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  Higher up their ranking, amongst the ruling brood, was another lizard variant…this one a biological upgrade to the templars, keeping to the live birth bloodlines. The lizard Kara was probing had never seen one, nor probably ever would unless this world rose to a very high Tier. They were the uber-leaders of the lizards, which she dubbed ‘sovereigns,’ who oversaw legions of templars.

  Kara knew that the local templar could one day upgrade into a sovereign, but the mastermind’s memories said that was a distant possibility, tagging this one as very green, thus it had been given a periphery command where it could learn and develop while still serving the empire’s overall purpose…which Kara realized was to spread out and dominate the galaxy. Lizard society was all they knew, and all they would tolerate.

  This mastermind knew that enslaving other races was one option it had, but they could never be treated as equals…only tools.

  That meant the Nestafar were going to get backstabbed themselves, because the lizards would never tolerate another power within their borders. She rather liked that part, aside from the fact that it meant the lizards could only be stopped through defeat and probably annihilation. There were no diplomatic channels available…they were what they were genetically designed to be, and unless those handcuffs were removed their individuality was not going to surface. Without it, they couldn’t be reasoned with, and were essentially slaves to their own race.

  That both saddened and impressed Kara, for all they’d accomplished, dishonorable as some of it may be, they deserved a nod of respect…but the idea that they could have come so far and yet be so blind at the same time made them pathetic, which Kara felt that any advanced race didn’t deserve to be.

  Both sentiments faded as the strategic implications of her newfound intel rose back to the forefront of her mind, along with the immense danger they posed to the Alliance and Star Force. Both had time to counter the lizards, given their current lackadaisical war strategy, but it was only a matter of time before they escalated the conflict, multiple times, until they overwhelmed their opposition.

  Kara desperately hoped the H’kar could give them more trouble than expected, but she didn’t hold out hope that the once great rimward race had any chance of winning…not now that she knew what kind of tech the lizards were holding up their sleeve.

  The Humans’ greatest asset was the fact that the lizards didn’t perceive them as a significant threat, coupled with the fact that their territory was on the frontier and farther away from the lizard core worlds than that of the rest of the Alliance. That made it all the more imperative that Star Force suck more technological upgrades out of the V’kit’no’sat database and set up a solid line of defense before the lizards got wise to their true potential.

  Kara realized for the first time that the Alliance, her team that she’d never give up on, was going to get beaten, and beaten badly…even if the Nestafar had stuck with them. Knowing that, Star Force had to adjust its plans…and Kara made a mental note to have a very long chat with Paul about that when she got back.

  She started digging into recent memories, trying to soak up some tactical knowledge of this mastermind’s plans in the local region, hoping to remember the flurry of images she was seeing when her spidey senses started to tingle with Ikrid contacts outside the room she was in.

  “Damn it,” she whispered, trying to glean the current location of the templar then giving up as armed lizards came in and found her kneeling over what looked like their dead superior.

  Kara knocked them down with a Fornax field as she sensed hoards more surrounding the chamber. She popped out her forearm weaponry, resealing her armor over her hands, and shot the downed guards with fast firing blips of green energy. She glanced down at the mastermind unconscious beside her feet and considered killing it, but a part of her didn’t want to, given how advanced it was. So out of professional courtesy, and the fact that they’d just grow another, she gave it a swift kick in the abs for all the trouble the lizards had caused, then ran off towards the main entrance where the other lizards were now coming in.

  She fought her way through them with relative ease, given the fact that they couldn’t get past her shields, let alone her armor in the small hallways that diminished the number of weapons they could bring to bear on her simultaneously…and then add in the fact that she was knocking most of them down with Fornax blasts before they could even pull the triggers, and she made her way to an exterior room rather quickly.

  Kara shot three lizards inside then extruded a different weapon on her right wrist that wrapped around her hand and created a hard circle in her palm. There she produced a small orb of green/white energy as she threw her hand forward towards the intact window as she ran, releasing it a meter prior to impact.

  The window vaporized in a flash of energy that also melted the rim around it…then her armored form shot through into the night air, falling a couple of meters under the influence of gravity before she shot off in a straight line like a missile, abandoning stealth in favor of distance and hoping that the alarm the lizards were sounding was contained to just the building behind her and that they hadn’t put the entire city on alert.

  Dropping low, she moved down into the city streets, hoping to keep beneath their sensors, and flew Ironman-style right through the lizard infrastructure, moving so fast there was a boom of compressed air whenever she flew past.

  Her black form didn’t go unnoticed, and before she’d managed to zigzag a third of the way back towards the city’s edge a repetitive screech sounded throughout the city and a number of blips showed up on her armor’s sensors, indicating that one of their fighter patrols had been pulled in and were angling towards her approximate location.

  “Time to dance,” she said, pulling up out of the streets and accelerating into a blur as she hit clean air.

  7

  “Stay low, stay low,” Kara said as she zipped across the lowest rooftops within the city, bouncing between one canyon-like area to another while avoiding the taller buildings as her armor tagged numerous anti-air batteries scattered across the cityscape.

  She’d accelerated up to more than twice what her speed had been flying through the streets, but she still couldn’t take a direct line to the city’s edge without exposing herself…meaning it was a race between her and the fighters moving towards her position, despite the fact that she had her sensor-dampening ‘skin’ on.

  Kara was flying so close to their equipment that she knew she was impossible to miss, but get those fighters over her head and a lack of restraint in firing down onto their own city and she’d be in for a world of hurt, for these were just the first few, with new contacts popping up on her sensors from numerous hangars…meaning she had to get out of here fast.

  Weaving her way below the firing lines of the anti-air batteries, Kara got halfway out to the city’s edge before the first stunted green plasma lance flashed by her and hit a building ahead, melting into the rooftop.

  Instinctively she pulled off to the right, feeling the excess aero drag of her pack underneath her armor coating, but that couldn’t be helped now. A couple more flashes hit behind her, then she pulled a hard left turn and shot off down a row of low buildings with the wisp turning more sluggishly to follow behind her as it leveled off at nearly the same altitude and started firing at her feet.

  Kara kept dancing about, all the time keeping under what her armor showed to be the anti-air altitude boundaries that kept changing depending upon what battery she was nearest. That still left her a lot of wiggle room in between the taller buildings, given her small size, but another pair of wisps came up from high overhead and started making strafing runs so they could fire down on her, adding to the green streaks hitting all around her…then one hit her in the shields covering her feet.

  “Oh no you didn’t,” Kara said, registering a significant chop in her shield strength just before she flipped over onto her back and put her palms together, forming a green orb that she cradled in both hands as more plasma ca
me her way.

  Ignoring it and sighting the wisp behind she sat up a bit, still flying level to the ground and backwards across the building tops as if she was coasting, and stretched her arms out in front of her as she got a mental lock on the target, releasing the energy orb like a bullet popping out of a gun. The glowing ball of light slightly smaller than her head shot back in a straight line and sank into the hull of the lizard fighter, then detonated in a bright puff of confetti that had once been the wisp’s hull.

  Kara smiled momentarily, then flipped back over to fly chest down, letting the tiny bits of debris left over from the shredded fighter fall in her wake as she saw more fighters dropping in behind her, as well as some gathering ahead, having predicted her course across the lowest building tops.

  Rather than facing them head on she made a detour, cutting close to the edges of lizard structures when she turned, hoping to get lucky and peel off a fighter in the process, but unfortunately their pilots weren’t clumsy enough to run into their own buildings. Some of them went high and wide, while a few others kept on her heels, all the while more were coming in from the periphery and boxing her in at a respectful distance.

  Kara could do the basic math in her head and knew time wasn’t on her side, so she tucked her arms in close to her body and eyed the nearest anti-air battery, plotting a course directly underneath it and up out the other side, then she accelerated hard, feeling the air dragging against her shields as she zipped down across building after building until she had no more room to maneuver and it was either slow down and turn or ram into one of the taller ones.

  Kara arced up and into what was soon to become a firing range above the city, putting herself through a wide spiral as the anti-air battery that showed up directly behind her spat a slew of plasma shards, each similar in size to the stubby lances the wisps fired, at the shrinking dot that was the armored Human as she tore across the cityscape gradually gaining altitude and speed.

  The buildings began to whip by her, with the forest ahead seeming enticingly close, then what looked like the fourth of July broke out ahead of her and the air was filled with plasma shards…with the lizard fighters wisely holding back and letting the city defenses take a swipe at her.

  Kara’s only saving grace was her tiny size, because even with her ever increasing speed the batteries were still able to accurately track her. She took a hit early on, then got by most of the short flight to the city edge without incident…then took three hits over the course of 2 seconds that nearly penetrated her shields.

  Before she even realized what was happening most of the anti-air fire cut out as she reached the construction ring around the city, with her dropping back down in altitude and skimming the partially constructed buildings to cut out most of the rest…which was when the now swarm of fighters moved back up in pursuit and began taking long distance shots at her, all of which missed initially, but sooner or later they were going to get lucky just through sheer numbers, as there were now well over 200 fighters on or near her tail.

  Every second that passed her shields regenerated…far faster than any Star Force shields, or even those of the Kvash, so she dropped low to canopy when she crossed over the boundary from lizard construction sites to forest, trying to use the limited topography to her advantage, but the mountain ranges were a bit further off yet, giving the lizard fighters a large field of yellow trees to fire down upon in the hopes of hitting her, now without having to worry about collateral damage.

  The sky around Kara lit up in green, and she took another pair of hits, both grazes, to her arm and leg, but her shields held…then she hit the brakes as fast as her armor could manage and her tiny dot of a body sudden fell back into the lizard fighters and collided with one.

  It exploded in a puff of confetti-like debris, then another one nearby did the same…which sent the others into a frenzy, zipping about every which way as they tried to track her movements while avoiding running into each other at the same time.

  Kara killed two more of their fighters at pointblank range before accelerating off in a straight line again, leaving them to come to their senses and reform their chase pack, allowing her to get some quick distance. She pressed her acceleration hard, building speed with every second as the air tugged heavily on her shields…which she reformed into a pointed tip to give her a more aerodynamic profile, feeling a sudden rush of speed accompanying it.

  The wisps were fast too, and a dozen or so of them began closing on her, but she’d gotten far enough ahead of them to almost be off their sensors. A few wiggles here and there, along with dropping down and literally skimming the treetops, and she was able to subtly veer off their current flight line, which told her she was almost in the clear.

  She held her line, letting them get further and further away…then they broke up and went multiple directions, trying to reacquire her signal.

  Kara pushed on, getting away from all but two of them who managed to catch a bit of a sensor image and redirect her way with the others turning to follow, lagging far behind. With the mountains just ahead of her Kara kept low and headed for the first jut of terrain popping up from the flat terrain and swung around it, blocking her from their sensors.

  Then she began swerving, hopping, and mimicking the ups and downs of the increasingly rough terrain, tricking the fighters into going the wrong direction, only to reacquire her sensor silhouette again. After several minutes of cat and mouse they lost her altogether and she was able to fly deep into the mountains while they pulled up to higher altitude in search mode, now too far away to pick her up while she was sensor dampened.

  Kara flew well away from them, curving to the south while they held a westerly vector, then she gently slowed to a stop and ducked down through the yellow forest canopy as the sun was beginning to rise. The branches and leaves scraped against her armor, now that the shields were down, but they didn’t scratch the black material. Like a rock sinking through water, the forest seemed to part for her as she dropped down to the dark interior, with her armor scales returning to their normal red after she confirmed that there were no lizard foot patrols nearby…or giant wildlife.

  Kara retracted her armor from her head, pulling in a fresh breath of forest air and almost choking on the moisture. She hadn’t seen it from above, but now that she was down on the ground she realized she was standing in a cloud that had formed below the treetops, covering the area in a thick mist.

  She could see just fine with her Pefbar, and otherwise it was still night anyways, or would be for a few more minutes. She took in several breaths, getting used to the vapor, then looked around with her second sight, finding the nearest ridgeline. Retracting her armor all the way back into her forearm jewel, Kara hiked up the hillside and found a small, level spot on top where she pulled her pack off and sat down, resting against one of the massive trees.

  “Well that’s done,” she whispered to the not so quiet forest, for there were chirps and creaks galore. “Don’t suppose they’ll settle down soon enough for me to go back and have a chat with the templar, so I guess it’s down to camping out the next few days.”

  Kara didn’t like that at all…the idea of just sitting and doing nothing. So after a couple of hours to let the wisps get bored with looking for her, she ate a snack and pulled her pack on, then headed down the opposite hillside on foot, managing a decent paced run without slipping and falling on her face on the way down to the bottom of the ravine. Once there it leveled out enough for her to make a go at a cross country run, for no other reason than to give her something to do and to keep her body from stagnating in lieu of the workouts she was missing.

  So Kara ran and rested the remaining days until her pickup was scheduled to arrive. When the countdown in her armor was getting close, she pulled her pack off and dropped it on the forest floor, glad to be free of its weight. With a mental twitch her scale-like armor reformed over her body and she summoned up another green orb that she used to blast apart her pack, leaving only bits and pieces of debris alon
g with a hole in the dirt, a lot of which had sprayed up on her in the explosion.

  She shook and it fell off, cascading back to the ground as the construction of her armor resisted the grime. Now clean and lighter, she started mentally plotting the rendezvous point in orbit, adjusting for her current position and expected flight path…which told her she had another 22 minutes and 18 seconds to wait.

  Kara hopped up into the treetops and perched herself on a branch tall enough that she could look out through the leaves into the sky. Off in the distance she could see the edge of the lizard city, but it was far from her current position and the anti-air weaponry was well out of range. Some of the other defensive weapons weren’t, but there was no way other than sheer luck that they’d be able to hit a moving target as small as her, even if they could pick up her sensor-stealthed armor.

  Forcing patience, Kara waited until the timer counted down to 00:00, then she jumped out through the leaves and flew through a sharp arc heading straight up into the air for a few kilometers before pulling back into an angle that gave her both height and lateral distance as she needed to accelerate up past orbital speeds to make her rendezvous, which even now should have been pushing past the lizard defense ships on a high speed approach to extreme low orbit.

  With her sensors in stealth mode she couldn’t pick it or most of the lizard warships or stations up as she ascended, so she had to rely on position data alone…but when she reached the upper atmosphere the target materialized on her passive sensors, along with the lizard ships racing to catch it.