Star Force: Intransigent (SF100) (Star Force Origin Series)

  1

  June 11, 3602

  Solar System

  Earth

  Barbriea Nooner set up the harvesting equipment over pod #1934 in the Antarctic bioharvest facility where she worked with a few button presses. Then after visually confirming with a glance that the apple trees were ready to be plucked again, she opened the top hatch on the acre-wide pod from her position outside the clear glass walls via a control gauntlet that the Star Force tech wore on her left arm.

  The collector assembly lowered through the containment shield beneath, entering the thicker atmosphere inside that was mostly CO2 and would suffocate her or anyone else that went inside, but the trees absolutely loved it and the machines designed to harvest crops didn’t need to breathe. The platform that lowered into a gap between the trees stayed on the roof of the pod and extended a number of arms and tubes down as if it were a mechanical mirror image of those growing below, but it did nothing else as it waited for Barbriea to get to work.

  Standing outside the pod on the narrow walkway that separated it from the one directly behind her, the tech hit a button on her gauntlet that caused it to create a holographic control board that didn’t move with her arm. It floated independently in front of her and allowed the tech to press the tactile floating buttons in conjunction with the mental control patch attached to her forehead.

  One of the buttons brought her into a virtual view inside the pod that overlaid with her actual senses, making her both in the walkway and between the trees at the same time. When Barbriea had first been taught to use this equipment that duality had caused her a lot of trouble, but after 67 years working bioharvest facilities it had become second nature now and she linked with the collector arms as easily as if they were her own.

  Using the sensors on the mechanical platform she was able to see the various apples, both those exposed and hidden beneath leaves. At a glance she could measure their width and ripeness, knowing which ones to pick and which ones to leave for more development. Those that were ready she locked as targets mentally, then pressed buttons for each that the collector automatically maneuvered an arm to, located the stem, and cut it when a collection basket was placed underneath.

  Those baskets weren’t physical, but rather made of shields that caught the 10-15 pound apples softly as they fell, then maneuvered them low to the ground near the tree trunks and back towards the small center gap below the collector. There they were pulled into a physical terminal that shunted them up a tube that had an atmospheric shield of its own. Each of the huge apples passed through it into normal atmosphere as they were carried along via the lifting shields inside the tube that would take them to a prep area to either be cut up and processed or stored whole for later usage…but that was beyond Barbriea’s task, for she was assigned to only collect and spent four hours each day moving from pod to pod harvesting crops, whether they be apples, corn, potatoes, toretia, narcal, kepper, or the thousands of other varieties that Star Force grew that ended up becoming food cubes, noodles, or the Archon favorite donuts.

  It was a repetitive job, but then again most tech assignments were unless you were in maintenance, construction, or research. She didn’t mind the solitude that the position brought, meandering about the huge indoor fields of crops and crossing paths occasionally with other bioharvest techs. This was an essential part of logistics within the empire, for without food it could not exist. So while it was quiet, repetitive work it was important and Barbriea was both pleased and honored to have the assignment.

  In the past she’d been paid credits for similar jobs, but she’d risen to a tier 6 rank now and they were the first level that received no pay, nor did those above them. That meant she was full Star Force and didn’t have any civilian interests…such as starting her own business or indulging in credit purchases of luxuries. Tier 5 and below were paid, with tier 5 being paid fairly well. The transition between the two meant that those who agreed to level up to 6 were interested in doing the work for work’s sake rather than it being a means to gain credits.

  Barbriea got everything she needed for free now, without limits, but that didn’t include the public markets. Everything that Star Force produced she could get, but privately made products required credits. She still got a small stipend from previous work completed, but there was no pay for days worked going forward. She wasn’t going to be buying any private spacecraft or building her own station in Earth orbit. After all, why would she want to when Star Force built far better ones and she could move about them freely?

  It was true she didn’t own any of it, but tier 6s and above considered each other to be family, and now that she was an ‘insider’ there was no desire to try and build something of her own when the entire empire now belonged to her in part.

  Other people couldn’t understand that and would never work unless compensated with credits…and that’s why those people would never rise far within the Star Force ranks. Greed was easy to weed out, and Star Force certainly wasn’t hurting for workers. It had taken Barbriea a long time to get this far by developing her skills, for her harvest rate had increased greatly since she’d begun, and in the bioharvest industry time was also a commodity.

  Some had argued for using fully automated harvesting equipment, but doing so in some experimental pods had resulted in greater inefficiency. A machine could only do what it was programmed to, and deciding which apples to take and how to take them was more of an art than science. She didn’t want to break branches in the process, and since trees didn’t grow along predictable paths a machine didn’t always know how to move around them to get at the apples.

  It was a minor thing, but Star Force liked to get the absolute most out of each pod and that required a mind guiding the collecting arms and choosing when to take an apple or when to let it continue to grow. This pod and the others that Barbriea worked were hers and hers alone, and the mild competition to see who could produce the most over the course of time was an added motivation to attend to detail each and every day.

  When her four hour shift was over she’d rejoin the civilian population in the nearby cities, take care of her training, then have free time to deal with however she wished. Some people worked doubled or even triple shifts to acquire more credits, but Star Force discouraged such things and outright prevented it at her tier. Unless there was a shortage, they weren’t going to encourage people to skip workouts or sleep, with the four hour shift being about average throughout the various divisions within the empire.

  But every moment of that four hours Barbriea was in motion, moving from one pod to another and harvesting crops or adjusting nutrient and atmospheric levels. It was quiet work, but mildly intense as neither she nor the other bioharvest techs wanted to waste time. Their job was too important, for it was them that fed Earth, and those of their tier and above were here because they wanted to be, so they took their job very seriously.

  The quietness was also soothing, which Barbriea appreciated, so when an alarm sounded throughout the facility it spooked her so hard that her mental connection to the collector arms inside the pod caused several to jerk wildly, snapping branches and causing a few apples to come crashing down to the ground far below, with some breaking apart on impact.

  Barbriea disconnected from the equipment, shutting down her control gauntlet and following the new holograms popping up in the walkways. The one to her left was specifically for her, and as she began running towards it the little dashed line in the air disappeared. She followed the evacuation path quickly, not knowing what was happening but the presence of an alien fleet in the system wasn’t a secret. She and just about everyone e
lse had been following the news feeds intently, but when she’d come to work the professional in her and the others meant they didn’t sneak looks, rather being patient enough to wait until their shifts were over before catching up on the battles occurring on their doorstep.

  But if there was an evacuation order for this bioharvest facility that either meant there was a major malfunction or, more than likely, the invaders were headed here…and that thought made her run through the various walkways as fast as prudence would allow, for the turns were very sharp and if she went any faster she’d start bouncing off the clear pod walls.

  With her eating up her evacuation route line like old school Pacman she eventually merged with another line, seeing out of the corner of her eye at the turn another tech racing towards her 50 meters back. Barbriea didn’t wait for him, knowing to clear out as quickly as possible. If there was going to be fighting occurring here then they needed to clear the area so the military wouldn’t be hampered by them…and if the facility was going to get blown up there was no point in waiting around even a second longer than necessary.

  She knew the planet had huge shields covering every square meter of it that these V’kit’no’sat would have to break through, so why they were being evacuated now she didn’t know. Barbriea trusted her fellow Star Forcers enough to just go with the evacuation route and worry about figuring things out later, so when she got to the end of the holographic line and joined the crowd of others briefly waiting to get onboard subsurface cars at a transit hub there was no talking or hysterics. No pushing or shoving. When a new car became available they crammed as many people into it then the few security force officers present sent it off and began loading the next one.

  Barbriea waited her turn then got pancaked inside one a couple minutes later, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other bioharvest techs as the tube visible outside the car started flashing by as they traveled through the undercity and hopefully away from whatever the danger was.

  “Does anyone know what’s going on?” a guy somewhere behind her asked.

  “No,” she said after a moment of awkward silence. “I just got the evac warning and ran.”

  “They have to be attacking Earth. Attacking here,” someone else suggested.

  “Why here?” the man next to her asked.

  No one had an answer for that, and without any knowledge to share between them there wasn’t much point in talking. By the time they reached the end of their transit they were several hundreds of miles away, having been taken north across Antarctica and deposited in a random city there…but when they got out of the car they didn’t see or hear any alarms. Everyone in the giant plaza they eventually came out into were behaving normally aside from seeing the curious number of Star Force techs suddenly pouring out of the transit system.

  Barbriea meandered out with the others, having received no further instructions and not being sure what she should do with herself, but eventually she and a lot of the techs were drawn to a live news feed that was being put up on the main holo in the next promenade outside the plaza. When she got there she saw images of the enemy fleet orbiting Earth. Their ships were so huge it was crazy, and they were all clustered together in a group while the much more numerous Star Force fleet was nearby but not yet fighting.

  Then she saw the zoomed images of a giant orange beam traveling all the way from the high up enemy fleet hitting the planetary shield over top of them…which had to be why they’d been evacuated. If it managed to punch through and hit the bioharvest facility they’d all be vaporized.

  But as she continued to look and listen to the commentary being provided it didn’t make sense. There was only one enemy ship attacking, and doing so from a range outside the planetary defenses…meaning Earth couldn’t shoot back. But if only one ship was attacking…

  Then the enemy suddenly started to move with the whole mass of ships heading in closer to the planet and Barbriea’s hand involuntarily came up and covered her mouth as her jaw dropped.

  They were coming here. And they were going to attack Earth with every ship they had.

  She saw the Star Force fleets react instantly, accelerating to intercept them and her not knowing if they’d get here in time or even how long it would take them to pound through the planetary shields. She’d been told the defenses were stupidly strong, but against that many huge ships who knew…

  But then she noticed something odd, for the point on the shields where the orange beam had been hitting was marked on the map…yet it wasn’t located over the facility where she worked. Not even close. The beam was coming down on the very edge of the continent and her evacuation route had actually brought her a bit closer to it.

  “What the fuck?” she whispered, trusting Star Force but not having any why they’d been evacuated from that bioharvest facility.

  Mak’to’ran watched the readouts from the command deck on his Kafcha as the J’gar fired its Tar’vem’jic into the planetary shields. It did not penetrate on first hit, and as subsequent impacts were registered and data analysis was conducted he began to grow very displeased. As powerful as the Mach’nel was, it couldn’t easily get through the shields protecting the planet…which were multi-layered and modulating. Even when it did puncture the top layer several minutes in, the lower layers prevented it from hitting the shield generators beneath. Doing the math he could see that it would take days to break through at the minimum, then when his analysts got him their determination of the effectiveness of the attack it was clear that the Mach’nel’s Tar’vem’jic wasn’t powerful enough on its own to get through to the surface.

  He was going to have to bring other weaponry into range in order to breach their planetary shields…and that meant exposing his fleet to their orbital defense guns.

  The Era’tran knew that would result in the loss of many more ships, for there was no way the Star Force fleet was just going to sit by and watch while they broke through and took out ground based defenses. They were probably sitting by now and waiting because they knew the Tar’vem’jic wouldn’t be enough on its own to get through, but as soon as he sent ships down to cover and assist the Mach’nel as it brought its full arsenal to bear against the shield they’d swoop in and engage in the most defensible position they had within the system.

  Mak’to’ran had already plucked the nearby Sentinels from orbit, so at least they wouldn’t be able to add defensive firepower, but this was going to be a bloody fight to punch through the shields and land his Zen’zat assault team…with the fleet commander knowing that the way to limit his losses was by making this as quick as possible. That meant taking the entire fleet in, assaulting the shields and creating a breach point in the minimum amount of time, and distracting the planetary defenses long enough to get a single ship to the surface.

  He’d wanted to pluck those planetary defenses prior to that, but now there wasn’t going to be time. He’d label them as primary targets, but this slugging match had to be as short and to the point. If the Zen’zat could be delivered safely he was confident they would accomplish their mission and give the J’gar a remote link to the planetary defense stations systems, allowing them to bypass the locks and give the Zen’zat full control of the defenses…which they could then use to hold that position indefinitely so long as they won the battle inside.

  To make sure they did he’d already assembled all the top Zen’zat in the fleet onto one Voro’nam Domjo that would hide behind the protection of other vessels as they escorted it down through the kill zone he was about to thrust the V’kit’no’sat fleet into…but there was no other way to do this. Send less vessels and he’d lose more. The safest means to take the planetary defense station was to hit the planet with everything they had and let their mass strength be their shield.

  The weak link was that single Domjo. He had to make sure it wasn’t hit and got to the surface before their enemy could react to the light invasion. The lockout the J’gar had implemented on the now hidden planetary defense station did not include the defe
nse shields, so if Star Force had managed to repair the damage the Rit’ko’sor had done to it they could throw up that additional shield and block the Domjo from landing…which was why they’d be going down outside the maximum perimeter of the shield and landing the Zen’zat in gunships that would travel underneath its altitude as far as they could get before being forced down.

  Mak’to’ran thought there was a chance they could make it all the way to the defense station’s location before Star Force could throw up sufficient aerial interference, and if they wanted to send some of their tiny starships down to strike them they’d have to lower the shields to do so. If they did Mak’to’ran was going to send his own ships down and fight it out long enough to block the attempted maneuver, even if it meant losing every one of them to create the distraction.

  If he succeeded there then the only hindrance to the Zen’zat would be anti-air surface defenses and their aerial division. The Zen’zat knew to head to ground rather than fight it out if they couldn’t progress as far as needed, taking to the Star Force cities and their numerous underground structures that the V’kit’no’sat had not been able to enter on their ‘Ribbon.’ Only Zen’zat had been small enough to fight there, and likewise only they would be small enough to fight on the planet below. Their battlesuits and aerial craft could not fit, and Mak’to’ran was confident that his elite Zen’zat could handle any number of infantry thrown at them.

  They’d make it to the defense station sooner or later, meaning the difficult task lay in getting them safely to the surface. If they could do that then he could have the fleet withdrawal to a safe distance and wait for the defense station to come back online…but if Star Force was able to accidentally down that Domjo before it delivered the Zen’zat, this attack would be an utter failure.

  The Era’tran huffed his approval. He was a fleet commander for a reason, and if he couldn’t protect a single ship with the thousands of others he still had, then they didn’t deserve to win this fight.