Star Force: Ice Queen Read online

  The Duke sighed. “Oh well, I’m not making any headway here,” she said, swinging her left leg off the fake-ice armrest and letting her bare foot smack the hard crystalline floor with a tiny ‘plop’ of soft flesh as she dismissed the array of holograms with a simple thought.

  Jessica sat there for a moment, closing her eyes and running through a meditative cleansing routine…forcing all thoughts out of her head for a few seconds then stabilizing the blankness on a single thought as her brain returned to her surroundings, letting go of whatever had been consuming her and almost forcing herself to forget it.

  She glanced down at her naked body, and in particular her soft breasts that were clean and clear of any markings. Her entire body was, in fact, whereas many others chose to adorn themselves with genetic tattoos or altered colorations. She’d experimented with different skin and hair colors during her life, but it hadn’t lasted long. She’d found she preferred her natural pale skin and blonde hair, keeping it simple and pure like the ice fields beyond the windows.

  Jessica actually stood out in that regard, for ‘normal’ had almost become rare. Jessica could get any part of her altered with a simple stop to a med bay, and if she went to the equator of this world and walked the public areas she could see people with checkered squares of skin covering them from head to toe, girls with fully pink skin and sparkles instead of freckles, or even people with pitch black coloration that made them look like walking shadows. Others had glowing eyes or fingernails, let alone the vast amount of tattoos, text or otherwise, that were programmed into their genetic code and grow from within rather than applied externally.

  Normal now stood out, either as a choice or a fact of laziness. Those people who chose to do nothing more than lounge around for their lives after graduating from a maturia didn’t have access to the genetic alterations. Those had to be earned or purchased, but it wasn’t expensive and most people got some alteration done as soon as they could as a mark of status. The limitations were imposed so the medtechs weren’t swamped with people wanting to change colors or tattoos every other hour, and if people did even a few years of work for Star Force they could get a limited amount of alterations done per month indefinitely, meaning that almost everyone had something, even if it was just a few dots here or there.

  Staring down at her thin and mildly fit body Jessica wondered if she should make some admirer’s day and hop into bed with him…but no. She didn’t need her head any more muddied than it was now, and the Archons were right in avoiding such things. Jessica hadn’t indulged in decades, but her current predicament was making her consider doing a lot of stupid ideas…including going over to the window and banging her head on it until she came up with something new.

  Tempting as that was, she knew she just had to keep working the problem until an epiphany hit her and maybe a change of venue would help. The Ascension ceremony was taking place at Lake Nessi…so named by Trailblazer Page-071 who’d been helping with Project Legolas…and Jessica figured she was one of a rare few who actually got the joke of it.

  Times changed, and her job as Monarch was to make sure those changes were beneficial for the empire, and more specifically the Zezdi, but remembering the root cause for the name ‘Lake Nessi’ made her feel lonely. Few peers she had left from back then, most of whom were now out in the galaxy as Monarchs or Archons wielding powers that kept them separated from one another.

  Jessica reached back and grabbed the collar of the cape she was sitting on, triggering it to reach up and wrap around her body, transforming into one of her many elegant ‘Ice Queen’ wardrobes that covered her slender form from toe to neck. A thinner cape remained and flowed through the air as she rose and walked across the large chamber, her shoes clicking on the crystal floor as she looked at the ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The little white thing was more than jewelry, but she’d had it fashioned for more than just security. It was also a reminder.

  “To bear a ring of power,” she whispered as she approached the ice-like door that stood twice her height on the far side of the royal chamber, “is to be alone.”

  Alone amongst a sea of people…that was the Monarch way, for a guide had to keep their eyes ahead, not behind, otherwise those following them would be lost. And with your gaze fixed ahead, you could see no one behind you, leaving your mind fixed on the upcoming challenges and dangers, hoping you could navigate them before they could engager those under your care.

  Jessica touched the door and it responded, pulling back against her fingers as if she had glued them to it. On the other side was more traditional Star Force architecture, but still with a fantasy bent woven into it.

  “Ready my skiff,” she told a waiting guard/pilot.

  “What destination?”

  “Lake Nessi,” the Duke answered without breaking step. “I need to be there in three hours.”

  3

  The outside of the ice-smooth command center opened up near the peak but just below the royal chambers, exposing an internal hangar bay with a boat-like craft slowly creeping out. On it stood Jessica and her pilot, protected beneath a clear energy shield that would stop both wind and weaponsfire, but otherwise they were standing in open air inside a short rim railing on the Duke’s personal skiff.

  It accelerated quickly, cutting through the air with its pointed bow while gaining enough height to get over the surrounding mountains as they headed north…though technically any direction was north from the southern pole…as they headed across terrain that would eventually thaw to reveal huge plains outlines by a multitude of rivers, most of which flowed north into a huge lake that circled half the planet.

  That was Lake Nessi, their destination, and while a total of 11,429 miles long, at its thickest it was only 112 wide. Beyond it the terrain transitioned into forests that eventually bled off into sand seas. Those eventually tapered off near the equator, leaving nothing but hard baked, dry rocky ground that was more or less uninhabitable if you wanted to live outdoors. That was where the Mainline colony was, living inside of cities much as they would on a totally airless world, though Eoxion was quite the reverse. It boasted an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s and a gravity of 1.2 that tugged on Jessica now that they were outside her castle.

  Technically it was the anti-grav in the skiff that was holding her feet to the deck plates inside the IDF that kept her from feeling the acceleration and turns, but the skiff was programmed to mimic the gravity effect on it, so now it was in the heavier natural environment and adjusting accordingly. The Duke stood for a long time, watching the terrain pass below them as they zipped across hundreds of miles of it before the ice fields finally disappeared.

  Eventually Jessica sat on a padded bench as she watched the uninterrupted ‘natural’ environment around her. Civilization was the enemy of nature, but ‘natural’ had several definitions. One was organic, and the planet fit mostly into that category with the select bits of infrastructure contained to organized areas. Another definition was survival of the fittest, which was totally darkside. People being born into situations where they had to kill and eat each other was abhorrent, and civilization fought against that by producing surplus food stores that didn’t come from other people’s body parts.

  If you were born into a civilization you didn’t have to kill to eat and survive, but true civilization didn’t just pick out a corner of the galaxy and huddle there while others were suffering from ‘nature’. Of the many native races to this planet, most no longer had to kill to eat because Star Force also fed them. Seeds for the birds, grown and laid out across long fields were occasionally visible to Jessica on the plains, though they didn’t fly over any of them directly.

  They did fly by many flocks of differing varieties, not worried about hitting them at speed because of the deflection shields that would gently push them out of the way rather than kill them on impact…but the native birds were usually good about giving them room and the skiff passed by without incident all the way up to the edge of Lake Nessi.
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br />   It was easy to spot, for the bank had no trees along this side, only grasses. Some of them grew as tall as trees now that they’d been modified, but the lake was so big even they could not hide it on the horizon for long.

  The light of three suns made the reflections on the calm surface a kaleidoscope of flashes that soon surrounded the skiff as they moved out over the water at some 450 meters of altitude as they curved to the right and began to follow the lake. Jessica looked down, seeing from above some of the subsurface habitats on the lake floor, for the water was so clear that when you got an angle that didn’t have reflected sunlight you could see almost all the way down.

  It got quite deep farther out, but in the shallows the clusters of habitats were easily visible but not common. Most of the lake was just…lake, but every now and then she’d see another village much like where they were headed. Had they been late they would have flown a direct line, but so long as they had some extra time she liked to take more of a tour over these areas that she rarely set foot in but was tasked to take care of.

  Eventually, after traveling over a 1,000 miles of lake, the skiff came upon a city that was first below the water, with many subsurface habitat buildings appearing below Jessica, but they eventually transitioned into a large cluster that rose high into the air and had bridges out to both sides of the lake on one of the thinnest portions of it, barely 8 miles wide.

  This functioned as one of their embassies, of sorts, for Project Legolas had different factions that lived mostly separate from one another, but for some occasions they needed to interact and rare cities such as this one were built for those activities.

  Ascension ceremonies were rare, occurring once every 2 years if there was any cause to have them. Today there were not one, but 5 individuals ascending and Jessica had made it a point long ago to always be there where it happened and make a personal connection with the altered Humans born into this world rather than choosing to immigrate.

  Davis had explained to her long ago that the basic maturia system was based off of taking chaos and turning it into a semblance of order…but that such things carried with them inherent disadvantages and eventually Star Force would have to find another way. Not an abandonment of the maturias, but a change none the less. Project Legolas was the Director’s primary research experiment into that distant future, and even he had said he didn’t know what would come of it.

  The idea was to venture forth and troubleshoot as you went, but that required a population closed off from the rest of the empire without making them prisoners. There was an out for them, if they wished, and a few of them had taken it even though it meant a removal of their psionic birthright.

  Jessica’s pilot brought the skiff in to a landing pedestal on the top of the cloud-like puffy architecture as a few fliers approached and gave them an unnecessary escort. They waved at the Duke and she waved and smiled back, seeing the four Sky Elves’ clothes whipping in the wind as they paced the skiff. Her own hair wasn’t moving a bit under the energy screen, but they had no such protection, marking them as first tier and unascended…which was why they were having trouble keeping pace with the skiff, but as it slowed they caught back up and followed them down like attentive children until they came near the proper honor guard.

  They shooed themselves off before the others could and the skiff proceeded the last few hundred meters by itself before it landed amongst columns of four different breeds of Elf, three of which were standing on the landing deck, while the Sky Elves were hovering using their Yen’mer psionic in a perfect ring around the landing area.

  On the ground were the three Clans/breeds that could not fly, but who each had their own special attributes, and each had an individual here for the ascension. The Sky Elves did not, but since they had enclaves spread across the planet they were always here as witnesses when there was an ascension ceremony while the other breeds were not.

  There were 8 in total, with those here today being the Fire Elves, Water Elves, and Wood Elves. The others not present were the Ice Elves, Sand Elves, Earth Elves, and Stone Elves, but this location was open to all of them while technically being in Water Elf territory. There was no rivalry or competition between them, but they did keep to themselves as Davis had originally intended, allowing for 8 different tracks of genetic development as Star Force studied the passage of psionics and other traits from generation to generation.

  Zen’zat had never been intended to reproduce, and their genetic code…which was inherited by Humans including Jessica…was not tailored to improvement. Her own psionics had laid dormant within her until awoken rather than being refined by her ancestors one generation after another as the V’kit’no’sat races did.

  The Archons, Arc Knights, and Arc Commandos also reflected this, not being allowed to reproduce and transfer active genetics to offspring that were never designed to inherit them. What problems Humanity had had when it first began were lost to time, but Davis had said his best medtechs theorized a lot of problems that had eventually led Humanity to its former state…which was essentially broken Zen’zat. Minor modifications had been made to Star Force over the years to plug some of the holes, but the idea of an entire population with psionics and those psionics being tuned over the generations was something new to Star Force…and dangerous, which was why Project Legolas was being conducted in secret and away from everyone else.

  All the Elves before Jessica as she stepped off the skiff were born with telepathy strong enough to communicate with their mothers while still being in the womb. Almost all V’kit’no’sat reproduced via eggs, but the few that did not did not have their younglings with telepathy activated until a later stage of development. Many of the egg layers did and could communicate in a limited fashion with them before they hatched.

  Davis hadn’t known what would happen if unborn Human babies had their minds linked to their mothers in such a fashion, for no Human or Zen’zat had ever been born with it. They’d all developed with a ‘silent’ mind then gained the telepathy later while many V’kit’no’sat races did not. They could hear and feel the others while they developed, and the dynamics of that sort of civilization was something superior to Star Force and inexplicable even with their access to the descriptions in the old pyramid database. Humans didn’t have enough common experience to understand, and even the most powerful Archons in telepathy still couldn’t make sense out of everything denoted.

  While Jessica had never given birth herself, she’d been told by others that did that the Elves’ births were much easier because they could coordinate with their babies when the time came for their removal. A downside was the fact that the mother needed to stay with the infant for a great deal of time afterward to lessen the transitional discomfort, for after having another’s mind with you constantly for all of your life, taking it away was very disruptive.

  Human younglings were taken from their mothers at birth without incident, as were most other races. What Jessica had learned from the Elves was also partly responsible for her predicament with the Zezdi, for she didn’t know if separating them early would be beneficial or not given the efficiency she’d seen in the Elves.

  Their maturias were different as a result, but eventually the younglings did get separated from their mothers after joining a Quenya, which was equivalent to a maturia class but much more important. Because their Ikrid blocks had been removed from their genetics, they could share thoughts much more easily and had no automatic defense to another’s mind in their own. As a result a Quenya tended to learn as one rather than each individual progressing at their own rate.

  Individuality had to be taught to them later, rather than teamwork having to be taught to individuals within maturias. It was completely backwards to everything Star Force had been constructed on, which was why Davis needed data to work with regarding how they developed in isolation. Jessica was one of only a handful of people permitted to interact with them, and while she did have an Ikrid block, her own telepathy allowed her to communicate with them on
their level.

  The Elves had a bad habit of not using their voice and communicating only telepathically. That was efficient in a lot of cases, but not when it came to them never developing their voices properly. Because of that, Jessica always made a point of using both her telepathy and voice when she visited them, and today was no exception.

  She linked minds with the two Elves that stepped forward and exchanged warm greetings, then spoke when she got within a meter of them.

  “It is good to be back, my friends. I hear you have 3 this time?”

  “Indeed,” Timan, a Water Elf said with his long blue hair bracketing his pale face. “It is a good sign of progress. All three stand ready.”

  “Then let’s not keep them waiting. They’ve worked hard for this day.”

  “That they have,” Jorcha, a Fire Elf agreed as he summoned a spark in the slit of his right palm. It briefly grew in intensity until it formed a small orb of orange fire that Jessica raised her own hand to meet. Using her Rensiek so not to get burned, she pulled the heat into her body until the fireball extinguished, then sent it through her arm, across her chest, and up to her other hand that she pressed against Jorcha’s. She couldn’t produce the plasma that a Fire Elf greeting required, but she was able to return to the heat to his flesh, completing the amended ritual with a touching of their foreheads.

  Her blond hair brushed up against his red for a moment, then they pulled back apart and began walking through the assembled ranks to the entrance to the city beneath them. The other Elves, apart from Jorcha and Timan, held perfectly still out of respect until she stepped down the first of the stairs and moved out of sight…with her sending a brief telepathic ‘thank you’ to them all, relating her feelings of gratitude and honor in a way that words alone never could.