Star Force: Lost Destiny (Wayward Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  It wasn’t until day 7 that their destination point came within view. They’d passed across the center of the plains and were just transitioning into a little bit of terrain that was now visible on the horizon. The waypoint marker on Esna’s HUD put their destination on this side of a small ridge a few dozen miles ahead. She couldn’t see any ship there, even with her helmet zoom, but if it was invisible that wouldn’t matter. Still, not being able to see it worried her as much as the sight of the fake holographic marker caused a streak of adrenaline to shoot through her weary body.

  She also saw Rammak’s speed ticked up a bit. Not so much that it was noticeable in his gait, but the speed readings had him at 1.7 mph faster than an hour before and she knew that he was more eager than she was to get off this planet. He’d been surviving here for 800 years waiting for this moment, so even with him being extremely tired Esna expected him to be able to sprint the last few miles if needed.

  He didn’t, showing more composure than she would and maintaining approximately the same pace as they covered ground up until they got a short range confirmation ping that put the invisible ship’s location 1.3 miles to the east of the waypoint and tucked up next to the ridge. Rammak altered his direction slightly and headed towards it with Nor’far staying on his heels and neither one of them speaking. Esna tried to keep quiet, following their example, but when they were a few miles out she couldn’t keep silent anymore.

  “The ship is invisible, right?”

  “Nearly,” Nor’far said. “Reproducing light exactly as impacted is tricky and even the best cloaks have some degree of error. Operating in atmosphere is even harder, but unless you know what to look for you won’t see it until you run face first into the field.”

  “Can you see it from here?”

  “No. We are following the coordinates that Javvin has provided. He is inside and waiting for us.”

  “Why doesn’t he fly over to us?”

  “He will keep the cloak up across the top of the ship and allow us to run underneath to further hide our location. The more seconds head start we have on the V’kit’no’sat the better our chance of escaping orbit undetected. There will be a race for distance as soon as we are on board.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We’re running straight in. As soon as we’re inside just find a seat and sit tight. Our fate will be in the ship’s speed and stealth.”

  “Are theirs faster?”

  “Depends what type they have. I do not think their Shav’rei is the only one they have here. It is the only one they want us to see.”

  “Why isn’t it cloaked?”

  “Most of their ships are not equipped with such stealthing, though they are hard to track at distance anyway unless you have proper sensors. The V’kit’no’sat prefer to be seen and scare away anyone who would challenge them. They only use stealth when necessary to accomplish a mission. They usually prefer to fight in the open, strength against strength.”

  “They have better weapons?”

  “Yes, but fighting isn’t the point here. Running is, so it’s a matter of engines and time. If we get even a little of the latter we will be alright.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Then there will be a chase as we try to evade them.”

  “Thank you. Regardless of how this turns out.”

  “We don’t willingly leave people behind, and if we’re forced to we come back to get them when we can. And even their offspring, in your case.”

  “What about the rest of the people here? Aren’t they offspring of survivors?”

  “They might be, or more likely they are migrants having come in from other systems. If the V’kit’no’sat aren’t bothering them that means they’re not Star Force and they’re not Human. We don’t know who they are, but they’re not our people and this isn’t our planet anymore. We’d help them if we could, but bringing in evacuation ships wouldn’t be subtle and would draw the V’kit’no’sat into a fight that might see them killed anyway. If we value them, they die out of spite.”

  “So they’re better off if you ignore them too?”

  “Sadly yes, but if we find any of our people we risk a fight to get them out, so you do not need to thank us. We are a team and you have been lost for too long. For that we apologize.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, it’s the V’kit’no’sat’s fault, but we missed you on this planet when we searched before and that failure does not sit well with us.”

  “It’s a planet,” Esna pointed out as she lightly bounced with each Scionate stride. “If it was easy to search the Zen’zat would have found us already.”

  “True, but you should never have been forced to endure this.”

  “Not your fault,” Esna repeated. “Live in the present, not the past.”

  “We do. I am simply explaining there is no need for your gratitude. This is an injustice that we are belatedly righting. You belong with us, not here.”

  “Thank you. I’ve been starting to feel that way too.”

  “Good. The remainder of your reclamation will occur quickly once you are safely in our territory.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “We cannot go there directly, but we have hidden bases in the Devastation Zone. We will be at one within days if not pursued.”

  “And if we are?”

  “We’ll have to take a longer route.”

  “I can wait,” Esna said sarcastically, then let Nor’far continue to run without having to talk more. She kept looking ahead trying to make out the nearly invisible ship but couldn’t. All that was there was the angled ridge covered with rocks and some tufts of brush. Staring at it didn’t change anything, but the closer they got the better chance she should have of seeing something so she didn’t pay attention to anything else.

  When they were within a mile she still couldn’t see anything until a black spot appeared over the ridge. It was hard to make out, even in the daylight, for the shade seemed to defy recognition. The light around it bled inward so much that she didn’t know what she was seeing, but it was moving and that caught her eye more than anything. It appeared over the peak of the ridge and started drifting downward…which was when the Star Force ship further below suddenly became fully visible and fired on the black spot.

  Blue orbs shot into it and the black smear suddenly grew much larger, resolving into red armor covering a huge biped body that was angled forward, extending up from a large tail and ending in a massive head with two small arms along the underside of the body. The orbs hit what Esna recognized as shields as the ship began to lift off and gain altitude…then the Tyrannosaurus Rex jumped high off the ridge and landed on top of the elongated Star Force ship and stuck there as the thing fired a huge green pulse into the shields it now stood on.

  “Ambush!” Nor’far yelled as he skidded to a halt and watched helplessly as the ship gained more altitude, then rotated around on its axis trying to dump off what Esna now recognized as a Vik Era’tran from the images Rammak had showed her weeks ago. It was one of the senior races within the V’kit’no’sat empire, meaning they were the boss of the Zen’zat and many others, and looking at it right now scared Esna more than anything she’d ever seen before in her life.

  The huge armored monster clung to the underside of the ship as it spun upside down, with the Era’tran slowly firing its huge weapon into the ship that suffered through three hits before the shields went down. The fourth shot hit and blew apart the upper hull, but then Javvin flew the ship down and scraped the Era’tran against the ridge, eventually prying him off as the damaged vessel got further into the sky.

  But the Era’tran rolled to its feet and fired another green pulse of energy so bright it almost hurt Esna’s eyes to look at it. It shot up and blasted into the side of the ship as the Era’tran ran after it so fast that Esna couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It jumped a second time and came up short, falling back down to the ground where it fired again, but the Star
Force ship took the blow and continued to rise as it returned fire with multiple blue orbs …then another ship appeared above it, a Zen’zat ship, and it opened fire into its unshielded hull at close range.

  Javvin tried to run, but didn’t get more than a few miles before his ship came crashing down onto the plains, digging a huge furrow in the ground as it appeared to be softer than the ship, for the craft didn’t disintegrate on impact and even continued to shoot back at the Zen’zat ship for a while as it flew over and continued to pound their only way off this planet.

  Rammak, who was standing a little ahead of Nor’far, knew they were all dead at this point, but he was Star Force and Star Force didn’t just lay down and die. They fought to the bitter end, but no amount of weapons was going to defeat that ship or that Era’tran, so he turned to Nor’far and pointed away from the crashed ship and back out onto the plains.

  “Take her and go!” he yelled, heading for the ridgeline and running parallel to it, taking him towards the west while the ship was southeast and he’d pointed Nor’far to the north.

  “What? No!” Esna yelled, disconnecting her grips on Nor’far and trying to jump off to follow Rammak, but an invisible grasp pinned her to the Scionate’s back as he turned and took off running away from Javvin and the Calavari.

  “Lock on,” Nor’far said angrily as he repositioned her legs where they needed to be while running harder than he’d gone the entire time with Rammak and bouncing her even more than before. “I can’t go fast enough with you loose.”

  “Don’t leave him!”

  “The only hope we have is splitting. If we stay together we are dead for sure. This way we have a tiny chance of either him or us getting away, now lock on so I can run!” Nor’far said angrily.

  The anger snapped Esna out of her horror and she activated the locks, cementing her feet to his sides and feeling his telekinesis evaporate with her body being thrown up and down wildly until she caught her balance as his legs stopped operating individually and he started reaching out with his two forward paws simultaneously and kicking hard.

  That resulted in a huge burst of speed, so much so that Esna couldn’t even believe it as she was whipping across the ground as fast as her old speeder, if not a few ticks faster. It was all she could do to balance with her tired legs and Esna couldn’t even turn around to look at where Rammak or the Viks were, but she could see him on her battlemap running off at a right angle to their direction.

  She could also see the two ships occupying the same spot and the dot that was the Era’tran…but it wasn’t chasing the slower Rammak. It was coming after them.

  “Nor’far,” she said as she saw it closing the distance slowly.

  “It will hurt, but seal your hands to my back. The more you move…the less speed I have.”

  “Do what you can,” she said, tears in her eyes from both the pain and the doom soon to fall on them. She reached down and tried to steady her hands on his pack, slipping several times until she just locked them wherever they laid…which yanked her arms hard and stretched her joints now that her upper body couldn’t get shock absorption from her legs, but her speed rating displayed in her helmet continued to climb until it pegged out at 118 mph.

  Nor’far was flying across the plains, but as she watched it wasn’t enough. The lead they had was dropping continuously and unless the Era’tran got tired it was going to catch them. Maybe if Nor’far hadn’t been so tired he could have outran it, but even when her reading ticked up to 121 it wasn’t enough. The precious meters behind them counted down with lethal condemnation for several minutes until a green energy blast crossed the distance between them and hit the ground to Nor’far’s left…blasting him and Esna off their feet.

  The Scionate rolled over, flicking his head up so Esna didn’t take his full weight, then got back on his feet and accelerated again, but the Era’tran was much closer now with Esna’s shields having dropped by 38%...and that shot hadn’t even hit them!

  Based on the time gaps she’d seen when it was shooting the ship, she guessed they had only a few more seconds until the next one fired, with her thoughts going to Rammak and hoping that somehow he could get to cover and hide…but knowing in her heart that it just wasn’t going to happen.

  The next shot missed as Nor’far dodged it, somehow knowing when it’d come, but it blew up a huge chunk of ground and covered Esna with debris and a compression wave that chewed another 13% off her shields.

  Then a weird sound popped into her helmet, like a gong, then a voice she didn’t recognize said ‘Choose your Destiny,’ with music playing in the background.

  She didn’t know what was going on, but suddenly Nor’far turned to the left in a big sweeping arc as the words ‘Flawless Victory’ followed from what she belatedly realized was an incoming comm. He skidded to a halt and turned around, freaking Esna out, but then she saw that the Era’tran had stopped and turned as well with two new contacts on the battlemap heading towards them at incredible speed.

  “Choose your Destiny,” repeated over the comm as she was able to visually spot two tiny things flying in from the southwest, then when ‘Flawless Victory’ sounded again her zoom was able to pick out the tiny Star Force armor suits…that were flying towards them!

  “Archons,” Nor’far said as the Era’tran fired its main cannon at them, but they easily twirled out of the shot and dove towards him with other weapons on the big red mass of armor opening fire a few seconds before the Archons got to him.

  “Mortal Kombat!” a different voice yelled over the comm, then the music jacked up in intensity as the two flying Archons nearly collided with the Era’tran and began zipping around it in circles while the big monster fired back, tripping over its own feet as it spun to shoot at them.

  22

  “Unlock!” Nor’far yelled. “I need to fight!”

  Esna didn’t know what was going on, but she did as he said and released the grip points on her feet and hands…then suddenly found herself picked up and dumped onto the ground as the Scionate ran towards the Era’tran as the two Archons flew around in what looked like a dance, save for the fact that they were firing green beams out of their hands and the Era’tran kept tripping and falling, making it hard to land a shot even with its more accurate smaller weapons.

  Nor’far ran up to and fired on it with a flurry of blue orbs coming from the underside of his helmet and the Era’tran switched targets to him, firing its main belly cannon, but the Scionate jumped to the side, now moving much faster without Esna or his pack on him, the latter of which he’d dropped a few meters away from her. He kept jumping and running around the huge monster, firing into its shields along with the two Archons that had some kind of green/purple armor on that almost matched the brilliant color of their weapons, but they were taking hits too. Not as many, but they couldn’t avoid the pinpoint targeting of tiny green orbs flying off multiple points on the Era’tran’s body.

  On its two small arms it had larger weapons, but it had yet to land a shot with them on the Archons. Both weapons fired a ring-like beam that hit an area rather than a precise point and it was using them to shoot Nor’far, who took several near hits as he pranced around with crazy speed and agility, all the while the two Archons continued to hammer the Era’tran until it suddenly started running towards Esna.

  “Baju!” she cursed, turning and running away knowing there was no way she could move faster than it, but a few seconds later Nor’far zipped up alongside her and she felt herself picked up and placed onto his back…only then to be yanked up higher into the air and away from him as an energy blast hit her in the back, burning through half her shields only to be followed by another that got through and melted a bit of armor.

  The next thing she knew she was falling to the ground…along with the Era’tran that had done a faceplant behind her with an Archon on either side doing something to it, then she was picked up again and put on Nor’far’s back as he ran off with her.

  “Turn on your countermeasures,
Esna, or he will pick you up again!”

  “Sorry,” she said, feeling like an idiot and scared out of her mind at the same time as she tried to remember what Rammak had taught her, pulling up the command menu and finding the appropriate button. When she hit it her grip on Nor’far’s back slipped and she nearly fell off, realizing he had been holding her in place and her countermeasures now worked against him too, so she got a foot glued back on again as he kept running.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get you out of here.”

  “Don’t they need your help?”

  “They said they didn’t and we’ve got trouble coming.”

  Esna didn’t ask what, fixing her other foot in place as she looked at her battlemap instead of trying to twist around and use her eyes. The Era’tran was behind them and not chasing, thankfully, and the two small Archon blips were buzzing around it…but the ship was moving towards it and suddenly dropped off two more dots before accelerating out towards her and Nor’far.

  “The ship…”

  “They’re going for us to try to distract the Archons. Hang on,” he said, accelerating harder and pulling her through a tight turn that cut back south and almost ran towards the ship, but at an angle that caused them to zip beneath it as Nor’far’s shields extended up around her and caught…nothing, for it didn’t’ fire on them, then they were past and the ship was slowly turning around to follow, but it couldn’t change direction as fast as the Scionate.

  But as it turned into a slow reversal it dropped another contact down to the ground and that dot on her map started running a different direction. She zoomed out her battlemap and saw it headed towards a Star Force dot far away but coming back towards them.