Star Force: Return to Earth Read online

  They will do it, he said, speaking via telepathy to get across the distance between pedestals. We have no means of defending against a subsurface attack.

  You want us to surrender? Dorchav asked neutrally.

  I see no way to fight. And if you think they’ll stay their hand to preserve us you are mistaken. They have given warning and adequate time to evacuate. That will satisfy their scruples. If we remain here we will die.

  I’m forced to concur, an Era’tran named Ollva said. He was one of the regional commanders, like Sess’met, who’d been kicked out of their invasion zones, and was learning a hard lesson that the Rit’ko’sor could see was starting to take root. We gain nothing by staying and dying. Destroy the Tar’vem’jic and cleanse the station of all data. There is nothing else we can do.

  If we run here, where will it stop? a Voro’nam regional commander argued in lieu of Zyrnox, whose absence left no one in full command now that they were all pushed back to this last foothold in Star Force territory. If they come to another planet and do the same thing, will we run again or find a way to fight?

  Do you have a suggestion, Sess’met challenged, or are you just wasting time with denial?

  V’kit’no’sat do not run.

  Then stay and die. I’ll take those with enough sense to avoid a hopeless fight and live to find a way to fight back later.

  Typical Rit’ko’sor, the Voro’nam huffed. I have no idea why Zyrnox brought you here. You have accomplished nothing in this invasion and now you argue to give up a planetary defense station without a fight. We should have exterminated you when we had the chance.

  You tried and failed, Sess’met reminded him, but Star Force will not be so sloppy with us here. They will send their Uriti at us from below, and we have nothing…NOTHING to stop it. Arrogance is not a weapon that will save you, so how do you intend to fight it?

  Enough, Dorchav said before the Voro’nam or anyone else could respond. I’m making the decision and taking the responsibility in Zyrnox’s absence. Unless any of you can concoct a strategy to hold this location, I’m ordering an immediate evacuation, the Brat’mar said, telepathically touching each of the 6 regional commanders and forcing them to respond to him personally.

  None had an answer, and he gave them a moment more to think, but no epiphanies followed.

  Then we have no choice. Sess’met, you are to handle sabotage operations. Expect them to be able to recover anything we leave behind, no matter how badly damaged.

  I’ll be thorough, the Rit’ko’sor said, accessing the interface on his pedestal and issuing orders to the army of V’kit’no’sat throughout the facility to begin the unsavory task of destroying their own equipment.

  I expect this Archon to allow us to leave if we leave promptly, but I want the fleet covering the surface evacuation regardless. Pull back all troops engaged in combat and get them off the planet as soon as possible.

  We’re abandoning all fronts? another Voro’nam asked, and Dorchav knew they were reflexively defending Zyrnox’s mission here, which was ending in utter failure.

  We must adapt to the threat before us. We cannot accomplish our mission now, so our new mission is to preserve what resources we have. Staying and dying avails us of nothing, and taking down some Star Force ships is worthless. It is the Uriti that we have to discover how to counter, and other than observing its destruction of this facility we can do nothing beneficial here.

  We need additional sensors in place when it surfaces, the Era’tran added.

  See to it, Dorchav approved. Then join the fleet. We are leaving. There is nothing more to discuss.

  Sess’met watched as the command deck cleared, not quickly, as many were visibly reluctant to go, but in the end he was the last one remaining as he organized the destruction of the Tar’vem’jic…which was not easy to do. Eventually he left the huge chamber as well, traveling deep down through the facility to where the power generator was and double checked the sensor modifications.

  They needed whatever information they could get on the Uriti, and this was the first time they’d had a chance to see one below ground. Even now they were able to track its progress through the planet, but with little more than a location blip as it disrupted the inner planetary material while shoving its way through very thick, but liquid material as if it was nothing but water.

  The tremors were visible even if the Uriti was not. Sess’met wondered how well Star Force’s communication with it functioned within the planet, but he doubted they would tell him if he asked. Regardless, they would get some data when it came close just before the sensors and the planetary defense station were destroyed. He’d make sure they had ships in orbit to get a close sensor scan of the impact, for he was curious to see how the Uriti fared against the Yeg’gor. He didn’t think it would break easily, and frankly didn’t know what would occur, but it was something they needed to know regardless…in addition to providing stark evidence of the threat Star Force now posed. Evidence that Itaru could no longer ignore.

  Morgan stood in the command nexus onboard her flagship Gold Ranger, a brand new model only three months out of the shipyards and configured with a Uriti transmitter onboard. She was using it to listen in to Papa Smurf as a Wrangler on another ship was guiding it as it came up through the mantle beneath the pyramid, the very bottom tip of which dipped into the mantle and syphoned heat as a backup method of power generation.

  That meant when Papa Smurf finally made impact he was able to touch V’kit’no’sat technology before he touched solid rock, pushing up through it like a wedge and destroying everything above him through sheer physical pressure. The Uriti did not need to use any weaponry, merely pushing up from beneath and crushing the components on the lower levels.

  Eventually he got high enough that the width of the understructure of the pyramid was wider than the Uriti, letting him move much more easily through the air pockets, snapping deck after deck until he rose all the way up to the widest portion just below surface level. Morgan saw him through the telepathic link, breaking up through the command deck like a mole coming up into his den with surprising ease.

  Papa Smurf spun around, tearing out additional walls until he was free of all obstructions and leveled out beneath the Yeg’gor ‘tent’ above him as magma billowed up from below, turning the command deck into a superheated sauna that eventually filled up to the cap where the air inside was caught and compressed down to the point that it was turned into plasma that helped to burn through the structures above.

  From the surface Morgan didn’t see anything but a few trails of magma pouring out of doorways that the V’kit’no’sat had left open behind them as they boarded their ships on the pyramid surface. The peak where the Tar’vem’jic was located was not open, and the Yeg’gor there was holding solid without even a leak of magma seeping through.

  Papa Smurf did not come any higher, for Morgan didn’t want to breach the surface and create a supervolcano. That was why the portal had been created to allow him entry to the planet and an exit gate was nearly complete in Central America. Papa Smurf would be exiting there and not through the pyramid, for the original gate was now full of solidifying magma that, if pushed through, would break the gate and create the supervolcano they wished to avoid. Thus the portals were one-time use only, and while they were attacking the V’kit’no’sat structures in Antarctica, they didn’t want to wreck the landscape in the way they’d seen happen on some of the planets in the Preserve that had Uriti holes poked into their crust.

  This was the first mission for Papa Smurf, and Morgan was pleased to see him hold position perfectly within the Pyramid to wreck the interior without breaking the Yeg’gor cap…then he eventually twisted over point first and headed back down through the hole he’d just bored through the crust and into the mantle. He got the approximate coordinates for the exit gate and headed off towards it, with Morgan losing track of him as even his telepathic power dimmed so much through the thickness of the planet that they couldn’t contact him
at the deepest levels. A single tracking signal was all that was visible of the massive telepathic presence until he rose up closer to the surface again a couple days later.

  But the Wranglers could handle that. Now that Papa Smurf was out of the area it was up to her and the other Archons to take possession of the planet again. They wouldn’t be staying and rebuilding, unfortunately, but they needed to take stock of what was left down there and many V’kit’no’sat cities to explore…and clear of potential booby-traps.

  That’s why Morgan was going down herself as soon as she made sure the V’kit’no’sat fleet was gone. Some of their ships were still hanging around and she’d been tolerating them long enough so they could see the destruction of the pyramid, though it clearly wasn’t as awe-inspiring as they’d probably expected. Still, with their telemetry they’d have seen what was happening internally and how easy it was to take down their strongest footholds from within.

  They couldn’t redesign their other planetary defense stations, which had taken ages to construct, fast enough to protect them against Star Force doing exactly this again. And even if they did there was no guarantee that the Yeg’gor could protect them. Morgan liked that doing it this way didn’t give the V’kit’no’sat a chance to see how well it held up to a Uriti, leaving them either in doubt or with false confirmation that it couldn’t break through.

  She was pretty sure it could, but even if not it could have risen up and carried the entire umbrella-like shield up into space with it if it wanted, so she wasn’t worried about that…plus Papa Smurf was the smallest Uriti they had, though arguably the strongest ton for ton. The later Uriti designs had gotten more and more potent, and when this one ‘grew up’ it was going to be a terror beyond terrors…for the enemy.

  A little over a day later Morgan was in atmosphere, flying around on her own power and looking at what the V’kit’no’sat had done to her planet. Antarctica was no longer covered in ice, but green beyond green, and it hadn’t suffered from Kara’s previous planetary bombardment. It hadn’t been touched at all save for the few small rivers of magma still seeping out of the pyramid, on top of which she landed on, finding the surface only mildly hot.

  That was because the Yeg’gor ate energy with a ravenous appetite, including heat, and from what naval sensors were telling her the interior was still full of liquid magma. That meant she wasn’t going in, and even when it did solidify…if it solidified…it was going to be full of rock with nowhere to enter, making it a giant paperweight and useless to both sides.

  But there were thousands of buildings around it that hadn’t been touched, and initial scouting parties were reporting nothing more than empty databases and some wrecked equipment. No booby-traps were being found, and hopefully that trend would continue, but Morgan was standing in the midst of a highly technological ghost town that made her feel eerily like the past hundred millennia had never happened and this planet had never been attacked by the Rit’ko’sor during the rebellion.

  Everything looked like the V’kit’no’sat had been here forever and the Human inhabitation nothing more than a daydream. Even the pyramid, which looked the same from the outside, no longer had the familiar interior that she could remember. Now it was just molten junk, washing away everything she remembered save for the exterior that she now stood on.

  Morgan could see with her Pefbar down through the Yeg’gor where the Tar’vem’jic emitters were…or used to be. Now they were fragments floating in a sea of plasma and magma, and she doubted that was due to Papa Smurf. The V’kit’no’sat had probably destroyed the weapon rather than let Star Force recover it if the Uriti somehow didn’t trash it. What she couldn’t see were the vital interior components, guessing that the V’kit’no’sat had taken them to be reused later. The exotic components were something that were hard to build, which was why Star Force hadn’t bothered to try.

  The V’kit’no’sat used the combination of Tar’vem’jic and Yeg’gor to create fortifications that were almost impossible to overwhelm, which was something that Star Force couldn’t do. Even if they made an exact copy of the pyramid on another world the V’kit’no’sat could amass enough ships to overpower it, meaning the Star Force war strategy had to be mobile and expendable…and Tar’vem’jics were definitely not expendable.

  Star Force needed powerful weapons that they could make a lot of and lose, and Morgan saw the irony and fear the V’kit’no’sat must be feeling now, for all their unbreakable battleforts were useless against the Uriti attacking from beneath. All the effort, time, and expense they’d gone to in building them was now a horrific waste of resources. That had to be driving them crazy, for they’d built the heavy defenses away from the core where the Hadarak couldn’t touch them. They were meant to defend the empire against other threats while the Mach’nel were the mobile teeth on the coreward front.

  But now the Uriti were here on the rimward frontier and the V’kit’no’sat’s entire strategic setup was now thrown on its head. If there were any doubters they now had proof, and she was glad they’d decided to leave rather than stay and die. It made things a lot simpler, especially making the likelihood of there still being hidden V’kit’no’sat on the planet extremely unlikely.

  Morgan looked around, seeing the unfamiliar landscape beyond the pyramid, and on impulse triggered her armor to retract down into a lump on the ground that she stepped out of, wearing the loose flowing Archon uniform beneath. They had many different versions now, but this one was her favorite and reminded her a little bit of a Jedi robe, though not nearly that sloppy. It was smooth as silk and almost body hugging, making it relaxed and combat ready at the same time.

  It was the same uniform that she’d worn when first coming here back before they’d even met the lizards. Morgan slipped the shoes off, telekinetically pulling her socks away from her feet and stuffing them inside as she stepped on the warm, but not too hot, black/green Yeg’gor surface as she’d done so long ago, feeling the synthetic rock with her bare feet and remembering back.

  Too many years of losses had weighed on her, pushing the older memories deep, deep within the recesses of her mind. Morgan closed her eyes, seeing only with her Pefbar that did not reach beyond the pyramid. She stretched it out sideways and above, so she didn’t see the magma beneath, and tried to reach back to the early years.

  It took some time, but when she made the connection everything seemed to come alive again. Her toes didn’t lie, the stone had the same pseudo-soft feel to it that reeked with ancient importance. So much had changed since her first time here, so many revelations and truths discovered that it took a moment to unlearn everything she’d learned and see through her old eyes.

  She’d come a long way. A very long way. So far that she hadn’t even considered it until now. She’d been living in the moment, as any good Archon would, but now she felt like…

  “Victory,” she said aloud, finally opening her eyes. The landscape was drastically different, but it was the same pyramid and the same planet. Many things had changed, but this was in fact Earth and where it had all began. The unbeatable V’kit’no’sat had just been kicked out and were now running. They’d be back eventually, she had no doubt, but Morgan had just reclaimed Earth. It’d been stolen from them in a very blood fight so, so long ago…but she’d just taken it back, and now she stood on the top of the pyramid, with her bare feet confirming the fact that this was real and she was actually here again.

  “The war’s not over by a long shot, but we finally won guys,” she said, speaking to the 98 trailblazers that were not here. Mark-099 was, out helping the scouting teams elsewhere on the planet, but the others weren’t. They were out dealing with the massive empire Star Force had created, and she was glad she’d been one of the two that got to come here and kick the damn Dinosaurs out. She hadn’t thought of them as Dinosaurs in a long time, but standing here was bringing back a lot of old memories.

  “We thought you were extinct before. We won’t make the same mistake twice,” she said to the s
ky. “But Earth is ours, and don’t you ever forget it. Ours…you hear me? No Dinos allowed!” Morgan added, taking in a long, slow breath of air she hadn’t felt in ages. It was warmer now, and more humid, but it was Earth air just the same.

  Morgan sat down, feeling her butt warm but tolerating it, then leaned back and lay looking up at the sky. Earth’s sky, as she’d remembered it from long ago.

  “We’re home, fellas. We’re home…”

  3

  October 17, 4833

  Tettio System (Unclaimed Territory)

  Stellar Orbit (Trade Route to Terraxis)

  Mak’to’ran’s Kafcha came out of its jump along with three others of similar class, the only ships he’d elected to bring with him as he traveled all the way out to Terraxis. They were having to move through the backwater systems now, having run out of black hole routes to save time on, and they were still several jumps away from their destination when they ran into a large V’kit’no’sat fleet sitting around the innermost planet.

  Mak’to’ran hadn’t expected it here, but a quick query confirmed his suspicions…it was Zyrnox’s task force that was supposed to be attacking Star Force or at least holding on to the territory they’d previously gained. Now they were waiting for their commander’s return, reporting that even Terraxis had now fallen to the combination of Star Force and the Uriti.

  The V’kit’no’sat leader brought his four ships out from the star and rendezvoused with them, then had all six regional commanders plus Dorchav join him and Zyrnox onboard his flagship for a debrief that he was sure he was not going to like.

  “We should have fought,” Turo said, glancing at his fellow Voro’nam commander. “We could have at least destroyed some of their ships.”