Star Force: Paladin (SF94) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  1

  April 19, 3493

  Tekin System (Rim Region)

  Asteroid Belt 16

  Myra-400118 stood onboard the single Star Force warship she commanded, looking out via the command nexus at the asteroids around her and the nearby planet that cut out the clear tunnel between overlapping belts 15 and 16. On it was over half a trillion Vittis, a race that no one cared about in times like these. They weren’t technologically advanced or skilled in much at all, but they did have some trade going with neighboring systems that had spread the word of the world’s dying.

  This one wasn’t a Nexus member and didn’t even appear in The Nexus’s records, sketchy as they were where the ‘unimportant’ came into play. Unlike most of the other conflicts breaking out across the Rim Region this one was internal. They weren’t being invaded from space, but rather from below ground. A dangerous race of primitive insects had always lived on and within the planet and the Vittis had dealt with them as wild animals in most cases, but aside from an occasional outbreak there was no real concern because their numbers were so small…even while their bodies were large. Larger than the Vittis, anyway, which came up to about Myra’s knee and were mostly fur at that.

  The ‘reavers’ were dog sized and ugly as hell, based on the few pictures they’d gotten back from a scouting mission. A ranger had been sent to follow up on the rumors and had sent a report indicating an extinction level event for the planet was in the making. The reavers were actually not small numbered, but rather lived deep underground where no one could find them. Legend said that every cycle, which amounted to some thousands of years, they would return to the surface and kill everything in sight…which is exactly what was happening.

  None of their neighbors were interested in helping and the major powers within the sub region were too busy with keeping their own asses intact to even care, but this was now Clan Star Fox’s domain and they did, which was why Myra had been sent to do what she could to save them. An evacuation would have been the preferred option, but there were far too many Vittis to take away. As it was, all she’d been given for this assignment was one fully outfitted Warship-class jumpship and one Paladin cruiser.

  That was it. Two ships to deal with a planet-wide catastrophe. That’s how stretched Star Force was right now, and there was a long list of people that they weren’t able to help at all. Myra’s being assigned here hadn’t been requested by the Vitti or anyone else, for Star Force had simply seen the need and thought there was a chance to save at least some of the Vittis without pulling thousands of ships off of other duties to either evacuate them or kill the reavers.

  Unfortunately killing was the only viable option, for the scout had indicated that mental contact with them was useless. They had a hive mind, literally, for they were telepathic. And while you could take control of an individual reaver’s mind there was no way to reason with it, for as soon as you released your hold the hive mind would reassert itself.

  The report indicated that there was suspected higher level reaver units that partially controlled the others, but speculated that they would be unable to be used to call the others off permanently. Instinctual drives were partially responsible for their bloodthirstiness, with the hive mind bonding them together and guiding them. It was almost as if these things had been created as a weapon and unleashed, but there was no one else on the planet intelligent enough to even speak aside from the Vittis.

  What technology they did have was allowing them to survive for a while, but they were losing territory and people at a steady rate. Right now it was rumored that the planet was doomed and those rumors had drawn scavengers. Pirates and other scum that were even now sitting in orbit and sending down raiding parties to steal whatever they could from the Vittis while they were preoccupied fighting to save their lives.

  And it was their ships in orbit that Myra was studying closely now. Because of the dense asteroids spread across this system…with far more mass than all the planets combined…one couldn’t make a direct jump to where you wanted to go. You either had to slowly work your way through each field or make a jump out above them, for they were thankfully situated in orbital rings that had about the same inclination.

  If you jumped above them, you’d have to stop and redirect back down. Without a binary gravity drive you really didn’t want to be in this system, but that’s where the Vittis were and they didn’t have the technology to leave on their own. What ships they did use to mine the asteroids were all but gone, having been stolen by the pirates or scattered around in pieces where their defense fleet had been destroyed.

  It looked like they’d put up a good fight but had been overwhelmed. By who Myra didn’t know or care, for her primary concern was the reavers on the surface. They didn’t have technology at all, and it was infuriating her that these lowlifes would be backstabbing the Vittis when they needed everything they had just to try and fortify themselves against the reaver swarms.

  With a thought she began tagging ships and directing her Captain to begin launching the drone fleet. She hadn’t expected to need them for orbital action, given that this was going to be a ground campaign, but the presence of the pirates hadn’t been anticipated. Her analysts were pulling a fair amount of information about what they were doing down there from errant signals coming from the planet and their own ships’ sensors, and since they had to take their time navigating through the thinner band of asteroids that covered the ‘top’ of the world, they weren’t getting a full count until they got in close.

  104 ships in total, four of which looked like full scale jumpships and a few others that might have been hybrids. It had to have taken them forever to get out here through the asteroids, even if they’d come the top route like the Star Foxes just had, for the belts themselves were so thick vertically speaking that you couldn’t get a direct jumpline through even with Star Force’s enhanced sensors.

  What was it they wanted so bad to go to the effort? Or were even the pirates so desperate out here as to go after the smallest bread crumb rumored to be available?

  She wanted to ask them herself, but taking prisoners wasn’t exactly something her two ship fleet was equipped for…then again, when you came into a situation like this you had to improvise.

  “Captain, the naval combat is yours. Get me onboard one of their jumpships. The rest I don’t care about.”

  “How intact do you want it?”

  “Be as surgical as you can.”

  “Dropship insertion?”

  “Yes. I’ll be armored up and in the hangar before you can engage. If they run, let the others go, but make it clear that they’re not welcome here.”

  “What’s your interest in the jumpship?”

  “I don’t want to have to babysit any of their men we take on the surface…plus I want some intel recovered.”

  “Tech team going with?”

  “Save it for after. We don’t know what these guys are like. I’ll personally lock it down and signal you when it’s clear.”

  “You, or you and a combat team?”

  “Team. I need to roam and engage while at least someone watches the ship.”

  “How many?”

  “I’ll arrange it. Just take care of those ships.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Myra disconnected from the nexus and took off jogging through the short tunnel that led to the bridge. She passed by the man she’d just been talking to along with the rest of the command crew, then headed through the innards of the not so small ship, picking up her armor and her boarding team while she left naval concerns to the Captain. The titan ended up standing in her golden armor in the ent
rance to the dropship looking back out into the hangar as Tia-755393 and John-755399 approached, one in dark blue mage armor and the other in padawan brown.

  Both had graduated basic in the same class, but John had leveled up much faster. He’d made mage before Tia made padawan, so when it came time for her to need a master it’d been a no brainer and the two had hooked up again with Myra being glad to have both of them with her. Assignments such as this were supposed to be 1 Archon only affairs, but given the high population levels of this planet she’d been assigned the extra pair while the rest of her combat troops were a mix of Knights and Commandos.

  “I thought you’d brought us along to squish bugs,” Tia commented as the two Archons walked up the ramp.

  “Mostly. Found a few other baddies in orbit we need to deal with. You don’t mind?”

  “Never,” she said with such high energy that her smile all but transmitted through her opaque faceplate.

  “Are we keeping these?” John asked as he came up and stood beside Myra as the Regulars started to arrive behind them.

  “I think they’ll run, but I want one jumpship to use as a prison for the ones on the ground.”

  “Why the mixed weaponry then?” Tia asked, referencing the only partial stun weapons loadout she’d told them to grab from the armory.

  “These are opportunistic scum and we’re not going to be overly nice about kicking them out, but we do need some of them alive to fly the ship out of here if we want to go that route.”

  “First call, kill or stun?” John asked for clarification.

  “Judgement call if it shoots back, otherwise knock them out.”

  Tia pulled out a pair of stun pistols from her back rack and twirled them around, limbering up her wrists. “I like bonus points.”

  “These are completely unknown baddies, so be careful what and when you shoot,” Myra said aloud, for both the Archons and the assembling Regulars. “I’ll head in first and troubleshoot. You follow and bag the crew. One guard on the ship, one venator in support. Everyone else doing sweeps, engage as necessary. Stun preferred, but if they get too persistent take them down hard. Comm intercepts say they’re looting the planet and killing anyone that gets in their way. We’re going to be a little nicer than that, but not too much. I want the ship. The crew are,” she said, glancing in Tia’s direction, “bonus points.”

  One last pair of Commandos ran in as she finished and the Knight next to her leading the group signaled their count was complete.

  “All present, Archon.”

  With a telepathic flip of a switch Myra started pulling up the boarding ramp.

  “Pilot, we’re good to go. Confirm with the Captain for departure. We’re all yours.”

  “Copy that,” the pilot replied over helmet comms as the assault team lingered in the hold of the Falcon-class dropship, one of the few pieces of Star Force tech design that actually outdated her within the empire, though both of them had undergone considerable upgrades over the years.

  Myra watched the naval combat unfold via her helmet battlemap, then when they had their opening the dropship accelerated out of the hangar and took up position behind a waiting Corvette-class drone and followed their blocker closely until they were right up on top of the wounded pirate jumpship with a hole blown into their own version of a hangar door. An energy shield was covering it, but when the corvette swung around to now cover the rear approach the dropship rammed into the shield and punched through using an alternate shield setting of its own that would breach primitive shields without destroying them.

  The silver ship slid through and into the internal atmosphere as if there had been nothing blocking its way at all, then landed on a mostly empty deck save for a few small ships and fighters that hadn’t been down on the planet doing naughty things.

  Myra was first out the lowering ramp, but only a few steps into the hangar and she skidded to a halt.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” John asked from behind his rifle barrel at the top of the ramp behind her.

  “No oxygen. It’s a methane-based atmosphere.”

  “I thought the planet was oxygen-based,” Tia added.

  “It is. These guys must be using…” she said, trailing off. “Stay here.”

  Myra ran over to one of the nearby enemy ships, using her backup oxygen supply that would only last a matter of minutes. Using her psionics she pried open the first door she came to and went inside. It was empty and waiting for new cargo, apparently, so she left and went over to the next one, and the next, until she finally found what she was looking for. A small cargo ship full of pressurized canisters.

  “These guys are going Grunt down there,” she said on her team comm.

  “Contacts,” John noted.

  Myra ran out of the ship and onto the hangar deck, getting there a few seconds late as an array of what looked like lachar blasts were harmlessly hitting the dropship’s superior shields as John and a Commando stepped out through the specialized barrier covering the entrance and opened fire. They took hits, but their own shields held up. Not ever having seen an Archon before the enemy apparently didn’t know what to make of them and stupidly pushed forward firing with their own forearm-mounted weapons as they took hit after hit with stun blasts, dropping their scarecrow-like bodies to the ground with single shots.

  Myra came at them from the side, opening fire herself with a stun pistol and running directly into the group of upwards of 40 or so that were still pouring into the hangar. She summoned up a Fornax field and detonated it in their midst…but to her shock it didn’t affect them and she found herself punching and kicking them down. They were as weak as they looked, but she didn’t feel any bones breaking on impact. Instead they bent like rubber and flopped to the deck with single hits…though the last part of that wasn’t unexpected given her titan-level strength.

  Once through the group she stomped her heels down and reversed direction, throwing a Jumat blast into those still coming into the hangar and knocking everyone still standing aside like grass clippings blowing in the wind. As they got up the rest of her team shot them down again until there were no more coming.

  With a glance at her HUD she checked her oxygen gage, having a few minutes left before she needed to recharge in the ship. Wanting to know why her Fornax hadn’t worked, she mentally connected to one of them and searched its mind…only to find it wasn’t fully there.

  Another shot flashed beside her as a Commando shot one of the scarecrows that had inexplicably started to get back up again.

  “Stay down,” he said, but then others began getting up as well, eliciting more stun blasts to put them back on the deck.

  A quick scan of Myra’s guy with Pefbar cleared up the mystery and she bit back a curse.

  “Cyborgs. The stuns won’t keep them out and my Fornax completely missed. Disarm them and shove them in a corner for now.”

  “Use one of their ships,” John suggested, and Myra nodded. The other Archon took charge of the collection effort while Myra worked on her guy, trying to see how much information she could pull from the biological parts of its mind, but there was little here at all. In fact, its mind was almost entirely made up of computerized components.

  “Damn,” she whispered. This guy wasn’t really a guy anymore, maybe had never been. She wasn’t sure if she was looking at a highly modified person or a biologically augmented robot. Was this the crew or a defense for the real crew? She needed answers, but didn’t have the time to go wandering around the big ship looking for them on backup oxygen.

  “Myra, these guys…”

  “I know. Keep them contained for now. I’m going to have to do some exploring to figure this out.”

  “Second dropship?”

  “Have to. I can’t hold my breath that long.”

  “We can start making mapping runs on backups.”

  “I want to know if this is the crew or not.”

  “Drones?” John asked.

  “I honestly can’t tell. What do you m
ake of them?”

  “Weird.”

  “Gee, that helps loads.”

  “If we can’t keep them stunned we’re going to have to babysit.”

  “I know,” she groaned. “Just standby.”

  “Mind if I go sploring?” Tia asked.

  “Go ahead, but don’t rely on your Hanme.”

  “Can’t. He hasn’t given it to me yet,” she said, but added before Myra could nix her scouting, “I’ll keep a 1 minute cushion, promise.”

  “John?”

  “I’ll keep her on a leash.”

  “Ok, see what you can find,” Myra said, switching comms. “Captain, we’ve got a situation here. Methane atmosphere and stun resistant cyborgs. I need oxygen packs sent over immediately…and probably should throw in some physical binders while you’re at it. A lot of them. These guys are flexible as hell.”

  “Do you need backup?”

  “No, they’re cupcakes too. The oxygen is the only thing holding us up.”

  “On its way. The pirates aren’t responding to comms and are running for the asteroids hoping to lose us. How long do you want me to pursue?”

  “Just get them out of planetary orbit. If they’re dumb enough to stick around we’ll deal with them later, but I don’t want them getting even the slightest chance of reinforcing the planet, so keep them at extreme range.”

  “We have two crippled ships, not counting the one you’re in.”

  “How bad?”

  “Big holes in both. Loss of atmosphere.”

  “Set up a dropship with the atmospheric content I’m sending you then get a search party over there. I doubt you’ll find anything, but try anyway. Send some techs too and tell them to grab anything of interest, hardware or software.”

  “Cyborg means your telepathy won’t work?” the Captain asked.

  “It should partially, but these guys don’t have much brain left. If you find some corpses, bring them back for study too.”

  “None where you’re at?”

  “We started off playing nice, so no, none yet.”

  “Understood. I’ll take care of it. Oxygen should be there within 25 minutes.”