Star Force: Lost Destiny (Wayward Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “What about which tunnels we take?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So that’s why you don’t get lost twice.”

  “A lot of effort, time, and experimentation has gone into the development of this armor. It’s a very important tool that takes decades to full understand how to use.”

  “I’ve got time,” she said, finally getting her breathing under control.

  “Hopefully.”

  “You still think they’re following us?”

  “I know it. I just don’t know how small a region they’ve narrowed us down to.”

  “Are there any recorders in your camps?”

  “Not that I set up, but public hallways always had recorders and they’re probably still functional.”

  “But not in here?” Esna asked, looking at the ceiling.

  “Maybe. There were never any in personal quarters, but I don’t know what this room was used for. It had been vandalized before I got here.”

  “Where did all this stuff come from then?”

  “I didn’t say scavenged. I said ‘vandalized.’”

  “The Viks?”

  “Look there,” Rammak said, pointing to a spot on the ceiling.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “A tiny depression.”

  “I see it…them,” she amended. Now that she paid close attention, the ceiling and even the walls had tiny chips out of them. Melted chips. “Weapons damage?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought your weapons would have blown out the walls.”

  “We build our infrastructure as solid as our weapons.”

  Esna looked around, thinking of all the damage in the areas around where he had cleaned up.

  “Whatever hit this place must have been really powerful.”

  “More than you can imagine.”

  “How do you defend against something like that?”

  “The shields that protected the planet held for a long time, but if you don’t have a fleet to keep the enemy from pounding on them indefinitely, or the ground batteries to do the same, eventually they’ll get through unless you have stronger shields than they have weapons. The Viks have stronger tech than us. Not a lot, but enough that in an even fight they have an advantage. When the shields go down, the ground game is over. A single warship can destroy just about anything given enough time.”

  “Was there fighting here before the shields went down? On the ground, I mean.”

  “Yes. If one shield goes down a region will be exposed. You can land ground troops and try to take out the others over land rather than beat your way through them from orbit. And if you lower the shields to the ground and give the land troops physical access to them, they can bring in equipment that will destabilize a point large enough to get people through. Given enough time they can even help destabilize the entire shield and make it easier for the warships to punch through. That’s why you don’t put the shields down all the way to the ground. You keep them in a raised dome or a flat shield to protect against orbital bombardment. It’s the biggest threat there is, and though it sounds counter intuitive, you will let the enemy assault you on the ground rather than let them bring the entire shield down and destroy everything from orbit.”

  “That sounds…horrible. Can’t you build bigger shields, or more of them?”

  “We did. They had to bring a huge fleet to counter those shields, which was why Star Force worlds didn’t fall quickly.”

  “Is that why there might be some left out there?”

  “Yes. Plus the people were being evacuated somewhere. Even I don’t know where it was.”

  “Are they going to lose eventually?”

  Rammak shrugged his huge shoulders. “I’ve been out of the loop for so long I don’t know, but if the Viks are still hunting Humans here then that means they haven’t finished and gone back to the core.”

  “Go back?”

  “They don’t want our worlds, they just want us dead. That’s why they didn’t keep this one or any of the others that we know of aside from Earth. That one used to be a colony of theirs, so I think it was a matter of pride that they took it back.”

  “That’s where Humans came from?”

  “Yes, and it’s where they hit first because of it.”

  “They really want us dead that bad?”

  “They are extremely determined to make it happen.”

  “Then I better get some more practice in,” Esna said, turning back towards the targets, but Rammak put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Patience. You’re no match for them and you’re not going to become one anytime soon. You’ve got enough in today, now let your body and mind absorb the workout and make upgrades. Pushing too hard for too long prevents that and forces you into emergency overrides. You can upgrade from them, but not as well. And usually you take damage in the process too.”

  “Funny, you never said that about the running.”

  “I haven’t been pushing you that hard.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “Strikes are more energetic and jarring. Running is a constant drain. When you get more acclimated to the strikes you can add more, but that’ll take time. If you remember, your first days of running weren’t all that long.”

  “I can’t remember. It’s all a blur.”

  “I can. It’s supposed to be difficult to spur your adaptation, but not too much so. I’ve been training far longer than you’ve been alive. I know what I’m doing. Trust me on the running and the strikes, but if you’re eager we can work on other things?”

  “Like what?”

  “Stability holds to work on your strength and balance.”

  “What are those?”

  Rammak stepped aside then tilted forward, placing all four arms on the ground and kicking his feet up in the air until they were pointed to the ceiling and unwavering.

  “Uh…not sure if I’m ready for that yet. And I’ve only got two arms.”

  Rammak shifted position and lifted himself up with only his top pair.

  “Show off,” Esna muttered. “Is that really training?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Alright, then show me how to learn…because I know I can’t do that right now.”

  Rammak flipped over and stood back up. “We’ll start without your armor. Take it off and I’ll run you through some simpler ones first.”

  “That sounds better. But be warned, my balance when I’m upside down is really bad. Cave climbing experience talking.”

  15

  Back to traveling through dark caves and in a decent running rhythm, Rammak suddenly pulled up so fast that Esna, locked into a zombie-like following mode, bounced off the back of his pack and fell onto her butt.

  “What the…” she complained, blinking away the sudden daze.

  “Stop here.”

  “What, you couldn’t slow down first?” she said, sitting on a couple of small rocks but not deigning to stand up, for she was tired as hell.

  “It was you that wasn’t paying attention.”

  “What did I miss?”

  “Me slowing down.”

  Esna glared at him through her faceplate. “Stupid Calavari. You’re lucky I like you.”

  Rammak snorted a brief laugh, then walked off to the right through a huge crack in the wall that ran straight up high enough that there was a bit of light coming down through it. There wasn’t much, but even a touch stood out amongst the pitch black caves that had become the norm over the course of their journey.

  Rammak’s orange armor passed beneath the haze, brightening his plates back to their impressive sheen after having existed in the dark and navigating by nothing more than their helmets’ nightvision. He disappeared just as quickly through the crack, leaving Esna where she sat.

  “Ahh,” she said blissfully, leaning back and laying on the rocks for a moment and enjoying just sitting still. When she felt like she was about to fall asleep she stopped herself and rolled sideways onto her feet, slowly standing up an
d looking around.

  “He did say stop,” Esna reminded herself as she began walking over more rocks until she was underneath the tiny ray of light. Looking up she couldn’t see any sky, for the crack wasn’t a straight shot, but there was enough ambient light coming down to mark the location. It almost felt deliberate to Esna and she hated to leave the light behind, but she was curious to where Rammak had gone as his tracking marker on her HUD was a fair distance away by now.

  Walking back into the darkness she moved through the crack and found a left facing shaft that descended at a fairly steep angle. Walking carefully so she didn’t trip and tumble down, Esna worked her way through more of the sharp rocks, glad to have her armor that seemed to defy even scuffing. Had she been in her old armor she was sure that her boots would have been trashed by now, but her current ones still looked brand new aside from the dusty grime covering them.

  Halfway down she smelled dampness, which was confirmed when she hit the bottom and her foot slipped. Esna caught herself, then looked around at the mass of plants covering a hollow, dome-like chamber that had lazy drips falling randomly from the ceiling. There was no light here at all but the plants were still growing, confusing Esna thoroughly.

  Didn’t all plants need light?

  On the far right there was a narrowing of the ceiling but it never fully turned into a wall, leaving a low gap that had Rammak’s marker on the other side somewhere. Careful not to slip again, Esna walked through the soggy, mossy plants and knelt down beside the gap. It was big enough to go through, but must have been a tight squeeze for the Calavari.

  Esna laid down and crawled sideways rather than rolling underneath several meters of low ceiling before the other side opened up and a smaller, more jagged cave had yet another crack on the far side…out of which she could hear faint sounds.

  “My fault for not keeping up,” she knew he’d say, so she didn’t bother to complain, even to herself, and hopped over a small puddle on her way to the new crack. When she got there the sound was more defined and she could have swore it was running water. A few dozen meters more and her suspicion was proven correct as she ducked under another low overhang and walked out beside an underground creek less than a meter wide but flowing quite fast over numerous rocks. That created the sound, but it was the sight of some Star Force equipment on the other side near Rammak that perked her up.

  “Where are we?”

  “Even I can’t run the whole way without taking a break. This is a camp I used previously, leaving a few items behind each time.”

  Esna glanced over the stash, realizing he must have come through here numerous times.

  “Why did you keep roaming so much?”

  “It’s a big planet. I didn’t want to get tied down to one location, but I needed to establish a resource circuit in case some of my camps were lost. I couldn’t take the chance of running out and having to live like everyone else, so I moved around, recovering and building up as much infrastructure as I could. It gave me something to do and allowed me to sample rumors from around the planet as I tried to figure out what was going on.”

  “You’ve been looking for the Viks the whole time?”

  “And other things,” he said, activating a glow orb that bathed the nearby channel in a deep blue that made the water look shiny and dark at the same time. “We’ll take an extended break here. Double rest.”

  “Thank you,” she said earnestly, disconnecting her helmet and sniffing at the unfiltered air. “It’s cold in here.”

  “The water flows from subsurface ice.”

  “Ice?” Esna asked, never having seen any herself aside from what was manufactured for drinks, and that was a rarity.

  “There are buried glaciers in this region underneath the debris.”

  “Glaciers?”

  “Miles of ice.”

  “Miles?” she asked, aghast. “Where did that come from? This planet is so hot.”

  “Not all of it,” Rammak said, pulling his helmet off as well but keeping the rest of his armor on. “The poles still have some surface ice in a few places, but most of it got buried.”

  “We’re not at the poles.”

  “But we are getting further from the equator.”

  “How can there be ice anywhere with three suns to melt it?”

  “This planet has no axial tilt, so the sunlight doesn’t hit the poles with much intensity, but most of the ice near here was manufactured.”

  “For what?” Esna thought, not having a clue what ice was for other than drinks and still not over the fact that somewhere on this hot planet was some out in the open and not melted. Even as Rammak said it she still didn’t totally believe him.

  “Recreation. There was a large park built here and contained within a shield dome to keep it from melting. A lot of it was vaporized in the bombardment, but the lower levels survived and were covered with debris that kept the sun off it. Most of it is gone now, but some still remains and seeps water out through this river that leads to an underground lake.”

  “A lake?”

  “We’re not going there,” Rammak said, drawing a frown of disappointment from her, “but I’ve been there. It’s a dead end.”

  “What happens to the water?”

  “It runs off through cracks and seeps out into hotter ground.”

  “I found something like that near our farm. Me and Teren used to sneak dips there. I didn’t know it came from ice.”

  “Back there, probably not. There’s water beneath the surface in many places across the planet, just not much on the surface or in the air. What did you do with the spring you found?”

  “It wasn’t a spring, just a…deep pool. We didn’t do anything with it because we didn’t want anyone else to know, or they’d take it and sell it.”

  “The water would have evaporated if it wasn’t being replaced, therefore it was a spring of some sort. Why didn’t you sell it? Water is rare enough that natural sources are a delicacy, despite the stupidity of that.”

  “We wanted to keep it a secret between us…” Esna said, unpleasant memories rising that she stuffed back into the corner of her mind that she usually kept them penned up in. “Why is that stupid?”

  “Water taken out of the air is more pure than what comes from underground, therefore better in most cases. People think ‘rare’ means ‘good’ and in this case that isn’t so.”

  Esna looked at the swiftly moving creek. “So this isn’t good to drink?”

  Rammak pointed to a piece of equipment sitting on the ground nearby.

  “We could drink it, but there’s no way of knowing what’s in it. It could make us sick. I’ll put it through a vaporizer and purify it, then we can restock our packs before we move on.”

  “I thought we were getting low and wondered why you weren’t using a water spire when we slept.”

  “This is much faster,” he said, grabbing a tiny object and tossing it to her. “Fill it up.”

  Esna looked at it under the blue light, finding only one button on the mashed up folds of something. She hit it and the material unfolded into a bucket…a hard bucket without so much as a seam showing. Esna tapped her armored fist on it, hearing a solid knock.

  “That’s handy,” she said, walking over and dipping the edge into the creek. It didn’t go all the way to the bottom and she wasn’t able to wiggle it around to fill it up all the way, but she managed to get it about half full then gave up and walked over to what Rammak had called a ‘vaporizer.’

  “Pour,” he said, pointing to an inlet a little larger than her fist.

  Esna held the bucket in two hands and tipped it over, slowly spilling the water in.

  “How much?”

  “It’ll take it all.”

  “How?”

  “Watch.”

  Esna did as told and slowly the water passed inside and she heard a faint hum. It continued to gobble it up until a small pod on the side began to enlarge.

  “Oh. That’s fast,” she said as the bucket empti
ed.

  “Get another.”

  “How many do we need?”

  “I think 5 would do for your pack. I’ll get my own.”

  “Four more then,” she said, walking back over to the creek to refill the magic bucket.

  4 weeks later…

  “Alright, that’s it,” Rammak said, closing a panel on the side of the mechanical monstrosity that he’d built that stood slightly taller than Esna. “It’s ready to transmit.”

  “After we leave?” she asked, just to make sure.

  “After. Five weeks after, to be exact. Starting now.”

  “Are we leaving now?”

  “Tomorrow. I want you to get one more good workout in, then we’ll be traveling via speeder for several days.”

  “Finally,” she said with obvious relief.

  “Rest is good, but too much becomes stagnation. Regardless, the only routes out of here that are to our advantage are overland, and the ones on foot don’t take us very far. If we head southwest through the valley it’ll protect us from lateral scans and we can cover a great distance before our message is sent. Unless they’re looking in this area they won’t see the speeder.”

  “And if they are?”

  “We won’t be the only speeder on this planet and we’ll have robes on over our armor just in case anyone takes a look. If the Viks know we’re here, it’ll give us away. But if they don’t know where this base is it’ll be too late before they figure it out later.”

  “What do you mean by later? They either see us or they don’t.”

  “Not if they’re recording all orbital sensor records. If they detect our signal then replay previous data from this area they will see our speeder leave and know which way we went.”

  Esna was silent for a moment, not having even considered that.

  “It is a risk,” Rammak added, “but we can get underground again before the message is sent. It will put them on our trail, possibly closer than they are now, but it won’t lead them directly to us. We’ll have a chance to get lost again.”

  “They record everything?”