Star Force: Marauders (SF63)

  1

  August 3, 2734

  Deeran System (Benoid)

  Wexfa

  Wixxi ran through the forest following the small trail that connected their frontier villages as she stared up into the sky where there was an occasional break in the yellow canopy. Up high there was a ship was descending, and it was Star Force. At first the Hevmaj though it was right over their heads, but she didn’t grasp the size of the thing until a few aeroships passed underneath it. They were flying high already and the little fuzzball had thought they were going to pass over top of it, but when the reverse happened she realized that this was something bigger than big and had jumped out of the treehouse she was in and began running to the nearest village.

  Wixxi’s stubby legs moved as rapidly as possible, hopping over a few puddles on the trail and otherwise trying to avoid the rocks and roots that had been exposed after the recent storm. It had dropped so much water that the rivers had flooded…something that hadn’t happened in more than a century.

  The rain had very rarely used to come to her continent, with the forests being dry scrubs for the most part, but ever since the Hevmaj had joined Star Force things had changed rapidly. The rain was something new, and coming on the heels of several atmospheric adjustments that were being made. Though Wixxi didn’t fully understand what they were doing, she’d learned in the maturia that there were large pockets of water beneath the surface, and that Star Force was tapping those to create subsurface structures.

  The water they took out was then being shunted up to the surface, with the humidity of the planet gradually increasing. That had produced an escalating climate change that was causing the forests covering her continent to grow rapidly, and even a few ‘lakes’ had been created. Previously all surface water had been located on other continents, but now the central landmass was beginning to become dotted with shimmering pools that many of the older Hevmaj still couldn’t believe were actually here.

  Wixxi continued to run as the giant ship came closer to the surface, with her guessing it was headed for the large plain that had been cut out of the forest further to the south. There was no way she could run all the way there, but in the village there were high observation posts open to the public and that’s where she intended to go, hopefully being able to see what was happening before they got too crowded.

  It took a few more minutes before she reached the edge of the village and the thick yellow trees disappeared, with her bare paws crossing over from dirt to synthetic paving stones. They were impossibly smooth, yet grippy, and covered the narrow walkways running between the 14 tree-like buildings that made up this village. Wixxi’s continent wasn’t densely inhabited like the others were, but rather dotted with tiny villages that allowed the large tracks of forest to be preserved rather than cut down and replaced with the magnificent cities that Star Force had taught the Hevmaj to build.

  They’d been here all her life, and she’d grown up in one of their maturia, but now that she’d chosen to live on the frontier Wixxi had met many older Hevmaj that told her stories of the times before, and it seemed like most of them had chosen to migrate away from the magnificent cities and cluster here, where they could live in relative isolation, given that the Star Force empire was so different from what they’d originally known that they could never become completely comfortable with the changes, at least not in the major population centers.

  They weren’t naysayers, fortunately, and Wixxi found that she rather liked the odd Hevmaj. She wasn’t one to work, rather simply living her life on the spur of the moment and doing what she liked. Most of that time was spent in the forest, exploring and just soaking in the natural environment that had been absent from her maturia training. What she would do tomorrow she didn’t know, nor care. All that concerned her was the moment, and right now there was something big going on that she wanted to see.

  Wixxi ran through the narrow streets and darted inside one of the three tallest structures, heading up a stairwell with considerable effort and coming out on the top level breathless, sucking in heavy puffs of the argon-rich atmosphere that the Hevmaj breathed. The Star Force people didn’t, and had to wear masks whenever they went outside. Likewise the Hevmaj, if any of them were to go into the few oxygen-rich cities, had to wear their own else they’d take in the poison. Because of this there was a stark divide between the empire and the Hevmaj. They were part of Star Force, but a disconnected piece of it that could never fully integrate with the oxygen breathers.

  The same was true of the other races in the Benoid, all of whom had also joined the empire. They could either breathe their air or at least exist in it, save for the Vonx, who were fully aquatic and couldn’t breathe atmosphere at all. Even within the Benoid the Hevmaj had been necessarily separated from the others, or so Wixxi had been told, but they’d always kept close ties with the others how and when they could. The same was true now that they were part of Star Force, yet the physical limitations of their race always kept them distant.

  Which was why it was rare to see one of the Star Force ships on the surface of the planet. Normally they’d dock with starports in orbit and transfer supplies there that the Hevmaj ships would bring down, but this was even more rare, for her continent saw almost no traffic at all, and the size of the ship was so big that it could have held the population of the nearest 100 villages with ease.

  When Wixxi finally got her breath she pushed her way through the other 8 Hevmaj and got a place on the window that stretched the entire length around the tower top, staring out silently with the others as they saw the giant ship finally touch down in the clearing. She’d come up here before, using at telescopic viewer to watch the clearing being cut so far away. She would have walked there to see it in person, but it was very far away. Fortunately, the building was taller than the forest by quite a bit and allowed enough of an angle to let her and the others see a great distance, including the tower tops of the nearby villages that all stuck up above the sea of yellow leaves that carpeted the landscape like a big, fluffy blanket.

  But off in the distance the ship that had landed stood taller than even the towers, with its size almost fully encompassing the plain that had been cut by Hevmaj workers. Wixxi was pretty sure that there weren’t Hevmaj in this ship, and pulling her viewer out of a small pocket on her utility belt and used it to zoom in enough that she could pick out individual trees.

  It took a while to find one of the entrances on the giant ship, but when she did she saw a ramp half lowered and disappearing below the tree line. Wixxi couldn’t see the ground, but she could see what was coming off the ship.

  They were construction mechs, and there were a lot of them. She knew what they were based on her maturia training, but she’d never seen more than a handful in person. Some had been used to build a neighboring village two years ago, but these were much bigger and pouring out of the giant ship. Wixxi watched for several minutes before cargo crates and bundled machinery started to follow, being brought out on anti-grav sleds. The mechs would be using it to do what, the Hevmaj couldn’t make out. Until the machinery deployed she couldn’t tell what it was for, and unfortunately the tree line was in the way.

  She couldn’t see anything below the ramp, and even the mechs were shorter than the trees…or at least most of them were. A few monster versions could be seen roaming around the ship, but other than a few meters of mech Wixxi couldn’t see anything.

  That didn’t matter, for she and the others stayed there for a quite a while watching the offloading and trying to catch any glimpse of activity that they could. No one knew what was going on, but whatever it was it was big.

  At least for their little corner of the frontier continent.

  Mandy Garrison
walked down one of the MCV’s many ramps, following the last of the mechs out of the atmospheric containment field that separated the ship’s interior from the oxygen-less atmosphere. The Human tech wore a fully body suit of light armor that had an attached pack with enough air to last more than 24 hours.

  The soft, wet ground past the ramp was now a mess of mud thanks to the mechs, but she didn’t care. Her armor was completely self-contained so, even as her dark green boots sank into the inch of muddy water and depressed twice that far, she pushed through and began following the mech trail not caring about how dirty she got. None of it would reach her skin, and she’d learned from many past construction missions that the grime was just part of the job. Once they got this site properly conditioned the wildness of it would be replaced with Star Force infrastructure.

  Until then, she and the others got to play in the mud.

  Mandy was the only Human on the MCV, with the rest of the crew and workers being comprised of Kiritak. Now that the trade route between the Benoid and the ADZ was up and running, a lot of new faces were showing up in the mini empire, herself included. Regular jumpship traffic was moving along the route, with citizens now able to book passage whenever they liked. The trade routes had even moved out past the Benoid now, with the cluster of systems becoming a central hub with four other spurs branching off of it out into the surrounding region, establishing a Star Force presence in the huge tract of stars that was many times the size of the ADZ and beyond their control.

  Key to it all was their military, and the Benoid already had a sizeable fleet patrolling its 7 systems, plus a handful of Sentinels in each, but that was just the first few phases of development. Mandy had been sent here with her crew of Kiritak to begin carving out a subsurface military base that would be recovered with forest after construction was complete. Wexfa already had several military bases located on other continents, both made up of Hevmaj and mainline troops, but in order to more firmly secure this world there needed to be other bases, some of which were clandestine.

  This project was for one such facility, and while they weren’t going to try and disguise the construction site, most of what they built would be below ground and therefore not visible for others to see. The location of this future base might become public knowledge, but such things often faded with time and the remoteness of this continent, which Star Force intended to keep remote and virtually unpopulated, would make it a different type of challenge for any invading army to overcome.

  The more varied a planetary defense plan was, the greater longevity it would allow. Right now the planet was safe, but only with a couple of layers of protection. This base and others slated to be built in the coming decades would add another layer, though with resources always being a limitation this was a significant project that she’d been entrusted with.

  Mandy had learned that a lot of races outside of Star Force only built what they thought they would need, and a lot of times that proved to be insufficient when the time of crisis came. Star Force built to be ready for more than they expected, and were always adding additional layers of defense, even on Earth, as time progressed. It could have been deemed as wasteful when these resources could have gone to establishing new colonies or additional habitats for the ever growing Hevmaj population, but when an attack came you didn’t want to be in the position of wishing for more military resources.

  And those resources had to be built during times when they seemed extraneous.

  The lizard front was still approaching, but its rapid progress had been reduced down to a creep thanks to Canderous’ activities within the region. That said, the lizards were still expanding elsewhere and flanking the protected region that Star Force was securing as much as it reasonably could. It was never enough, and lizard incursions were still occurring around the perimeter. Mandy didn’t know if they’d ever get this far, and if they did it would be after fighting through several other defense forces, but the key to holding territory was in the creation of strongholds that you could fall back to if things went poorly for you and good for the enemy.

  This planet wasn’t a stronghold yet, though the Hevmaj and others might think so given the upgrades Star Force had made. The base Mandy and the Kiritak were about to build would be designed for the Bsidd, who would eventually be depositing a large amount of troops in the system. When they did the ‘stronghold’ status would ensue, but they couldn’t come until enough facilities were constructed, both on planet and in orbit, which was why Mandy and this MCV had been sent along with 9 others to the system.

  The tech hopped out of the mech tracks and got to the short grass that had yet to be smashed into nonexistence. Staying on it she paralleled the mechs’ path and followed them out to the various depots they were creating with stacks of crates and equipment, ending up at the coring machine as it was set in place. The giant slab of machinery had been cobbled together from multiple sections and now stood like a thick, square brick that had squashed itself into the mud, but there was an access staircase on the near side and Mandy jogged across the mech ruts, getting to it and climbing up before the next one strode past.

  There were no workers outside the ship save for those in the mechs as of yet, with Mandy being the only person on the ground. It would stay that way until she gave the order, and she was going to hold off on the heavy work until they got the site cleaned up a bit. The Kiritak were more mobile than she was, given their hopping ability, but she wasn’t going to have them moving around in the muck, which was damn distracting and tiresome.

  Mandy got to the control station on the outside of the slab of machinery and confirmed that the various segments had been locked together into workable order. With a final check of the area to see if the mechs had retreated back far enough, which they had, she powered up the internal reactor and brought the mass to life.

  With the press of a button several arms lifted out of the smooth surface as the machine began to transform, unfurling like a giant flower and sending various legs out to the sides that dove down into the muck and created grip points. About four minutes later the base of the machine lifted off the ground, pulling Mandy up into the air with it as some of the legs became rigid and inserted into the soil below as pylons, fixing the now elevated platform in place as various other arms and legs stretched out and created a perimeter around the dig site.

  Energy shields colored to be visible to the workers snapped into place on the underside while extendable walkways formed outside, including an addition to the staircase that Mandy had climbed up. Once fully deployed, the mobile rig was set to begin cutting down into the muck and the bedrock beneath it. The tech held off on that, needing a crew onboard to handle the machine so that it didn’t eat out the very ground it stood on, but before that happened it was time to create some roads.

  Mandy left the coring machine and walked across to several other packaged machines that needed activating while the mechs unloaded the last of the initial equipment, then they also went through a transformation, brandishing small scale digging equipment of their own which they began sinking into the muck at various points where the Human indicated, scooping it up and carrying it over to several dump sites around the perimeter, forming a ridge-like mound that started to stretch around the square edge of the clearing as they continued to add more and more material to it.

  When they got a stretch of nearly half a mile long cleared out from the area in front of the ramp, Mandy ordered the next set of crews to come out. Several small hovering craft flew down carrying stacks of panels which they first deposited at the foot of the ramp. With the rest of the small convoy holding on the ramp and within, floating in place patiently, a few Kiritak clad in their own environmental armor unloaded and unfolded the ‘road’ plates, further scraping and smoothing the exposed areas of ground before laying down the first section, which was 12 meters square after unfolding and 1.3 meters thick.

  When that one was set they added three more on the sides of it, excluding where the ramp now was, with the convo
y beginning to come down and unload more plates as more and more workers were given workspace to use. They continued to add to the grid, locking them together like legos and creating an offloading plaza that they then began expanding into much narrower roads that stretched around the perimeter of the MCV and eventually connected to each piece of machinery that Mandy had went around and activated.

  When a road spur finally connected, the Kiritak workers would come with it, traveling on the smooth paving stones and avoiding the mass of muck around them, with the ground water now leaking into the small trenches alongside and outlining the roads with tiny, muddy moats.

  When the roads hit the coring machine Mandy returned along with the work crew, seeing to it that they got underway. She didn’t need to issue any orders other than to get to work, so the tech just watched from a distance, standing on the edge of the loading platform the road plates had made nearby as several mechs waited beside her.

  With a huge lurch a drilling pylon dove down from the center of the machine like a spike and ate into the muck beneath. Within a few moments that material was shot out another arm on the machine where it fell into an open collection crate that was the equivalent of a huge bucket. Mandy watched it fill up, then the spout shut off and a mech walked up to remove it as the mud and dirt, soon to become mixed with rock from below, began flowing out another arm into more waiting crates so there would be no delay.

  The mech behind Mandy picked up an empty crate and moved it into the open slot while the full one was carried away down the road then off it and onto the mech tracks that led to the perimeter mound. The Kiritak at the controls tipped the crate over and dumped the material on top of what was already there, piling it up higher in a wall that would eventually encircle the construction site.

  Mandy liked how procedure had them build their own little fort out of the excess material, and this one was going to get some very high walls before they were done. Those walls would eventually be cannibalized by factories within the MCV and sorted into various useable materials, nearly all of which would be shipped elsewhere. Everything in this base was going to be built from parts shipped in, but the ground they were hollowing out had to go someplace.