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  Except the ‘punch’ wasn’t a punch, but an invisible energy ball pushing the Black Knight down and across the top of the pyramid. Somehow he managed enough coordination to reach his arms and legs out and go spread eagle on the surface, making it more difficult for them to move him, but with a swift kick from Rikku to his shoulder blades the rest of them telekinetically shoved him off the top where he clung to the angled side like Garfield on a car window…until all nine of the Archons hit him with a combined Fornax blast and his nervous system was suddenly no longer under his control.

  The Black Knight slid down all the way to the flat bottom as the seconds began to tick up on the scoring clock for the Archons.

  David was smiling inside his clear faceplate, but then it faded as a sort of mental image of the Black Knight smiling was telepathically transmitted up to the group as the big man got to his feet and began walking up the hillside slowly. He shook for a step as one of the others hit him with a Fornax blast, but he didn’t go down, instead keeping to his steady, pounding steps as he leaned forward and crawled upwards with his hands for added balance.

  Another coordination signal came from Riona and David responded with the others by hitting the Black Knight with nine simultaneous Fornax streams this time, with each of them keeping the flow of disruptive energy going. Their opponent collapsed to his elbows and knees, but somehow he managed to keep from falling over.

  Then, inexplicably, his arm moved up two inches and set in place, followed by his opposite knee. Then his other arm…and other knee.

  David’s gut clenched up as he continued to pour Fornax energy into the man, for somehow he was withstanding all nine of their psionic attacks and very slowly making his way up the hill.

  “Son of a bitch,” Riona said out loud as she jumped over the edge and went down after him.

  9

  March 26, 2451

  Solar System

  Earth

  Davis came into his office after his short morning workout and went through the priority updates his staff had laid out for him, eventually working his way down to the interrogation files that had come in over the past 24 hours. He skimmed them all, but took care to read David’s latest report from the Primarch concerning the origins of The Word.

  According to the memories pulled from the man’s mind, The Word had began in the 2290s. That was far earlier than he’d guessed, meaning the criminal organization had been active on Earth for a century without him finding out…though ‘active’ was a bit of a misnomer. They had to have been keeping a low profile during all that time, but why?

  As he read through the report he got a partial answer. The Word’s first priority was to establish an off the grid network so that Star Force couldn’t track them. That meant bases and resources that neither came from Star Force nor any other nation whose economy he could monitor. They wanted to build and produce everything they could in secret, and had spent many decades doing just that, supplemented by thefts to give them the material they needed.

  But a century was a very long time, and he found it hard to imagine they could keep quiet for so long without at least attempting to do something of merit. Davis might have that kind of patience, but these people did not, nor did they have the longevity for it, meaning there must have been something else driving them. Something that David hadn’t gotten to yet.

  As he read down through the report he came to the point where the creation of The Word was detailed, indicating that there had originally been 12 Masters and 1 Primarch from which the rest of The Word was created. That format had been derived from the Arthurian myths, with the Primarch taking the position of King Arthur and the Masters being his knights of the round table. Apparently the notes from previous Primarchs were preserved for each successor to study, allowing that single individual to maintain continuity over the years while the rest of the organization focused on present day tasks.

  The concept and mandate for The Word had been set down at a clandestine summit meeting involving representatives from 6 nations. Shortly thereafter The Word had been created from volunteers that left public service in those nations, never to be seen again as they disappeared in a variety of accidents designed to get them legally dead and off the electronic grid.

  The nations, by design, had no contact with The Word past that point, knowing that if even a shred of evidence was left behind Star Force would backtrack it to the source and come down hard on them. They’d concluded that being economically, militarily, and technologically outmatched, the only way they could challenge Star Force’s power was by doing so indirectly. Thus they created a criminal organization to do their dirty work for them, setting it on its path then washing their hands of it to give them deniability if it were ever exposed.

  That said, they ‘allowed’ various items to be stolen from them on a regular basis, fueling The Word’s growth until it got to the point where it could steal on its own, having infiltrated operatives into various corporations and countries…including those that had founded it. As the founders in the 6 nations eventually died out, the secret of The Word died with them, erasing any last links between the two and leaving the criminal organization completely sovereign, off the grid, and in a position to do whatever it wanted.

  But the Primarchs held to their mandate, which was more or less what their subordinates espoused. They were to counter the ‘degradation’ of society that Star Force was bringing with it and return Humanity to its true purpose, going back to the ‘old ways’ while embracing present day enhancements.

  Davis could read between the lines, knowing that such philosophical ideology was merely a smokescreen to cover their real objective…which was to gain power. Star Force was in the way of that, and like a lot of people, they find courage and purpose in taking down whoever’s on top, without any plans for the afterward.

  The Word was, admittedly, a bit more complex than that, for their philosophy was a tool they used to indoctrinate and recruit, thus it had to be more robust than a casual façade…but a façade it was, and it existed to legitimize bad behavior, something that Davis had all but eliminated from Earth over the past 500 years.

  Oddly enough, Earth was the one planet that Star Force had little control of. Davis had given some moons and small planets away, such as Tyr to the Brazilians, but on Earth he had never had control, and aside from Antarctica and some small bits of land elsewhere, Earth’s landmasses were completely independent from Star Force’s oversight.

  He had control of the ocean colonies and his spaceports in the various nations…which was a caveat that had allowed banned nations to reclaim their portals into space. The land that they were built on had to be ceded to Star Force, essentially creating small embassies where the local nation had no jurisdiction. As such, even China now had Star Force spaceports dotting its territories, despite the fact that the government couldn’t conduct business with the mega corporation due to its permanent ban.

  Its citizens could, which was why it had ceded the small bits of territory to Star Force in exchange for the courtesy of closer placement, for the Chinese and other banned nations didn’t like having their citizenry transitioning through other countries and feeding their economies. Even though no government officials were allowed access to the spaceports, the area surrounding them boomed with ancillary economic activity, making it very profitable for the host nations to sport as many spaceports as they could coax Davis to put there.

  And that wasn’t just true for the banned nations, but for all of them. While the Archons were out battling alien races militarily, Davis had been battling Human enemies back home economically and philosophically, and kicking just as much ass as they did. Using animal herds as a food supply was now gone from the planet, banned in every nation due to the fact that it was a stipulation from Star Force in order to conduct various levels of business with them.

  Several nations had balked early on, but as the years passed and new generations rose up to replace those that died out the citizens in those nations gradually
swayed to Star Force’s firm and steady code of conduct, aligning with it to gain their own economic advantages.

  Star Force held to the sovereignty of the individual without exception, which had led to a holy political war against Islam, Christianity, and a host of other religions who placed females subservient to males. Likewise he went up against the evolutionists and ‘mother earth’ naturalistic fanatics who likewise put individuals as subservient to the planet or their species. Davis had been unbiased and relentless in his assertion that every individual, no matter who or what they were, was a sovereign entity that no one owned…and that stance hadn’t made him many friends at the outset.

  But he had the leverage and the time, with society’s mood gradually changing. When a nation changed its laws to accommodate his demands they opened up new economic opportunities, with him essentially rewarding good behavior rather than punishing bad. He still held that the nations of Earth were independent from Star Force and treated them accordingly, working with them or against them, but always they were Earth, not Star Force. Star Force existed above and beyond it, an outside influence that by unspoken agreement had no territorial aspirations back home.

  There was a short list of nations that were considered allies of Star Force, which Davis held to a higher code of conduct…a code that many of the others would not embrace. While they had, eventually, gotten rid of all of Davis’s ‘red flag’ practices, such as meat production, hunting, conscription, second phase abortions, forced pregnancies, forced abortions, death penalties, dismemberment penalties, circumcision of youth, gladiatorial contests, ‘lab rat’ experimentation on macroscopic races, organ transplants, ‘live’ animal food, living sacrifices, etc…they still clung to many yellow flag practices that kept them from being considered ‘allies.’

  Such things like income taxes, censorship, and mandated activities were penalized by Star Force in less severe ways, but they didn’t trigger the revocation of licenses and removal of spaceports the way red flags did. By setting up code of conduct standards for the nations’ legal codes, Davis had gradually pulled the chaotic, brutal planet into a diluted version of civility…but it was still a far cry from the civilization that was present in all Star Force territories, whether they be owned colonies or free affiliates, with the result being a continual flow of people leaving Earth nations and seeking to establish homes somewhere within Star Force’s domain.

  And that was the kicker of it all. The individuals in a nation had to have the option of leaving. If they didn’t that was also a red flag, because it meant a person could be trapped inside a culture and a set of rules not of their own choosing, which was, in essence, another form of slavery.

  Star Force had rules, of course, but they were few and basic for the common citizenry. So long as you didn’t interfere with another individual you could pretty much live your life however you wanted, for better or for worse, and Star Force would leave you alone. That openness without acceptance, for Star Force didn’t coddle the stupid or delusional, merely letting them discover the error of their ways on their own time, was something that the nations of Earth, even Star Force’s allies, could never quite fully swallow.

  They still, at their core, wanted some level of control over their citizenry, seeing them as property rather than sovereign individuals under their care. Without Star Force and Davis holding their bad behavior at bay, Earth would gradually devolve back into the mess it had been when he’d first created the space corporation.

  Nowadays no one starved to death…at least if they could reach a Star Force facility of some kind, for Davis freely gave away basic foodstuffs. That in turn prompted the other nations to do the same, for economically speaking if you could get a product for free elsewhere you were quickly going to lose your customers. To assist them with the conversion, which still allowed for the sale of ‘luxury’ food items, Star Force provided the various nations with basic foodstuffs for distribution on the grounds that they remain free of charge and available to all.

  That had virtually eliminated starvation from the planet, save for remote or lawless areas within the mega cities covering most of Earth’s landmasses. That was something Star Force couldn’t fix on its own, for they didn’t administer those areas, but they did keep an eye out for them and gently nudged the nation in question to fix the problem with the unnecessary threat of repercussions if they didn’t always hanging over their heads.

  Still, the people suffering in those areas still had a chance if they could get themselves to a Star Force facility, whether it be a spaceport, recruitment center, food kiosk, etc. Likewise people could come to Star Force with medical problems and be aided without cost. Some nations, still greedy and unscrupulous, allowed Star Force small tracts of land to establish hospitals to service their populations in advanced medical cases, which Davis readily agreed to. While it was extremely unusual for a regenerator to have to be used, for they were still a closely guarded secret, as were all things pyramid-based, Star Force had reverse engineered enough medical tech that they could now regrow lost limbs and organs with the aid of other devices of their own manufacture.

  Star Force didn’t sell those devices, but they used them to treat people that couldn’t be treated elsewhere, and given that those sorts of cases were very expensive in the local healthcare markets, the nations were more than pleased to have Star Force come in and foot the bill for them. They thought they were using Star Force, but in reality Davis was infiltrating their nations and uplifting their populations. Over time those people would come to forget the ‘old ways’ and grow used to some standards of living that would be difficult to reverse.

  Money was no longer an issue for Davis, not that it had ever been important for him, but now that Star Force directly controlled 3/4ths of the Human population and his army of logistical personnel kept their supply levels optimal, currency was now no longer needed for sustenance, and had been reduced to a voluntary means of acquiring luxuries or raising your personal ownership and influence within society.

  That was less true in the nations on Earth, but monetary classes had virtually disappeared in Star Force colonies. Everyone knew the echelons in Star Force were based on merit, with those at the top having to work their asses off for centuries to get there. Politicians were a joke, for the idea of choosing one’s leaders by a popularity contest simply didn’t exist within Star Force’s overly efficient empire. Some of the nations had followed their example, hybridizing their governmental structures into republics rather than democracies, but there were still some that operated off of ‘the will of the masses,’ but behind closed doors they knew that Star Force and Davis were subsidizing their foolishness.

  Most nations no longer fielded militaries, for they knew Star Force would protect them if they were in the right. The ones who weren’t blacklisted used Star Force’s transportation network and resource markets to sustain their populations, without which their lack of self-sufficiency would be their undoing. Little by little over the decades since its inception, Davis had been changing Earth without conquering it, which would have been a much faster resolution to its problems.

  And that had long bothered him. Should he have taken action sooner to save people he knew were suffering by taking out the governments that were allowing the suffering? He hadn’t, rather undercutting the problem by getting to some of the individuals and supplying them with what they needed or evacuating them to Star Force territory, but there had always been others he couldn’t get to unless he went in and overthrew the bad nations that were allowing and/or encouraging the suffering in the name of sovereignty…something that Davis had reinforced often.

  Nowadays it was a moot point, for the most part. Many nations still sucked, but the level of depravity was nowhere what it once was, and so long as the people maintained the option of leaving and going someplace better, those that chose to stay where they were had a choice, which was enough to satisfy the sovereignty of the individual.

  But Davis knew that a legal code and reality o
n the ground were often two separate things, so even with the wholesale improvements he’d leveraged on Earth he knew there were still people out there who were getting screwed in some way, often unseen by the media and his own intelligence division.

  It was that underlying problem which had always left his dealings with the nations of Earth a bit strained. Colonies off Earth were another story, for they were all in artificial structures that demanded a different way of living, but Earth was open air and the origination point of this Human exodus out to the stars…meaning the old was still buried there, whereas a colony on Mars had to have everything built brand new.

  And those nations that Davis didn’t deem worthy didn’t have colonies off Earth anymore, for his pull in the Solar System was far greater than it was on Earth, and those that had done a bad job of managing their colonies had seen those colonies confiscated, either through secession or being taken over directly by Star Force…leaving only the nations on Earth as the lingering taint on Humanity’s growing empire.

  Davis had been tolerant of them, though they would have vehemently attested to the contrary, choosing to work with or through them to achieve his goals and helping those in need, whereas the Archon approach was simply to go in and take out the bad guys directly. A part of Davis had always been tempted to do that…no, not tempted. That was the wrong word. His logic had been leaning him in that direction while his past assertions had been holding him back.

  He’d made promises and assurances to the nations, stating what was and was not acceptable behavior, so how could he go back on his word and seize nations that had gotten rid of all their red flags? His own logic said because people were still suffering in one form or another and Star Force could eliminate it.

  Those two differing points had been bouncing around in the back of his head, lightly, for many years as he helped the nations past their own stupidity, teaching them how to do things differently and having many grow because of it…though in truth those non-allies, and even some of his allies, only did it to ingratiate themselves with Star Force rather than out of an understanding of what he was teaching/coercing them to do.