Star Force: Crusade (SF93) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 3

  She should have expected nothing more from the devious bastards, and the trailblazer wasn’t going to make that mistake again. They’d fed Star Force what it wanted to see and they’d bought it, playing up the ‘we’re weak’ angle when they didn’t immediately pursue them coreward. After all, if they thought the reason was their focus on the powerful core systems around and including Krachnika the last thing the lizards would want was to project an image of regained power and potentially draw Star Force to their new replacements.

  Now that it was clear Star Force was holding to The Line, the lizards were going to use that power to go after the Skarrons…with Star Force not even knowing what was going on given the distances involved.

  One thing was clear, though. The lizards didn’t think they could take Star Force, but they did think they could take the much larger Skarrons down. Smart of them, on the first part, but what about the second? Had they miscalculated? Was this Crusade tactic something they were unaware of from their history?

  Or was it all part of the plan? Morgan didn’t think they could survive 90% of the Skarron fleet showing up here with extermination orders, but then again what was their play? They’d used the internal fiefdom conflict against the Skarrons and taken a chunk out of their empire that they would now be using to further invade…but did they really have that much strength in them? Had the Trinx upgrades really changed things that much?

  And they were still pressing on with this now that their tech lifeline had been cut. They wouldn’t be getting any more easy upgrades, yet according to the Voku and their own scouts, they were aggressively pushing into more Skarron territory and essentially poking the tiger straight into both eyes.

  Morgan envied their tenacity, as well as the 2s finding a way to incorporate their strengths into their Clans, but that wouldn’t work for the Ninja Monkeys. There wasn’t going to be lizards fighting lizards and Paul had been adamant about that. Morgan agreed. Fighting your mirror image was always a difficult thing to do, which meant as long as her Clan was on the lizard border they wouldn’t be incorporating any Paladin, even if all the other Clans did.

  Best to keep the lizards as clear enemies rather than muddy the water with enemy and friendly versions. Besides, she didn’t need the Paladin. She had Kiritas and Bsidd, and both of them combined were more effective than lizards. Kiritas could work better and Bsidd could fight better. Her Clan was only recruiting individuals, not growing new civilizations from genetic samples…and she really liked that potential capability…but there was no lack of available volunteers for her to pull from. Most didn’t meet up to her entry standards, but there were so many people trying to become Ninja Monkeys that she wasn’t in need of additional population.

  She was in need of additional experienced personnel, and that was something the Paladin were not. They were all green, but could function that way shortly after being grown. Morgan needed more than that and didn’t want to dilute the professional culture within her Clan by adding anything even remotely close to newbs in her ranks.

  The 2s could spam their way to results and Morgan could be jealous of them for that, but she greatly preferred the traditional method of building up individuals over time and accumulating them. And given the length of Star Force’s history and their large population base, she now had the luxury of pulling recruits that had hundreds of years of experience already…which she would then take up to the next level via her own training methods.

  And now the Ninja Monkeys were back to being on the front line. With the Rim Region expansion occurring the enemy lizards had become the JV team with regards for potential combat, but not anymore.

  With Paul’s hologram gone, Morgan pulled up a starmap of her current territory on the left and one of the entire border on her right…which she was now responsible for. Ninja Monkey territory covered only a tiny patch of it, with her now owning 53 systems spread out in a flat net 280 lightyears wide and 120 tall. It was a thin defense line, but an effective one, and she had surveillance equipment and patrols throughout the adjacent systems giving her more asserted territory than she actually inhabited.

  But she was going to have to do a lot better, and her Clan alone wasn’t going to be able to handle it all by themselves.

  The Hradeiti were a joke that Davis was tolerating in the hopes that they could grow to the point of expanding out into lizard territory on their own, but assuming the Crusade was coming that plan was now moot and they weren’t strong enough to hold the piece of the border they now owned. They were 18 systems of weakness that Star Force was carrying, but Morgan couldn’t have them on the front lines…meaning she either had to evacuate them or move the lines forward, just like the Voku were doing.

  Morgan smiled and interlaced her fingers, then inverted them and stretched her hands theatrically. She’d grown to hate the idea of The Line, imagining the lizards mocking her from just out of reach. She could go after any of them whenever she wanted, so it wasn’t the actual geography of it that bothered her, but rather the principle. Knowing that they were about to get stomped on, hopefully, alleviated most of that emotional burden while also making it apparent that the current Line wasn’t the best defensible position…and that while she had time, she might as well take the systems she wanted to defend against the Skarrons with.

  Which meant a brief conquest of their own, and that was something her Ninja Monkeys had gotten very good at.

  But scale was the issue. Looking at the map she needed to establish a wedge of systems around the Achkor Region, for that was the part of the line that poked into what had previously been Skarron territory. The Line that extended down to the Voku was pulled back around the Achkor bump, making it almost impossible for the Skarrons to take out the lizards and not come across Star Force.

  But that bump wasn’t in the best of locations. Star Force had built what it needed where it had it, but it hadn’t carved out the region based on defense. Looking at the greater map now Morgan could see numerous must haves, including some bottlenecks in nebula dense areas. She could get her ships through some of them if they jacked up their shields enough, but she knew the Skarrons and lizards couldn’t. That would give her some flanking jumplines to use if needed, as well as other permanently blocked lines that were too dense with diffuse gasses for her ships to get through at multiple times lightspeed…and going any slower was a waste of time when you could get there by circuitous routes.

  There were no black holes close by for her to seize and she didn’t want to press all the way out to the closest one, but it would probably end up being used to funnel ships into the region, meaning she needed her line far enough back from it that she could get scouting reports on what was coming rather than just having it show up on her front doorstep.

  That and hundreds of other considerations worked through her mind rapidly with her tagging systems and morphing the map in a simulation mode for several hours until she got a good border. A better one would have been pressed out further, but she didn’t think they had enough time to take that many lizard worlds and get them built up to a level to defend against a massive Skarron armada. That said, she didn’t know how much time they had to work with anyway, so it was best to not get too greedy. If they had more time there were some very valuable systems further out that she’d really like to have, but she couldn’t risk it.

  No, this new chunk of territory would be taxing enough to take and hold, but she’d make it work and turn it into a buffer zone. One built on battle colonies focused on producing resources and not population…and ones that could simultaneously be built expecting to become a battlefield.

  Yes, yes…the more Morgan looked at and amended her map the more she liked the overall idea. The ADZ was a clogged mess of non-combat personnel that was well defended, but she needed more than that. She needed the civies in the back and out of the way so she could cleanly fight anyone that came her way. It was the same principle that she’d been building Ninja Monkey territory on, only this was the mammoth sized version…and one
her Clan could never fill in time.

  Or could it…

  Watering down her Clan with a lot of new blood was a no go. She wasn’t going to wreck the mojo that had taken centuries to establish. That meant she could only incorporate recruits at a slow rate, giving them time to adapt and assimilate before eventually adding to their overall strength. Morgan didn’t have time for that with this. She needed a lot of people and resources now, and her Clan didn’t have them.

  “Paladin would be real helpful now,” she muttered to herself, but nixed that idea straight off. The 2s didn’t have them fully worked out yet, and even if they were they’d still be facing off and potentially fighting against other lizards and that was just a road that she didn’t want to go down, in addition to the other obvious reasons. That made the Paladin as tempting as Halloween Candy, but it was candy filled with drugs that would eat away at her Clan and potentially kill it. So no, she had to keep the Ninja Monkeys what they were and build on…

  Morgan snapped her fingers as an epiphany hit her.

  “Damn it. You and Jason aren’t the only ones that can add a Clan. No, make that Clans,” she corrected as her eyes began to twinkle with sheer devious joy.

  There was, after all, a long list of people wanting to join Clan Ninja Monkey. They might not be ready for that yet, so why not bring them onboard in a hybrid fashion? A feeder system, so to speak, made up of new Clans. Clans that were part and parcel of Ninja Monkey yet separate. They could do a lot of the construction and secondary defense work while the Ninja Monkeys took on the primary combat duties.

  “Who needs Paladin?” Morgan scoffed, pulling up a prompt and beginning to scratch out some notes as she began mentally building what would become a huge new Clan alliance. She’d need to recruit others, starting with Clan RaSeru. They were already on the border, but they’d need to get into a proper defensive line as well in order to prepare. The overall border was far too huge, but Morgan would take the hottest spot for invasion on her own shoulders while others would fill in around her.

  Clan Star Fox was next on her list. Even though a chunk of them had moved Rimward they were still the largest Clan and could probably take up piece of the border. Not a big piece, but Randy’s Kiritas built so damn fast they could help out even with their resources split…and he had Paladin to draw on as well. She’d let him work on that angle and whether or not he wanted their assistance on the border. Probably not, given that most of them would be in the Rim Region, but it was his call.

  Morgan selected several other Clans, all of which were not involved in the Rim Region, and made basic guesses as to what they could handle, plotting out a net around her now huge territory and nodded appreciably. It certainly didn’t cover most of the border, but the Skarrons would be hard pressed to attack them without coming through somewhere on this grid…and if they tried to flank them they’d have to go way the hell out of the way, in which case Star Force’s various factions could get involved. The Skarrons would not have a chance to build a string of support systems to flank them, for Morgan did not intend to just sit by and watch something like that happen. She’d strike first if they shot into the gap between Star Force and the Voku or the other surrounding regions, but she doubted they’d try that.

  If a Crusade really was a juggernaut on steroids, then they’d just run into the first wall they found and try to smash it down…which was why Morgan was going to build a badass wall and sit behind it while they and the lizards fought it out, keeping quiet and buying as much time as possible before attracting attention. But if and when the hit came, it was going to come on this extended nub into lizard territory that she was going to make her own and fill it with her Ninja Monkeys and soon to be formed JV Clans.

  Paul had said Davis approved and had left her in charge to organize the defense however she chose, so there was no point in asking for permission. Paul and Jason had added a Clan without permission and she was going to add hers…but first she needed to get her list of existing Clans onboard and set them in motion, for there was no time to waste. They had lizard worlds to take and hold, then a lot of building to do.

  A lot of building…and without the resources of the ADZ, most of which were already spoken for in local projects or being exported to the Rim.

  4

  February 1, 3478

  Solar System

  Earth

  “Come in,” Vortison said as he saw the Archon at his doorway.

  “Are you sure about this?” Lara-379 asked.

  “As sure as I can be. I can try it out on someone else first if you like, but I thought you deserved a bit of compensation after that previous debacle.”

  “I don’t want to lose any more levels,” the newly reclaimed titan said as she walked into the genetics lab.

  “You won’t,” the master tech said confidently.

  “Alright then. I’ll risk it.”

  Vortison waved her towards the nearby medical station and she walked in, pulling down the containment bar so the equipment fully surrounded her at the waist and the top of the chamber formed a cupola that would have shaded her had it not been indoors. As it was, there was a lot of subtle blue lighting on the device that marked it as Star Force made rather than V’kit’no’sat.

  “I have to make adjustments as I go, so this will take longer than a typical ascension, but there should be no pain. I’m not numbing it out, so I want you to tell me if you feel anything.”

  “Won’t the flash growth be painful?”

  “Sorry. The spot numbing of the device will be intact, but ancillary blanket numbing will not. If there’s any spillover of damage or alterations occurring you will feel them.”

  Lara nodded, simply standing in place as the machine scanned her and Vortison studied a series of holograms around and on top of his control station.

  “You’re sure about this?” she reiterated.

  “I wouldn’t have called you otherwise,” he said, continuing to work.

  “Do you need me linked in?”

  “Not just yet. There’s no need to be nervous.”

  “No, none at all,” Lara mocked.

  “Relax, Archon,” he said a bit more sternly. “These aren’t alien genetics I’m working with. I’ve been studying our code for over a millennia. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I’m sure the V’kit’no’sat geneticists said the same thing.”

  “Well I’m better than them…as of now, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m catching up with the database knowledge and I’ve had to work my way up the ladder rather than having it spoon fed to me. I’m guessing I understand the subject matter better than most of them did, and I know they didn’t try anything like this.”

  “You’re not filling me with a lot of confidence here.”

  Vortison pointed up at the contraption around Lara. “We didn’t copy that one. We built it from scratch to suit our purposes. It’s superior to what the V’kit’no’sat use, not so much in raw technology, but as far as tailoring it to match Star Force’s methodology. I wrote a lot of the basic programming myself rather than just straight copying theirs. Most of it is similar, but I can assure you I understand what I’m doing rather than just repeating their accomplishments like a stamp monkey.”

  Lara giggled despite her misgivings. “Stamp monkey?”

  “A very old technology had a rubble mold with a pattern in it, so one with no artistic ability could put ink on it then ‘stamp’ it down onto paper and create an emblem of some sort. And they could do it again and again, hence the term ‘stamp monkey.’”

  “You’re saying the V’kit’no’sat medtechs just knew how to push the buttons?”

  “I wouldn’t discredit them that far, but when you’ve had to build the equipment you use, you tend to understand it better than those that are merely informed of how to operate it.”

  “Alright then,” Lara said, setting her hands on the sphere in front of her, “impress me.”

  “Just a moment more. I�
�m syncing your code oddities with the model. That should alleviate the…glitches this time.”

  “I thought those were from the extra tissues?”

  “Only if there wasn’t enough room for them, but the V’kit’no’sat aren’t that stupid. They can count. It’s the implementation that’s the problem, and programming a base sequence into the genetic template doesn’t take into account individual variations…hence you get a raw transition that you have to heal from afterwards.”

  “And that’s why a regenerator takes away the pain?”

  “It fixes what your body couldn’t on its own…at least not very fast, and in some cases such as yours, not at all.”

  “Alright, but if I splinter like a porcupine again I’m kicking your ass.”

  “I’m not worried,” Vortison said, bringing the interlinks online and freezing Lara’s hands to the sphere as the tiny tendrils of machinery bored microscopic holes into her skin and then extended throughout her body, giving him far more data than remote scans ever could. “Beginning ascension process now.”

  Suddenly Lara felt her head wash with disorientation. There was no buildup this time, no swirling hurricane that she had to control. Rather it was a tsunami of internal resets that left her so loopy she didn’t know how she stayed standing…then she remembered that the machine was holding her still, for she couldn’t move a muscle. Lara’s head got its orientation back, but she was locked inside a statue’s pose until Vortison released that restriction as he saw her body’s control systems reasserting themselves.

  “Any problems?” he asked as she shuffled her feet, though her hands were still stuck to the sphere.

  “Dizzy.”

  “Pain?”

  “No. Is it done? I can’t feel anything.”