Star Force: Captains Mint (Star Force Universe Book 70) Read online

  And now without Kiljarro to rely upon, he’d be in a far greater role of responsibility. The crew and his first officer, or officers, would rely on him. If his new ship only encountered things that had been encountered before he was confident he would lead them well, but the unknown could never be categorized, analyzed, and quantified. That concept was referred to by the Naval division as the ‘Question Mark,’ and officers were trained to accept it rather than fear it, but Han had never quite been able to do that. He couldn’t plan to fight what he didn’t know, and he dreaded the day when his crew suffered because he wasn’t ready enough.

  Out here, now, running in the cold in his armor, he was warm inside but inches away from an environment that would cause his death if he was exposed to it for too long. The further the mechs had traveled the lower the temperature had got, and if they came into full night it was going to get far more dangerous.

  Yet here he was safer than onboard a starship, which was oddly refreshing while at the same time terrifying. He’d die almost instantaneously if he stepped outside his ship into the void, but here he could survive a while at least, for the air was breathable and not too low in pressure. He’d have a chance here, but seeing the vast emptiness around him he thought that might actually be a curse. He’d live long enough to suffer a prolonged death, whereas the void would at least be a quick one.

  His envirosuit was solid, but it was only a tiny bit of armor compared to what he was used to, and his current situation was making him wish he was back in the mech. That seemed the safe spot now, while only hours ago that had felt like the vulnerable position.

  Maybe that had something to do with the lesson here. About assessing threat levels without getting normalized around one. Kara was probably quite comfortable here, due to her Commando training. Their personal armor was their home, and she was wearing hers now, but it wasn’t an envirosuit. It was her personal jewel armor, and it looked like the ice around them, only clear enough to see through if you caught the right angle.

  Every time she’d lapped him…which had been 9 times so far…he’d tried to get a closer look. Was it just his imagination, or did her armor leave her nude? That wasn’t a look he’d seen the Archons use before, nor had he ever seen one of them naked. Had it been a guy he’d still have been curious to see what kind of musculature they carried under their armor, but given it was a girl he had double reason to investigate.

  “Need a better look?” Kara’s voice suddenly said as she ran past him, then spun around and still outpaced him while running backwards…which was insulting…but coming from her he almost didn’t care.

  Almost.

  Her armor altered its ice-like composition and went pure as glass, giving him a very good and unobstructed look at her 10-pack abs along with everything else that looked like god-mode biology.

  “Are you messing with me for a reason, or just having fun?”

  “You’re running all alone. I thought you might be lonely,” she said, not missing a step on the craggy ice path they were wearing into the ground, hopping over a small crack without being able to see it…then Han remembered that Archons had Pefbar vision that allowed them to see in a spherical radius without any blind spots, for shapes at least.

  “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” he said, quoting a familiar Naval joke for when you were facing something technically possible, but so unlikely it wasn’t worth the effort. Onboard the Hela’s Fury in the High G training chambers there was a bit of unauthorized artwork on one wall of a nude Archon…or at least what someone imagined one looked like…pointing to a video sticker that kept repeating a snippet of an ancient movie called ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ which is where that line came from.

  It was a way of reminding the Naval crew that they were nowhere near the fitness level of the Commandos, let alone the Archons, and the Captain had let it stay as a lesson to the crew. Just because your warship did the fighting for you, that was no excuse to stop improving your bodies in your spare time. And if an Archon ever did come onboard, he didn’t want his crew being so out of shape that he or she would cringe at seeing them nude.

  But from what Han was seeing now, whoever that anonymous artist had been hadn’t come close to the awe-inspiring, yet simplistic form he was seeing in front of him. For she was beyond beautiful, yet she had almost no breasts to speak of. Her body fat content had to be well under 1% for that to be the case, yet still she seemed too small. Commandos were famous for showing off their bodies, the girls especially, and while they all had smaller breasts than civilians, he hadn’t expected an Archon to look like this. It was almost like she was a ripped 12 year old.

  “There’s always a chance with Archons, Captain,” Kara said deadpan. “We’ll die fighting before we accept a no-win scenario. And we expect the navy to take on the same mindset.”

  “So I should make a pass at you?”

  Kara laughed. “I just took you to third base without you even asking for it, while most guys are obsessed with how they get to first.”

  “Just trying to understand the mission, Archon. Though I do appreciate the view.”

  Kara nodded. “Better. So I’ll give you a little help on this one. The view is your hint.”

  “To pursue perfection and not settle for anything less?”

  “If you’re not already perfect, you’re not qualified to be a naval officer, let alone a Captain. Perfect is the enlistment pre-requisite. Is there anything holding you back from perfection right now?”

  “Just a little swelling that’s interfering with my stride.”

  Kara smiled widely, almost as if mocking him. “And that, Captain, is why Archons avoid it, though I hear it’s worse for the guys. Some have even joked they’d prefer to cut theirs off.”

  Han grimaced, and not from the effort to keep pace with her, for she kept accelerating slightly while going backwards, probably on purpose to mess with him further. “Did any of them?”

  “No. Not to my knowledge. It’s an unwritten rule that we upgrade ourselves through training and not genetic alterations. Surgically removing parts then rewriting our genetics to accommodate the change would be more problematic than you realize, for we wouldn’t know what else we were potentially messing up. So we keep our biological inefficiencies and work around them as we try to minimize them. That’s why the guys never run nude, but the girls can.”

  “I thought you would bounce too, or did you reduce your rack size some way other than a med station?”

  “Adaptation, Captain. When we need the speed and agility, our bodies make the adjustments for us over time. These have never produced milk,” she said, gesturing at her tiny breasts, “just hung around for decoration. Eventually they got the message that wasn’t needed, so they shrank on their own over the millennia. Coming from a guy, what do you think? Visual improvement or not?”

  “If you want the streamlined effect, big improvement.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “There’s not much of you a guy could hold onto. Let alone catch. Are you trying to outrun me?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Kara said, slowing down a bit. “Natural reflex. Got caught flirting too much, I guess.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” Han said, feeling a swell of pride despite the meme of his ‘chance’ repeating in his head.

  “What can I say? I have a soft spot for the lost little boys, and if a little motivational flash can help, why not?”

  “You said a hint?”

  “There you go, Captain. Back on mission. Can’t let your focus lapse because the enemy comes at you with a naked avatar.”

  Han blinked beneath his helmet. “Has that actually happened before?”

  “More than once. One of our allies even tried that on Jason-025. He says he didn’t even blink, and that’s probably true, but we still tease him about it. It’s such a ridiculously juvenile technique that you had better never fall for it.”

  “I’ll try not to,” he said, with a little more regret in his voice than he planned t
o let show.

  Kara’s eyebrows narrowed. “I can’t get into your mind with your Ikrid block, but your tone says something is bothering you. As long as you have an older woman here, might as well ask for some wisdom while you have the chance. So spill.”

  “How do I shield my crew from the Question Mark?”

  “What have you tried so far?”

  “Beating my head against the wall until something shakes loose.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one a Captain needs,” Han said, kicking himself for abandoning the innuendo, but he really did want a useful answer more than the chance to flirt with one of the most epic Human women in the galaxy.

  “Shields.”

  “What about them?”

  “You don’t carry shields to fight only known threats. You put up a barrier that should intercept everything. In this way you plan for the familiar and the Question Mark. It’s no guarantee that they will catch the Question Mark when it smacks you across your cute face, but it allows you to fight the Question Mark without knowing what it is.”

  “As a Captain, how do I do that with my own knowledge and judgement?”

  “Figure out who you are, and how you fight. Use that as your baseline and build on it. Stop trying to bend yourself to the Question Mark and instead decide what parameters you will use when you face it. If we’d let the V’kit’no’sat define our identity, we’d have killed the Uriti rather than befriending them. And if we’d done that this galaxy would have no chance of surviving what we face now. When you figure out who you are, and what you’re willing to do and not do, the Question Mark isn’t so scary. It’s not about you beating it, it’s about not letting it beat you. A Captain can die with his crew and still not be beaten if he is horribly outnumbered. Instead he focuses his last moments on accomplishing what missions he can. Saving another ship, taking out one more enemy so his fleet won’t have to. It’s not so much about saving your ship, but being the best badass fighter you can give them in the unwinnable situations so they can die well rather than in a panic.”

  “I thought Archons didn’t believe in no-win scenarios?”

  “We don’t. And if you were an Archon we’d be having a very different conversation on this topic, but in your case you need to consider what you will do in a no-win scenario, and for the sake of your crew you have to accept it in order to maximize their efforts in potentially defying it and surviving. The Question Mark works both ways. In what looks like a no-win scenario the Question Mark could be a way out that you can’t see. If you panic, freak out, or decide to go bang your hot first officer in your final minutes of life, you’re wasting potential opportunities that your crew needs you to constantly be on the lookout for.”

  “So it’s my job to look for the opportunities, not make them?”

  Kara closed her eyes and nodded dramatically slowly. “Well done, Captain. And all the while staring at my naked body. Double marks for that.”

  “Technically you’re not naked. And there’s two sets of armor between us.”

  “There won’t be in the barracks.”

  Han couldn’t help but smile. “Now you are messing with me.”

  “Yeah, I am,” Kara admitted. “You seemed like you needed it.”

  “Not saying I didn’t, but how could you know?”

  “Archon intuition. But if I show up in your dreams tonight, you have permission to touch,” she said with a wink as her armor reset to the icy almost-nude setting it was before as his swelling reflexively increased as he wondered if she meant a dream or if she’d hack into his brain and maybe cheat her Archon rules that way.

  He began to stumble as his crotch hurt a bit when his armor suddenly became too small.

  “Hey!” he yelled as she turned and began to accelerate away from him. “You did that on purpose!”

  “Yes I did. Enjoy!”

  Han slowed down into more of a waddle than he wanted to let anyone else see as he tried to calm his instincts and get back some semblance of professionalism. Kara had him reacting like he was a youngling in the maturia during sex training…and was showing him his weakness in probably the most effective way possible.

  He let her get out of earshot, which didn’t take long considering how fast she went back to running, then whispered to himself.

  “Best. Teacher. Ever.”

  4

  March 14, 128852

  Plucar System (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Idolo Wastes

  It had been 6 days since this camping trip had begun, and Han was still no closer to figuring out the lesson than he had been before. In fact, he felt confused more than anything, but that was because he was learning so much so fast from Kara, Nuomo, and his fellow Captains that he felt like he was back in the maturia again.

  Except there were no challenges here. No workouts except what everyone voluntarily decided to do impromptu. Most of what they were doing was talking, with their two guides initiating a lot of it, but he and his peers were also doing a lot of info swapping with each other.

  Han wasn’t the only one worried about dealing with the Question Mark, but not all had the same concerns. Kleeso was freaking out about being able to develop trust in people she had never met before immediately, because anything less would mean her new ship would be subpar until that meshing process completed, and if they were sent to the Hadarak front immediately that inefficiency could end up meaning their deaths.

  Biolom was concerned what assignment he’d be offered, because Star Force didn’t just send you anywhere. You always had a choice to say no, or request another assignment if they only wanted you for one, but Captains were often offered multiple openings to choose from based on what was available, most of which were currently warships because Star Force was mass producing them as fast as they could train new crews. The combined Star Force navy had never been as large as it was now, and it was constantly getting bigger as drones were lost but not many warships. As long as drone production kept ahead of the fleet’s needs, more warships would continue being added at a rapid pace.

  But Biolom didn’t want a warship. He’d served on one already, and while comfortable with that role it wasn’t his first pick. Basically warships were aircraft carriers for drones, and unless the warship was operating alone there wasn’t a lot of skill required to maneuver with a fleet unless things got out of hand. The fight against the Hadarak were large fleet affairs for the most part, and he was wanting a solo assignment where he could have more of an effect on his ship and crew rather than less right from the get go.

  What he really wanted he knew he couldn’t get, and that was a frontier scout ship. Those never went to rookies, but in-empire scout ships did. The difference was the map, with the in-empire ships traveling only on known space lanes and generating updated information on systems Star Force didn’t own and didn’t have a link to through their comm network.

  The scouts in the Hadarak warzone had to be veterans, and the same was true of those exploring the Rim. Then there were the cargo ships, and many of them. Some of those had to traverse war zones to ferry out evacuees, but that wasn’t what he was looking for either. He wanted something remote with just him and his crew, but he was afraid there was such a high need for warship Captains that there wouldn’t be any openings available in that field or any of the other specialty divisions.

  Han and the others swapped concerns, experience, little tricks that they’d learned, and stories. It had been so long since he’d been with peers it was an odd and refreshing experience, because aside from Captain Kiljarro…who was more than a peer…everyone was looking to him for guidance, leadership, or as a conduit to the Captain. But here he was the most junior, as were the other new Captains, and this mission was taking on a dynamic he’d never expected to experience again…yet one he had never experienced before. They were not newbs. Not any of them. So when put into a ‘newb’ situation they dealt with it far differently than raw recruits.

  When they weren’t traveling by mech each day to a new
location to set up camp, they were either outside getting some workouts in or sitting around a campfire outside that did little more than make light in the now perma-dark sky. There was a flame sculpture being emitted from a device on the ground, making the Star Force symbol glow in the darkness as most of the Captains sat around it in their armor talking to those nearby or using comms if they were sitting too far out of earshot for a private conversation the conventional way.

  Han had usually joined them, as had Nuomo and Kara, but sometimes they stayed inside the barracks and that’s where Kara was now, probably talking to Captain Stigari, but when Han saw him walk outside and join the campfire group and Kara didn’t come, he hopped up and headed that way, hoping to catch her alone.

  When he got inside he had to pass through an airlock, in which he popped off his helmet before the interior door opened. Beyond that was a commons area, with bunk rooms on either side with other rooms spaced around the wide hexagonal perimeter. Kara was in the commons, but sitting on the floor with her back pressed against one of the walls and still as a statue with her eyes closed.

  Han walked over to her as quiet as he could, then stopped a few steps shy, wondering if she was doing some Archon training thing and wanted to be alone.

  You have a question? he heard her ask in his head telepathically as her face refused to move.

  “Is this a bad time?”

  No. Sit down, she said as a nearby chair was dragged over towards him by an invisible force.

  Han grabbed it and spun it around, straddling it backwards so he could lean forward and set his armored limbs on the soft backrest.