Star Force: Crusade (SF93) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  1

  November 28, 3474

  Tarric 1 System (H’kar outer region)

  Middle Zone

  The star system was an empty one, not a planet nor asteroid field in orbit around the single golden star at its center. That had been intentional when The Nexus had created the nearby Grid Point Annsa, for they wanted it located off an uncontested system to be used as a waypoint and not become a target or siege station in and of itself. Now that this system belonged to Star Force that was changing, with several seda situated around an Imperator-class station that was only partially constructed as they watched the traffic come and go from the star to the not so far off grid point, standing by to intercept any threats before they got to it, or if they were coming out from it.

  A short comm signal was all that was needed to transmit from one to another, and it would travel faster than any of the ships due to the low gravity of the construct at the other end of the jumplane, so if someone ran from the forces at Annsa they could call ahead and the defense fleet in Tarric 1 could be standing by to attempt an intercept…or to warn Annsa if an invasion fleet arrived.

  There were four seda here, two of which were 13 miles in diameter, one at 9 miles, and another at 3. The Imperator was going to dwarf them all, though it wasn’t spherical. Rather it was star shaped, a six pointed work of sheer terror that would stretch 74 miles from tip to tip when completed. There were seda back in the ADZ that were larger, but this thing was designed to be star forge-sized, yet it wasn’t going to be used for mining or habitation. It had but one purpose and one purpose only.

  It was a pure battlestation…and on each of those six points was a Bra’hem beam cannon fueled by an independent Nash’ti reactor.

  Then throw in all the other medium and short range weaponry powered by other reactors and the most advanced shield set Star Force had, and you ended up with a tiny piece of infrastructure that no one wanted to mess with. It couldn’t guard an entire star system, but it could provide a safe haven to run to if you were in it, and that was incredibly valuable given the realities of interstellar travel. Fights happened insystem, and the idea of calling reinforcements in before you got annihilated was idiotic. Lag time of signal plus travel time meant that anything short of a full blown invasion was going to be over with before you could get help, so all defenses had to be structured around what you had insystem.

  It was the reason why so many planets had fallen to the lizards. Simply scout ahead, find out what was there, then bring in enough ships and troops to take it. Unless you hid away extra defenses the attacker was always going to have an advantage, and against single system civilizations…well, there were reasons to have more than one system, and the basic purpose of defense in that case was to design your infrastructure to buy you time so you could call for help and still be alive by the time it eventually arrived.

  Help here would come from Annsa and it was right next door, but if you were being pursued by a faster ship insystem you wouldn’t even have time to get it. The best hope you’d have would be to evade long enough to get to a safe spot somewhere in orbit of the star…and the imperator was definitely that safe spot, with extra long range shield generators build into it so that it could reach out and protect incoming ships and freeze others with dampener versions. Get to the imperator and you’d probably be safe, and while Star Force didn’t have more than 20 built to date across their entire empire, their theoretical reputation was already spreading rapidly.

  Theoretical because no one had been stupid enough to attack one, but Star Force had done some visible weapons tests and made those records public…just to discourage the stupid.

  This Imperator was partially operational with one of the star points built and capable of inflicting massive damage at insane range, but the station itself, even when fully constructed, would be operated by less than 1000 crewers. It could hold more than that, but it’d been built to be all teeth and no spa, somewhere you wouldn’t really like to be stationed during peacetime, but the place everyone would want to be in the middle of a battle.

  The surrounding sedas were a much better place to live and would allow the Imperator crew rotational options as well as adding their own impressive array of weaponry to any engagement as they sat within Bra’hem range but some 10,000 kilometers away, for if there was to be a fight the Imperator would need clear firing lines around it to inflict maximum damage.

  So it was being built here from parts shipped in by regular convoys in order to become the doorstop to Annsa that would function as watchdog and oasis for passing ships in distress. Capable of more than defending itself and alerting the grid point should trouble be headed its way.

  That meant it constantly monitored jump activity around the star, so when the first Nexus ships began to arrive it took note immediately.

  Four Gfatt warships led the way, followed by a fleet of huge cargo jumpships that dropped into a lower stellar orbit and began to circle away from the jumppoint…that soon saw a planet arrive out of a slow braking maneuver.

  Or rather it had the mass of a planet. In truth it was two giant discs connected by a thick stem and thousands of ‘small’ ships attached to it like ticks, all of which were themselves massive jumpships. Their combined propulsive power had slowly towed the construct across Nexus space and then the Rim Region, finally arriving here with the cargo jumpships immediately scrambling to attend to it.

  They got in close and extended huge umbilicals over to the ‘ticks’ and began to refuel them. They’d been stripped down to essentially engines and shield generators, with then more engines being added. It was how The Nexus had imagined transporting one of the huge constructs and was far less elegant than what Star Force had in mind, but per the agreement they wouldn’t be moving the Meintre’s pair here. The Nexus had taken this beast off of Grid Point Polla, stranding a smaller member known as the Uque temporarily.

  Or rather relegating them to traditional grav drive travel to and from their region, which was one of the less unstable ones within decent range of Star Force territory. That said, even with all the jumpships attached to the construct, it had so much mass that their collective engine power could only manage slow jump speeds. They’d been enroute for some 28 years thus far, with constant supply convoys running back and forth at much greater speeds in order to keep the constructs’ ticks fully fueled and constantly moving. Those convoys had been coming through Annsa for several years now to take the short cut to the construct, but they’d never stuck around long enough to draw attention.

  The Gfatt warships were here to escort the convoys just in case they did, though not the construct, for it had so much firepower of its own that escort wasn’t necessary. But pluck the convoys away and the construct would quickly run out of fuel, becoming stranded in whatever system it was in at the time and easy to siege out, for the giant station didn’t have much in the way of food production internally. It relied on warehouses and the abundant trade occurring at the grid points to function, meaning that right now it was truly a fish out of water.

  But that fish gradually moved over to a nonexistent jumpline, and once all the refueling had taken place it made the slowest jump the crew onboard the Imperator had ever seen, lazily creeping out of the system and taking more than a day to do it. Ships came in from Annsa and docked with it during its micro/microjump, transferring over Star Force-allied crew that would be replacing The Nexus handlers once they got it into position.

  It wasn’t going to the other construct, but rather some 1.5 million kilometers away. As far as interstellar navigation was concerned that was basically the same spot, but it would give the two constructs plent
y of breathing room and allow traffic from one not to influence the other, and both were far enough away from the star that its gravity didn’t tug them too much out of alignment. Hitting a target as ‘small’ as one of the giant 12,000 mile wide discs require a precise shot, then some additional steering as able to correct minor drift problems since you couldn’t actually see the target you were shooting for. You knew its supposed location then had to adjust when you got close enough to sense it, either via gravity silhouette or alignment beacon, for the magnetic field itself was too local to pick up before you hit it.

  But getting the construct 1.7 lightyears away from the star was a huge pain in the ass, because the jumpships moving it had no gravity to brake against. They were going to have to sip off the star’s limited gravity signature at that range and ramp up their engines for an extremely long burn just to nudge down its speed. And knowing that was going to be necessary, a huge fleet of additional fuel ships arrived the following day from Annsa and began running back out to it in escort formation, setting up for continuous transfers that was going to require a lot of precision flying to match speeds.

  It was either that or slowly take the construct over the 1.7 lightyears distance in the next 2 centuries, and even then you’d have to expend a good deal of fuel to stop it on station. So in fuel costs alone the deceleration on point was going to be more than 30% of the sum total that it took The Nexus to get it here, which was a staggering amount.

  The Imperator watched The Nexus supply convoys keep coming into the system, thousands upon thousands of the giant ships that would return piecemeal and head back out empty, but before the construct made it to its final resting point another four ship Gfatt escort arrived at the star ahead of another fuel convoy, but they didn’t make a microjump out to catch up with the construct. Rather they headed around the star to get to an outgoing jumpline as a second planet-sized mass arrived.

  It was the other end of the link, and behind it came more fuel ships and a diplomatic vessel. The latter headed over to Annsa to handle the official handover of the construct being dropped off here, but this one still had a 14 year journey left to get to the location in the occupation zone where The Nexus was already setting up shop, but they wouldn’t be able to send convoys in earnest until the grid point system was linked in.

  Time wasn’t on their side, so they’d been sending many the slow way to get their gifted worlds prepped, but once this construct got there and the link between it and Annsa was established, traffic and commerce was going to explode at both ends, and not just because of the Meintre relocation plan. Star Force would be on the grid, for the ADZ wasn’t that far away, and virtually every member within The Nexus was going to have access to them through the grid point system.

  They did now via the H’kar, but the H’kar weren’t fully integrated into Star Force yet. They were enough for a lot of players to begin making contacts and setting up arrangements for the tidal wave of trade to come, but it wasn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to what would result when the ADZ was keyed in and its markets were open…and militarily secure from the instability plaguing many regions within The Nexus.

  But that was still at least 14 years into the future, for once the second construct was refueled and made its lazy way around the star it slowly jumped out on the next leg of its journey without wasting any time here, leaving the Imperator as the dominate force in the otherwise empty system, but had it been a living beast it would have been feeling emasculated by the passing of the two true giants through its turf…though it would have been interesting to see who would win out in a fight. Big as they were, they weren’t built as battlestations and they didn’t have any weapons that could match the range or firepower of the Bra’hem…though they did have a lot more of them.

  It would take another 5 months before the first construct was finally ground to a stop in its predetermined position, then the ticks turned it around to align with the far off occupation zone before The Nexus work crews began cutting away their jumpships from the frame they’d been physically attached to via umbilicals. They weren’t becoming Star Force property and The Nexus wanted them back, but the process itself was going to take a few months to complete and until the other end of the link was established this construct wasn’t going to be of much use.

  But that didn’t stop the commerce from flowing. The mass of stations around the existing construct at Annsa began moving into the gap between them, setting up for what the future would hold and positioning themselves to make the most of the two construct grid point…something that the rest of the Rim Region did not have aside from Mankla. One construct was a huge magnet for commerce, pun intended, but two at a grid point rocketed the location into higher status that would be attracting investors here even before Grid Point Stargate was established.

  While Annsa was now Star Force property, they were still on the grid point network and that made them part of the larger civilization whether officially recognized or not, and a great many people that lived in The Nexus or within its domain didn’t care about such things. They went where opportunity was and now Annsa was the newest hot spot on the map. No alterations in the grid point system had been made in centuries, and even though this was a moved set rather than a newly constructed pair, it was progress…something badly needed in The Nexus given all the setbacks it was having and markets lost to the traders when planets fell.

  It didn’t take long for news of the construct arriving to work its way out through the network and soon the number of magjump flights coming in quadrupled. Part of that was due to ships being repurposed from the now defunct Uque until the Meintre pair were moved there, but in truth those ships had already been repurposed elsewhere in the grid. The surge in flights here was due to the greater demand, and within the space of 3 years Annsa was the most traffic heavy grid point after Mankla…which also saw a boost because it was on the line that ran from The Nexus to Annsa.

  And as usual Star Force didn’t allow a letdown with any of the transfers. The grid points continued to operate at peak efficiency and word of that spread too, along with some of the minor improvements being made in the local economies. After all, Star Force began as a corporation, not a nation, and its roots in business philosophy ran far deeper than those of The Nexus even if the mammoth civilization had been around a lot longer and had ample experience to draw from.

  But there was just something about the way Star Force handled business that drew opportunists to them…not to mention that they kept all of their holdings extremely secure, and that was a vast improvement over The Nexus. Some people in the Rim Region complained about Star Force not sending enough of their existing fleet in to help secure the new members, but that way of thinking was exactly how The Nexus got into trouble. They’d overextended, and Star Force never did. When they took territory they held it, which was why a lot of the resources needed to secure the Rim Region were going to have to be built there, for Star Force had a huge occupation zone of captured and mostly emptied systems to guard against squatters, the still hostile lizards, the advanced races congregating at the Uriti preserve, and any others that felt like poking around.

  That firm grip on security attracted investors like a moth to a flame, and Davis was not one to waste opportunity. He had a Duke assigned to every grid point that Star Force owned and they were following the playbook that he’d written out long before the tidal rush of commerce began, so as people from all across The Nexus began sniffing around they found an even more professional custodian of the grid points than usual.

  And while there wasn’t a lot of traffic coming into H’kar territory itself, for most of it stayed in the grid point network as that was where the primary markets were, there was still a huge amount of cargo and other traffic interfacing with the H’kar as a result of Annsa’s increase in notoriety…and they all got the chance to fly by the Imperator station on their way through. A not so small reminder of the teeth that Star Force had in its own right, and that they were not just replacements
coming in to take over possession of The Nexus’s toys.

  They were a large civilization of their own, and though it wasn’t immediately apparent, people began to realize that technologically speaking they were on par with the major races in The Nexus, if not more so in some cases. Especially when it came to military hardware.

  The only problem was, they wouldn’t sell any of it. But still, when times became turbulent and uncertain, you fled to those you felt were the most powerful, and that too would begin to draw people towards the Rim Region and down into the expanded ADZ once Grid Point Stargate became operational and Star Force’s reputation slowly spread by word of mouth.

  2

  May 3, 3476

  Unknown System (Skarron territory)

  Middle Zone

  Captain Uzzedi sat in his command chair onboard his Ma’kri scout ship watching the fireworks in the system from a position of safety. They were well away from stellar orbit and the five inhabited planets that were currently engaged in the most massive brawl he’d ever seen…and he’d been at Krachnika when it ultimately fell. There were far more ships here, on both sides, and though it was hard to tell he thought the lizards were winning.

  Almost all his data was time lagged, but he’d dropped sensor buoys off around the system as they’d lazily trolled around in enhanced shadow mode. Ever since acquiring the Trinx into Star Force the Ma’kri had been upgraded with a crude overlay to their impressive signal sucking technology, so now they had the ability to be immune to sensors and give off a faint false signal enough to mimic starlight. It was less effective when backdropped by a planet or star, but they would no longer appear as an obvious black silhouette and that gave the Captain a lot of leeway with regards to where he could go within the system and still remain unnoticed.

  And unnoticed was the key, for they were fast enough to go where they pleased and neither the lizards nor the Skarrons could catch them. That said, they were so far away from Star Force territory that they didn’t want to risk a mishap. They were alone out here, for while there were other scout ships sniffing around the Skarron/lizard war zone they were all on different missions and not coordinating. Uzzedi was basing out of an outpost in Voku territory and he knew other ships were as well, but where they went to he didn’t know. He’d been given a section of territory to scout and orders to follow any large lizard or Skarron movements.