Star Force: Persistent Ravage (Wayward Trilogy Book 3) Page 17

  Esna keyed a search into her HUD, and soon tiny tracking dots identified a few sedas and ships within view, but they were too distant to be seen without magnification. So they were out there, traveling alongside but not too close to JOR. But were the Viks following or not?

  If they were she and her team needed to work as fast as possible. If they weren’t…then they’d just won possession of the system that everyone had to go through to get to the Grid Point.

  Meaning they’d probably just succeeded in setting up a blockade on Grid Point Stargate.

  After junk removal was completed Esna and the other nonessentials were released from Relevance duty to return to their normal activities with her handler finding her soon thereafter and getting her back into her training routine. After the first day she spent her downtime studying the battle data and the current state of the conflict, but by the end of the week she was so fatigued again all she could do was come back to her quarters and crash…only to get up the next day and push on.

  What she’d learned was that the Viks had not followed them through the slow jump to the Grid Point, which was now so large in view from the seda to be overwhelming. They were parked not too far from it and the shadow from the upper disc completely eclipsed JOR. The disc itself was 12,000 miles in diameter and pointed in the precise direction of the Grid Point construct on the other end of the link far out into safe Star Force territory rimward of here.

  Below the seda was the rest of this construct, with a huge central cylinder and another 12,000 mile wide disc. Both could be used to accept and send traffic, but one was assigned to each direction to avoid collisions near the construct as ships were accelerated and decelerated at such high speeds that no normal IDF could protect them. The massive speed of travel offered by the Grid Point was as insane as its size…but beyond that, the number and size of the space stations nearby was beyond reckoning.

  The Grid Point wasn’t just the construct that allowed the transit, it was the location in and of itself, which Esna could now see up close had more population than most star systems. This was a travel hub, and with no planets or anything else nearby people had built their own habitats…and not just Star Force. There were a lot of alien structures in addition to the construct itself, and population statistics had the entire Grid Point Stargate housing over 6 trillion people…which was apparently low compared to other Grid Points.

  If the Viks got here there was so much for them to destroy, but there was only one way in and out, and the way in ran directly into the face of an insane amount of weaponry on the construct itself. If the Vik fleet wanted to come, they’d have to face that hammer in addition to all the sedas and the remaining defense fleet. Esna didn’t know how many ships the Viks had, but she understood why they hadn’t immediately followed them here. They probably couldn’t take the Grid Point, but the blockade they had set up meant that anyone who traveled here had nowhere to go and the nearby systems from the Star Force ally The Nexus could not be reached with or for reinforcements.

  Esna wanted to learn and see more, but she didn’t have the time. While everyone else dealt with the damage and the loss of transit and everything else going on in this crazy war, the Canderians weren’t going to let her training suffer for it. They kept hammering her with workouts and lessons, making her focus her entire being on it just to keep going.

  But keep going she did, losing all track of time, and grinding out gradual progress as the rest of the galaxy disappeared from her vision. All that existed was her current workout and the elusive next rest period that she was working towards, and no matter how hard the workouts were they were not impossible. It was simply a matter of her choosing to press on each and every second. Stopping once was unacceptable, and she feared that if she did she might not be able to start back up again. She was barely hanging on, but persist she would as long as possible. She owed that to Tyrenk and especially Rammak, but the further she got the more she realized her loyalty to them had vanished, her debt paid…if it ever truly could be…with her now pressing forward for her own sake.

  No one else existed for her, even her trainers and handlers were just facilitators. Keeping her going and improving was part of their job. They weren’t friends…definitely not the trainers, and while she had people around her constantly she was alone.

  Alone for the first time in her life and not afraid of it. She could be honest with herself about many things now that she didn’t have to factor in what other people thought, and the effort required to keep moving through the workouts and the wisdom required to absorb and process the lessons she was being taught and having to apply in simulations burnt away the lies of the past, instilling in her that only the truth mattered. Lies meant inefficiency or failure. One had to calibrate themselves to the truth or there wasn’t much point in doing anything.

  Day after day she pressed on, doing it for herself and being changed in ways she could never have imagined. Part of what Rammak and Tyrenk had taught her started to make new sense, seeing things from a perspective she hadn’t had before, but their words were distant, and while helpful, were not important. She had to do this on her own, and something about that felt right.

  Completing the training no longer mattered to her…for that was too far ahead to think about. Pass the challenge, complete the lesson, finish the workout. That’s all she was about now, and it was a more fulfilling life than she’d ever had before. What she was becoming she didn’t know, but despite the hardness of the training she couldn’t have stood to live anywhere else in any other life. She needed this. She wanted this. And with each day that passed, she was becoming this.

  What ‘this’ was still wasn’t clear, other than the obvious fact that Canderians were fighters who would never quit. That was basic necessity in an environment like this, and after a while she began to welcome the intensity increases, wanting to get further and further away from a ‘normal’ life and more into whatever this new state of body and mind was.

  Was it a Commando? Maybe. At this point the labels didn’t matter, only the reality of it, so it was on to the next workout and the next challenge with no end in sight…for they wouldn’t tell her how far from completion she was, further forcing her to live in the moment by not giving her any distant benchmarks to measure by.

  And that was fine for Esna. As a matter of fact, she liked it that way. There was only now. No future, no past. Just now. Just her.

  A simple, focused life. But one with purpose.

  And purpose was what she’d been lacking her entire life until she’d met Rammak.

  Esna hoped he’d be proud of her, for she was becoming more than she had been before…and the thought about how far this journey might take her was all the incentive she needed to keep pressing on and putting more distance between herself and her past.

  19

  January 3, 4815

  Grid Point Stargate

  Seda JOR

  A year and a half had passed since the Vik attack, and to date they hadn’t moved on the Grid Point. They just sat in the nearby star system and blocked any traffic coming in and out while their other fleets moved around the Devastation Zone attacking up and down the border worlds that could no longer get rapid reinforcement through the Grid Point system. What all was happening Esna barely kept up with, for her own training kept getting more and more intense, keeping her in a constant state of fatigue that was being pressed on a long challenge run today.

  It was through another interior park, the biggest one in fact, but one that didn’t have combat elements. Her challenge was to complete the path given to her via a small headband-mounted headset with a holographic battlemap displayed over her right eye with the waypoints that she had to move through. The start had been low and flat, but as the course took her back and forth across the miles-wide park she began to scale the interior mountains and even crossed the snow line wearing nothing but knee-length tights, a jog bra, and running shoes.

  Esna knew that if she kept moving she’d retain a lot of h
eat, but it wasn’t long before the chill started to get to her. There were trees on the mountainside blanketed in snow with the path being little more than a series of footprints through the white blanket that was still slowly depositing everywhere. Clouds were visible overhead obscuring the ceiling beyond, with little white flakes falling and gently kissing the windless environment as she ran hard trying to maintain pace in order to pass this challenge.

  She’d already gone through 14 miles and the final 6 were all above the snow line save for the final one. That last bit would be almost a straight downhill and she’d gain time on it, but she knew from experience that it was these slower uphill sections that would bleed the most time if she didn’t stay aggressive on them and there was no one around to pace off of, only her tracking unit and her willpower to keep her chugging along through the several inches of snow as she kept weaving her way side to side as the trail zigzagged up the artificial mountain.

  Esna hadn’t run this one before, so she was going extra hard expecting to mess it up…but if she was going to miss the time requirement she didn’t want to do so by losing too much time early. If she kept on or ahead of pace then at least she’d have a chance at the end, and right now her tracker said she was 8 seconds ahead. Over the course of 20 miles that was nothing, but she was still on the positive side of the terminus line. However as she climbed that advantage reduced gradually, dropping to 6, then 4, then 2, then even before she started to lose time.

  Knowing that she’d have a downhill at the end she didn’t try to get back to even, but to slow her loss. It was a gamble, not knowing how her legs would hold up, but even tired she figured she could at least hold pace downhill so long as she didn’t stumble and fall.

  By the time she got to the summit Esna wasn’t even sure of that, feeling so dead legged that she had to mentally shout at herself to get moving on the downhill. Each step felt like a heavy thud for more than a minute, then her body remembered what quick running was like as her deficit began to diminish. Esna didn’t know if she’d make it all up, but she was going to give it a try and a chance at knocking off this challenge on the first try.

  Stretching out her legs while trying not to stomp, Esna flew down the mostly straight trails until she was almost to the snow line…which was when her foot slipped and she went down, crunching her left leg under her butt and sliding on her outstretched right leg as her body plowed through the snow.

  “Shit!” she said, feeling so out of it she had trouble getting back up, then limped through the next few steps. Losing a lot of time and cringing with every second that went by, Esna regained some speed on the snow but didn’t try to hit it hard until she got below the freeze line and got dirt beneath her feet again. After that it was all in, running with wild abandon and not even bothering to look at her tracker knowing that she was behind.

  Esna was so numb from all the pounding she barely had control of her body, but she avoided careening off the side of the trail on the few turns and kept on her feet as she pressed her body into painful downhill running to eat up as much of the deficit as she could all the way down to the flat, then she had a 230 meter sprint into the finish that she tried to carry her momentum into, but there wasn’t much left in her legs.

  A quick glance at her tracker surged some adrenaline as she saw she was actually 2 seconds ahead and knew that as long as she stayed in at least a light sprint she had it. The only thing that could stop her now was a fall, so Esna focused on making firm, even steps as her now sweaty body flew across the trail up to the two pylons with a semi-visible energy field passing between them. When her body hit that field the clock stopped and she heard the ‘challenge victory’ tone sound…which had become her favorite sound in the galaxy.

  “Ah damn,” she said, coasting to a stop and collapsing to the ground as a spot in her right shin started to hurt and would probably get worse as her adrenaline bled off. She sat on the trail just past the finish rubbing her leg experimentally as a trainer walked up to her.

  “Are you injured?”

  “Sore spot. Nothing much.”

  “On your feet then,” he said, offering her a hand that she promptly refused, having made the habit of snubbing the annoying trainers whenever she had the opportunity. With a limp she stood up and the trainer pointed to a side trail. “Walk.”

  Esna did as was told and they soon came to an exit that led down below ground level and out of the organic environment to the regular internal cityscape of the seda where the trainer took Esna into a lift and to an unfamiliar equipment room.

  “Shower and dress, then we have somewhere else to go before you return to training,” he said, pointing to a black uniform unlike the training garb. Esna didn’t pay much attention to it until after her shower…which she barely managed to stand through…but then when she began to pull the clothing on she saw it was a standard Canderous uniform with no ornamentation. The subtle green lines bracketed her body shape perfectly along with the matching boots that blended into the pants perfectly and were really just an extended running shoe, not the hard, armor-like footwear she used to wear on Forso.

  Refreshed but so fatigued she could barely keep her eyes open, she reported back to the trainer who took her to another lift that zipped them across the interior of the seda to an area unfamiliar to her…but Sen Legat Artu was here, and she hadn’t seen him since the day she’d arrived.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Quiet,” the trainer said softly as he retreated in the face of two uniformed Canderians that approached.

  “Step forward.”

  Esna did as told, walking between them up to a small depression in the floor around which four pedestals were ringed. Artu took up position behind one of them with three other people Esna was unfamiliar with standing behind the others, one of whom spoke for the group.

  “Esna Donovan?” the Legionmaster asked.

  “Yes,” Esna confirmed.

  “You came to us as an outsider, but as of this moment that is no longer the case. You have now completed your conversion training and are officially part of Canderous. As appropriate, your name will now change. You are now Esna-58321JOR-18. Your seda of origin follows your orisect number rather than preceding it, marking you as a convert to Canderous rather than one born here, but that is merely the path you took to becoming one of us. You now have equal status to all others who completed their maturia basic training. You are no longer a trainee. You are a full Canderous citizen, and I am proud to welcome you into our ranks.”

  “When did I finish?” Esna asked, perplexed.

  “The challenge run you completed was your last item. You were not supposed to know it was, thus all the other training you were doing around it was supplemental. When you crossed the finish line under time you graduated. Now your future with Canderous is in question, and you have a choice of options going forward.”

  “You are one of us now,” Sen Legat Artu said, “but you are still a rookie. Higher level training will now follow or you may find a position within Canderous immediately.”

  “I’m not combat ready, am I?”

  “No, you are not.”

  “I will do whatever is needed to become combat ready.”

  “You wish to become part of the Canderous security forces?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then report to your new quarters and training unit,” the Sen Legat said, gesturing to the woman on his left. “You’re under Triarii Neela now.”

  “Let’s go Canderian,” she said, stepping out from behind the podium. “Time to teach you how to use that psionic of yours.”

  Esna looked confused, but smiled at that last bit. Her basic/conversion training hadn’t allowed her to use it at all, and she’d barely practiced on her own given the hectic schedule she’d been on.

  “You came here just to tell me that?” she asked the Sen Legat.

  “I’ve been watching your progress from afar and wanted to be here to mark the moment of your transition…as well as to promise you the c
ombat you want if and when you can prove yourself. You’re Canderous now, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready for field work, let alone combat.”

  “Understood,” she said, finally turning and walking in step with Neela as they left the room.

  “Impressions?” Artu asked after they were gone.

  “She didn’t have a problem with the training,” the Legionmaster, who was in charge of the Canderous maturia, attested, “and she didn’t use her psionic to gain an advantage. She can control it, and aside from a few intentional protests against the trainers she’s never had a documented slip.”

  “Breyor?”

  “She’s still raw.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But she’s not stiff. There’s an openness about her that the other recruits don’t share.”

  “She’s had a unique history. Hopefully one that can be turned to our advantage.”

  “I still have my doubts, but some of them have been allayed by her scores,” Breyor said. “She’s competent enough to be part of Canderous, but beyond that there’s little to say.”

  “One step at a time,” Artu cautioned. “That girl could become our greatest hand to hand asset, given enough time and preparation.”

  “Get her up to an acceptable level and I’ll do the rest.”

  20

  Veela took Esna back to her quarters and waited while she packed up a duffle with the few possessions she had, which amounted to some foodstuff packets and casual clothing, then Esna carried her belongings over her shoulder as the Triarii led her to who knew where. She was a second rank Canderian, with Munifex being their lowest rank in the security forces, and one that didn’t talk much. Other than a few instructions as to ‘go that way’ or ‘wait here’ she didn’t say anything and Esna reciprocated. She didn’t know what was going to happen so she just went along with the flow and waited to find out. One thing she was fairly sure about was that whatever was ahead of her, it was going to get harder now that she was no longer a trainee.