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

  During their walk through the seda Esna had plenty of silent time to think, and the implications of her just becoming part of Canderous began to sink in. She was no longer an outsider or guest. She was one of them now, and she’d earned that status. Where she would go from here she didn’t know, but wherever it was this was now her home and part of her new name.

  Esna-58321JOR-18

  No longer a Donovan, which was her father’s last name. Her family. Now she had a number and her seda, meaning that was her family now. Both Canderous and seda JOR, and she’d carry that identifier with pride from here on out. She’d earned it, and the fact that there were so many numbers and letters in it reminded her of how many people were in Canderous. She was one of a huge number of soldier/civilians, and part of that brotherhood.

  Esna wasn’t sure what that meant, because she had been on her own basically the entire time during her conversion training, but maybe that would change today…or maybe she’d been thrown into more isolation training.

  Esna didn’t get an answer, for all Veela did was take her to her new quarters in another part of the seda that were identical to the ones she had before and tell her to rest up the next two days, after which she’d be back to start Esna on her combat training. That was all the Triarii said, not even a word of congratulations or warning about what was to come, leaving Esna in a form of limbo as she sat on the edge of her bed next to her still packed duffle trying to think this through. She had a rest day, two in fact, and in a way that seemed like too much free time to know what to do with.

  Sitting still didn’t feel right, so she unpacked her limited stuff then went for a walk after memorizing her quarters location…TCJ-299.

  With that number cemented into her memory she left the door unlocked and headed left…then roamed without any idea where she was going. Esna just walked and looked, listening to the people moving about and the sounds of the city/station that was now officially her home. Even if she was assigned to another seda her name would always retain this one. She’d known that beforehand, for it had been drilled into her during lessons, but it came with a very real sense of pride now.

  Canderous moved about from system to system as needed, meaning they were always mobile, and each person had to operate the same way…but home would always be where you originated, and this was now hers. She wasn’t born here, but this is where she had been forged. For all changes Rammak had instilled in her, and Tyrenk thereafter, it had been the years spent here that truly remade Esna. Canderous had taken the lessons taught to her by Rammak and made them real, whereas his stories and lessons had mostly been fairy tales listened to by an eager and ignorant outsider…but no longer. She was one of them now, and part of Star Force.

  She was what Rammak had been…in lesser amount, obviously, for as strong and fast as she’d gotten she still wasn’t close to his level. That would take years upon years of training, and she understood that now in a way she never could have before. Esna could see the path forward, long as it was, like a ladder she had to climb rung by rung. As long as she kept moving forward she’d get there eventually, save for growing two more arms. She’d never match Rammak there, or with his size, but she had seen Canderous troops sparring with Calavari and taking them down. It was possible, but it wasn’t easy.

  The same went for every other faction within Star Force. Skill and strength surpassed everything else eventually, though base attributes always mattered…and she had a big one none of the rest of Canderous had. Something that the Calavari didn’t have either. She had Fornax, and Neela had said she’d be training for it now along with everything else, and in a way that made her different from the rest of Canderous.

  Esna really just wanted to be part of the group, finally finding a place to fit in…but one thing her lessons had taught her was the Star Force way of training, and you didn’t pass up advantages. If you did you didn’t have a clue what Star Force was about. Everyone was striving to be the best they could be, and if Esna just tucked her ability away to try and fit in she’d be accomplishing the opposite.

  So she couldn’t be a normal Canderian, but she could choose when and where to use her ability. She hadn’t used it during her conversion training, so she’d been ‘normal’ then, and that felt good. Very good. Nobody carried her anymore. Esna was earning her own way and finally had someplace she fit in...even if she hadn’t gotten to know anyone yet.

  It took a few hours of wandering before all those dead back on Darlek worked into her mind, especially Rammak. She was alive because of them, and them keeping her alive was a debt she could never repay. They were dead now, and despite everything that had happened here and the changes made in her, part of Esna was still back with them, back with Rammak. Out there running across Forso and Tauntaun. Out in the field fighting the V’kit’no’sat.

  Esna wondered why she was feeling split. She was proud to be part of Canderous now, but those ties to the past were still there. She’d forgotten them with all the rush of training demanding her immediate attention, but now that she had a chance to rest and decompress it was coming back to her along with a few seeping tears.

  Surprisingly it didn’t take her long to figure this mystery out. Everything here in the seda, save for the attack, was just practice. Out there, with Rammak, it had been real and failure meant death. She’d learned from the battlefield first, then was brought into training. Everyone else here was the reverse, training first then the battlefield, including Rammak. That was why Esna couldn’t be comfortable here, because she’d already seen the fight Star Force was in first hand and the losses they were taking. The V’kit’no’sat had to be stopped, and fitting in here with Canderous, if made a priority, was actually counter to that goal. Fitting in had to be a beneficial side effect, not her aim.

  Her aim was to kill V’kit’no’sat and avenge Rammak and all the others who had died alongside her.

  As soon as that thought ran through her mind everything crystalized. She wasn’t here to be part of Canderous, she was here to get the skills necessary to fight the V’kit’no’sat and this was the best place to do it. That was why Tyrenk had brought her here, and she was glad for his foresight. It was hard as hell training, but worth it if it would make her strong enough to do what she needed to do.

  And what she needed to do was become strong enough to kill Zen’zat. Other Canderians couldn’t do that on their own, for they had no psionics. Esna only had one, but it was a powerful one. She had to learn to use it to take them down, and Canderous was going to help her with that, even if it was something they couldn’t do themselves.

  So she was separate from them, but at the same time she was bringing her ability to their ranks to strengthen them…so it was an exchange, not them carrying her.

  “Damn it all,” she whispered as she walked along an elevated platform above an indoor lake that was visible through the clear floor. “I have so much to do and so far to go, but I will make it back to the front. I will find a way to kill Zen’zat. I promise you, Rammak, I’ll find a way. They have to be stopped.”

  And with that, Esna’s future was made plain. She was going to walk the path of a warrior, becoming a weapon to fight an enemy that was so powerful and so numerous there seemed to be no way to beat them. Fighting that impossible fight and getting at least a few good blows in was the purpose of her life, not fitting in with Canderous. They were her team now, and she’d honor that allegiance as Rammak honored his Calavari faction, but she was a Star Force warrior and belonged on the front…not here. She belonged back on Forso fighting V’kit’no’sat, and the irony of that realization struck her.

  She’d been bored out of her mind on Forso, and with everything Rammak had told her she wanted to be in Star Force…but she couldn’t be one of their civilians, or even one of their guardians. Her fate, her entire life had been forged by the conflict with the V’kit’no’sat before she even knew their name, and the remainder of her life, however long or short it may be, was tied to that conflict.

  Es
na chose to embrace it, for it was a fight that was righteous. Training for training’s sake was the Star Force way, but it wasn’t enough for her. This was her purpose, and now that she had all her mental ducks in a row she knew what she needed to do.

  To that end Esna made an abrupt turnaround and headed back to her quarters, stopping by a cafeteria on the way to fuel up, then she slipped into bed and slept. Whatever training was coming her way was going to be hard and she needed as much rest as necessary so she could dive into it swinging. From here on out there was no ‘free’ time, only rest between the previous workout and the next. Esna wasn’t a citizen, she was a weapon, and finding meaning in that identity she nodded off to sleep easily as her mind settled on a purpose and path that put all her past questions to rest.

  She had to fight the V’kit’no’sat…and in the process exact vengeance for Rammak and the others. Nothing else mattered to her. Nothing else could matter while the V’kit’no’sat were still out there, and Esna doubted that would change in her lifetime. If Star Force wasn’t very good and very lucky they’d be the ones wiped out, not the V’kit’no’sat.

  And becoming a weapon to fight an unwinnable war meant her victories would come in individual battles, day by day, moment by moment, with the overall war and strategy left to the Archons and their insane skills.

  A weapon. She was a weapon. And in the coming days that would become her battle cry as the level of workouts were ramped up near to her breaking point as Neela returned for her and started her combat training along with several other recruits that Esna would soon surpass, for a weapon would always be superior to a soldier.

  A solider fought enemies as they arose, protecting and preserving the civilization they belonged to, but a weapon was forged for a specific purpose…to attack, to destroy, to confront, to damage. Esna’s life didn’t matter to her, only doing damage to the V’kit’no’sat did, and that freedom allowed her to press further than the others did. They worked hard, but in between their workouts they were people with hobbies, relationships, and other things that were distractions. Canderous was military to the core, but most of them were part-time warriors.

  Esna was not. Every single second of her life going forward was that of a weapon…and soon Neela and the other trainers began to see that as well, switching her ahead to more and more experienced recruit training groups even as she spent at least an hour a day on Fornax training that the others did not have on their workload.

  Esna slept almost every minute of free time she had, devoting her waking hours to training, training, and more training for the next two and a half years, never wavering in her self-assigned purpose and becoming the weapon she knew she had to become. A weak weapon, she’d admit, but one that would gain strength in time in direct relation to the level of workouts she completed, with her devoting every minute of every day to that quest.

  The other recruits didn’t understand her, tried to get to know her and, in some cases, in bed with her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. She cooperated and worked well with them in team challenges, making her a valued and much sought after comrade when in combat, but outside of it she was but a shadow disappearing, where, the others did not know. Her behavior made such an impact on them that they began to refer to her as ‘The Phantom’ with the nickname sticking and spreading to everyone who encountered her.

  And The Phantom was racking up training records as her rate of advancement surpassed all previous Canderians from seda JOR as she reached the final stages of her combat training program.

  21

  August 8, 4817

  Grid Point Stargate

  Seda JOR

  Esna jumped over a low wall, swinging her legs over it on the right side while pivoting on her left arm. The fall on the other side was about a meter lower, so she disappeared beneath the wall then sprinted back into view as she raced down the combat course with multiple drones chasing her.

  Esna ran straight, listening for the slight hum of the drones that she couldn’t see or feel. The notes Canderous had gotten from the Archons indicated that they often targeted their Fornax blasts using their Pefbar and Ikrid…two psionics that she did not have. That meant she could only fire in the direction of targets she could see, so the trainers had added an audible hum to the normally silent drones to get her to train her senses beyond eyesight as avenues for targeting.

  Esna concentrated for a split second, loosing a spherical ball of invisible energy that flew from the Fornax tissue in her head out behind her towards one of the hums as she continued to run hard. With no change in the sound, indicating that she had missed, Esna tried twice more before she got a crescendo of electronic bleeps indicating that she’d made a hit and the drone had shut down, lowering to the ground and becoming inactive while the others continued to snipe her with tiny stun shots.

  She’d been doing drills like this for the past 2 years and had gotten fairly good at it, but hitting targets she couldn’t see was still something Esna had difficulty with, not to mention that she couldn’t avoid all the stun hits. Her running form was beginning to slacken because of it and the mental energy she had to devote to not tripping and falling on the concrete was distracting her counterattacks. Esna had to pull her attention away from her steps momentarily each time she fired her Fornax, and from past experience she knew that if she got too loopy that would be enough to take her down…then the drones would move in and pummel her.

  So Esna had to keep racing through the course while knowing she couldn’t make it without taking down the drones. She’d tried that before and didn’t make it half way, for there was very little cover amongst all the obstacles. She also couldn’t make it through cleanly no matter how hard she tried. Esna was going to take hits and be forced to work through the numbing little stings, relying on her Fornax to diminish the number of them coming in enough for her to will her body through the course to completion.

  This wasn’t a one and done challenge, but rather one she had to run daily. She’d already done it 402 times, with most of those being failures. Recently she was on an 8 day streak of completions, but other Fornax workouts had drained her of energy and she was borderline for making it today. That said, she knew that even in her failures she would gain more strength, so Esna would work this challenge run as hard as she could in order to get the adaptation payout later even as it became clear she wasn’t going to make it all the way.

  Esna finally went down at about the 85% mark, tripping on a wall barely 4 inches high. It was so low it normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but her legs were so numb she misjudged how high she pulled them and clipped the barrier with her right toe. Normally that wouldn’t make her fall, but even that little imbalance was enough to send her tumbling out of control, bouncing and scraping on the concrete with little pain as a result. She could see herself bleeding as she tried to stand up, but couldn’t feel it. The numbing did have some beneficial side effects, but Esna would have preferred to have her full capacity and just endure the pain, for at least then she could have continued on.

  But not today. She got up to one knee before her other leg lost all control as the drones moved in and peppered her with shots. After that she couldn’t do anything but ball up and wait out the debilitating strikes until the trainers called it off and a medtech appeared above her and injected her with the denumbing serum.

  Her limbs suddenly returned to mind’s eye and she was able to slowly stand up as the serum neutralized and washed away the lingering stun energy in her body, leaving the telltale pins and needles effect that the trainers wanted. Had the medtech injected her with more serum they would have been washed away too, but they didn’t want her failure leaving her mind, so they injected just enough to get her mobile again while leaving the last bit of recovery to her body…which would also teach it to respond faster in the field if and when she was shot without serum to use on herself.

  That meant her immediate suffering came with a purpose rather than the trainers just being cruel, though they seemed to t
ake to those types of scenarios eagerly and Neela was no exception. She wasn’t a trainer by profession, but a security officer tasked with overseeing the recruits’ training, and Esna had originally thought that meant she’d take a different attitude than the trainers. That thought had quickly vanished when Neela was even harder on them, though less hands on. Hers was more verbal motivation and guidance, though she did occasionally spar with them and beat them nearly unconscious to prove the point of how weak they were.

  Technically she never crossed the line into abuse, but she made it clear the enemy would not give them any breaks so she had to be hard on them. Esna understood that, but she still saw her as an enemy just like the trainers. Not the kind you killed, but the kind you defied with every available opportunity, and she was there when Esna woke up from the massive stunning effect, looking down on her with contempt.

  “You’ve made this run before. What’s the problem, Phantom?” she asked, using Esna’s nickname as if it were an insult.

  “Fornax depletion,” Esna said evenly. “I didn’t have enough charge left after this morning.”

  “Well then, you’ve got to develop larger reserves or learn to make do with less.”

  “This challenge doesn’t allow that.”

  “No, it doesn’t. So your path is clear, isn’t it?” she said rhetorically. “Get yourself over to aquatics. You can swim off your fatigue without having to worry about Fornax.”

  Esna walked towards the exit along with the medtech, not disagreeing but not saying anything in response. She’d learned it was pointless to argue with them, for they were doing their job and she wasn’t meant to be friendly. This was business, and there was nothing to gain from pointless conversation.

  So Esna walked through the seda to the nearest lift and headed for the aquatics center, then did surface swimming through a course that had water jets to produce current that aided and hindered her at various points. After completing that, it was on to another workout and another, then when Esna got several hours of free time along with the rest of the recruits she spent those practicing sword work before heading to bed…and getting up the next morning directly into an easy long run of 12 miles.