Star Force: Insurrection (SF28)

  1

  May 3, 2405

  Solar System

  Ganymede

  A foot landed in his back, knocking him forward into two other adepts but taking it had been necessary to get his hand around the right one’s wrist. As David-441 was moved forward he jerked to the right, landing his shoulder into the Time Lord’s dark blue uniform just above the navel and knocking him back…only to twist aside to duck another adept’s punch at his head. As David dropped he yanked the other one back in by the wrist he still held, off-balancing him enough that when the level 77 acolyte popped back up to full standing height he was able to kick the adept in the midsection and knock him back to the edge of the elevated ring.

  The Time Lord almost caught his balance, but came up a few inches short, falling backwards and landing on a 45 degree padded incline a few meters down that slid him away from the ‘king of the hill’ open air ring and out of the enhanced gravity, depositing him on the flat floor some distance away where more adepts from Clan Time Lord were picking themselves up and walking off to the exits as more and more of their trial team continued to get knocked off above in spurts.

  David kept on the move, knowing that staying put was to the Time Lords’ advantage. He had a 25 meter diameter circle to work around in 1.2 gravity, with six short walkways feeding him 1,000 adepts at a staggered rate of their choosing. Their goal in this Archon trial was simple…knock him off in hand to hand combat. They could come at him one at a time or rush as many as they could onto the platform. This lot was pumping numbers at him, but they weren’t being reckless about it. David was having to stay on the move constantly, because they weren’t giving him so much as a second’s break…which he knew was intentional. They were trying to wear him down to the point where he’d make a mistake.

  Which was the challenge for him. This trial was one of hundreds taking place across the star system which saw the Clans battling each other with their lower ranking Archons, adepts mostly. There were still prizes to be claimed, both material and territorial for the Clans, but the trials had mostly reverted back to what they were originally intended to be…combat experience, Archon vs. Archon, to keep them sharp and uncomfortable to where they’d have to push their limits and improve, else they’d be very uncomfortable.

  As these adepts now were. Most of the time they thought of themselves as being the best of the best, and compared with the rest of the star system they were, but with all the higher level Archons off on assignments outside of Sol David felt it necessary to come down and remind them how far they had to go to catch the others, let alone the trailblazers. This trial was important for them to get their asses kicked so they could learn from it, as well as to learn how to counter a superior opponent using numbers.

  David’s challenge was the reverse, learning how to cope with numerical disadvantage despite being superior to his challengers. This wasn’t the first time he’d worked this end of this trial, nor was he the only one doing so. Other Clans were making runs against a few higher ranking Archons in the Star Force training facility on Ganymede, along with similar trials for a number of Knights and Regulars that David was also assisting with on occasion in between his own training sessions…getting to play ‘black knight’ despite the fact that he only wore his white with silver stripe Archon uniform.

  By the ones and twos he continued to knock the Time Lords out of the gravity enhanced ring, moving about from side to side but never getting within 2 meters of the edge. The gravity was slowing their movements considerably, but less so David who normally did extensive gravity training at 1.5g, so to him this felt easy…especially when everyone else seemed to be in slow motion.

  Still, this Time Lord bunch had come prepared. He guessed they’d watched previous trials footage when other Clans had gone up against him, each of which had failed, and had tailored their strategy accordingly. He was faster and stronger than any of them by a long shot, then add in their gravity disadvantage and they were hopelessly outmatched one on one, but they had six access ways onto the platform and they were using all of them to funnel adepts in, many of which stood waiting and watching until there was enough room on the platform to get into the fight.

  Though he didn’t have time to analyze their tactics, David noted that they were staggering their attacks to keep the pressure on him constantly, but without cluttering up the platform and allowing him to shove/kick them off four or five at a time…which was smart. It also lengthened the time of conflict, stretching out the 1000 man army he had facing him into one very long fight.

  To top it off they weren’t fighting him trying to knock him off, but rather to stand their ground. Another interesting tactic, in that each of them were trying, he thought, to get in as many blows/blocks as they could, thus wearing him down further. David wondered if they were holding back their strongest adepts for the end when he would be the weakest, but there was little time for him to do anything other than punch, kick, flip, twist, and evade until he set one of them up for a knockout bounce. If he wanted to analyze their attack pattern in detail, he’d have to do it post trial.

  David was making good time, but each Clan that came against him was getting better…which was the point. This was one of the newer trials, and not widely used because of the availability of high enough level Archons to play king of the hill with. Gone were the egotistical ‘I’m gonna knock him out’ attacks that he’d gloriously punted off the platform in previous days, now replaced with pure team tactics. These adepts had to work together to stand a chance of taking him down, and he was pleased to see they were finally starting to think and fight like Archons rather than newbs.

  David palm-punched an adept with a cross from right to left, knocking her up off her feet because of the shallow rising angle he put on the blow and threw the adept back into another, then dropped into a heavy spin kick and knocked the legs out from two more as they swung at where his head had just been. One of them fell into him, but a knee lifted the adept up and nearly all the way off the platform where the Time Lord fell on his back, his head dangling over the side.

  He felt his chest, wondering if something hadn’t been broken as more of his Clan members were tossed aside with horrifying ease. He was a level 11 adept, far stronger and faster than any normal Human, and yet he’d been flicked aside by a man an inch shorter than him and one who looked to be 20 pounds lighter…and made of adamantium.

  The adept swung himself around so he could get his legs underneath him from behind while keeping his torso low and his eyes on the acolyte. Another Time Lord got knocked back his way and the adept ducked down…with the other flipping over top of him like a pivot point. Had he not ducked he would have gone over the side as well, which is probably what the Archon had intended.

  Pleased that he’d succeeded in defying him that much, the adept got his feet under him and charged, sliding in across the floor and reaching for David’s legs…only to get kicked in the face, hard. He felt his nose pop as he was twisted to the side by the blow, then all of a sudden David was knocked back his way by a pair of others with interlocked arms and forming a Human battering wall. The acolyte countered them, but an almost random kick by the adept caught him between the legs and tripped him up, dumping the acolyte down on top of the adept with other Time Lords falling onto the pile.

  David knew he’d been caught off guard and had made a tactical mistake of letting one of them drop near his feet…but he’d wanted to teach the newb a lesson that would sting for a while. Coming in at his feet was stupid, and David wasn’t going to cut them some slack because this was a training exercise. He might be holding back on the others to conserve energy, but he wasn’t going to let one of the imps wander into dangerous territory like that…oth
erwise it might encourage them to do the same in the future, and had he been a Calavari or other physically strong opponent they’d stomp the newbs flat without hesitation.

  His lesson had cost him though, and now David was squeezed between a sandwich of Time Lords, and if they had any sense they’d…

  Just as he got his head up the other adepts began rushing onto the platform and pushing the pile towards the edge with the downed adepts clinging onto David so he couldn’t get up or fight back, intending to go over with him in order to get their Clan the victory.

  Problem was, despite having a bunch of kids clinging to his arms and legs, David definitely could still fight back.

  Knowing that he had to go all-in David started flexing back and forth, getting himself inches of airspace to work with and started delivering elbows and kicks into the bodies surrounding him…gapping them and creating more room to work with, all within split seconds before they’d come crashing back down on him or more would stack on the pile…which then made it even harder to push towards the edge.

  David kicked his right leg free, then knocked the leg out from under an adept on the outside of the pile. She fell down, taken off guard, and he kicked her in the chest as she dropped, sending her tumbling back into the legs of three others and mowing them down like bowling pins from the ferocity of the blow.

  Then another adept got knocked off the stack…and another. Two more went toppling over the edge as the pile neared it before David’s head finally came into view just in time to headbutt another newb Archon in the chest and knock him off. Twisting left and right David finally got mostly free, then punched three more in sequence off of him, one going over the side and two more headed back towards center, falling into the others coming forward.

  They caught them and shoved them back, using their fellow Time Lords like ammunition to keep David down or knock him off the side, but the acolyte had just enough time to snap his legs back underneath him and drop down to his knees in a turtle shell as they fell on top of him…then a moment later they all came rising up in a mass as David heaved them off him in Neo-esk fashion. A series of lightning-fast blows knocked the mass of blue uniformed adepts aside, hollowing out a small clear space that David expanded upon as soon as he had enough room to swing his legs, after which the more than three dozen Time Lords that had come out onto the platform began falling off it in droves, given that they had no room to duck or dodge the acolyte’s blows.

  David eventually worked his way back to the center and cleaned off the deck, with the Time Lord reinforcements falling back into their staggered attacks, hoping again to wear him down with their numbers but they would have no success. His ire was up now and he kept his effort level up straight through to completion, reveling in the increased challenge they were finally giving him and knowing that it would make both them and him better…though mostly him, given that the average time on the ‘hill’ for the adepts was between 10 and 15 seconds.

  David grappled with the last of them, slipping an arm underneath the adept’s armpit and twisting her around, then he grabbed her leg and lifted her up off her feet and walked to the edge.

  “Off you go,” he said casually, tossing her down to the angled crash mats and watching her slide down to the bottom where the others were still picking themselves up and walking out.

  David rubbed his hands as if brushing off dirt then slowly walked back to the center and gave the control room a two-fingered salute before heading over one of the six walkways and exiting the way the adepts had been coming in from a large gathering area circling the ring whose overhang extended out above the majority of the crash pads. With the room now all to himself the acolyte walked across with almost inaudible footsteps and exited out a side door to one of the main hallways that connected the various trials’ competition zones that were separate from the training areas.

  As he walked down to the left his vision got a little wonky on him and he blinked several times trying to clear it, only to have it extend out behind him where he could ‘see’ a person running up towards him.

  The enhanced sense faded almost as soon as it had begun and David turned around to meet the adept chasing after him.

  “Acolyte,” the man said, appearing to be the same age as David…though all Archons looked to be roughly 25, despite the fact that David was 380 and this adept was probably 40-100. “Can you spare 30 seconds?”

  “Half a minute, yes,” he offered, waiting for a question.

  “How do you defend against a chest blow when your opponent is stronger and faster?”

  “Ready yourself,” David said, then he stepped forward and like the crack of a whip sent his stiffened palm into the adept’s chest and knocked him back off his feet to the ground where he slid back another two meters.

  “Again,” David prompted with his fingers. Gingerly, the adept got up and walked towards him.

  “Now me.”

  The adept nodded and tried to use the same attack against David, but when his hand approached the white uniform it skidded aside as the acolyte twisted his body to the left and around the adept’s hand so that only the corner connected, though David still had to take a half step back to maintain his balance.

  “Speed is essential, because it allows you to reconfigure your opponent’s attacks into situations that are less damaging or potentially advantageous to you…but if you are not the faster, then you must use the time you have to diminish the attack. Set yourself and lean forward,” David prompted, then he hit the man again just as hard as before.

  The adept flew backwards, but landed on his feet and fell face forward, half the distance from David as he’d gone before.

  “Whatever you do,” David suggested as he reached a hand down to help the adept up, who had got the wind knocked out of him a bit, “don’t let the blow land flush. Chip away at it with angles, however you can create them.”

  “Thank you,” the man said, cringing from the ache in his chest. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Speed is the best defense,” David said as he turned and walked on, letting his impromptu lesson sink in. He didn’t know who the adept was, nor did he know most of the Archons in the training facility, but this wasn’t the first time he’d been asked by the younger ones for help and he always took the time to offer some quick assistance no matter how rushed he was.

  Today there was no rush though, and he walked across the facility to one of the training tracks and found it half full of Archons working through various paces. Gone were the lane line lights that had used to guide them in the old days, replaced by holographic glowing spheres set a few inches above the track all the way up to head height depending on where the runner wished their marker to be. David triggered one to stay on the ground, for that was what he was used to, and dropped into the flow before swinging out into lane 3 to pass a pair of slower runners.

  He made his way through 5k at 5:00 pace, just a relaxing run while he gauged the amount of damage he’d taken from the trial, noting the locations where he was sore and hoping they’d work their way out, which most of them did by the time he was finished. For his body, anyway, running worked as therapy and stretching, loosening him up for other training, of which he focused primarily on hand to hand combat.

  Feeling warm and lithe after the run he ran himself through a set of agility drills then headed his way over to Balboa Lane for some strength calibration, noting how fatigued his muscles had gotten from the trial while measuring against a punching bag he had moved into the corner while others were hanging out in their own areas of the long room working on various drills.

  After that it was time for lunch so he stopped by his quarters for a quick shower, then checked his message terminal on the way out…only to stop and sit down when he saw there was a vid from Davis, timestamped 56 minutes ago.

  “David, I need you on Earth. Possibly Green Team as well, though I’ll leave the choice up to you. This mission is a bit more complicated and I’d prefer we discuss it face to face, so get back
here as soon as possible. Mischief is afoot.”

  2

  Half an hour later David and a small gear satchel were riding a dropship up to low orbit for a rendezvous with the primary starport. As the golf ball-shaped dropship rose up from the airless surface of the moon the Archon watched the monitors distractedly, seeing the Star Force military complex shrink beneath them as other cities, civilian and Clan, began to show up on the horizon. Each of them spread out across the barren surface in a glittering of lights on the night side, then as the dropship began accelerating laterally new ones began to show up, including the huge city of Capsule Corp that was the largest on the planetoid and served as Clan Saiyan’s capitol.

  It held over 48,000,000 people with a footprint of only 27 square miles. Together with six other cities, Clan Saiyan’s population on Ganymede topped off at 112,000,000, though the Clan had five times that number in total population spread throughout Sol and a few other nearby star systems. The second most populous Clan on the moon was Clan Croft with 18 smaller cities that totaled 68,000,000 members, a mix of civilians, techs, and Clan military Regulars and Knights. The Regulars were recruited and trained by each Clan out of their own population, but the Knights were still trained by Star Force and distributed out to the Clans, much as the Archons were.

  As David watched he could see other bright little specs moving across the black sky as dozens of dropships came and went from low orbit, servicing the 16 Clans that had territory on the moon as well as Star Force’s own colonies and the 5 nations that had retained territory after a long fought out political swapfest. In the end Germany, Denmark, Argentina, Russia, and Tranquility had come out with sizeable swaths of the moon to populate, though together that population totaled only 4,000,000. Star Force and the Clans were by far the most prolific builders in Sol and the nations had never even begun to catch up.

  All together Ganymede held a population just under half a billion, and though it was the largest moon in the star system it wasn’t the most populated. Thanks to Star Force’s guidance Earth’s overpopulation paradox had been solved, and while some stubborn nations still experienced problems most of their unhappy citizenry would emigrate to Star Force colonies, of which there now numbered over a thousand, 4/5ths of which were located in Sol.