. But they’d gotten a decent handle on their new bodies, enough to give the go ahead to start reproducing. The first class was 100 younglings born through surrogates…all Pages who volunteered, for they didn’t want to risk birthing the potentially larger Furyans in smaller Human bodies.

  That had been a wise move, for the infants grew fast in the womb and were born in only 5 months, each at 22-26 lbs. They were walking within 4 months, and growing far more rapidly than anyone expect. Kent had kept up with the flow of highly classified updates heading his way, but he hadn’t predicted a call for his assistance. Definitely not this early, and from Wilson himself, without saying why.

  Kent knew there had to be trouble, and there wasn’t any point in explain with a 10 month trip ahead of him, so when he landed on the top of the Temple where the Furyan maturia was located, he went in knowing little of the problems that they were facing until Wilson took him directly to the group as they were going through calisthenics drills under the direction of 200 trainers…two for each one…and still the younglings were not paying much attention.

  “I never had this issue with you,” Wilson said from the observation room high above the training deck and hidden behind a wall with 1-way vision. “And they’re getting worse as they get older. It’s almost to the point where they will ignore us on anything, and when we try to coerce them they automatically go into combat mode…and they prefer that to anything else. Even when we beat the crap out of them in self-defense. They keep coming back for more. I’ve tried to incorporate as many combat drills as I can, but they don’t want that. They want to come after us.”

  “You’re the only real threat. The machines are just toys,” Kent said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That’s a lot of chatter.”

  Wilson frowned. “Are you picking up something?”

  “You’re not? Their telepathy is broadcasting constantly.”

  “I don’t sense anything. Are you sure?”

  Kent stared silently for a moment. “It’s not normal. It’s…almost as if it’s a corrupted version of battlemeld. I can’t sense their perceptions, but I’m getting errant thoughts and emotions.”

  “If it’s keyed to only Furyans that would eliminate us. I should have had a technological scan rather than personal monitors. I didn’t expect they could produce anything we’d miss. What are you sensing, specifically?”

  “Chaos. And if it’s transmitting from one to another, it’s going to drown out any progress an individual might make. Why are they all together?”

  “Because they freak out when isolated. They just pound on the doors demanding to be let back into the group. I’ve gotten them to do isolated tasks in view of the others but at several hundred meters distance, though they refuse to be out of sight of the others.”

  “Pefbar?”

  “They can’t use it. We had to lock it down because it was confusing them even more. I don’t think they can handle these bodies, and everything I’ve tried they’d deliberately sabotaged. They’re viewing me as the enemy.”

  “As did we,” Kent pointed out.

  “You craved the training.”

  “We craved the challenge. Are they finished growing?”

  “Height wise, seems so. But their mental growth is not compatible with Human standards. I don’t know if they’re damaged or if this is going to be normal, but the only teaching I’ve been able to do is how to better circumvent our daily activities.”

  Kent looked down at the lackadaisical activity and felt their noise. He let it soak into his senses, as if deciphering it, and began reflecting it back in more order than he received it.

  Every head on the training deck immediately turned to look up towards his hidden position, then a few seconds of increased chatter amongst them resulted in them breaking their loose formation and running towards the nearest exits as the trainers jumped to stop them…and a 300 man brawl immediately broke out.

  “This is where the fun begins,” Kent said as he raised a hand up to the wall before him and blew it apart with his Bra’stem, formulating the vivid red energy into a compressed orb that cracked and disintegrated the duck blind while he used his bioshields to keep the debris from flashing back on Wilson. He forced it all out into the training deck, with it raining down onto the edge of the brawl that suddenly stopped as Kent leapt out and landed beautifully on the floor in a well-practiced ‘hero landing’ that would have made Deadpool proud.

  “All the trainers need to leave, now,” Kent said, feeling the chatter amongst the Furyans shift and focus on him as he reflected it back, modulating it, and seeing them learn to mimic his alterations almost instantaneously. “I will handle this personally.”

  “Good luck,” one of the Golden Knights said as he shoved one of the Furyans out of his way…with the youngling punching back three times in response and not budging the Knight with any of the blows as if she was nothing more than an annoying gnat.

  “Come here,” Kent said forcefully as he telepathically focused on the flailing red-skinned female that was literally wearing her emotions on her arms. All of these younglings had been born of the same pairing…Kerrie-057 and Rio-058…as a testbed before attempting other pairings, so all of these 100 would have the same set of abilities to learn to master rather than mixing them up with different bloodlines.

  The female jerked away from her haymakers, the red in her skin showing spikes of yellow as the red faded back to blue and she walked over to Kent.

  “What is your name, youngling?”

  “Samira Kerio,” she said, quaking either from the recent rage or being this close to Kent.

  “Why do you not want to train?”

  “It doesn’t feel right. You feel right, though.”

  Kent nodded. “Is that true for the rest of you?”

  The others mostly stood frozen, but a few responded…though with all their telepathic chatter he could tell what they were thinking whether they liked it or not. They were broadcasting uncontrollably, and he could either handle this the easy way, or brute force.

  He chose option #3.

  “Your bodies are made from those of my brother and sister. They are very advanced, and in order to use them properly you must train…a lot…and you have not been doing so. I feel right because I am stable. You are unstable. So from now on you will train with me, not them,” he said, pointing to the last of the trainers leaving through the far door. “Use my stability to learn to develop your own. Mimic mine as much as you can, but each of you will have to fashion your bodies and your minds to suit the person within. There is much similar in you, but you are not identical. You must find yourselves, for now you are lost, and when you mimic each other you will forever be lost. I am not lost, so mimic me, and follow.”

  Kent took off jogging, making sure he went painfully slow…and immediately all 100 of the young Furyans flocked behind him as if they didn’t dare be left behind, and he knew why. It was the same pull he felt for other Archons, and especially the trailblazers. They were better together, always had been, but missions required them to be apart and solo most of their lives. They knew this, and accepted it, but they always felt a pull to be with one another, as if a longing for a home that didn’t exist in place, but in people.

  These younglings were feeling the same thing, and now that he had shown himself h
e knew they would not let him leave their sight…which was going to be annoying, but it meant they would listen to him and follow his orders. He’d just become the pack leader by showing up, and already their chatter was altering drastically. There was order to it now, all focused on him.

  And from him they would have to learn, for he was not sensing individuality in them. He was sensing a group mentality driven by instincts too advanced for them to handle.

  This was definitely not going to work for the Furyan race they had envisioned, and he was glad Davis was pulling the plug on it, because these 100 were going to have to be trained Master to Apprentice…in the middle of a war where he was needed elsewhere.

  But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, leave them like this. It was his Furyan genetics that were too much for them to handle, and it was now his responsibility to get them trained enough that they could overcome it and chart their own course forward. These people would probably never be Archons, but they were kid brothers wearing the hand me downs of the trailblazers.

  That made them more similar than the other Archons in some respects, but also so totally foreign that Kent knew this was not going to be a simple fix. This was going to be decades, if not centuries, to get them squared away.

  The trailblazers had created this problem, and now it was his job to handle it while the others were out doing the big things he should be doing.

  But now that he was here, he didn’t regret it. This was important, not to the war effort, but to these 100. They needed rescued, and it looked like a Furyan was the only one who could do it. Kent didn’t know where this was going to lead, but in the near future he was going to be mother duck whether he liked it or not.

  He sped up a little bit to test their speed, soon to find them pushing hard to try and fight through their fatigue and stay with him as he headed out to the nearby halo track and began doing laps.

  They were aggressive as hell, and he thought he knew why Wilson was having trouble with them. They didn’t see the value in training, so they weren’t going to devote themselves to it. Furthermore, they couldn’t be tricked into it by the normal means…because these people weren’t normal. They were Furyans…sort of…and they needed a valid mission to throw themselves at, which Kent had just become.

  And he knew now, that they would do anything for him. He could feel it. He could feel the connection like a weak battlemeld. They had a hive mind, of all things, which is exactly what Archons were not supposed to have. But the bond between the trailblazers must have morphed into the only similarity their genetic adaptation could fathom.

  They were a wolf pack now, similar to the Elves only with Archon-level emotions pouring through them, and bodies that no other younglings had the advantage of having.

  Kent corrected himself. Maybe this wasn’t going to be annoying. Tedious, yes, but now he was curious to see just how aggressive they could be…and just how much of the trailblazers’ legacy had translated through the reproductive process.

  He sped up some more, intent on finding their breaking point and making the snap decision to treat them like mini-me’s rather than recruits. If his suspicions were right, they’d react to it in a very distinct way. If not, he’d know they were normies in high powered bodies.

  He kept running until the first few finally dropped off, but they didn’t fall down. They kept staggering forward at a walk while their legs burned and their lungs gasped for more air. He kept in mental contact with them all, watching more and more fall off as a few found the strength to hang on minutes longer.

  Kent kept going until all of them failed, then he sped up to his normal ‘easy’ speed and did a few laps, running by they as he instructed them to gather in a specific place, and stopping his laps when they finally did.

  “How are you that fast?” another of them asked, still breathing hard.

  “Didn’t the trainers show you how fast they were?”

  “They didn’t show us anything other than their stupid drills.”

  “Really? They didn’t show you how much better they were?”

  “All they did was talk and fight.”

  “How did they fight?”

  “They won.”

  “Easily?”

  “We took a few down,” someone else said defiantly.

  “They were going easy on you, and I was running easy just now. You have been born into an empire of some truly powerful people, and you must earn your way up the ranks. That takes time and effort. I will show you how, but know that those trainers were trying to help you, and you spurned them. I think I know why you did. You’ve got pieces of us mixed in that you can’t comprehend, and in them is a desire to do other things. You are the first of your kind, so we didn’t know what to expect. But I’m here now to see to you personally. I am your Master, and you are my Apprentices. You will learn from me and take your place in the empire, but you will choose that place. Not me. And you will have to earn it, or choose to simply live a bored, useless life that I don’t think any of you actually want.”

  “We want to fight,” Samira said eagerly between huffs.

  “I thought so,” Kent said with a smirk. “I will be hard on you, because you need the challenge. I do this to help you, not to hurt you. The universe is a hard place, and you must become strong to survive in it. You are safe here, and here you must grow strong before you go out into the danger. There is a war going on, and if we lose it we all die. It is a long war that will take millennia, and we intend to win. Whether or not you fight in it depends on how strong you get here.”

  “Why aren’t you there?”

  “Your name?”

  “Darius Kerio,” the guy said.

  “Darius, I have fought many battles in this war, and was doing other work to grow our empire when I was called here. Master Trainer Wilson is the man who trained me, and he should have been able to train you…but you would not listen to him. You foolishly disregarded the greatest teacher in the empire, but you did so because you have our tendencies encoded into you, without our wisdom. This is a dangerous combination, so I have come to make sure you get through these early years and learn what you need to. If you don’t, you will self-destruct in one form or another. I can feel it in you. You must act, and if the only action available is self-destructive you will reach for it due to the lack of other options.”

  “I do not expect you to understand that now,” Kent continued. “Nor do I expect you to understand much of anything. But I want you to remember my words for later. Right now, you need food and water, plus some sleep. You have not been sleeping enough, and you are not trained well enough to handle the little sleep your bodies lead you towards. You have the wrong habits and must develop the proper ones.”

  “How?” another girl asked. “Caitlyn Kerio.”

  “Cait, I will show you everything in time. But be mindful of what you think and what you feel. You are a puzzle that you must solve on your own someday. I will help, but I cannot do it for any of you. It is a personal quest each of us have. I completed mine long ago. I am one with myself, and have conquered the War Within. Your war will be easier and harder than mine, and unique to each of you.”

  “What war within? Kayn Kerio,” another guy asked, with them picking up the need to give their name without having to be ordered to.

  “I will explain later. First food, then sleep, then some harder activity. Along the way I’ll give you tidbits before we get to that explanation. If I don’t, you won’t understand the explanation. You must learn other things first,” he said, waving them towards the right. “Go. You stink of newb. Get showered and eat up. You will need it for later.”

  “Will you come with us?” Samira asked.

  “Briefly, then I must do my own training.”

  “Can we watch? Jinx Kerio,” another girl added.

  “Not today. When you try and sleep it will feel different, because you need it. That is your current mission. Get going,” he reiterated, telekinetically pushing them all towards the exit as he crinkled hi
s nose slightly. Their sweat really did stink of newb, and it would be a long time before that changed.

  4

  December 19, 154971

  Web Wall Breach Point #6 (System 13)

  Third Planet

  Oni-081 tapped her fingers on the rim of her command nexus as she waited impatiently for the scout ships that were due back today. They’d been given a set number of days to go out and explore beyond the breach point, with orders to be back in this semi-safe system at the same time. None were back yet, and they were already a half hour overdue, and Oni did not like that. Scouts and couriers were typically prompt and knew how to plan out their travel weeks in advance to arrive at a specific location at a specific time…though interstellar travel wasn’t an exact science when you didn’t have vision of what was ahead of you.

  The part of the Web Wall that was on the Coreward side had already been breached and a link of 8 systems traversed one side to the other. Oni was in the middle now, with her fleets moving out laterally to extend the breach and take down more of the heavily infested Hadarak systems while exploring beyond. Most of the systems on the other side had a Hadarak presence, but only minimal, with signs of past battle damage attesting to a culling effect taking place.

  But not by the Hadarak. Someone else was culling them except in their heavily defended systems, with the Web Wall looking more and more like a Jurassic Park outer fence barrier to keep the dinosaurs inside. And it was those ‘dinosaurs’ that Oni’s scouts had been sent out to look for.

  What was out there was partially known, starting with Kara-317’s scouting trip from years past, augmented by the detailed records in the Maty…but that still left a lot of mysteries to uncover, for there were so many star systems packed together into a smaller volume of space in the Core that it often looked like a chaotic bundle of yarn with so many intermixing gravity strands that you had more travel options than elsewhere in the galaxy.