Star Force: Ice Queen Read online

  This was a big upgrade to the basic null field technology, but it wasn’t perfect. A careful look could detect discrepancies and previous attempts at fooling Star Force had been mostly unsuccessful with regard to insertions anywhere near a luminous source, including planetary reflectivity.

  The difference here was that the cloaking field did not have to leave a bandwidth to navigate through. This Kaeper would be traveling totally blind, making it even harder to detect by the enemy. They could still use their gravity drive to detect where planets and stars were and avoid them, but they couldn’t see anything else and might very well ram another ship…except that this scout vessel had a new sensor in it that would allow them to detect the position of other gravity drives, as well as artificial gravity fields.

  That meant the Kaeper could fly blind and avoid the Star Force infrastructure at the same time. Atmospheric insertion would still be tricky, but even a simply probe the size of Ronoken’s finger floating on anti-grav could be detected and avoided. What the name of the new sensor was he wasn’t allowed to know, but the Ari’tat assured him that it had proven successful multiple times in recent history and had only come into existence within the past 30 or so years…a product of new V’kit’no’sat research.

  Meaning it was technology that Star Force did not have blueprints of…and that was key to their insertion into the Tauriel System weeks later when they exited their jump blind to everything but a field of dots that had replaced their sensor board.

  The big two were the stars at system center, with another large one further out that was the blue/white giant in this trinary system. Around it were smaller ones for the inhabited planets, but the bright pinpricks were the return signals for the enemy ships and stations.

  It took a long time for the system scan to return, with the gravity fields being picked up immediately but the new sensor contacts coming later. Using those positions the Ari’tat pilots kept the fully cloaked Kaeper far from them, taking a long, laborious path through the middle of nowhere to get to their destination planet.

  There they avoided orbital stations and starships, dropships coming up and down through the atmosphere, and anything else with a gravity drive. The Kaeper couldn’t see what was what, and it really didn’t matter. Wherever there was a dot there was danger, so they steered clear of it after taking a tiny peek out through the cloak at range to make sure the planetary shields were not raised.

  They weren’t, and there was no cause for them to be sucking up enormous amounts of power when not under battle conditions. With the door confirmed open they fully shut the cloak against all known signal forms and proceeded in towards the planet, dodging the mystery signals and eventually encountering resistance from the atmosphere.

  They slowed immediately, coming to a full stop so not to create turbulence that could be spotted. There they released the stealth gunships, giving them their last bit of sensor telemetry. Remembering the locations of the Star Force infrastructure, the gunships took turns leaving so not to hit each other and moved down to the planet’s surface, not knowing exactly where it was until a Pefbar cone from the pilot finally picked it up. Nestling down along it, the gunships slowly peeled back a layer on the cloak so they could see where they were and what was outside.

  Ronoken’s was in rocky terrain with sporadic trees and no sign of Star Force infrastructure or people. The gunship waited patiently for more than a day to make sure they had made it to ground undetected, then it repositioned to a nearby location at a crawl, nudging itself down next to a sheer cliff where no one would be passing through. There it dropped off Ronoken, with him wearing a cloaking field of his own and looking up into the sky through the invisible ship. There was a tiny hint of distortion betraying its presence, but had he not know what he was looking at he could easily have missed it.

  Soon the distortion moved and he lost track of the ship as it headed off towards the equatorial region where most of the Star Force infrastructure was. He’d decided to drop off here and explore the small settlements nearby…if 150 miles counted as ‘nearby,’ but he wanted to take no chances. His team had his orders and his blessing to carry them out in a way they saw fit, but their gunships would drop them off then find a nice cozy place to park and wait for the pre-arranged pickup windows, for no comm traffic would work when the cloaking fields were fully up, and even if they could their signals could be detected by Star Force.

  They had to be ghosts here…and vengeful ones at that. But first Ronoken needed to find out what was on this planet before he started to kill anything, and that was going to take some time.

  A lot of time, in fact, so he set off across the landscape navigating by only his Pefbar to make his cloaking field work more efficiently as he headed towards one of the odd cities they’d picked up further to the south. They didn’t match the normal Star Force design, but then again the gunship couldn’t do a scan to know for sure. All they had was a basic image and outline on the horizon, plus the new sensor pings from that location that showed a fair amount of anti-grav devices clustered in a haphazard fashion.

  Ronoken didn’t know what they were, but he intended to find out cautiously. Kills didn’t matter on this mission if they got him caught, and Sess’met had trusted him with getting and returning the necessary information. With no time limit on his return he decided to take this very slow, knowing that soon there would be activity along the equatorial belt to draw Star Force’s attention while he quietly slipped in and started to dig up whatever he could on the rumored genetic research heresies taking place here.

  If he had to run across half the planet to find them he would, and he had plenty of time. This war wasn’t going to be ending anytime soon, and this mission came from the campaign commander himself. That meant it was of the utmost importance and Ronoken had no intentions of letting Zyrnox, Sess’met, or the empire down due to reckless haste. Patience would prevail here, so he set his mind to that mode and started off, not knowing where he would end up, but knowing the first place he was going to start looking for heretics.

  2

  February 9, 4827

  Tauriel System (Seon Region)

  Eoxion

  Jessica Avril sat with her bare left leg hanging over the armrest on her ice-like thrown as she sat on it mentally flipping through holograms via the advanced mental interface that all Monarchs now had access to thanks to their Ikrid psionic. The chill of the room tickled her skin from head to toe as she sat naked and exposed…a trick she’d learned long ago to help break mental blocks, and she was full force into one right now.

  The throne chamber was empty, and despite the encircling, majestic windows no one could see inside. This was the Duke’s personal version of an office as well as a conference room, patterned off of fantasy lore that she was fond of, but it was also her private sanctum where she did most of her creative work.

  And that’s what her responsibilities were…creation. It was joked that the Monarchs were the gods of creation while the Archons were the gods of destruction, and while there was some truth in that, it did the Archons a disservice. They had built quite a lot of the Star Force empire, but their responsibilities didn’t lie solely there as hers did. So when they hit a mental roadblock they could always switch gears and go blow something up, whereas she couldn’t afford to waste such time outside her duties.

  Jessica had her own physical training where she could blow off steam, but unlike the military she didn’t spend more than 40 minutes on it per day and her morning session was already over. That left the rest of the day with administerial duties that her immediate subordinates were handling while she focused on big picture issues…though right now she was browsing through the smaller details, essentially looking over their virtual shoulders as she was stuck on her own work.

  In past years, when she got really brain locked, Jessica had taken a walk up in the mountains visible outside the windows of her command ‘castle,’ on top of which her royal chambers were located. She’d walked out amongst the snow and
rock and then disrobed, letting the frozen air of the southern pole soak into her and reset her mind all the while using her Rensiek to avoid actually freezing. One time she’d walked over 30 miles before inspiration had hit her, and she really did need to get away from everything for a while, there just wasn’t time.

  She controlled far more than this planet, on which she’d placed her own personal ‘capitol’ in her assigned territory, and had a total of 18 systems under her care. There were lesser Monarchs in some of them, but the overall interaction of their economies was her responsibility…as was their defense, supply lines, trade routes, resource acquirement, resource allocation, infrastructure development, shipyards, commerce markets, etc. The responsibilities of a Monarch were virtually without end, and much of what she was doing out here far beyond the warfront was work that she could do in her sleep because she’d already done it many times before.

  She’d been the Duke of Epsilon Eridani for more than 3 centuries before it finally fell to the V’kit’no’sat, and before that she’d been the Marquis of Clan Stark under the de facto tutelage of trailblazer Will-052. Both assignments had been stepping into the shoes of another Monarch that had moved on to another task, but the growth rate of the Clans had taught her much about improvising, for Will had been relentless in his pursuit of expansion and advancements, and the other Marquises who she’d been in regular contact with had said the same of their trailblazers.

  But her assignment now wasn’t carrying on what someone else had started. After Epsilon Eridani had fallen she’d been reassigned to another system far from the ADZ where she’d temporarily helped facilitate the massive evacuation exodus that had occurred.

  After that Director Davis had given her this more important assignment all the way out in the Seon Region. It was deep into the territory that had once belonged to The Nexus, and when Jessica had first taken up residence on this uninhabited world it had been on the back border. Not so anymore, for Star Force had pressed rimward much farther by now and Seon Region itself was moving towards dead center within what was now their territory, with Grid Point Seon being the namesake and central transit hub with 7 different routes out to other Grid Points.

  Jessica didn’t have control over them all, and Seon itself was not hers, but she did have Grid Point Natam and shared access to Grid Point Soti, which was a main trading hub for the Zezdi…and they were the source of her current mental block.

  She had 4 different full races under her stewardship, 3 of which were single system entities and all wards…which was the lowest of 4 tiers within Star Force regarding the size and responsibilities of pieces of the empire.

  A Ward was a race or civilization that was taken into Star Force as a guest, with few or no responsibilities. Star Force was taking care of them and in exchange the ward was giving up all sovereignty and joining the empire under Star Force’s terms. The three that Jessica had were in bad shape initially, one of which was near starvation and had to have years of foodstuff supply convoys coming in from other Monarchs to sustain them enough to even begin rebuilding.

  Not that they had done much. She’d had a Kiritak crew come in and build new habitats for them, including bioharvest facilities that her trainers eventually taught the Vadi to operate themselves. They were a mix between refugees and younglings and even today still required a great deal of handholding, which was accomplished by others she’d recruited into colonies built on their worlds. Those colonies were not part of the wards, but rather classified as Axius save for one standalone Kiritak colony she’d maintained.

  They were what kept her 3 wards…the Vadi, the Onoskat, and the Wenat…alive and functioning, as well as giving her a few exports to the rest of her small fiefdom that was composed of the multi-system race known as the Zezdi. They were not a ward, but rather a sub-faction, which was the third tier of civilization within Star Force.

  The second tier was known as Beacon, with the civilizations in it being more responsible for themselves but not able to stand alone. Rather they were groomed to contribute via specialties, with the Beacon faction being a combination of hundreds of these races that supported each other and made up for their respective weaknesses.

  A Sub-faction had no weaknesses. Sure, they might have areas they weren’t that great at, but they could stand on their own without having to have imports in order to survive. They had to have a military that could help defend beyond their own borders and have a robust enough internal economy and infrastructure to stand on its own if the rest of Star Force suddenly disappeared.

  The highest level was a Faction, and they were the pillars on which the empire was built. Mainline was the original, and was the name for the bulk of Humanity. The Calavari, Bsidd, Kiritas, H’kar, and 19 others held that lofty position. Canderous, populated entirely by Humans, was technically a sub-faction, but Jessica wished she had even a fraction of their strength. The Zezdi were far inferior, and in some ways even less powerful that some of the larger wards.

  The problem with them was that they hadn’t started out as a ward or a member of Beacon. They were one of the original members of The Nexus that had essentially been abandoned during the collapse of this region and Star Force hadn’t been able to get to them in time. They’d suffered over 70% population losses and had their territory chopped in half before more than a few Archon-led warships were able to assist them.

  Jessica had been brought in as soon as the situation was stabilized and no longer a warzone, and while she’d been able to bring them back from the brink of collapse she’d had to use their own methods for most of it. Transitioning them over to Star Force technology and methods was a headache, and despite the hard earned progress she’d dragged them through to this point they had to make a big change and she didn’t know how in the world she was going to make it happen.

  She’d been weening them off their previous culture slowly, but there was an impasse that had formed. They reproduced via a process known as Atroki, which had their younglings literally attached to their bodies as they grew on the exterior…and they were conscious in the latter stages, carried around observing and learning, even talking, prior to reaching semi-adult status and finally disconnecting.

  That made the traditional Star Force maturia a moot point and Jessica had been using modified versions of the Zezdi’s current nurturing system to inject some Star Force mojo into their society, but it wasn’t enough. They had to get over this hurdle to take on bigger challenges ahead, and she still wasn’t sure how to go about it. Medtechs had told her it was theoretically possible to make alterations to their biology so they would be released earlier, or more complicated and bold changes to have them develop within eggs or even biotech surrogates.

  All of that would have to developed, tested, and refined…and she wasn’t sure if that was the way to go. If it was she needed to get started now, because altering their population was a long term process, for the new births would be the foundation for the future of their race while current ‘holdovers’ would only be used as transitional population. She’d give them a chance to convert to whatever form the Zezdi ended up in, but her and other Monarchs’ experience said that few would want to.

  That meant the future would be built on younglings that didn’t exist yet, and she needed to get a baseline establish on which to build, otherwise everything she was doing now was just more temporary crap. Jessica desperately wanted to jettison their former culture and infrastructure…the latter of which she was already working hard on…but until she could deal with this reproductive issue there was a long list of things she could not do and it was driving her nuts.

  Their development was her responsibility, and it was one that she knew she couldn’t fail at…and not just because the Zezdi were depending on her. That was the primary reason, of course, but guiding the redesign of annexed civilizations used to be an Archon thing. The factions within Star Force had been fashioned by the trailblazers, but with the increasing number of races in the empire that task was falling more and more to t
he Monarchs while the trailblazers were focused mostly on defending against the V’kit’no’sat on the coreward front and fighting/expanding on the rimward one against lots of smaller, but still dangerous enemies.

  As it was, there were now 372 races at sub-faction level or above and well over 2,000 races, all of which she couldn’t name from memory, that were at least ward status. The full number of different races, when including Axius and the individuals there, was beyond 12,000 and rising with every year as more refugees found their way across the stars to their empire or the empire expanded out to them.

  But there were even more races within Star Force territory that were not aligned with them. They were neighbors, in essence, and more or less under Star Force’s protection. There were two within Jessica’s region that she had to look after…not on a managing front, but in the way of keeping other races from beyond coming in and attacking them. Other than that, there was no contact with her neighbors, though many others more advanced traded with Star Force all the time, and some of the produce from the Tauriel System was being put on the public markets that those neighbors accessed.

  The Tauriel System was not a part of the Zezdi, thankfully, but a fresh colony built by Jessica that was considered Mainline but had a lot of cross play with the Kiritak, who were providing the bulk crews for the shipyards and mines as the Human population gradually increased, both from local births and immigration.

  That Mainline colony was her other responsibility, and the key piece of her assignment that Davis had chosen her for. On this planet the colony was built up across the desert terrain of the equator, but beyond that they were forbidden from traveling save from her southern polar city. Everywhere else on the planet was a research project that she was babysitting for Davis and the Trailblazers. She chimed in on it where appropriate, but her primary task was to watch for problems and keep everyone else away from the denizens. They needed isolation, and she was to provide it, but she kept close personal ties with them and a pinging hologram suddenly broke her mental funk as it reminded her of the Ascension ceremony she need to attend.