Star Force: Persistent Ravage (Wayward Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  1

  August 21, 4812

  Chawik System (Devastation Zone)

  Darlek

  10 days…

  10 days and everything had gone to hell.

  And Rammak was dead.

  He wasn’t the only one. There had been 58 Star Force survivors after the crash. No one had been killed during the wreck thanks to the preparations that had been made, but in the following days 36 of the warriors and techs had been killed and it was Esna’s fault. It was all Esna’s fault.

  Right now she was being carried by a Bsidd like a piece of useless cargo, fighting just to keep breathing as the survivors ran behind the single speeder they had left. It was sticking below the tree tops, for the Kat’vo were in the air and had accumulated more kills than the Zen’zat whenever they had found the survivors…whom they’d been pursuing relentlessly.

  And that’s how Esna had got them all killed.

  They’d been carrying their supplies on their three speeders and running alongside as they tried to get further away from the crashed Kat’vo ship. No dead drops had been found, so they were just trying to put some distance between themselves and however many V’kit’no’sat survived, which turned out to be at least 12 Kat’vo and 4 Zen’zat. Three Kat’vo had been killed thus far, and confirmed dead, but all 4 Zen’zat had been holding back and letting the aerial attack do the most damage, then moving in and following up. They’d been very aggressive, but in a conservative way meant to wear down the surviving Star Force troops who outnumbered them.

  Tyrenk was doing everything he could to keep them alive and had saved her life multiple times already, but she couldn’t keep up and they wouldn’t leave her. Esna could barely walk now, for after 10 days of high gravity her body was just trying to keep her heart and lungs going. Her head hurt constantly and despite the full powered setting in her armor her body dragged. It could move her around but her internal organs were still getting crushed. Without artificial gravity, which her armor did not have, that fact couldn’t be ignored and while the techs were having trouble they were holding up far better than her.

  She was a wreck. Back on Tauntaun in the low gravity she was slow, but she could at least cover distance. Here, at the best she could walk quickly. She literally could not run for more than short sprints before her body got so tired Esna got dragged back down to a stumbling walk. That meant the group couldn’t move any faster than her, their slowest person, and after a few miles Rammak had picked her up and carried her, allowing everyone to pick up speed but not even close to what they needed to.

  The V’kit’no’sat didn’t catch up to them for two days, but had she not been slowing them down they could have gotten a lot further ahead. With Rammak or a Bsidd or even the Scionate for a short while carrying her they were slowed considerably, and the speeders were full of cargo. They’d let her drive one until she started running into things, which had taken all of a few minutes. Her head was hurting so bad she couldn’t concentrate, and now after 10 days the best she’d managed was a cocoon of pain in which she tried to keep it from getting any worse as a mess of mandibles surrounded her and she had no idea where they were or what was going on.

  Suddenly she found herself dumped to the ground, hitting hard and being pressed into the mud by the gravity as movement blurred around her. Soon streaks of green weaponsfire shot down through the trees, hitting nearby and blasting damp branches into instant fireballs.

  Around her return fire came, shooting up through the canopy. Esna could only see out the side of her helmet and didn’t try to move. Being carried jostled her so much, furthering the damage to her body, that even in the middle of a firefight the chance to just hold still was too much to resist…plus there was no way she could do anything to help. If Esna got killed now she wouldn’t care. In fact, it would give the others a better chance of surviving, so she just laid still as the sounds of battle surrounded her and she took a few hits on her shields as Esna fought against the nonstop pounding in her head while tears continued to be sucked off her face and onto the side of her helmet by the high gravity.

  “Esna, open your helmet,” Tyrenk’s voice said some time later, jolting her partially out of her pain-induced funk. It took her a few moments to figure out what to do, then she triggered the release and her helmet retracted with her head smashing into the mud as the smell of dampness and fire washed in on her nose…then a Human hand settled itself against her neck and the Archon used his healing ability to repair a bit of the gravity damage as he had 6 times previously.

  Her head cleared but the pounding was still there, though more muted now.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Not well,” she said, still not moving.

  “Try,” he said, pulling her to her feet…where she finally noticed that the speeder had been hit.

  “Oh no.”

  “You have to walk now. We can’t carry you.”

  Esna put her helmet back on and took a step, collapsing to a knee before she managed a few wobbles that left deep footprints in the dirt/mud.

  “This isn’t going to work,” the Scionate said with a smoking wound on his envirosuit as he gripped a crate and heavily hauled it off the speeder with an attachment point on his helmet, then he swung it up onto his back where it stuck, bending him down greatly, but he was still able to move far better than Esna could.

  “Leave me,” she said, meaning it. “Just go. I’m dead anyway.”

  No one answered her, and that told her they agreed, but it was against Star Force protocol to leave people behind and no matter how bad off they were they didn’t want to leave her here to die.

  “Dig,” Tyrenk said, running off into the forest again as two Protovic Commandos appeared, coming back with obvious armor damage.

  The Scionate tossed off his crate and ran over to a spot nearby, then began clawing the ground and moving a lot of dirt. More weaponsfire sounded further out and Esna saw that most of their remaining warriors were absent, with the techs clustered around her and offloading what supplies were salvageable from the speeder. Those they couldn’t leave behind or they’d starve to death on this world, but sadly they didn’t need as many as they had a few days ago.

  A few minutes later Tyrenk came running back with a new hole smoking on his right shoulder, but his movements didn’t suggest that he’d been hurt. He grabbed Esna by the arm and yanked her over to the Scionate, then pushed her face down into the shallow hole as a wave of dirt exploded outward, digging it deeper then holding in the air above it as her dirty white armor fell inside.

  “Stay still and keep your mental countermeasures running constantly. They won’t be able to spot your mind and we’ll try to draw them off. If we can, I’ll come back for you later, but you have to lay here and pretend to be dead. No comms, no movement, no sounds. Do you understand?”

  “Do it,” Esna said, scared but glad she wouldn’t be holding them up anymore.

  The Archon smashed her further down into the hole, then the dirt began piling over her save for a small hollow that magically hardened around the lower part of her helmet where her air intake was.

  Esna didn’t see anything else as her helmet visor was covered in dirt, then there was…nothing.

  No comms came in, no telepathic message or even a tap on her helmet. With her countermeasures up Tyrenk couldn’t contact her mind to mind and she knew a signal could give them away, even on battlemap, so she turned it off too, leaving her with no contact to the outside. She played dead as instructed, feeling the crush of gravity on her but also glad that she wasn’t supposed to move.

  She didn’t expect to survive the next few minutes,
but they stretched into dozens and then hours as Esna drifted in and out of consciousness. Apparently the V’kit’no’sat had missed her, but right now that was of little comfort. Her body was trashed and Rammak was dead…the latter of which had done just as much damage. She’d seen his body get blown apart with repetitive hits from the Kat’vo, and that image of the hundreds of shots being fired down from above ripping off his armor and then into his body wouldn’t leave her mind.

  But he wasn’t the only one. Others were getting massacred too, for the aerial attack wasn’t something they were well suited to defend against. The Kat’vo’s weapons weren’t any stronger than the Star Force rifles, but they could just fire into an area and rack up a few hits here and there, draining shields until their Zen’zat moved in, darting around trees and making it very hard to counterattack them. They peppered the techs’ envirosuits, which were little more than shield emitters, until their defenses breached, after which they were easy kills. Rammak had died while defending them and Esna, putting his bulk in the way and taking so many shots that he left himself weakened and bleeding for the flying Kat’vo to finish off later.

  Esna could see him dropping to a knee as one of his legs went out, then pinned in that spot they swarmed overhead firing hundreds of shots down, killing him in a matter of seconds then rendering his body so damaged that he couldn’t be regenerated...but Tyrenk did kill one of the Kat’vo in the process, exacting a bit of revenge, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. And Esna had been like the walking dead ever since that moment, for what was the point in continuing on without him?

  Rammak had saved her so many times she couldn’t count, and if one of them had to die it should have been her. He’d spent 800 years abandoned on Forso and had finally made it out…to what? Die here a few months later as he took hits for others, herself included? What was the point of that?

  He deserved so much more, and had Esna not been slowing everyone down he wouldn’t have had to take those hits, or at least not that many. He’d saved her and she’d been the dead weight that got him killed.

  Whenever Esna thought of it she hurt in a way that she hadn’t since her brother had died, so in a way the physical pain was a welcome distraction, but as the Human laid buried under the dirt her body finally started to adapt to the gravity. It still hurt, but given the chance to rest Esna finally began to hold her own, at least as far as what was needed to lay still. The gravity still left her numb under the pressure and her head was constantly pounding, but she got out of panic mode and her mind cleared…which was when she desperately wanted to pass out, for the full impact of what had happened began to work its way through all the torturous permutations as her guilt choked her.

  Esna had nowhere to go, nothing to do to distract her, so she suffered in silence unable to do more than flex her toes for fear of moving the dirt and giving herself away. When she was nearly to the point of insanity and considering getting up and finding the V’kit’no’sat so they could finish her off she heard dirt start to move, then a strong grip grabbed her arm and wrenched her up…with light flooding into her faceplate and her eyes squinting shut against the glare.

  “Still alive?” Tyrenk said out loud, but in a whisper.

  “I don’t want to be,” she said, now out of tears or they’d have been running wildly again.

  “He wanted you to live. Don’t let him down by giving up,” the Archon said firmly as Esna noticed his armor was a mess, full of holes that were showing burnt flesh beneath.

  “Are you ok?” she asked, barely able to speak the words as her body twitched against the high gravity with her emotions swirling around in such a great torrent that she barely knew what was up from down right now.

  “No, I’m not. I need your armor. Take it off.”

  Esna didn’t argue, triggering the release and then getting a rush of humid air on her already sweat soaked body as it peeled away. Tyrenk started to take his off, but several parts froze and he had to bend and twist the pieces until he could get free, breaking one of them in the process as Esna was able to see the full extent of his wounds. He’d been shot at least 7 times and his white uniform was soaked in blood, but the burn marks were small…and as she watched, they began to shrink as he flexed and grimaced.

  Before her eyes he began to heal, but not all the way. His wounds reduced in size, then he pulled her Commando armor away from where she sat in a heap on the ground and stepped into it. It reformed around his thicker body, then he moved his arms around experimentally.

  “Thank you. I’ll be back,” he said, handing her back her pistol while he recovered his own weapons from his dead armor. “Two of the Zen’zat are down, and I’m going after the others. Move away from my armor and find some cover. Shoot if you have to, but just try and hide…and survive. That’s an order, Esna. Don’t you die on me too.”

  Before she could say anything, the mud-covered Commando armor ran off into the forest and out of view, leaving her totally exposed, but he’d make far better use of her armor than she would…and if he died, none of them was going to survive this.

  Esna didn’t expect she would, for all it’d take was a single shot from a Kat’vo to kill her now, but Tyrenk had given her an order and she’d at least try to follow it. It took her three tries before she was able to stand up, then another two when she knelt down to grab her pistol. When she finally got on her feet she took very small steps, feeling like the gravity was trying to drive her down into the ground like a pole. Inch by inch she moved, putting distance between herself, the hole, and the Archon’s broken golden armor.

  She didn’t get far before she tripped on a divot, falling on her face and into soft moss-covered dirt. Her hands sunk in a few inches as it seemed to want to trap her, but slowly Esna wiggled out and got to her feet again, finding a bit of strength she didn’t know the source of, then continued on with more baby steps. She didn’t know how far she went until she found a large fallen tree trunk, but there was no way she was going to be able to walk over it…so she let herself fall to the dirt, then began to crawl forward.

  Esna went up and over belly first, but when she got on the far side she found a puddle a few inches deep. Landing in it her legs felt the slightly cool water and refused to go on any further. She worked herself around into a sitting position with her back against the log then placed the pistol in her lap as her eyes closed and she fought the persistent headache. Esna hadn’t thought she could walk at all, but apparently there was a bit more fight in her than she’d realized.

  What good it would do she didn’t know, but what the Archon had said about Rammak stuck with her. He’d died saving her, so the least she should do was stay alive a few minutes longer and Esna wasn’t going to dishonor him by giving up. That at least was something she could control.

  But as she sat and thought, pain pounding in both her body and heart, she didn’t feel that she deserved to live. Teren dying had gutted her, but Rammak had kept her going. Now he was gone, largely because of her, and there was no way she could make it without him. She wanted to die, but knew that also would accomplish nothing. Her weakness had gotten Rammak and the others killed, and there was no way to undo that. All she could do was limp on in shame, but the small part of her mind that was still being rational told her that moving more now wouldn’t help…and that if she rested a bit more her body might be able to keep adapting to the gravity.

  The rest of her mind laughed at that idea, preferring to wallow in guilt and hopelessness, but the spark of defiance in her wouldn’t quit and the occasional sound of distant weaponsfire drifting her way reminded her of the fight still going on out there by people far more valuable than her. They’d been fighting to keep her alive, so who was she to argue with them? She’d do what she could, little as that was, and somehow managed to silence the mocking part of her mind.

  It was weird, for one moment her head was awash in multiple voices and ideas, then it crystalized into silence as her senses became more alert. She realized she’d been sitting he
re alone in the forest mentally living out a fiction. Reality was here, and no matter how bad the situation was, she was still alive and needed to do whatever she could to maximize her odds. She was in the middle of war, far outclassed, and she was hurting what small chance she had by doing…whatever it was her head was just doing.

  But it was silent now and she didn’t want to go back to the way it was, so she kept looking around and feeling her environment…her guilt present but quiet as well. Rammak was gone and she’d probably be joining him soon, but she had a pistol and the least she could do was weaken whoever it was that came to kill her. That might be the difference between one of the others surviving or dying, and if she could help them she was going to. Her life was gone if they found her, she knew that, so she stayed alert in the hope of getting that single shot off before the killing one came her way.

  2

  Time crept on, with Esna having no way of knowing where the others were or what was happening other than for a few sounds now and then. Above her was nearly full canopy, so she couldn’t see into the sky to spot the Kat’vo but had no doubt they could find her if they came this way. Right now though her primary opponent was the gravity as she fought to keep her head clear up until a sound to her right caught her attention.

  She spun around, feeling her muscles ache with the motion, and saw the leaves near the ground moving. Esna held up her pistol with both hands to steady the heavy weight, then saw a huge snake crawl out into the open.

  She sighed for a moment, glad it wasn’t an enemy, but then the snake turned and headed for her, wiggling back and forth and leaving a little furrow in the moist ground wherever it moved.

  “Go away,” she said, aiming at its big green head. “Please.”

  But it kept getting closer, flicking the air with its tongue as it came within 10 meters of her, eyes locked on the Human.

  “Go away!” she yelled, knowing that was a bad idea but it wasn’t stopping and looked to weight at least twice what she did. “Baju,” she swore, then pulled the trigger.