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  “Of course we are willing,” the Reproduction Councilor said cautiously, “but how will we sustain greater numbers, above and beyond our current growth scales?”

  “I do not want you to alter your current plans. Your civilization is now stable, and growing at a substantial rate. You’ve taken what we’ve taught you and applied it well, but what I’m asking of you now goes far beyond that.”

  The High Councilors exchanged glances with one another, but it was the Reproduction Councilor that spoke for them all.

  “We do not understand.”

  “Star Force is comprised of many parts,” Randy began, knowing this was going to take some explaining of things the Kiritas had not been previously informed of. “We have a military and a civilian split, with the Archons controlling the military and Administrators controlling our cities. We work together, much as you do with your respective divisions. This you know, but what you do not know is that there are more parts to Star Force.”

  “I am of Clan Star Fox, but unlike the clans that Kirit once had, my Clan is independent and self- supporting. This is critical, in that if the major network of Star Force infrastructure was to be taken down, Clan Star Fox could survive on its own. In addition, there are 99 other Clans, each capable of independent operation. We are each an individual empire, with our own cities, sometimes our own worlds. We have our own military, some of which is present in this system, the rest are standard troops, assigned here from the primary fleet, which is far larger than what any Clan fields.”

  “We are all Star Force, but we operate in different ways, structured for a future day when we are badly defeated. If and when that day occurs we will not crumble, for the Clans can continue on without the others…just as the primary fleet and colonies can continue on without the Clans. We are stronger for this, but the primary fleet and the Clans are not all that there is to Star Force.”

  “There is also another entity called Canderous. You have never seen them, for they are not present in this region of the galaxy, but they co-inhabit many star systems along with the Clans and the primary colonies. They are Humans that we, the Archons, have trained to be a military civilization that lives almost exclusively in space stations. They have some resource gathering infrastructure on the surface of worlds, but their colonies are always in space.”

  “They are independent as well, but they take orders from the Archons, and are part of Star Force. Our terminology can be confusing at times, for ‘Star Force’ can refer to our primary fleet and colonies, or it can refer to our overall empire that includes the Clans and Canderous. Also, in our home system, there are Human factions that are independent from us. Some are allies, some are not. They are small and insignificant, a remnant of the past, but they are also under our protection, so when we speak of Humans they are included, and when the term ‘Star Force’ is used for Humans, it can also apply to them, and the population number I gave you includes them as well.”

  “What I am here to ask of you…or perhaps I should say offer you…is for the Kiritas to become part of Star Force, part of our empire, while maintaining a level of independence, same way the Clans and Canderous do.”

  That set the Councilors off, and the din of hushed conversation between them was too convoluted for Randy to make out, even as it escalated into a full blown roar. Using his psionics, he could get the general sense of their mood…which was elated…and knew that they were going to accept in some form or another, for what he had just offered them was being received as a great honor.

  The frantic discussions went on for nearly 2 minutes before the Reproduction Councilor brought the others into order with a series of audial tones that sounded like a musically inclined jackhammer.

  “A point of clarification, Archon Randy. You said earlier that you needed us to grow, now you say that you want us to join with you. How are these two things connected?”

  Randy smiled, glad that he’d caught that.

  “As I said, your civilization is stable, and we do not want to upset that stability. We want to bring the Kiritas into Star Force as you are, while at the same time creating another Kiritas from volunteers. Long ago the Kiritas clans referred to those of you who were trained by us to be Kiritak, and separate from the rest of you. I plan to build a new Kiritak civilization, one with the sole purpose of collecting the raw resources we need to build the ships and infrastructure we need to defend ourselves against the lizards when they finally move against us en mass.”

  “The Kiritak would be led by Humans and use our technology, as we establish hundreds of new colonies with the sole purpose of collecting resources. We, the Humans, will monitor and control the population growth rate of the Kiritak, as well as supply all foodstuffs they require. We only need your volunteers to begin, along with as many eggs as you can spare.”

  “Meanwhile, the Kiritas will continue to advance on your own. Know this…we need you to be independent and capable of operating without the rest of Star Force. You need to advance your technology, your fleet, and be able to protect your own worlds when we are not here. When the lizards come, we may have to pull our ships away, and in their place you will have to step up.”

  “The Star Force fleet will guard the Kiritak and their colonies while the resources they harvest will be shipped out, for the most part, to the lizard front. There they will build warships and battle stations to prevent the lizards from ever coming here. You can help us defend ourselves against the lizards by providing us resources…resources that we cannot collect ourselves, for our numbers are too low. They are growing, but you have far more people than we do, with the potential to raise that number considerably higher over a much shorter period of time.”

  “That is why we need you to grow. Continue your stable growth as Kiritas, and channel to us your explosive growth through the Kiritak. Both will become part of Star Force. At present, you are our friends and allies. We are offering to make you our brothers. What say you to that?”

  The Kiritas Councilors exchanged glances with each other again, but this time there wasn’t much discussion. One of them put up a voting hologram above Randy’s head in the chamber in a simple ‘yes or no’ fashion, and the Councilors quickly input their votes, needing no further discussion or clarification.

  The tally quickly shot up to 58 yesses, making their decision unanimous.

  Randy smiled, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared up at the tally, and then them.

  “Welcome to the party.”

  Four years later…

  Morgan raised her strapped right arm up level to the ground, with her neo mimicking her movements and doing the same with the machine’s appendage, on top of which sat a small mauler cannon. With a twitch of a finger she triggered it to fire, sending a brilliant blue mass of energy across a couple hundred meters into the side of a Nestafar super dragon.

  The corrosive energy ate into the normally stubborn chrome armor, literally dissolving it in a splash of melted material that left a hole in the underside of the giant walker as Morgan’s neo ran up to and underneath it, getting hit with a red plasma blast from a leg turret in the process. Her mech’s energy shields caught it fully, spreading out the blast so that it surrounded her in a momentary cloud of ionized gas before the shields drained it of power and it reverted back into harmless hot air.

  Morgan pumped another mauler blast into the hole she’d just made, overlapping impact craters to get a small opening in to the interior of the gigantic walker. Standing underneath it as its six humongous legs propelled it onwards towards the Calavari battle fort, she raised her neo’s other arm, this one containing a plasma cannon, and started firing at near pointblank range in through the hole that was well above the mech’s head.

  The ranger got off three salvos before her shields failed and her neo’s armor started to take hits, prompting her to get moving again. She ran across to the other side of the giant walker, targeting one of the leg batteries that was firing on her while other Star Force mechs took the opportunity
she’d given them and targeted the hole with plasma fire and missiles while Morgan tried to snipe the heavy weapons that had been devastating the Calavari flying tanks.

  Meanwhile the super dragon’s primary weapon fired off another long range stream of thick plasma into the shields of the fort up ahead, this time penetrating the defensive barrier and winging one of the defensive cupolas on top, with the excess plasma passing harmlessly through air and out the far side of the base. Morgan saw the shield failure notice on her battlemap, and despite the armor damage she was taking, moved up to the front of the super dragon, dancing between its six giant legs to avoid being stepped upon, and fired her mauler up into the main cannon’s orifice.

  The energy hit a small shield protecting the walker’s primary weapon, blocking it from doing damage to the vulnerable mechanism, but the excess ate into the armor surrounding it, and Morgan knew that even if the shield didn’t go down, the armor would melt away with a few more hits.

  The Nestafar gunners on the massive walker realized that as well, with every available heavy weapon still operating on the legs and underside turning to target her mech.

  Luckily she saw it coming and ran back through the legs, knowing that the Nestafar weapons batteries rotated slowly. She caught a few plasma hits, one of which her renewed shields blocked before failing again, before she exited out the back end of the walker into the face of a giraffe as it collected red plasma at the peak of its head, preparing to fire at her.

  Morgan didn’t slow, but ran straight into it, jutting out a corovon alloy blade from the left wrist of the modified neo and hacking through the neck of the walker with one strong swing…though the blade stuck three quarters of the way through, but it was enough to sever the power conduits and render the walker’s primary weapon useless.

  Turrets on the back of the super dragon’s legs lit her neo up just as an internal explosion sent a plume of fiery debris back out the small hole in the left side. Two of the legs stopped functioning, bringing the massive beast to a frozen stop. Its weapons on the right side continued to fire, as did the main plasma streamer, which launched another ruby beam towards the Calavari fort, with this one hitting the barrier wall surrounding the buildings and melting through the artificial rock construction.

  Morgan deactivated the mauler on her right arm, regaining the use of her mech’s hand and grabbed the neck of the giraffe. Using the leverage she pulled her blade free, then ignored the nearly decapitated machine as its smaller weapons chewed at her mech’s legs and chest. She pivoted around, coming up on the super dragon’s left side and passing through or underneath the firing lines of a dozen or so Star Force mechs as she moved back up to the front and targeted the main weapon again as gold plasma orbs and streaks were nipping away at the walker’s almost impervious armor from a host of Calavari tanks halfway between it and the fort.

  Morgan’s neo was the only mech on the battlefield that had a mauler, so she knew she had to take out the primary weapon else it’d wreck the Calavari base like it had two others previously. With her own armor down to 50% in places she knew she could take a few more hits and tagged the nearest batteries on the super dragon as targets, hoping the nearby mechs could whittle them down before they roasted her.

  When she got up past the first leg on the left she pumped another mauler shot into the side of the stubby main cannon, melting some armor off as she shot a plasma blast into the shield covering the muzzle, discovering that it was still in place and wondering just what kind of matrix it was using, for the mauler usually disrupted shields. Then again, her mauler was just a baby mauler, so she hit it again with both arms’ weapons, and this time saw a little bit of plasma sneak through following the mauler.

  Then another huge ruby beam leapt up, with the defensive shield dropping a fraction of a second before it did, and reappearing afterward. Morgan didn’t even look at the damage it had done, nor to the flashing red on her own mech’s armor schematics, she just fired again and again until the mauler did its magic and penetrated the shield, melting the outer barrel and letting her plasma get in too.

  A hail of golden plasma followed, most of which missed but a few hits got inside the only vulnerable place on the otherwise armored weapon, followed by a radial plume of plasma as the weapon tried to fire again and malfunctioned, eating through its own armor as the magnetic constraints in the barrel were no longer powered.

  A sizeable amount hit the fort, but the rest opened up the barrel, melting away its components and causing a backwash that gutted the weapon. Now with a new spot to shoot at, the Calavari tanks, which were still getting picked off by the super dragon’s remaining secondary cannons and support walkers, concentrated their firepower and pounded the ‘head’ of the huge walker furiously as Morgan got the hell out of their firing line and retreated back behind her fellow Star Force mechs, who shifted to targeting the spiders and giraffes that had been escorting the big machine.

  Only then did Morgan take a good look at her armor, seeing it was chewed up and her shield generators had been slagged…or at least the emitters had been, with the internal generators still labeled as intact, but without the emitters they were useless.

  Walking with a slight limp, due to an excessive amount of armor having been sheared off the right leg that was now unbalancing the mech, Morgan circled around behind the three stars of mechs that were distracting the enemy from her and picked out a peripheral target, running up alongside a madcat and using her still intact mauler to help take down the spider it was targeting by slagging the belly plasma streamer in one shot, taking out its most potent weapon.

  With the super dragon down, the rest of the battle came to a predictable end. Morgan lost two of her mechs, but the pilots were recovered intact…the same couldn’t be said of the Calavari tanks that littered the road between the mega walker’s corpse and the fort, whose shield generators had survived the attack and were now covering the base with its protective canopy once again.

  “Morgan, you have a minute?” a voice asked into her spherical cockpit where the Archon was strapped into the control harness half nude.

  “Go ahead.”

  “A relief fleet just arrived in orbit.”

  “Who’s?” she asked, frowning.

  “One of ours, and it’s a big one. Says they’re looking for you.”

  “Who’s in command?”

  “Jenna-732.”

  One of her Ninja Monkeys, and a high ranking one at that. Whatever this was about, it had to be important else they wouldn’t have assigned an Archon of her caliber to babysit a fleet. It couldn’t be another taskforce, for only Morgan, Taryn, and Leif-069 had been assigned to the Calavari/Nestafar front, with replacement and relief fleets being sent out to them rather than having the trailblazers return to Star Force territory periodically for resupply.

  This new fleet had to be one of those, but if it was a lower ranking Archon would have been escorting it here. Jenna was too important to be wasted as backup to what usually was an all naval theatre of war. This particular ground excursion had been an exception, meaning that most of the Archons in Morgan’s taskforce usually sat on their butts onboard their warships twiddling their thumbs or training in the onboard sanctums. Most of the strategic and tactical planning was carried out by Morgan and her fleet Captains, meaning the Archons she did have with her were usually second string, yet seasoned fighters.

  “Connect me to her now,” Morgan ordered, still picking her way across the debris field of downed Nestafar walkers looking for living enemies, machine or biological, that could still pose a threat as the Calavari sent out troop transports to take care of any Nestafar crews trapped inside their disabled walkers.

  With resources spread thin on many worlds like this one, she had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t gun down surrendering Nestafar, though they probably deserved it. Star Force wasn’t taking permanent prisoners, and the Calavari didn’t want to waste foodstuffs on prisoners when their own people were seeing heavy rationing on w
ar torn worlds. That said, the Nestafar usually didn’t surrender, but Morgan wasn’t going to let any battle she was in devolve into a mindless slaughter.

  “Morgan?”

  “Here, Jenna,” she said to the audio-only commlink. “What’s up, Monkey?”

  “Big things in the works, including a convoy route back home that doesn’t rely on the Hycre. The ships I’ve brought with me are fresh out of the shipyards with the new Binary drives. We’ve got a link from Drema to Corneria that’s 3 and a half months long,” she said, referencing the relatively secure Calavari world that the Hycre had been dropping Star Force fleets off at, then letting them make their way across the Calavari spacelanes hunting Nestafar targets of their choice.

  That was almost as good as the Hycre’s 8 weeks, considering they wouldn’t have to wait for available carrier jumpships which always had load limitations. In fact, it’d allow much more in the way of cargo transfer once Star Force had enough upgraded jumpships to flood the route with.

  “Sweet,” Morgan said, knowing how important that would be, but knowing that wasn’t the reason why Jenna was here. “What else?”

  “Stuff I’d rather not say over the comm, no matter how good our encryption is.”

  “I had a feeling it was something like that,” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll be back in orbit within the next 10 hours. Meet me on the Red Ranger…but first, tell me whose brainchild this is.”

  “A team effort that originated with Paul, I believe.”

  That meant it wasn’t big, but huge, otherwise he wouldn’t be involving Morgan’s war theatre when he had his own to deal with.

  “Figures. See you in a few. I’ve got some cleanup work to finish down here first.”