Star Force: Sav (SF51) Read online

  The game was capture the flag, with the stunned individuals eventually coming out of their coma through what Bo guessed was respawning armor. Like what the Black Knight originally wore, the material in their flex armor probably had elements that would soak the stun energy out of their bodies after a matter of time, bringing them back into the game eventually. With the emphasis on getting to the opposing bunker and claiming their prize, how many times you went down didn’t really matter. Bo could already see several individuals covered in paint splatters, attesting to a somewhat lengthy ongoing match even before Bo looked at the clock display and saw that they’d just passed the two hour mark.

  He suppressed a whistle. That meant both sides had to be very evenly matched…which made him want to get down there and into the fight even more. After taking another couple minutes to watch the action he’d had enough and left the platform, taking his duffle with him out the door then jogging down to the equipment room. His presence might off balance the match, but after two hours that would probably be a welcome change. If not he didn’t care, they got to see each other so rarely he would take the chance of being rude if only to get the surprise drop on one or two of them.

  Bo pulled out a flex armor suit from the various sizes available and quickly got dressed, hitting the armory before running over to the entrance doors and inputting an override code to get them to open during the match. Without announcing his presence or logging into the scorekeeping software he went inside, closing the doors behind him, then disappeared off into the terrain carrying the stinger rifle that had made up such a large part of his life but had since been replaced by the pure stun rifle.

  Bo kept to cover as much as he could, not wanting the others to know he was here just yet. He moved off into the trees while avoiding the large open area in the center that was scattered with boulders and dry streams that separated the distant bunkers where the ‘flags’ rested. It was actually just a finish pedestal with a button press, but a holographic flag marked the location inside of each. Getting there was the problem.

  He thought about making a sneak run against one of them, but that would have been a bit too cheating…well, maybe not, but that’s not how he wanted to handle this. He had a golden opportunity here and wanted to take advantage of it. There were two teams, with one being made up mostly of 2s. Paul and Jason led it, but Emily, Jace, and Ivan were also there, with the other half being made up of Sara-012, Kiran-011, Riona, and two other second gen.

  The other team was led by Greg and had a mix of trailblazers from different teams, second gen, and Vermaire…though in truth he kind of counted as more than one. And all things being equal, Bo still saw him as the terror that he’d been to them as trainees so he opted to throw in with the expanded 2s.

  To that end he established a telepathic link to Jason, who was the closest, and sent him a private message.

  Olly olly oxen free, he told him along with a location ping.

  Bo? Where did you come from? Jason answered back, taking cover behind one of the boulders just in from the trees while he got the heads up as to what was going on.

  Just got back and felt like joining in. No one knows I’m down here yet, and I’m throwing in with you guys. Where do you want me?

  You armed?

  Of course.

  Jason smiled, quickly having a side conversation with Paul. Pay your respects to the Black Knight, he said, sending Bo a telepathic location ping. He’s giving Emily and Riona a lot of trouble.

  With pleasure, he said, running off through the trees to eventually come out near his team’s bunker, swinging around behind it and coming up the far side to stay out of sight. Crossing through the middle would have alerted the others to his presence and he didn’t want to ruin the surprise so he took the long way around…and just happened to spot Greg out of the corner of his eye.

  All of them were running with telepathy screens, making it all but impossible to sense someone coming unless you were focusing on a specific area. Bo was lucky he spotted Greg first, because his fellow trailblazer had no clue whatsoever that he was on his outside, probably focusing his Ikrid on the nearby bunker to try and pick up a location trace of those guarding it.

  Bo jumped out from behind a chunk of ground with a small ledge that had been hiding him and peppered Greg’s back with stinger shots. Blue splatters covered him and he dropped face first to the ground, his rifle flying from his hands as he fell unconscious. Bo ran over to him and flipped him face up so he could breathe easier, then tapped him on the chest despite the fact that he couldn’t see or hear him.

  “You never did learn to mind your surroundings,” he whispered before heading back into cover and moving along the irregular wall and into the small forest on the far side, at the end of which he felt Vermaire. At the moment he wasn’t blocking his mental presence, and Bo wondered if that was because he wasn’t good at it or he was just being cocky…with him settling on the latter.

  As Bo got close he felt a battlemeld prompt and accepted it, suddenly linking up with both Emily and Riona and knowing exactly where they were and what they were thinking. Without even having to talk he knew what he needed to do and darted from one tree to another as they distracted the Black Knight away from the chamber’s edge, giving him a narrow corridor of approach.

  When he got close enough Emily and Riona jumped out of their cover and went hand to hand with the Knight, Emily pumping round after round at him and making him juke to the side while Riona came up and blocked a sword swing with a briefly-lived bioshield. A kick to her chest a moment later broke through it and knocked her back, then as Vermaire took after her with intent to jab Bo came up from behind him and fired twice into his back.

  To his surprise the Black Knight ducked beneath both, then he belated realized the big guy must have been focusing on his Pefbar to sense the immediate area around him. Abandoning Riona for the moment he ran behind a tree and disappeared from view…though Bo still had him on Pefbar and chased after him.

  Riona got up and flanked Bo two steps back as both sprinted ahead, trying to run the menace down. Suddenly, and with far more speed than Bo knew he had, Vermaire reversed course and came back at them, swinging his long sword in an upward flip that caught Bo in the chin and wacked his head to the side, simultaneously delivering a bit of stun energy…not enough to knock him out but giving him the wobbles as he tried to remain standing.

  With one opponent temporarily disabled Vermaire took a punch from Riona, who tried to swing her rifle up behind it with the other arm and deliver a point blank salvo into the man’s crotch as she ducked beneath his reflexive sword slash, but a light telekinetic shove moved her barrel off target and she fired through his legs. Next thing Bo knew she was on the ground covered by a bioshield as he tried to kick her, then as the trailblazer brought his own rifle up to bear on him Vermaire was lit up from behind as Emily got the drop on the mass of muscle.

  “Umph!” Riona said as he fell on top of her and popped what was left of her shield. It took a moment for her to roll him off, then Bo offered her a hand, pulling the striker to her feet.

  Battlemeld-linked as they were there was no need for discussion. Bo put another six shots into the Black Knight while Riona volunteered to stay put and keep shooting his unconscious body in order to keep him down. That way they’d have a 10 vs 9 without the big guy in the mix.

  The two trailblazers moved out, and within the next 18 minutes Ivan finally got to the flag and won the match for them.

  In the equipment room afterwards Greg came up and lightly punched Bo in the back as he was pulling his shirt off and had it over his head.

  “Ow…hey.”

  “That was so cheating,” Greg said with a smile on his face.

  Bo finally got his shirt off and tossed it on the bench with the armor that he’d already removed. He turned around, with Greg’s levity fading. “Where did you get that?”

  Bo rubbed the nasty welt on his chest, checking to see if it had gotten any worse. “A few days a
go. I was helping with some repairs on the cargo ship I hitched a ride on and got skewered with a piece of frag when an overload blew out a console. I thought it was mostly healed up, but I felt something pop out there,” he said, still examining it. “Doesn’t look like the skin broke though.”

  “Go find yourself a regenerator.”

  “Yeah, I know. Just got back though and haven’t had time. So,” he said, picking up his shirt and heading towards one of the personal compartments lining the walls to catch a shower, which was where most of the others were right now or headed there after removing their armor, “what’s the big occasion? The dynamic duo didn’t say in their message.”

  “A lot of training projects, or rather attempts. We need as many of us here as we can get to try and get a handle on them, so I’m glad you showed up. Just wish it would have been an hour later.”

  “Ah, suck it up. Not the first time you’ve lost.”

  “Was it you that got me in the back earlier?”

  Bo smiled. “Hadn’t planned that, but you walked right by me and I couldn’t resist.”

  “Figures,” Greg said, planting his hands on his hips as the both stopped outside one of the empty stations. “I couldn’t sense you at all.”

  “Just like the old days.”

  “Yeah, but I could find all the others when they were close by. You I completely missed.”

  “You weren’t looking for me,” Bo pointed out.

  “I was looking for trouble and missed you completely.”

  “Pefbar?”

  “I don’t know. All I remember is getting jumped. Makes me a little nervous if the Zen’zat can do that too. I think I’m starting to rely on my Ikrid radar a bit too much.”

  “Something to think about.”

  Greg nodded. “Catch you later.”

  Bo let him go and entered the personal bathroom/shower chamber and got cleaned up, grabbing a new casual uniform without ID stripes and wearing it back to his quarters…which he found out were the originals they’d had in Atlantis when they’d just finished trainee graduation. It was odd that they were going there, but also a bit refreshing as the 16 of them met up for some old school Halo tournaments using the original gaming equipment that was still lining the lounge.

  They spent several hours there, fanning the old competitive flames and relearning how to work the controls and eventually chitchatting until late at night when Paul finally pulled him aside as the others headed off to bed or for a late night snack or workout.

  “Ok spill,” Bo said, with both of them sitting down on stools in the lounge along a counter with various freshly stocked ambrosia foodstuffs.

  “I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but Jason and I are getting close to identifying some triggers. We both have Pren now, and six of the others have gotten it since they got here and have been training with us. We’ve gotten them close and they made the leap on their own, but with a few more ascensions we might be able to pin it down, and if we can do that…”

  “…we can start sharing it with the twin link knockoff.”

  Paul nodded. “We’re also working on a lot of other things that just require us here together as a group. Using the training holo in the pyramid we know we’re pretty much on par with most of the Zen’zat, or, well, on par with the masses. Their elite are still beyond us, as you know well, but our scores are starting to match up with their line troops.”

  “Actually I haven’t used it much, like maybe four or five times, and nothing recently.”

  “Might want to swing by and check it out. I’ve been doing so a lot and its sobering. We’re not behind them anymore but we’re still going to get our asses kicked if they come back and throw even a low level elite at us.”

  “So what are you working on to fix that?”

  “No magic bullet,” Paul said, dismissing the idea of an easy fix, “but some potential reworking of our structure going forward. We’ve got the battlemeld and they don’t, but we’re not using it much.”

  “We’re not?”

  Paul inclined his head in a ‘really’ gesture. “How much training have you done with it recently?”

  “None, but I’ve been out in Lothlorien for the past 6 years.”

  “My point exactly. We’re still going out on solo missions, and while we can train pretty well doing that, working the battlemeld requires another…and one at or near our level.”

  “You think we should start pairing up for assignments? Kind of a logistical waste.”

  “Won’t matter if we get our asses kicked by the V’kit’no’sat.”

  “Always that…” Bo said, starting to feel a similar frustration.

  “Jason and I have been discussing this for several years now, and we’ve been running it by some of the others when we’ve had a chance to meet face to face. Morgan doesn’t see the need, but she likes doing the lone ranger thing anyway.”

  “Big shock there.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve been training pretty hard here with the battlemeld, especially in groups of 3 or more. Takes on an entirely different dynamic, especially when we use it for more than coordination. Those are our strengths that the V’kit’no’sat hopefully haven’t discovered yet. We need to really go all in there and we haven’t been.”

  Bo considered that. “With the second gen not sucking as much as they used to, we could pull back a bit from our current duties and let them handle them…the straightforward ones I mean. We’d still have to troubleshoot.”

  “I don’t want to go that far,” Paul cautioned. “The ADZ isn’t exactly buttoned up yet, but if we start deploying to some of the frontiers in pairs it will give us a training partner for the battlemeld.”

  “Not to mention a decent sparring partner.”

  “Exactly.”

  Bo looked at him closely. “Does this have something to do with the brats?”

  Paul sighed. “They’ve averaged 1.9 over the past decade.”

  “Holy crap,” Bo said, noting that was a faster rate of advancement than most of them had had at that point in their training. It might even have been faster than Morgan, come to think of it. Any Archon that managed 1 level per year was moving along considerably fast, but to go up 19 levels in 10 years was really cooking, especially for an acolyte.

  “Yeah, I know they’re not that good, but they do everything together and there has got to be some unseen advantage to that, twin link aside.”

  “And you want us back together to try and see if we get our old mojo back?”

  Paul smiled. “Well put.”

  Bo stood up. “I’m game. A good night’s sleep and a little quality time with the regenerator tomorrow morning and I’ll be good to go. I don’t know why, after all these years, but playing multiplayer Halo still wears me out.”

  “Show me,” Paul said, staring at his chest.

  Bo rolled up his shirt and showed him the mark on his chest.

  “How close was that to hitting your heart?”

  “2.3 inches.”

  “Oh, well that’s nothing then,” Paul scoffed. “Just a beauty mark.”

  “Still, it’ll be nice when we can start building our own regenerators. Healing patches just don’t get the job done.”

  “I’ll be sure to kick Stark in the butt next time I see him.”

  “Do that,” Bo said, walking off. “Night.”

  “Night,” Paul offered, spying the video games that everyone else had abandoned. He grabbed an ambrosia cookie and headed over to the couch, intending to get a little Mario Kart action in before bed.

  3

  June 25, 2546

  Achkor System (Skarron territory)

  Zenniza

  Morgan ran through the tall grasses in the night, heading for a position marked on her battlemap and arriving a few minutes after ducking down and wrapping her dark blue armor up in an impromptu blanket as a trio of Skarron fighters passed overhead. Once they were gone she got to the virtual marker and dug around through the grass until she found the tiny S
tar Force hatch buried underneath, through which she climbed after carefully pulling the grass back over top like a small hut to keep it from being visible from above.

  A few meters down and Morgan found herself in a one person-wide walkway that she’d dug out on previous missions to Zenniza with the help of some robotic drones. The tunnel had been reinforced by compressed dirt bricks they created, likewise eating up the excess soil so it wouldn’t have to be discarded aboveground. Morgan kept her elbows tucked in so she didn’t hit the walls and jogged down the long tunnel, crossing underneath the barren strips of land that surrounded the Skarron city and into the substructure.

  She came out in one of the Hobbit zones, with the entry hatch hidden behind a large, heavy crate. Morgan scanned the area with her Ikrid and Pefbar, having to wait nearly half an hour before it was clear, then she opened the hatch, pulling the door inward and putting her shoulder to the crate. With her own strength being what it was it wasn’t hard to dislodge and soon she had a half meter gap that she slid out the side from, leaving her in a maintenance/storage area too small for the Skarrons to enter. She pushed the crate back in place then moved off on her recruiting mission.

  This facility was part of the Hobbit habitation zone, meaning the Engineers rarely came here unless something broke down. There were, however, thousands of the squat infantry in the area and she had to be careful to move around undetected…with which Ikrid helped out immensely. Using several Jedi mind tricks she walked past a number of Hobbits without them hearing or seeing her, or more accurately not noticing that they did, allowing her some limited freedom of movement around what had become her prime recruitment zone.

  From information given to her by the Hobbit turncoats she knew the layout and the politics of the Aronsic community on the planet, as well as how to find those who didn’t hold to the Skarrons’ authority over them. Threat of death for insubordination only worked so much, and there were always dissenters making themselves known through tiny acts of defiance. It was those acts that Morgan was looking for, so she could dive into the minds of those committing them and check as to their suitability for evac.