Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) Read online

  1

  February 26, 2825

  Jartul System (Calavari Region)

  Daka

  Mark-084 stood on the mountaintop that held the remains of the old Alliance base, looking out at the surrounding geography that was a mix of small mountains and plains, the latter of which held a number of lizard cities. Smoke was rising from them even now weeks after they’d been assaulted by Star Force troops. The battle for the planet was over, but the cleanup mission was going to take years to disassemble the lizard infrastructure.

  But they had time, and Mark was going to be personally overseeing the reclamation of Daka for Star Force. Clan Gunstar was going to get a small piece of it, but the bulk of the planet was going to be one of the new tier 4 worlds, housing the best of the best of Star Force personnel when it came to the aerial division and all supporting assets. Under Mark’s leadership the planet was going to become the premier industrial producer of aerial craft and the test bed for future prototypes, as well as the most intensive and extensive training available for all of the empire’s various factions.

  Likewise there were 8 other tier 4 worlds planned, though none had been tagged to date save for a waterworld in the Bsidd Region that was going to house the tier 4 aquatics stronghold. Already the reorganization of Star Force was beginning to show dividends, with the tier 3 sectors that had already been created on Earth and Corneria having begun to generate a new ‘feel’ to the civilization there. Everywhere from the residential sections to the entertainment facilities was more mellow, focused, and purposeful. The chaos of the general population was gone, as were the dysfunctional citizens.

  Roam a tier 3 region and there were no fat people, no old people, no cutters, anorexics, gays, addicts, loudmouths, egotists, zealots, etc. Everyone here had earned their way in, and that trial in and of itself had allowed them to solve their personal problems and rise above the rest of the citizenry…and now they no longer had to see the problems of others on a daily basis. The ‘normal’ was now perfection, in that the people here had no personal problems dragging them down with the focus being on improvement, both personal and communal, and a striving for excellence rather than coping with flaws.

  The synergy that had resulted surprised many by its suddenness and intensity, with the go ahead for the tier 4 worlds coming quickly thereafter. The basic theory was to create an advanced core group that would bring the rest of Star Force up with it, much like the Clans were, except that these tier 4 worlds would be skill specific and essentially the poster model for others to learn from. Mark had wanted Daka for the aerial specialty for that was what the planet had originally been tasked for when the Calavari had owned it prior to the lizard invasion, not to mention its strategic location.

  It was on the very edge of Star Force territory at the moment, but with a coreward boundary line essentially fixed the further push against the lizards would be rimward, eventually making Daka centrally located if all went according to plan. The ADZ was going to be displaced as the geographical center of the empire as they ate up more and more lizard worlds, with Davis already commissioning the placement of Epsilon Eridani caliber systems at various points along the current borders. Those so designated would be receiving supply shipments from across the empire to fast track their development, with Daka being one such planet.

  The first convoy wasn’t due to arrive for another month but Mark wasn’t in a rush. There had been so many lizards here that it had literally been a blood bath. The widespread usage of the Keema weapon batteries within the drone fleet had given them the range advantage they needed, and most of the destruction of the lizard civilization had occurred from orbit, but there had been considerable ground fighting for the limited troops the Archon had brought with him to cleanse the planet of the longtime invaders.

  The base beneath the mountain had been repurposed for the lizards, leaving nothing of the original behind, but Mark recognized the location just the same. He’d fought here against the Nestafar when they’d backstabbed the Alliance and joined with the lizards over 400 years ago, and though the grasslands had been burnt away the rest of the topography hadn’t changed.

  It felt strange to be back here, for when he’d left the Calavari had been the larger and more powerful race with Star Force being a junior member in the Alliance. Now the Calavari were the smaller faction within Star Force, with the Bsidd likewise having joining them and the Kvash having been wiped out. The Nestafar were likewise all but gone, with only a small ward colony left that was also part of Star Force now. The founding members of the Alliance, once the huge, powerfully dominant races, had receded, with even the Hycre now taking a backseat to the Human-led empire. Mark and his kin were now in the driver’s seat, and doing a far better job of fighting the lizards than the Alliance ever had.

  Mark knew that criticism wasn’t entirely warranted. The other races didn’t have a pyramid of highly advanced tech to continually leech off of, but that aside the old Alliance’s methods had been inadequate and rather than repeating failure Star Force learned and adapted…which was necessary against an opponent that did the same. Mark knew that they’d never be beaten, for the lizards had grown so large and vast that they could keep spreading throughout the galaxy faster than Star Force could hunt them down, so the mission was to be better than them while staking out a ‘safe’ chunk of territory for themselves and others to take shelter within.

  Daka had just been added to that list of star systems and its inclusion was long overdue. Now that Mark was here he was going to be leading numerous other invasion fleets against the surrounding systems, carving out another section of lizard territory while others did likewise at numerous locations throughout the local section of the galactic arm. Eventually they planned to move all the way over to the new Voku stronghold and place a line there, allowing their new ally to fight the lizards beyond and protect their own designated ward races while Star Force became the link between their territories.

  It was now a common sight to see an occasional Voku convoy passing through the ADZ, despite the fact that they didn’t own any territory within it. More and more resources were coming forth from the Voku empire and being sent out to Cal-com’s new territory and Mark welcomed the help, for not only were they defining the spinward border of what would eventually be Star Force territory, but they were also holding a bit of the coreward line as well. And though it was going to be a very distant goal, Mark knew that Star Force was also going to have to expand up and down all the way to the edges of the galactic disc in order to cut the lizards off from further expansion in their area or they’d just skirt the edges and surround them.

  There were so many systems out there that Star Force couldn’t save because they were too far away that it left Mark feeling a bit hollow inside, but he and the others had decided to grow their empire as large as they could in order to save as many races as possible, and the stronger the lizards grew the less able races there were that could defend themselves. Star Force was winning their corner of the war, but virtually everyone else was losing and fueling the growth of the lizard juggernaut.

  The number of races fleeing into Star Force territory was growing as well, with some coming from the coreward area that had made their peace with the Skarrons only to now be displaced by the lizards. Others were coming to them for a myriad of reasons, some because of other threats, some in the hope of preventing doomsday from coming their way. Few were the races that could stand alongside Star Force as their equals, and those known were far away from here. The Nexus, for all its power and size, was so far rimward that they didn’t have any claim to this region aside from the H’kar fleets that were still fighting alongside Star Force, and that was more on their own merits than any edict fro
m the Nexus leadership.

  The Skarrons were the other major power, but as far as Mark knew they were getting their assess handed to them by the lizards and despite the information digging that Star Force had been doing for centuries there didn’t seem to be any other major powers out there within any proximity…meaning that this region was essentially an all you could eat buffet for the lizards when and where Star Force couldn’t stop them.

  It wasn’t fair. Nobody chose when or where they would be born, and many new races he’d come to know were fairly honorable and industrious but there was no way they could stand up to the tech level of the lizards, let alone their numbers. Some of those races had been wiped out, others had seen survivors flee to Star Force. They’d done nothing wrong, hadn’t made any missteps, and still they’d gotten obliterated. That frustrated Mark to no end, because he hated no-win scenarios.

  He and the other trailblazers had been facing one their entire life with the V’kit’no’sat, but rather than give in to despair they’d devoted themselves to finding ways to do the impossible, and although that day hadn’t come yet, fortunately, they’d progressed so far that it had brought them into a dominant position over the lizards…but that made the situation in the region even worse, for Star Force could stop the slaughter. The trouble was, they couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  “Not enough good guys in the galaxy,” Mark said to himself as he looked out over the planet through his helmet’s faceplate. Clan Gunstar was pretty much on autopilot right now, for aside from a few tweaks here and there his second gen Archons were handling his development plans while leaving him free to work on whatever he needed to. Right now that was going to be Daka and building this planet up for all of Star Force, then inviting the top pilots and aerial engineers here to train as they continually refitted the empire’s equipment and combat techniques.

  He’d been doing much the same thing within Clan Gunstar ever since its creation, but Daka was going to be a training world that all the Clans could use, not to mention the other races within Star Force and even some of their allies. With the change in lizard tactics and them deploying huge swarms of wisps to counter everything from infantry to warships there was a growing need for aerial craft and this planet was going to begin producing them in crazy numbers…or at least that was the plan, and his plan, for Davis had left Daka up to his discretion while feeding him all available resources that he requested over the next 50 years.

  Mark toed a bit of dry dirt with his dark blue armored boot. There was so much work to do here and none of it fighting, assuming they really had cleared out the last of the lizards. He doubted they’d make a second invasion of the planet, for that was no longer something they felt like doing. They hadn’t taken a planet from Star Force in ages and were no longer trying. Their plan seemed to be to turtle up along the border and make themselves as hard of a target as possible to delay Star Force when they eventually came for them, all the while expanding elsewhere and preying on those too primitive or too weak to defend themselves.

  Daka was staying in Star Force hands from here on out and Mark was going to make this home for a lot of people. People who earned being here, and who would literally feed off of the attitude of their likeminded peers. Freedom was essential for any civilization, but while you had to let people make their own mistakes you didn’t have to be dragged down by them. People could learn and grow elsewhere, or not, but in order to get here they had to prove themselves worthy…then Mark would take over from there.

  Aerial training wasn’t so much a thing of learning various techniques or developing skills as it was of sheer repetition. A commando improved by upgrading their body through training, but a skeet didn’t become more powerful with more missions. It was mechanical and static, meaning the pilot had to advance in terms of reflexes, endurance, and mostly the mental applications. Experience was the key factor and Mark knew that Daka had to have people flying, both for real and in simulators, on an exhaustive schedule. Only that would give his trainees the chance to learn and adapt while he and a few handpicked others worked on improving their equipment.

  One of those advancements coming down the line was the neural interface. So far it’d been used in naval and mechs, but aerial was a bit different and Mark had insisted that they still use hand controls until the technology became more streamlined. It was going to be far superior, if for no other reason than being able to see all around you in a way similar to Pefbar, save you’d be using the craft’s sensors instead of your body’s.

  Mark was already using the tech in an effort to goose along its advancement, but during this latest assault he’d piloted a standard hand controlled skeet. The new models just weren’t reliable enough yet, though that time was coming soon…and when it did, aerial combat was going to change drastically, which was one reason why he wanted to personally oversee the development of Daka so he could gear it towards that new reality from the ground up rather than having to do a refit later similar to what would be occurring on many other worlds after the transition.

  One of those items was going to be a subsurface comm grid that would allow fighters to be flown remotely the same way that naval flew drones, allowing them to be used as disposable assets in various circumstances. Mark had already decreed that they weren’t going to use actual drones, with every craft having a pilot’s seat just in case you needed to manually fly it, but now his pilots would be able to sit inside a city and fight the battles anywhere on the planet from relative safety.

  That was, assuming you got a grid to cover the entire planet. He wasn’t going to trust orbital transmissions, plus the lag effect would always give an actual pilot in the seat a slight advantage, but he saw value to this new concept and was going to use Daka as a planetary test bed for it, then it’d be evaluated and used on other worlds if deemed advantageous.

  But setting up relays across an entire planet was no small feat, nor was building the cities that would eventually cover the planet. Decades would not be enough. This was going to be a centuries long endeavor trying to rise to a level of Epsilon Eridani or even Sol, though with every year that passed those systems were growing stronger and larger themselves.

  But you had to start somewhere, and this planet’s return to allied hands was that start, bloody as it had been. Mark would be basing here for the foreseeable future but he’d let the engineers handle most of the construction after he gave them the basic plans. While they did the tedious work he’d be leading warfleets doing the harder, more dangerous work of cleansing and claiming additional worlds. Some of those they’d keep, others they’d leave bare yet monitored. As it was Star Force had more worlds in its technical possession than they could fill, and that was becoming a big political rub with a number of races that wanted to colonize them.

  Twice already Star Force had to forcibly evict squatters, and Mark was glad he wasn’t having to deal with that task. It was insulting to have to waste time and resources with so-called ‘allies’ when every world Star Force took from the lizards could mean that another one out there beyond their reach could be sparred, for while the lizard empire was vast it was not infinite, and even they had supply limits.

  The stupidity of those in the ADZ was not something to underestimate, but here on Daka he wouldn’t have to deal with that. Not from general citizenry, and definitely not from any non-aligned race that they were graciously babysitting. Everyone coming to Daka would be here for a purpose, and that was the kind of atmosphere that he and others could genuinely think of as home…or so he hoped, if he did his job right and built the planet up into the aerial mecca he hoped for.

  Mark took off his helmet, holding it in his hands as he breathed in the toxic air. It had the necessary oxygen he needed, but a lot of other stuff that didn’t agree with his lungs so much. It’d been a long time since he’d tasted this air and wondered how much his advanced physique would be affected, hence this little test.

  His lungs didn’t detect any problem in his first few breaths, but that wasn’
t abnormal. It usually took a little time before they started burning, but the feel of the air was the same as when he’d first come to Daka. As the minutes passed he continued to look around at the horizon, seeing the junked lizard cities and their smoke plumes, then turning around to see the mountains behind him that had a fair number of concealed hideaways within them, but from here it looked all natural.

  The burning sensation started to manifest itself again, and after only a few minutes. Mark sighed and put his helmet back on, cycling the air out to clear it completely and return the internal composition to the desired setting of oxygen and nitrogen.

  “So much for being fitter,” he chastised himself with a bit of chagrin. “I guess some things don’t change with time, short of terraforming.”

  Nostalgia or no, the air was going to have to change, with giant scrubbers on the to-build list a number of decades down the line. This was a Star Force planet now and the atmosphere was going to have to agree with Human lungs eventually, no matter how much of a hassle it was going to be to filter out all the noxious stuff.

  They had time, after all, and Mark was going to see that this world was built right…and as fast as possible without compromising that first tenet. Patience was a learned trait for Archons, for faster was always better, no matter what you were doing.

  2

  May 17, 2825

  Shaleth System (Voku territory)

  Inova

  Cal-com sat on an elevated platform in his private oracle, reserved only for the Dafchor and select staff as he saw fit to permit entry, though to date that list held 0 names. This was his personal sanctuary from which he oversaw most of the operations within the local annex of the Voku empire. On occasion he would lead a mission personally, but most of those days were now behind him since the other 8 races had been reached and moderately secured on the far side of lizard territory.