Star Force: Sav (SF51) Read online

  1

  September 30, 2538

  Megatron 1 System

  Inner Zone

  Bo-065 sat in the command chair onboard the Bowser, a Warship-class jumpship leading a fleet of two others and 16 Mammoth-class cargo jumpships through orbit around the black hole that Star Force had affectionately labeled ‘Megatron 1.’ It was the only gravity well in the system, meaning that moving around it to get to their preferred jumpline was taking time as they had to pull on one side of the dense mass as opposed to the center line and that gave them very literal lateral movement as high up as they were.

  A slingshot approach was faster, but then they’d have to stall it out on the far side to hit their jumpline anyway, so Bo had ordered the Captain to take it nice and slow as they monitored the traffic as best they could. Sensor signals traveling in near the black hole got funky with the event horizon completely shutting off anything from inside and slowing those reflections near it to worthlessness, making the area around the EH a sensor blind spot.

  The Telaris sensors the Bowser was using reduced that blind spot considerably, but didn’t eliminate it…and they noticed quite a few starships dipping down into the EH and coming back out as they cut close orbital tracks to get to the far side quickly. With proper IDF and gravity drives there was no danger for a ship going in that close, for the black hole’s gravity was their best friend and able to lift them away from the mass at the center almost effortlessly given that only a small energy expenditure was needed to reverse the massive pull into anti-grav to keep the ships in orbit.

  The trouble was if there was debris in the area or you ran into another ship, but with Megatron 1 there was nothing left that the black hole hadn’t eaten up and given the size of the thing the chances of ramming another ship passing through, even with the high level of traffic they were seeing now, was low.

  Bo didn’t like low, and preferred ‘no,’ so they were making their way around in an orbital path that still allowed their sensors and beacons to be partially functional. They were declaring their position while scanning for others to avoid collisions as they got closer and closer to one of 3 hot zones.

  Those hot zones were the jumpline links to 3 other distant black holes and had traffic coming and going from races that Star Force was mostly unfamiliar with. Everyone seemed to give each other space, not wanting to interact and just going on about their journeys, but the closer the Bowser got to the jumpline the more congested it became…and there were no stoplights to keep everyone organized, more of an impromptu ‘get to the head of the line first’ situation that was more than a bit hectic.

  Then there were the ships coming in on the jumpline. Fortunately most of them were transmitting beacons so their signals arrived ahead of them, hyper-compressed from the speeds they were traveling, but able to be detected if you had your sensors calibrated correctly. That let outgoing ships know where not to be on the jumpline and allowed them to move around with a decent certainty that you weren’t risking your life on the off chance of a collision.

  That said, there were some ships popping up with no preceding signal. That worried Bo, but it couldn’t be helped. As his fleet finally moved into position there were seven ships ahead of them on the line that had just jumped into the system at a much higher orbit. The Star Force convoy waited for them to move off, looked for incoming signals and saw they had a gap, then made their slightly staggered jumps off the black hole’s gravity well and accelerated far faster than any traditional jump.

  Soon they were out of the system and drifting across the stars towards the black hole on the other end on a trip that would take them better than 2 months. As soon as they were away and on course the small Star Force fleet set themselves into a drift to the right, getting them off the jumpline so to avoid ships coming at them from the other way. Still there was always the possibility of collisions, which was why someone had to be at the helm constantly monitoring for incoming beacons so they could move aside if necessary.

  Bo had them taken well off the jumpline to reduce that possibility, then nulled out the drift with tugs on the distant stars to keep them headed in the correct direction. When they got near their destination they’d drift back up to the jumpline and run the traffic gauntlet again, but for the interim it was hopefully going to be a silent, steady trip as the jumpships moved like bullets from one black hole to the next.

  The trickiest part past them, Bo left the bridge and headed to the sanctum where he spent most of the next two months training, for there was little else to do while they waited to make the passage.

  When they eventually arrived at the exiting black hole, which they’d designated as ‘Megatron 2,’ Bo oversaw their deceleration and movement off the jumpline over to a stellar one, bouncing off the black hole with minor power in order to move at a safe speed that could be successfully braked at their destination star, whose gravity well was infinitely smaller.

  From there they made another six jumps, hopping from star to star on a path that Yori had trailblazed years ago until they arrived at another black hole, this one much smaller but still producing a gravity well far larger than any star. It was labeled ‘Megatron 5’ and took them another 120 lightyears out to Megatron 6. From there they had to travel star to star until they eventually ended up in the Lothlorien System.

  They were still well within the Orion arm, which was approximately 10,000 lightyears wide, but they were the farthest rimward Star Force had yet expanded, more than 1,000 lightyears away from Earth. In contrast, the ADZ border terminated at about 100 lightyears, leaving the Lothlorien System far outside everything that they knew…and knew them.

  Which was the point. As invested as Star Force was in the ADZ they also knew that their distant future would probably involve running from the V’kit’no’sat if/when they ever found them. To do that they’d have to have some place to go, and Lothlorien was one small stepping stone out into the true rim of the galaxy where the V’kit’no’sat had no presence or maps. They were in the wilds now, as far as their progenitors were concerned, and the further they got out there the better.

  Bo brought his fleet out from the central pair of stars to one of six planets major planets in the system. Three were habitable, in atmosphere only, and there was no other presence within the system. Star Force had mapped out the surrounding area, finding a more or less dead spot on the local starcharts to set up camp and begin terraforming one of the rocky planets by introducing plants onto a world that had none.

  Bo could see the first little bits of green on the surface below when they made orbit, clustered around the single city colony that Star Force was in the process of building and to which the supplies he was escorting were going. The warships would be remaining here, save for one that would be taking Yori and the empty cargo ships back as Bo switched places with him and took over control of the planet, named Legolas, as well as all other operations in this small region of space that included multiple mapping missions that were even now ongoing.

  Already there was another warship in orbit, along with a few construction projects. The one operational station was a defense platform equipped with a large cleansing beam that was covering the construction of a shipyard and other key infrastructure pieces, for the goal of this colony wasn’t to rely on shipments from the ADZ but to become self-sufficient as most Star Force colonies were. That was even more important in this operation, given that if the ADZ was cut off by an invasion it would have to supply itself and any future colony expansions rimward on its own.

  Which was why a trailblazer was needed here at all times. There were too many uncertain factors in play and the delay to get a message back to the ADZ took 7 months one way, making this colony truly on its own. Until it was better developed it had to
be watched and grown carefully, so as boring as this sort of thing was Bo knew the importance of it and how it had to succeed in order for them to start further extending the chain out into the rim.

  As the cargo transfer began in earnest Bo hopped onboard one of the descending dropships and rode it down to the big city that was all that currently existed in the colony and eventually found Yori waiting for him in the spaceport. The two shared a hug then headed over to the local sanctum as they filled each other in on current events, then began a long series of workouts knowing that the cargo transfer was going to take days to complete.

  Catching up on missed time and using the opportunity to press each other in training, the pair of trailblazers worked through some very long sessions taking breaks to tour the infrastructure so Yori could get Bo up to speed on what he’d built since last being in contact. In addition to the obvious stuff on the surface he’d added a considerable amount of subterranean structures, plus various sites around the planet for resource collection, including two new ones on other planets. The material being collected was just beginning to snowball, which would make Bo’s job of continuing the effort much easier now that Yori had done the hard part getting it all up and running.

  Coming in the convoy was also an abundance of new personnel, with only a handful transferring back with Yori, giving the colony a new population of 55,000, up from the 42,000 previously. The extra manpower would help greatly, Bo knew, but more would be needed as operations escalated and have to be shipped in with the following convoys. People couldn’t be grown as fast as infrastructure, let alone those with the skillsets required, and that was the major drawback in the self-sufficiency goal. Lothlorien was going to have to grow quite large in order to have enough people to take care of its own needs, and by large he meant in the billions.

  That day was far into the future, however, and would be overseen by someone other than Bo. He was taking on a 6 year stint, then would be replaced by another trailblazer or high ranking Archon, based on what the situation was then. Having that fixed endpoint helped him focus on the mission ahead without getting lost in the utter isolation. The mission was temporary and necessary, but after his part in it was completed he’d head back to the ADZ where all the action was at and get back in the flow of things.

  In the meantime he was going to do like all the other trailblazers did…focus on his training in his off hours. There were a few other Archons with him that he could spar with but no other strikers, unfortunately. They were too valuable and assigned elsewhere, which meant there was no one around that could even come close to pressing his limits the way Yori was.

  After his fellow trailblazer left Bo set himself to the task of singular workouts and the unique challenge that they posed while overseeing the construction efforts and making a few tweaks to what Yori had been running…and the person to follow Bo would probably do the same. Neither person would care, for they were only here to carry out their part of the operation and what they left behind then became the responsibility of the other, who was right to customize it as they so chose.

  Over the next 6 years the city on the surface grew in size, with Bo adding another two small ones elsewhere on Legolas and a fourth on a neighboring planet to further facilitate the corovon mining operations there. The subsurface expansion that Yori began Bo continued, but not with as much fervor. This colonization wasn’t clandestine, nor meant to be like the circuit worlds were. This was supposed to be a full-fledged colony, complete with economic and diplomatic links to the surrounding area where applicable, so hiding wasn’t the point, though having some infrastructure tucked away that no one knew about was always a plus.

  Three years in and the first of those economic ties manifested itself in the form of a trade agreement with a neighboring race that Bo’s mapping expeditions came across. They were a single planet civilization that had yet to achieve interstellar travel, known as the Furrens, who were amicable enough on contact to open up formal relations with. Bo had Star Force build a starport in orbit of their world and start work on a bit more infrastructure there to facilitate the mining/trading of a rare material their planet possessed called Shema.

  Originally it was a compound that Star Force thought had to be synthesized and as a result had never delved into its production heavily, though it was useful in making advanced armor when you didn’t have corovon flakes available. Since it was naturally occurring on the Furren homeworld it was of significant value, not just to Bo’s colony but to Star Force in general, and using his diplomatic skill and experience the trailblazer set up a mutually beneficial relationship between the two…the first of many such local links that would be established with their neighbors in coming years.

  The rest of those would be created by others, for by the time Beck-061 came to replace him the Lothlorien colony had yet to meet any other races of note, preferring instead to keep things quiet until their defense fleet grew to decent levels…with Beck bringing an additional two warships with him that would stay behind in the system.

  Like Yori before him, Bo relished the opportunity to get a few days of training in with Beck, a fellow 6, before heading back across the stars and through the two black hole jumplines leading a much larger and empty train of cargo ships…save for the Shema crates they carried. It wasn’t much at all compared to the size of their holds, but he knew the techs in Sol would like to get their hands on it and he was interest in seeing what armor modifications they could make with an ample supply.

  As his single warship and cargo ships made their way back into the ADZ they passed through the first Star Force system on their journey, getting a news update that Bo tore through eagerly. It was dated, due to the lag involved in the relay network, but it was ‘fresh’ by Star Force standards and the trailblazer felt good knowing that he was back on the grid and no longer having to rely on courier ships to bring or send news.

  Updated reports on the lizard fronts indicated they were still at it, probing here and there and trying to find a weakness or go around to get closer to the zone to decrease the length of their supply lines. As it was they couldn’t launch a major invasion past the border worlds without having their convoys picked apart by the Hycre. There were just too many systems to go through and the navally dominant race was using that to their advantage when they knew where the lizards were going to be.

  So the lizards were trying to make a trail of ‘safe’ systems into the ADZ, much as Star Force was doing heading out to the rim, so they could protect their convoys with system defense fleets rather than sending them through an abundance of ‘empty’ systems where they could be jumped.

  But Star Force wasn’t going to allow that, and kept hitting and pushing back the lizard front away from the ADZ boundary creating a sort of neutral zone that saw an enormous amount of fighting whenever the lizards tried to put down roots there, let alone try and sneak past the lines and plant one inside the ADZ.

  Content that everything was still under control there Bo skimmed through a lot of other entries, getting a feel for what was going on until he came across a message for the trailblazers only. It was an invite to return to Earth and assist with a new training element…and it was co-signed by both Paul and Jason.

  That piqued his interest, for the last he knew the pair were lightyears apart. If they’d gotten together on a new training project then he definitely wanted to know what was up, and given that he didn’t have a new assignment as of yet he could at least pop in and see what was going on while he chose one.

  It took another month or so to get back to Outreach and transit into the Core Zone, eventually arriving at Earth on a cargo ship since he’d left his warship with Steve who needed it more than he did. Bo found out that the little training summit was being held in Atlantis rather than the pyramid, which he also found odd, as well as the fact that some 13 other trailblazers had also arrived before him, with him bringing the count up to 16 in total…which was a very rare occurrence for so many to be in the same place at the same time.r />
  Whatever was going on was big, and he hurried out of the dropship and through the surface spaceport down into the city and straight to the training areas to find out what, not even bothering to stop off and deposit his duffle in temporary quarters on the way.

  2

  May 31, 2546

  Solar System

  Earth

  When Bo tracked down the others he found them…all of them on blood gulch, bumping out the trainees that otherwise would have been using the training course as they had a 10 vs 10 match going on with the old school stinger rifles and light, flex armor. It was too late for Bo to join, unfortunately, so he laid his duffle down in one of the observation galleries and watched them from above and on the various monitors. The combat course was huge, making seeing everything difficult, and the hidden cameras helped to highlight some of the close-in action.

  Bo wasn’t the only one there. A handful of random personnel were in the same gallery as him, most of whom didn’t even notice him arrive until they glanced over and saw his white with black stripe striker uniform, but they didn’t ask questions, merely giving him a little more space and continuing to watch the others go at it below.

  The non-trailblazers in the match were high ranking second gen and, Bo couldn’t believe his eyes, even Vermaire was out there. At first he thought he was imagining things and it was just another Knight, but the way he took to the battle with a single sword only and moved with speed equal or greater to the trailblazers said it was definitely him…despite the fact that he wore the same pale white flex armor that the others did. Bo still couldn’t help but to expect the black armor that he was famous for, but there was no mistaking his skill…meaning they’d somehow recruited him for this match.

  That was odd, for he was the one that constantly interrupted their old matches to beat them down randomly. Whatever Paul and Jason had going here was looking even more interesting.