Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) Page 4

  That next generation was going to be in the hands of someone else, for as soon as they tidied up here they were leaving. This system was remaining in Star Force hands, but it was going to be under the direction of a mage while the trailblazers cycled back to the ADZ. Rafa was going to spend some badly needed time with the advanced training group and he wasn’t sure about the others. They hadn’t talked about what they were doing next, rather focusing on the task at hand and maintaining their training throughout.

  It had been a long war, but in some ways it didn’t seem like it. Once you got past a certain span of time everything blurred together and you just went with the grind. Rafa’s sense of time was linked to planets taken, not days on the calendar, and this one finished the set. Five systems conquered, zero casualties, and a prisoner count exceeding 3.07 trillion. What they picked up here would be added to that, but the bulk of that number had already been shipped to the Broj System, leaving Rafa and the others with a small pool of waiting cargo ships to carry these last few off. When they went, so would Rafa, and he could wash his hands of this place.

  The building he now sat on and all the ones in his vision would be gone if and when he ever came back. Every last bit of infrastructure was going to be torn down and replaced, erasing the Veliquesh from existence. After this it was back to fighting the lizards and that even longer war, which made Rafa laugh. When were they not at war? First it was with other Humans on Earth, then the lizards, followed by the Skarrons and a lot of little confrontations that didn’t even make the news. Archons were always fighting someone, somewhere…he was just glad the battles were taking place on the enemy’s turf rather than the ADZ being invaded. At least now they could pick their battles, more or less.

  “All done?” Jason’s voice asked inside his helmet.

  “Looks like, but there could always be a few stragglers.”

  “The sweeper teams can finish those. I’m heading back to orbit. Want a lift?”

  “Sure,” Rafa said as he stood up, with Jason sending him a waypoint across the city. “Be there in 20.”

  When Rafa finally ran up to the position where Jason had given him the waypoint he saw a Falcon-class dropship squeezed onto a road between two fat buildings and a trio of golden-clad Archons standing at the foot of the open boarding ramp. The trailblazers slowed to a jog as he came up on them, then stopped just a foot short of Oni’s armored shoulder.

  “Greg’s on his way,” Jason told him. “We were discussing where we were headed after this.”

  “Now or when we get back to the ADZ?”

  “Right now,” Oni clarified, “I’m heading to a sanctum for a nice long run, after that is the question. Do you want to head back to the ADZ on the same ship or are you going somewhere we’re not?”

  “I’m headed to Earth,” Rafa said. “What about you?”

  “Mordor. I’ve got Clan stuff to take care of.”

  “I’m going to pay Morgan a visit,” Kip added. “Her reports are indicating some heavy lizard activity in her region and I want to see what they’re up to personally.”

  “Well, I’ve got some rounds to make in Beta Region,” Jason finished, “but I can transit through Sol, so I’m up for a group trip if you are.”

  “I’m in no rush,” Kip mentioned as Greg came floating down to them from one of the nearby rooftops. “So I’m game.”

  “Game for what?” he asked as he walked the last few steps to them after deactivating his jump pack.

  “Heading back to Sol on the same ship so we can get some workouts in together before we head our separate ways,” Oni said.

  “I’d like to, but my I’m going to meet up with a task force heading deeper into lizard space not far from here. I’m not heading back home for a while.”

  “Sucks,” Kip commented.

  Greg’s golden armor shrugged. “Lots of lizard systems to take and this little detour put us behind schedule as it is.”

  “We have a schedule?” Rafa asked.

  “I’d like to be knocking on their homeworld’s door in a couple hundred years, if that’s alright with you?”

  “Fine with me, but don’t you want a break from combat to get in some decent training?”

  “Nope. I’m good as is.”

  “Can you stick around a few days?” Jason asked.

  “We need to babysit the tail end of this operation anyway, so sure. I’m up for a few days of kicking your asses in challenges.”

  “Your ship or mine?” Oni asked.

  “Mine,” Jason said, thumbing towards the dropship. “That’s where this bird is going.”

  “Settles that,” Rafa said as he brushed past Jason. “Let’s get to it.”

  Brad-050 arrived in Aphat 4 months after his fellow trailblazers left, bringing with him an army of techs and a few combat ships to replace the majority that had cycled out to lizard hunting duty. He still had a decent defense fleet under his command to protect the system, but coming with him were a flotilla of Sentinel pieces that would combine into two of the newest versions full of Keema batteries and the most advanced defense shields to date. With those in place it was going to be damn hard for the lizards to displace them, and nowadays they didn’t seem to be in a rush to try.

  Since the initial invasion the lizards hadn’t been back to Aphat or the other four systems that Star Force had taken from the Veliquesh. Those were being patrolled with their own guardian fleets while techs disassembled what was left of their infrastructure, then those fleets would eventually transition to Aphat, leaving nothing but monitoring equipment behind to make sure the lizards didn’t move in and claim them.

  Aphat was an entirely different situation, for the reclamation effort here was going to take far longer. Brad had picked the planet of Nym to begin his work on and had redirected all techs to cleansing a section of its surface and subsequently building a small Star Force colony in its place. As the techs progressed further across the planet the Star Force infrastructure would follow, at a much slower pace, but as time went on the Veliquesh stain would be erased and a new piece of Star Force would grow in its place.

  The facilities on Broj where the Veliquesh prisoners were being held also had the maturias for the children recovered. Those children were then sent into the transitional colony where they could prove themselves worthy or not of being full citizens. Already some had moved into the ADZ, but the ones coming out to Brad were another group entirely.

  When prisoners had been taken a fair number of the Veliquesh females had been pregnant. When they gave birth to the fleshy egg sacks in isolation, those as of yet unhatched younglings were taken offworld to a separate maturia located deeper in Bsidd space. Brad had been working with them for a while, but most of the maturia regimen was a copy of the Axius Protovic program so he didn’t have much to do there. His work was going to begin in earnest now that those maturia were starting to produce graduates.

  They weren’t in vast numbers, for the Veliquesh prisoners weren’t mating in isolation and the handful that were in the transitional colony weren’t adding all that many. That meant Brad had a limited window of opportunity to get a Star Force Protovic civilization set up and functioning before they ran out of younglings to grow it from. He had specifically said that none of the transitional Protovic would be allowed to join in the early stages, for he wanted to form it out of those who had known nothing but Star Force maturia, but intended to open it up to them a few decades down the road once the tone of the civilization had been set.

  That meant he had a lot of green personnel to work with, so he’d recruited a variety of individuals from across Star Force to assist him in forming the core of the new civilization. Few of them were Protovic, but rather a mix of Calavari, Kiritak, Human, Bsidd, and Elarioni, for this world did have a large ocean on it and Brad wanted to get the aquatics division started right away. There were around 1200 of them in total, meaning that aside from the construction crews building the colony everything was going to have to be staffed by the maturia gradu
ates and overseen by the ‘elders.’

  That wasn’t the most preferred situation, but given that Brad didn’t have a native population to babysit and he was able to start from scratch he felt it was a good place to start. Wisdom took time to build, and the more hands-on activity these younglings could get, the faster they would learn…though he was having a transitional support team in place to actually run the startup colony during the integration of the younglings. Things like food prep and maintenance weren’t something you wanted to hand them right off their first day, but the support team would cycle out gradually and within a year or two be fully replaced by locals.

  When Brad’s jumpship arrived he took a dropship down to the half-built colony with his elite staff and got to work right away setting up the necessary programs needed for when the younglings started to arrive a month later. A lot of that planning had already been done, but it wasn’t until they actually got on site that they were able to get a feel for the place and set up shop. There was a full sanctum in place for Brad’s use, so he intended to stay planetside for the foreseeable future rather than living out of a jumpship.

  When he got to the surface he essentially staked his claim and started micromanaging everything in order to make sure things were in order for when the first batch of 5,000 younglings arrived. He’s specified that number and would have exactly that amount coming in every month for the first year while the balance would be moved into other locations within Star Force to await their turn. Nearly all of them wanted to come to Brad’s new addition to the empire, for they’d been hearing of it throughout their maturia training, but the trailblazer knew he couldn’t overload the limited infrastructure and staff with too much new blood, hence a staggered approach was used.

  He spent a lot of personal time with that first 5,000. So much so that he eventually knew them all by name. He pushed them hard in training, got them acquainted with limited but essential duties, then relied on them to carry them out when the next batch came in and he saw to their indoctrination into the new order…save it wasn’t all that new for them, for all they’d ever known was Star Force. The few wrinkles that Brad put into the Protovic civilization took some getting used to and developed over time, but after that first year the trailblazer felt he had a sufficient core of personnel to open up the immigration doors and allow an additional 10,000 per week.

  The Star Force engineers gave him plenty of infrastructure to use and kept right on building as he incorporated more and more Protovic younglings into his new civilization. Some of them even began working with the construction crews to learn hands-on and begin creating their own branch. They weren’t given anything critical to do, just some basic work to gain experience on with the prime crews as they expanded the single colony out into a network of cities across the northern continent.

  As the colony’s population surged a small trickle of new infants came with it, which were put into a maturia on site staffed by the same people who had been working the others and were now transitioning here as those were being shut down stage by stage as they exhausted their supply of infants. Brad couldn’t trust younglings to run the maturias so they had to be staffed by professionals, but as soon as the local maturia had its first class assembled the Protovic civilization was officially born and sustainable.

  It would take another 20 years before any of those infants cycled into the general population, but the sequence was underway and Brad was careful to monitor all aspects of the new Protovic as they developed, making adjustments where necessary and improvements where he was able to fashion them. He kept his core staff around permanently, knowing that it would be a long time before the Protovic were able to fly solo, but with each year that passed they became more and more capable.

  Brad didn’t open the door to the older Protovic transfers until the 24th year, and even then he limited the number to only 10 the first month. He increased that tiny amount to 15 the next, then 25 and so on to make sure that the individuals assimilated into the masses rather than having a social division form between the old and the new. He wanted them all to identify simply as ‘Protovic’ and made the transition gradual for that reason.

  Over time he upped the number, but by then there were so many maturia younglings coming in that it didn’t truly matter and the transitional ones were blended in with the new civilization as they all worked to build and strengthen the newest part of Star Force. It would be a long time into the future before they’d start fielding warships and armies of their own to fight the lizards, but Brad worked patiently and diligently towards that end, slowly crafting a new twist on classic Star Force protocol to make the Protovic an effective and unique addition to the overall empire…and one that would surpass the independent Protovic civilization in comparison, tech advantage aside.

  5

  December 26, 2879

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  Naisha set her bag down on the bed of her new three room quarters. The design was slightly different than what she had been living in on Onyx but basically the same third level allotment that she’d earned in the transitional colony that was now in the process of becoming part of Axius. More and more non-Protovic were coming to the world as a slow trickle of people were coming out of the prisons. She didn’t know the exact number, but it had only been a few years ago when the ‘survivor’ count had passed 500,000.

  500,000 out of what had been 3 trillion people taken prisoner. Naisha had been insulated from the rest of the Veliquesh civilization, but she hadn’t expected it to be as thoroughly corrupt as that number indicated. On the other hand, given some of the stories she’d heard from other survivors it was amazing that anyone had come out of that mess of a life sane. But all those she’d talked to were, for like her they’d come through the transition process and earned their freedom. Naisha still didn’t know exactly how that worked from a psychological or scientific standpoint…but it obviously did.

  Most of the Protovic on Onyx were from the pools of younglings that the invasion had rescued before they could be evaluated as ‘unfit’ and killed, making her and the other survivors a small minority, then add in all the immigrants from other races and the planet had become a vibrant mix of faces and cultures that washed away the last bits of Veliquesh from her system…though she’d always retain the memories of how they’d tried to kill her and nearly succeeded.

  She never know who it was that had saved her, but what she’d learned of Star Force told her that it had been an Archon, based on the armor. She couldn’t for the life of her remember what color it had been, and though she wanted to know she figured that was probably going to be one mystery she carried with her for the rest of her life…which now that she’d attained self-sufficiency could end up being a very long time.

  Rather than spending her days in the colony lingering about as she had at first and many others did permanently, Naisha had trained as a generic worker, though for Star Force that was a lot more complicated that it sounded. It was the lowest paid position within the organization but one that still required extensive training. She spent over 8 months going through drills and procedures that expanded upon what she’d learned during her days in the prison…which she eventually found out doubled for what others went through in a maturia.

  The extra training ran her through all kinds of variables and how to deal with them, giving her basic training in the food supply division that was far more than she’d expected. Half of all Star Force foodstuffs were prepackaged, with the rest requiring combination and prep before being made available in the cafeterias. She began as a level 1 assistant having had lessons in various allergies and the components that went into every bit of food that Star Force provided free of charge.

  Other food items were available for sale by private venders, but Naisha hadn’t been allowed to work in a cafeteria until she knew every single item Star Force served and how to assemble each of those that were not prepackaged. That included the foodstuffs for Protovic, Humans, Calavari, and e
very other race within Star Force. The foodstuffs weren’t labeled as such, for some were palatable by several races, but they weren’t going to let her do so much as lay out the packages onto the display cases until she was able to spot potential problems, such as the wrong items going in the vending lines.

  All the foodstuffs looked different, even if it was as simple a thing as coloration, so people would know which ones were meant for them and which were not, and it was the responsibility of every single person on the staff to insure there were no mistakes made so the people coming in to eat didn’t have to think about what they were grabbing off the racks.

  It was important, as were all Star Force positions, and that was made clear from day 1 of training. When she began her work the tasks were simple, with her taking certain items from place to place and other menial tasks that could easily have been accomplished without any training required, but the difference was she wasn’t just following orders. She understood everything that she was doing and saw each item as a puzzle piece in a larger system that was recognizable to her.

  Working in that position was her way of paying back Star Force for saving her, though they in turn paid her a credit stipend for doing so. She received an automatic 2.2 credits per day when she began and that had risen to 2.9 by the time she’d petitioned and received permission to transfer to the Protovic colony on Nym. After a month of working in the cafeteria she had been given a quarters’ upgrade as default, but she went ahead and purchased the next level up. That had cost her .7 credits per day and was deducted from her stipend automatically, which still allowed her to accumulate a surplus to use on whatever she wanted.