Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  carrying a special pack with no gear in it whatsoever. It was the same size and

  approximate shape, not to mention a bit heavy, but it made up for that drawback

  in longevity. She could still run, jump and tumble with it, but the tethers

  that ran down her arms and ended at her wrists connected to the base of the two

  sabers she held and fed them with continuous power. Disconnect the weapons from

  it and she’d get a couple hundred dead lizards and that was it.

  These weren’t stun weapons, and there was only one

  purpose for them…cutting apart lizards fast and efficiently with one hit kills.

  It was a badly needed upgrade to their fighting arsenal, but one that didn’t

  allow for taking prisoners or limited combat. In an environment like this,

  close quarters with a lot of bodies all around you, it made for a very potent

  weapon system when paired with an Archon mage.

  Which had turned Ginsi into a killing machine.

  She wasn’t fighting with troops backing her, she was

  going solo, same as several other Archons in different locations. Her mission

  was to probe beyond the defense lines and just rack up a body count. With her

  psionics, and especially the addition of her new Jumat that Taryn had been

  gracious enough to give her ahead of schedule, there was nothing the lizards

  could do to stop her short of detonating a really big bomb in her face.

  Her armor could take a det pack and survive it, so she

  wasn’t holding back and aggressively pushed past the Bsidd postion, cutting her

  way down a long corridor that eventually led to a larger promenade that was

  used to haul cargo to and from various sections like a highway.

  And it was filled with lizards waiting in orderly and

  blocky groupings that were being dispatched piecemeal into adjacent exits that

  would filter their way through to the thousands of tiny combat fields they were

  engaging the Star Force troops on.

  Ginsi let slip a wry grin, no longer thinking of the

  lizards as people, just targets. She’d been careful to avoid thinking like that

  before, but after so many engagements with them and not even a single lizard in

  the history of the war ever surrendering to Star Force, she’d let go that

  safety restraint. They still offered them multiple opportunities to surrender,

  and would continue to do so, but in a situation like this where they were actively

  fighting and they were spamming Star Force lines with millions of infantry…the

  best way she could protect her Regulars was by becoming a slayer, and gruesome

  as it was, Ginsi didn’t mind at all.

  These were bad guys, and taking them down fast and efficiently

  wasn’t a problem with these death sabers…so long as she hit killing blows. It

  was either take them out or not strike, for there was no point in maiming them

  or lopping off a hand just for fun. These were threats that needed to be taken

  out, with pain and punishment nowhere in her mental vocabulary.

  It was a very fine line to walk, mentally, but Ginsi

  didn’t have trouble with it. The death sabers were definitely a weapon that

  could be used to torture, but neither Star Force nor her would ever use it that

  way…and that’s why it was reserved specifically for high ranking Archons. Those

  who could walk that fine line between being a slayer and a butcher, and could

  do so with such lethal efficiency that the lizards would have no way to stop

  them.

  Ginsi launched herself into the first row of the

  lizards as they pulled their rifles off their backs and fired at her, swiping

  both glowing white sticks through two of their chests and cutting both in half

  as she passed them by, then with the help of her Pefbar she put herself into a

  controlled twirl that saw another 5 of them taken out Darth Maul fashion as her

  shields flared with phaser hits that suddenly began hitting friendly targets as

  she redirected and dashed a different way.

  Point to point she jumped/ran, slashing and making

  clean kills each time while covering the artificial ground with pools of blood

  that the living lizards trampled through trying to get at her. None of them

  fled, all of them stayed and fought, pumping shot after shot into her shields

  whenever they could get the chance. A part of that was admirable, most of it

  was just stupid, but that’s what the lizard empire was and these people were

  born locked into it, apparently without the will to break free…and definitely

  no option to do so logistically, for even if they wanted to get away they’d

  never have anywhere to go, save for those rare times they met Star Force on the

  battlefield and were offered a way out.

  The fact that none of them took it meant these lizards

  weren’t victims, and were fully committed to a combined will and mission. Dying

  for the cause didn’t concern them. Making themselves useful was their only

  priority, and even if they only landed a single phaser hit against Ginsi they

  were accomplishing that…though there was no way she was going to let them wear

  down her defenses so far that they’d actually get a chance to kill her.

  Not bothering to count, though a bit interested in

  what the number had become, Ginsi continued to slay lizards and the more

  concentrated groups like this that she encountered the better, for there were

  billions of additional lizards on their way up the connecting columns from the

  planet’s surface, and it looked like the ground war was going to be fought on

  this spacebound ring long before they ever set foot on the surface.

  And without heavy weapons or aircraft to counter her,

  it was only going to be a question of how many she could kill and how fast.

  August 18, 3104

  Menchet System

  (lizard core)

  Tess

  Paul dropped down from an opening in the ceiling, one

  he’d just quietly cut with a very hot finger, and fell down into a mass of

  lizards, hitting them with a Fornax field as he punched aside a couple leading

  into a twirl of his death sabers. He lit them and started jumping from one area

  to another and mowing down all the infantry as they desperately tried to target

  him with their phaser rifles. A few hits were absorbed by his shields but they

  couldn’t land even a tenth of their shots…and it wasn’t because he was messing

  with their minds. Once he landed, his Fornax disappeared and he took them all

  hand to hand, though dropping an Ubven field on top of them would have been

  much easier.

  He hadn’t done that, nor was he using any of his

  psionics now that he was on the ground. He did what was necessary with blade

  and muscle alone, not even engaging the powered nature of the light Archon

  armor he was wearing. It was originally gold, but after nearly 8 hours of

  fighting there was little of it showing beneath the blood splatters. His

  shields kept most of it off, but he’d taken on such large groupings that some

  of them had managed to peel that defensive layer off him a few times, resulting

  in a bloodbath as the precision cuts left the lizards’ dismembered body parts

  spurting blood as Paul passed through them.
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  This group was about six or seven hundred strong, but

  they didn’t prove a challenge…nor did they flee. They all just stayed put and

  kept shooting him, despite the fact they had no chance of stopping him. It was

  mindless slaughter and the lizards were forcing it upon him, but when he got

  finished with this group and was then going to be on his way back for a rest

  and a new power pack something inside him snapped.

  When he got to the last three lizards he slashed two

  clean in half with a single move, each arm holding a blade that passed through

  two lizards’ midsections and cleaving them as well as a couple of wrists in the

  process. Rather than jump through them to the last lizard Paul checked up,

  yanking the rifle out of the lizard’s hands and tossing it aside.

  The standard variant snarled and ran to the side,

  picking up another and aiming at Paul. The Archon let him fire twice, then he

  also ripped it out of his grip with his telepathy.

  The lizard did not run, instead scrambling around to

  find another weapon in the bloody mess that was now the floor. This time Paul

  wicked it away from his hands before he could get to it, then he froze the

  lizard in place with a telekinetic grip around its waist.

  “Why do you keep

  fighting and dying?” Paul asked in lizard. “You can live. You can all live if you would just surrender. Why are you

  forcing us to kill you?” he demanded, though he already knew his reasons.

  After so many deaths by his own hand today his nerves were on edge, for enemies

  they might be, but he did not like killing them, especially when they were this

  helpless.

  The lizard squirmed around, trying to wiggle out of

  the Human’s invisible grasp.

  “Answer me!”

  Paul yelled, retracting his helmet with an energy shield still covering his

  head just in case he’d missed another threat. He stared into the lizard’s pitch

  black eyes with his own twinkling grey orbs. “This world holds billions of you. Do we really have to kill you all to

  take it?”

  The lizard snarled something in its own language that

  translated as an insult but Paul didn’t let it go, nor did he kill it, he just

  held it still and stared it down. Several minutes passed before he spoke again.

  “Why are you

  doing this?”

  “I may not kill

  you, but one of us will eventually,” the lizard finally answered.

  “We are here to

  stop you from killing everyone in the galaxy,” Paul said icily. “We don’t want your deaths.”

  “Your words are

  meaningless, Star Force. You will die like the rest of our enemies, no matter

  how many of us it takes.”

  “Do you care

  nothing of being in the right?” Paul asked, sensing that he didn’t

  understand the concept. “Are you certain

  that we’re the enemy?”

  “You kill us.

  You are the enemy.”

  “We only kill

  you because you force us to. Surrender and you will live.”

  “We will not

  submit to you or anyone else. One may die, but the collective will survive.”

  “You don’t care

  about dying?”

  The lizard didn’t answer, just trying to extricate

  himself from the invisible hold, and Paul sensed that this conversation was

  over, so he shoved him back a few meters and dumped him on the floor. He

  tripped, with his tail catching on a corpse and flipping him over.

  “Not today,”

  Paul said, turning around casually and walking away. A few seconds later a

  phaser hit struck the shield covering his head, but he ignored it. Several more

  impacted his shields before he got to a doorway and disappeared around a

  corner. A few seconds later the lizard came after him, getting another line of

  sight on the Human, but before he could fire at his back both he and the weapon

  were picked up off the ground and thrown back out the door.

  The lizard immediately got back up and in pursuit, but

  when he got around the corner the Human was gone. A short chase followed, but

  he could find no trace of the slayer that had killed everyone else in his unit

  but had left him alive. Eventually he retreated, falling back to find another

  lizard unit to incorporate himself with and to receive new orders. Unless he

  had a mission that required solo action, there was no benefit to operating

  alone. Better to pool his strength with the others, which was the only way to

  take down the heavily armored enemy infantry.

  Paul made his way back to friendly lines…which was

  kilometers away through the interior of the ring. When he got there he bypassed

  the sentries and heavy defense posts as usual, but instead of checking into one

  of the relief areas onboard that held Star Force facilities, some prefab, some

  custom constructions, he headed to one of the protected hangar bays and boarded

  a dropship. He had it deliver him back to the nearby parked Excalibur and went straight into one of

  the most remote parts on the ship.

  It was in the sanctum, a little corner of it that was

  reserved for high ranking Archons. There was a special meditation chamber there

  that had several different themes to it, with Paul heading for the one that was

  based on Dagobah.

  The entrance was open, with only an energy shield

  separating the artificial corridor from the interior. He stepped through hit,

  having to push a bit to allow him passage, for it was keeping the dense fog

  contained within the ‘natural’ environment of the little park. As soon as he

  got inside he did an about face, immediately stepping back outside the energy

  barrier. He hit the release for his armor and had it peel apart across his

  chest, arms, and legs with the helmet disappearing behind his neck.

  Walking out of the metallic scarecrow he went back

  inside, this time feeling the warm fog hit his face as soon as he entered. He

  stood there for a moment, breathing it in and trying to get it to wash through

  his senses. When it didn’t fully work he felt a pang of panic, but locked down

  on it. Dropping to a knee, his sweat soaked uniform picked up a bit of mud from

  the contact as he ran through a mental reset that he’d had to do a long time

  ago.

  After a few minutes that worked, but it wasn’t enough.

  He needed to disconnect, think outside the box as he often did here, but even

  though his armor hadn’t let any of the lizard blood through to his skin he

  still felt covered in gore. The bastards were making Star Force fight like they

  did in order to stop them, and even though he knew that wasn’t entirely correct

  there was enough of it that was true to unsettle his stomach. They were taking

  planets from them, but he still felt like they were losing, in ideology anyway,

  and he had to find a way around this.

  But as he thought it through he came to the same

  conclusions he always did…if the lizards wouldn’t surrender and they wouldn’t

  stop attacking people then they had to be destroyed. Unlike other races, if

  they took them prisoner anyway they�
��d just kill themselves, so there was no

  indoctrination/imprisonation option with them, nor was there an option of

  taking their younglings away from them. Lizards didn’t learn their cultural

  core through experience, but rather through genetic knowledge placed into their

  coding before they were even born.

  So there were no untainted younglings to rescue.

  Lizards were produced as a product from genetic seeds. They were engineered to

  be this way, and even if Star Force could find a way to fix that genetic code

  to undo the inhibitors it would do no good for those alive and the planets not

  under their control. Star Force could create a new lizard civilization, in

  theory, one day but it wouldn’t change a damn thing. The current one would

  still have to be fought or destroyed, meaning that this blood bath had to

  happen or these bastards would continue to conquer and destroy all the weaker

  races they came across until they consumed the galaxy…or ran into the

  V’kit’no’sat.

  But by that time they’d have grown so large that it

  almost wouldn’t matter. Not for the little guys out there. Paul and the others

  had to take these bastards out now before they could kill more, but they were

  forcing Star Force to make it a blood bath and something in Paul’s gut didn’t

  like the feel of that. In the past he hadn’t like it either, but when they were

  a greater threat it seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

  Now though, these lizards honestly didn’t stand a

  chance against him aside from some fluke. He could kill them so easily, in so

  many ways, that there was literally no point in fighting. It was an automatic

  loss for them, but they were forcing him to kill them anyway, wasting their

  lives by the trillions in this war.

  Paul had killed so many over the past couple years on

  this ring that he had no idea how many he was personally responsible for, but

  he may very well have been in 7 or 8 digit range by now. And while he wasn’t in

  much danger he couldn’t say the same for his troops. They were hard to kill and

  this station was confined compared to ground combat, but there were still

  casualties mounting. In order to protect them he had to kill as many of the

  lizards as he could, and right now he should be back down there, resting up for