Star Force: Veracious (SF48) Page 3

  Back in the day she’d been accused of being inflexible and never being able to change that, then when she’d gotten to Archon basic training Wilson had taught them how they could customize their bodies however they wanted with time and proper training. Since then she’d proven her former naysayers wrong and had become quite flexible, gradually extending her range of movement as she lightly pressed her current limits and caused her body to add additional material to her ligaments, lengthening them and other tissue. She’d had to build her flexibility whereas others had been born with it, though now she surpassed the people she’d gone to school with that had been deemed with ‘natural’ talent.

  Unfortunately they weren’t around to gloat over, and not because Bri wasn’t on Earth. Everyone she’d known growing up, friends and family included, were all dead now, failing to reach self-sufficiency and dying from attrition damage. Bri couldn’t imagine doing that, after all, how could one just sit on their ass and let their body fall apart?

  Then again, how could one think someone was permanently inflexible? Bri realized there had been a lot of ridiculous ideas on Earth back in the day that seemed to be common sense, and even though her friends and family hadn’t lived to see the changes to the planet she was glad that most of those stupid ideas had been burned away by Star Force, with the Archons being the prime example of what one could do with proper training…not in theory, but in practice.

  It galled her even more to think that people once thought that sugar was bad for you. It and the ambrosia flowing through her veins was what gave her the energy to train at such a high level, and she’d remembered Wilson’s words on that too. ‘Sugar is rocket fuel. If you’re not a rocket you probably shouldn’t eat it.’

  Simple wisdom like that was ahead of its time, and she was very grateful to have been selected for Archon training and being able to learn from men like Wilson and Davis. They’d shown the light on so many lies that they’d basically given Earth a sunbath, cleansing it of most societal stupidity after a long, hard fight…and now that fight continued in the ADZ and beyond, with Bri heading up one of Davis’s many swords that he was using to hack down the forest of stupidity that most of the galaxy sat within.

  But in this case she and her team, designated Gamma 6, were dealing with more than stupidity. They were dealing with bad people doing bad things, and whom were trying to hide their actions from Star Force, knowing well how Davis’s clandestine teams and the trailblazers had dealt with their previous violations of ADZ rules.

  The wall clock hit 5:00 and switched over to a 10 second interim before starting another 5 minute segment, allowing Bri time to lift up on her hands and out of her side splits, only to rotate her torso around and ease back down into a forward splits with her right leg forward. She adjusted her position a few times, getting a good feel for the support blocks, then lowered down until she felt sufficient tension, settling in for another good, long stretch.

  She went through three more, finishing with a handstand set of pushups before hitting the showers and heading up to the command center. The base she was currently residing in wasn’t on a planet, but a planetoid-sized chunk of rock that most likely had been part of one. It was surrounded by a swarm of other asteroids that had stretched out into a 1/3rd orbital arc around the system’s star and far outside the only planet in the system, which was a blue gas giant in very low orbit, making it far too hot for Hycre tastes and virtually unusable to anyone else.

  The asteroid field held plenty of resources, but it was virtually impossible to get to with differential gravity drives. There was literally nothing to brake against save for several large chunks like this one, but to do so meant you’d have to fly through the other, smaller asteroids, practically insuring that you’d kill yourself in the process.

  One could make their way out on thrust engines, but given that the system was uninhabited there was little chance that someone would go to that much effort, giving Star Force a resource base to draw off of without anyone else’s knowledge that they were then using to expand the hidden base that was one of some 7 currently built in the Clan Neon Squirrel circuit. Liam’s Clan had three bases within the ADZ and four outside it reaching into what had once been Calavari territory and below it, putting this system far beyond Protovic space and out of the way of anyone’s attention.

  What Bri was using it for was a way station, allowing her ships to refuel and otherwise resupply without having to return to the ADZ and an official Star Force colony. The scout ship the commando had mentioned was one of 18 tiny jumpships designed as a personnel transport. They couldn’t carry anything other than passengers and some small amount of cargo, but they were the fastest ships that Star Force had and Bri’s fleet was out scouting nearby systems trying to track down activity that some of the ADZ members were conducting out here in the ‘wilderness.’

  And there was a lot of activity going on, not all of which was coming out of the ADZ. The region of space they were currently in was sort of a no man’s land in between the lizards, Nestafar, and Skarrons, with no controlling faction and a very lawless, panicky environment. Bri didn’t land on planets regularly, nor did her scouts, but what they were observing from orbit or deep surveillance points in the systems they scouted was disturbing. There was a lot of nastiness going on that she didn’t have the power to stop, and a good amount of it had ties to the ADZ.

  The trick of it was, with so many star systems, literally in the hundreds of thousands around the perimeter of the ADZ within easy access, there was no way to monitor it all and the ADZ members knew it. They might behave themselves inside Star Force’s domain, but beyond it they reverted back to their bad habits, some of which Star Force wasn’t going to stand for.

  Others chose the more clandestine route, using intermediaries to do what they wanted that couldn’t directly be attributed to them. As such, a lot of smugglers, mercenaries, and other forms of pirate were working for some of the ADZ races outside the ‘safe’ zone, with most of them based out of Scionate space.

  Though not an outright defiant member of the ADZ, the Scionate clung to their independence and allowed their systems with no Star Force presence to act as bastions of unmonitored activity. Bri and the others still had transit rights through their systems, meaning they could drop in and take a look, but they didn’t have any Star Force infrastructure there, making those systems the inroad for the people that Gamma-6 and others needed to monitor.

  That actually worked to their advantage, because the smugglers would use predictable routes, allowing scout ships with good pilots and a bit of luck to track them through interstellar jumps, though they rarely were able to follow them through more than one before losing track of them. You had to be right on their heels to remain in contact and get a good jump measurement to know where they were going, and then get yourself aligned and off at a precise speed, otherwise you’d fall behind or overshoot your target.

  Bri’s pilots knew what they were doing and had been tracking a number of ships and plotting their preferred routes. The ones less frequented were harder to find, with this latest attempt apparently paying off as her ships had been visiting every star system within 10 light years of the last known jump point.

  When Bri got into the command center and pulled up the recent reconnaissance data she concurred with the assessment. Distant scans showed considerable infrastructure on a planet that was supposed to be uninhabited, as far as the charts that Star Force had compiled from a number of sources said. The scout ship had also captured sensor data for one known ship interacting with the surface via a slew of dropships, either unloading or taking on cargo. It wasn’t broadcasting an IDF so they didn’t have conclusive evidence of what ship it was, buy they’d pulled enough of a sensor profile off it to identify it as a Lemickas-made transport.

  It was a design that they didn’t use themselves, but manufactured exclusively for sale. The stubby little race of bipeds were rather industrious as well as unscrupulous, not caring who they sold their ships and oth
er products to and not looking beyond their own borders to see what they are used for. That wasn’t a problem with Star Force, for the Lemickas were just doing business, but it wasn’t uncommon to see their transports used by private enterprises that were trying to avert Star Force’s notice.

  One noteworthy feature of the design was that it doubled as a slow jumpship, meaning that those who couldn’t afford to purchase a convention one could buy their own interstellar transportation for relatively low price…if you didn’t mind the long haul between systems. Privateers and independent shippers swore by the craft, and a number of the ships that Bri’s fleet had been monitoring were of this design.

  Bri contacted her warship, stationed on the dark side of the base so it wouldn’t be visible on sensors to any ships passing through the system who happened to look in their direction. They’d have to be looking very closely to notice anyway, but since the base was intended to remain a secret they weren’t taking any chances. She checked in on their status and informed the captain that they’d be leaving the next morning, then she headed off elsewhere in the base that housed some 50,000+ personnel, most of whom were not under her direct command.

  They were a mix of Clan Neon Squirrel personnel and a few other Clans plus mainline troops, techs, and other useful individuals. There were no true civilians in the base, with everyone being here for a purpose. As it was, most of them were engaged in other circuit activities, scouting missions and construction, while Bri’s fleet had just made the base its temporary home, same as Beta-4 had done two months ago.

  The planetoid chunk was still being expanded into, keeping the surface features ‘natural’ and all the infrastructure interior. Likewise the mining ships roaming the asteroid field were drilling into other large chunks and hollowing them out, both to keep their activities all but invisible, as well as to build structures inside. Right now only the main base was inhabited, with the few others that had been constructed to date being used primarily for storage.

  One of those held a fuel reserve that had topped off Bri’s warship immediately upon arrival in the system, meaning that they wouldn’t have to worry about doing it now when they needed to leave in a hurry. There were still some other supplies that needed to be transferred over, but those would be finished within a few hours. It was Bri’s crew that was currently in the base that she had to get over to the ship.

  Most were techs and pilots, which would be recalled via the comm system, leaving only a handful of Archons that Bri needed to track down, knowing that most of them would probably be in the sanctum and off comms. She managed to contact 3 of them remotely, then headed over to the base’s sanctum and interrupted them during the workouts, knowing that some would need a few hours to deal with side projects before they left.

  Bri politely butted into several intense sessions, waiting on a few to finish and just telepathically telling the others while they were in action rather than stopping them to deliver the message. The last two she found in one of the small sparring rooms, sitting crosslegged on the pads facing each other and levitating a weight between them.

  The ranger reached out telekinetically and grabbed the weight, suspending it herself and grabbing both of their attention…which apparently had been so focused on the task at hand that they hadn’t detected her approach.

  “What?” Karen asked, glancing over at her in sync with Travis.

  “Ready for some action?”

  “Please,” her brother answered.

  “We got a hit. I need you both back onboard, we leave in the morning.”

  “What’s morning?” Karen asked.

  “3 am.”

  “Morning morning,” Travis clarified.

  “Yep,” Bri said, floating their weight over to her and grabbing it in her hand. “You guys can lift this?”

  “Battlemeld Nemsa. We can’t do it stacking.”

  “Not even close,” Travis agreed regretfully.

  Bri raised an eyebrow. “Not bad. Wish I knew how to do that,” she said, floating it back out between them and letting the two acolytes get hold of it again. “Carry on.”

  About time, Travis told his sister after Bri had left.

  What do you think they found?

  I say base of operations.

  My money’s on a meat farm.

  Yuck…I hope there are at least some mercenaries. I want a challenge for a change. Smugglers are too easy.

  We’re not there to have fun, Karen corrected him. That’s just bonus.

  You want to finish here?

  No, might as well switch sanctums before we get into the heavy stuff.

  Right, Travis said, using their battlemeld link to pull the weight over to where he could reach it, though technically they were both moving it in sync, only he didn’t have to ask his sister to help him. She was in his head and him in hers, with movements like this occurring without conscious thought or request.

  The level 67 acolyte carried the weight with him as they left the room, then deposited it in the nearby lifting chamber where he’d grabbed it from. After that they both headed over to their temporary quarters in the base, which were situated next door to one another, and packed a light duffle with their personal belongings. A few minutes later they met each other outside and headed over to the hangar bay, tagging a dropship pilot to haul them over to the GameRay.

  The Mk. 26 warship was one of the newest in service, with an enhanced gravity drive that gave the ship quicker jumps and more range, letting them be the hare to the smugglers’ tortoise. It was as fast as a Hycre jumpship, which was still too slow for Karen, considering how much unused tech they had waiting in the pyramid to unlock. She didn’t see what was taking so long, but was glad they hadn’t been assigned one of the clunkers for this mission…and very glad that they weren’t stuck with training or ‘residential’ assignments.

  These intercept missions might be easy with a lot of downtime in between, but they were live combat, which was what both of the twins wanted. They would have preferred a front line post fighting lizards, but that hadn’t been an option, though the trailblazers had saw fit to allow them to stick together. Splitting them up would have been downright stupid, and even though they didn’t get along with one another she was glad that they’d respected them enough to keep her and her brother together as a pair…sort of a super Archon, for most typical assignments were all individual, save for a few exceptions.

  After getting off the dropship and letting it return to the base to wait for other passengers, Karen and Travis dumped their duffles off in their normal quarters and headed over to the ship’s sanctum, grabbing an open sparring chamber and proceeding to enter into a game of ‘twister’ wherein they helped each other stretch out in two person holds, both to increase flexibility and warm themselves up for the agility challenge they were about to get into before Bri had arrived.

  Downtime or not, the twins were leveling up faster than any other acolytes and they intended to keep it that way, knowing that they’d have to get much higher in rank before they got to start choosing their own assignments, as well as stay ahead of the other Archons coming out of basic training, let alone catch up to those ahead of them. Paul and Jason had accused them of being lazy numerous times, and both Karen and Travis still felt the burn from that, with them deciding to work their asses off that much harder in order to prove them wrong, and to date they were catching up to and passing Archons older than them by the droves.

  4

  April 18, 2534

  Xaxe System (beyond the ADZ)

  Unnamed Planet

  The GameRay came into a high orbit, braking heavily so it could avoid the normal parking lanes. As the sensors caught up to the transition Bri had 4 ships pop up on orbital scans…all cargo ships based on the designs and no threat to her warship, though what was on the other side of the planet was unclear. It could hold more ships in orbit, which was why she’d wanted a high observational position, allowing the jumpship to sit and watch to see what came around. While it was po
ssible to hover on anti-grav, doing so was simply too much of a fuel burner, which meant ships would sit in orbit and coast around a circular or elliptical path, eventually revealing themselves to a fixed position.

  The GameRay was slowly falling into the planet rather than putting itself into an orbit, but being so far out it wasn’t a concern. The surface infrastructure that the scout ship had detected was currently out of the line of sight, and Bri was going to wait until it rotated around before sending anyone down…which would occur in 36 minutes, according to the mapping data that the scout ship had brought back to update their records with.

  The infrastructure the scout ship had detected from range had been little more than material readings differentiating from grass and dirt in geometric patterns. That basic outline had told them where it was on the planet but not what it was. Now that they were much closer than the scout ship had been, that weak schematic began to fill in as the planet rotated beneath them and exposed the construction to a more revealing scan.

  Bri watched as a far greater region was detailed, with small structures and what looked like walls outlining large tracks of land around the heavy infrastructure…at which point she immediately knew what they had here, based on her previous knowledge of Earth before the ‘golden age’ had begun. These were farms, and even though the sensors couldn’t pick out life forms from this distance, she was sure they weren’t growing plants down there, save for maybe foodstuffs for their ‘livestock.’

  Whoever they were had a meat farm set up out here, risking attack from the lizards, Nestafar, pirates, or any of the other threats in the area in order to get outside the ADZ’s legal restrictions…then to smuggle the meat back inside, probably through the Scionate worlds, or maybe even selling to them directly.

  Bri flipped her earpiece on with a telekinetic button press and cycled through the various options until she got the pair of IDs she wanted to contact.