Star Force: Nemesis (SF3) Read online

  “How’d you take him down?” Greg asked in disbelief.

  “Take who down?” Paul asked, getting more and more confused.

  Greg and Scott exchanged glances. “You should know who if we’re talking about the same thing. G-2C, bunker defense scenario?”

  “I know what it is…what are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t fight the Black Knight, I take it?” Greg finally asked.

  “What Black Knight?”

  “That’s a no,” Scott confirmed.

  Greg shook his head. “I don’t get it…the challenges are supposed to be identical.”

  “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Paul demanded.

  “Ok,” Greg said, lowering his voice to a whisper and slipping into the chair beside Paul. Scott stood and leaned on the back of another. “I know this is a breach in protocol and probably looks like the 7s are trying to get a leg up on the 2s but it’s not, I promise.”

  “Go on,” Paul said, remembering the heads up Greg had given him earlier.

  “When we went through the G-2C challenge the trainers threw us a skiffer…a 7 foot tall, black armored trainer armed with what we’re guessing is a stun sword. He jumped us in the bunker and knocked us all unconscious. When we came to he was gone and the trainers wouldn’t say a word about it.”

  “Same thing here,” Scott added. “He didn’t even go for the pedestal. He went after all of us, even chased Kerrie down through the woods until he got her.”

  “He is unnaturally fast and swings his sword like it doesn’t weigh a thing,” Greg continued. “Our two teams got hit by him, but the 8s didn’t…and apparently you guys didn’t either.”

  “No, we didn’t see anything like that,” Paul said, thinking hard. “Some sort of trigger you tripped?”

  “We thought about that, but we haven’t come up with anything. A few of us even snuck back inside last night to look for motion trackers or pressure plates but we couldn’t find a damn thing,” Greg admitted.

  “8s didn’t pass, did they?” Paul asked.

  Greg shook his head.

  “You said this guy was wearing armor? Were you able to stun him at all?”

  “That’s the worst part,” Scott said. “Brad wacked him good with his stun stick, but it didn’t take him down. I saw him do it and the guy barely twitched.”

  “We were told that the stun energy soaks through everything,” Greg continued. “Now armor should lessen the bleed through, but we hit him with two shotgun balls and three stun sticks in less than 10 seconds and he didn’t go down.”

  “Oh…” Paul said warily, realizing that things had gotten to be a bit too easy lately, “this is not good.”

  “But why didn’t you guys get hit?” Scott asked.

  “Good question,” Paul agreed. “I think this is something everyone needs in on.”

  Greg nodded, already thinking along those lines. “Team reps in my quarters in half an hour?”

  “I’ll help spread the word,” Paul said, putting the last bit of snack in his mouth before he left to track down the others.

  Whatever this new training element was, he had a sneaking feeling it was some kind of payback on the part of the trainers…and given how much trouble and embarrassment they’d caused them, this could end up being one hell of a karma-induced ass kicking.

  4

  Three weeks later…

  Jack and Paul walked side by side down the narrow desert canyon, feet crunching slightly on the hard packed dirt/sand that made up the dry creek bed as they watched the nearby rocks for movement. The rest of the 2s were also patrolling the park in pairs, cleaning out hidden turrets that the trainers had placed in random locations. Given the narrow confines of the erratic canyons, the pesky turrets could literally have been anywhere…and the team had been tasked to clear them all out in the minimum amount of time possible.

  This was the third attempt the 2s were making on the course, set in one of three desert environment parks in Atlantis. Their first attempt had been a learning exercise, with them taking it slow and getting a feel for the challenge while coming in well above par time. The second time through they’d rushed it, making par but losing half their team in the process, which incurred additional point penalties.

  Paul jerked back just as the barrel of one of the turrets came into view, with a paintball flying through the space where his head had been and splattering against the side wall of the canyon. Jack went evasive as well, then regrouped with Paul a few meters back and exchanged some quick hand gestures. They’d recently learned that a lot of the turrets had hidden mics so that the trainers could listen in and anticipate their tactics if they spoke them aloud.

  Paul guessed that this turret was on auto…no trainer could have responded that quickly to him coming into view, but now that he’d been spotted one of the trainers in the control center could assert control over the quad barreled pain inducer and give the targeting a personal touch.

  Paul and Jack weren’t going to wait that long and split up with Jack running over to the side of the canyon and Paul darting ahead into view again. He dove and somersaulted on landing behind a boulder near the creek bed, drawing fire as a distraction while Jack leapt over the angled rock the turret had been hiding behind and fired into its deactivation sphere at point blank range.

  The turret attempted to swivel back around to face the rock but didn’t have time before Jack filled it with enough charge to permanently deactivate it with a confirmation tone sounding.

  Paul nodded his congratulations towards Jack when he saw his teammate’s face widen in surprise. The sound of rocks/gravel falling prompted Paul to spin around just in time to see a huge black figure come sliding down the side of the canyon and drop to the ground a dozen meters behind him.

  Jack peppered the figure with paintballs, half of which missed as the giant stood up out of his landing crouch and ran towards Paul, pulling a long black tube from a clasp on his hip and shoving it into Paul’s sternum as he awkwardly fired back into its midsection.

  Paul hit him with at least three shots, but the man was so fast he was on top of him before he could move aside. The end of the stun sword knocked Paul back against the rock…after that he remembered nothing.

  Jack stood by the deactivated turret and filled the air around the black armored giant with a hail of paintballs, then took off running back down the canyon the way they’d come, knowing that he had to stay out of range of that sword.

  The Black Knight saw him run off and took after him, covering the ground in large, fast steps. Jack’s face went white with shock when he turned around and saw him closing rapidly. As a last resort, Jack tried to double back at an angle to avoid the intercept and fired off a few close range shots one handed as he tried to slip free…but the narrow canyon didn’t leave him many options.

  It wouldn’t have mattered regardless. The Black Knight deftly spun about, reversing direction and ran Jack down in three steps, slashing diagonally across his butt and up to his right shoulder. Jack fell hard, bouncing off a boulder and breaking his nose.

  The next thing he saw was the synthetic sky atop the park with three heads partially blocking his view. One was a med tech, the other two were Jason and Paul. He tried to twist his head to the side, suddenly feeling a painful tightness in his face. As the anti-stun injection cleared his senses he also tasted blood on his lips.

  “Remain still, 020,” the medic said calmly as he dug through a supply satchel. “You have a broken nose.”

  “I don’t know, Paul,” Jason said casually. “Might be an improvement.”

  “Can’t get much worse,” Paul added deadpan.

  “Your compassion is touching,” the medic noted as he pulled out a small, shiny metallic…something.

  “What is that?” Jason asked. Paul was equally curious.

  “The proper name is Kich’a’kat,” he said, placing the device on the bridge of Jack’s broken and bloodied nose. “But we usually refer to it as a level 1 re
generator.”

  “Dino tech?” Paul asked. The medic nodded as the small silver/gold device appeared to melt into rivulets that ran down the sides of Paul’s nose, then solidified. With a painful ‘crunch’ that made Paul jerk in sympathy, the device realigned the pieces of bone in Jack’s nose.

  “Can he feel that?” Jason asked when Jack didn’t so much as blink in response.

  “Shouldn’t…it numbs the affected area first,” the medic explained as the skin on Jack’s nose regrew impossibly fast, sealing up the cracks where the blood had been leaking out. When the device finished a little over a minute later, the metal rivulets flowed back into the main housing and the suction-like grip on the Jack’s nose released, with a small blue light winking on, indicating that the injury had been healed.

  The medic picked the device up, which still lightly clung to Jack’s face, and placed it back in his equipment bag. Paul wondered what else he had stashed in there.

  “It will take a moment for the numbing to wear off,” he explained, looking down at Jack. “Your new tissue will be weak, so try to avoid landing on your face again in the near future.”

  Jack tentatively reached up and touched his bloody nose, then wiggled it back and forth experimentally. The pain was indeed gone.

  The medic offered Jack his hand and pulled him to his feet.

  “Thanks,” he said gratefully.

  “You guys have been giving us some extra business lately,” the medic noted.

  “The Black Knight?” Jason guessed.

  “Is that what you’re calling him? Hmmn, yes, he does seem to be causing an abnormal level of injuries.”

  “Who is he?” Paul demanded.

  “Can’t say…I’ve never met him. But I hear he’s been kicking the crap out of you guys.”

  “We only met today,” Jason clarified.

  “Did he get all of us?” Jack asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Paul answered. “You took the worst of it.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Jack asked the medic. “Will that thing heal a broken neck if he tosses us off a ledge?”

  “Not this one, but this one can,” he said smiling, pulling out a much larger device that was equally shiny.

  “Really?” Paul asked, a bit concerned. “So we’re free to get our bodies broken up as much as we want so long as you can put us back together again afterwards?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. These ranges were designed to minimize the hazards, but there will always be some amount of danger associated with the type of training you’re doing.”

  Jason looked around at all the sharp edged rocks and cliff walls. “Minimized, huh?”

  The medic smiled ironically. “Why do you think there’s no water or deep sand in any of the environments?”

  Jack caught his meaning first. “So we don’t suffocate when we’re stunned.”

  “Bingo,” the medic said, sealing up his satchel and walking off down the canyon.

  The three trainees let the man go, then turned to face each other in conference. “The others were right,” Jason whispered. “Whoever this guy is, he’s good.”

  “And stupidly fast,” Jack added. “I don’t see how he can move so quick in all that armor, let alone for his size.”

  “Are our weapons doing anything to him?” Paul complained/asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said, remembering how many times he’d shot the guy before he’d been offhandedly bounced into that rock. “I lit him up after you went down. He didn’t so much as twitch.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” Jason differed. “Me and Ivan met up with Emily and Dan before he took us down, and several times I saw him duck into cover to avoid being hit. If his armor makes him immune to the stingers then he wouldn’t need to shy away from weaponsfire.”

  “He didn’t shy away from mine,” Jack argued.

  “There were four of us firing on him,” Jason reminded his recently wounded friend. “I’d bet you 100 laps in the pool that we can take him down with enough hits.”

  “Like a super turret,” Paul added, not liking the concept at all.

  “That attacks us at random?” Jack said, kicking the toe of his shoe in the dirt. “Doesn’t exactly make for a level playing field between teams.”

  “Actually it won’t affect the team scores,” Paul said, suddenly seeing the logic in it. “It may delay us and the others, but as long as he isn’t showing up every time in the same challenge we’ll all have a chance to pass uninterfered with.”

  “So what, he’s just screwing with us?” Jason asked.

  “It might be just that simple,” Paul said, wishing he was wrong. “Another way to keep us on our toes.”

  “Well that’s just wonderful,” Jack said, placing his hands on his hips in frustration. “What are we going to do about it?”

  The three of them were silent for a moment, then Jason finally responded with a fiery confidence in his voice. “We’re going to find a way to take that bastard down.”

  5

  Five weeks later…

  Paul held position just outside the stairwell with Emily as Jason and Jack slowly walked up, overlapping their narrow shields for cover against the waiting paintball turrets on the next level up in the new training course the trainees had dubbed the ‘tower.’

  A completely ‘urban’ course, the tower was 15 levels of staircases with a finish pedestal on the top level. There were no windows inside the ‘building,’ buried deep within Atlantis’s inner structure, but there were heavy floodlights on some of the levels…offset by dimly lit levels and others with intermittent lighting, making it hard to spot turrets and trainers.

  Today’s challenge was turrets only, with few barricades in the otherwise open levels. Each corner of the square rooms held a stairwell, either going up or coming up, with its opposite direction facilitated by another quartet of stairwells situated back to back in the center of the room looking like a large pillar that blocked the view of the opposite corner. That way, in order to climb higher, the trainees had to cross each roomful of hazards, though they could advance up any of the four stairwells they chose.

  There were a few low barricades spread out across each level, but everything else was just open space and an easy kill zone for the turret columns situated along the walls, next to the center stairwells, and a few random ones placed out in the open to create additional fire angles. Normally the trainees would have sniped at the turrets to deactivate them from afar…problem was, they didn’t have their rifles in this challenge. They were only equipped with stun sticks and the new, but handy, personal shields.

  That meant in order to deactivate the turrets they had to close to point blank range…or else just try and make a run for the next stairwell and ignore the turrets altogether. Neither was a good option, as usual, which made the 2s work hard for each level up the tower they advanced.

  Paul heard several shots hit his teammates’ shields as they were only partway up the staircase, meaning there was a floater turret placed directly in front of the stairs…

  “Paul!” Jason yelled.

  “On it!” he answered back as he passed by Emily and put his foot on the bottom stair, looking up at his teammates hunkered down near the top, deflecting a steady stream of stingers that were thumping off their shields in mechanical rhythm. He flicking the power button on the stun stick in his right hand, hearing the soft crackle/pop as the ‘blade’ charged with stun energy. He repeated the process on Jason’s stick, which he held in his left hand. “Ready…give me the angle.”

  “Half meter left,” Jason said, holding his and Paul’s shields tight together as he rotated the one on his right hand about in preparation. He glanced at Jack, who was brushing up against his left shoulder, pinched between the sides of the stairwell coming up from below floor level.

  Jack nodded and looked forward. A moment later he and Jason leapt up four steps and into view of the wall turrets on their flanks. They pulled their second shields over to cover the additional
turrets, trying to scrunch up in between the corner of the too narrow shields. With a well placed shot the turrets could get through the gap, but it was a risk they had to take.

  When the pair had run up the steps they’d also split apart, leaving a narrow gap between them that Paul ran towards. When the turret directly in front of the stairs came into view he shovel threw one of the stun sticks forward, trying to keep as much rotation out of it as possible, then let himself fall face down onto the steps and out of the line of fire.

  The stun stick passed between his teammates, almost hitting them in the shoulders, and flew true to target. The silvery ‘blade’ hit the target sphere atop the turret and on physical contact released its stun charge. The stick bounced off the sphere and fell to the floor, bouncing across the carpeted surface until it hit one of the waist-high barricades.

  Jason and Jack readjusted their shields to the sides, providing better cover now that they didn’t have to defend against the immediate forward arc, though there were a pair of turrets flanking the inner stairwell directly ahead, but at the moment they weren’t aimed at them.

  On the two adjacent stairwells the rest of the 2s were gathered and distracting as many of the turrets as they could. Jason and Jack had poked up last of all, hoping to avoid most of the attention, and as of now only four turrets were pelting their shields with paintballs while the other two groups were getting most of the turrets’ attention.

  “Emily?”

  “I’m ready,” she said, standing directly behind Paul and activating her own pair of stun sticks.

  “Jason?” Paul asked.

  He glanced at Jack again. “Go!” he yelled, stepping up out of the stairs and onto the floor to the right. His two shields blocked everything above his knees, and he hoped the turrets would track his center of mass.

  Jack did the same thing on the left, opening up the stairs and further distracting the turrets as Paul and Emily ran up and out, hurdled a low barricade, and each smacked one of the turrets guarding the inner stairwell with their stun sticks before running halfway up the stairs and out of view of everyone except Jason and Jack, who quickly retreated back into their stairs to cover their exposed shins and feet.