Star Force: Perquisition Page 4

  He didn’t try to work on all of them, deferring to his medtechs and letting them treat the Protovic with equipment from the dropships and eventually, once they were trusted enough, they’d landed one of them right in the middle of the village to use as a makeshift medbay. The cultural exchange continued from there with his team moving around freely taking samples and adding to their very limited linguistic database. Some of the villagers helped out, but most were just watching in awe. Trey was now able to remove his helmet without sparking fear in the Protovic, for now they saw him as a great healer and asset rather than a threat.

  Fortunately they didn’t know how much of a badass he was, otherwise they never would have calmed down.

  He’d dispatched other small teams across the planet taking samples from uninhabited regions and doing the boring legwork of digging up data for analysts to use later while he got to play Doctor Who with the villagers, with his psionics working as well or better than psychic paper. He just hated not being able to have a meaningful conversation with them…and the fact that they were living in horrid conditions.

  He’d seen worse, by far, but they were so primitive and ignorant that it hurt, yet they were eager to learn despite the road bumps. Cultural clashes were occurring every day, but after Trey got to the root of the problem and literally jumped into their heads to wash away the resistance they began to learn and learn fast…so much so that new arrivals began to turn on the locals for violating their cultural protocol.

  That was when Trey had to step in, pulling a Vader on the first beating he observed and telekinetically grabbing and holding aloft the outsider that was issuing the appropriate response based on their local culture…or whatever other excuse you liked. It was still unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. When the locals saw the magic that the Archon was capable of, above and beyond the healing, the obvious protests stopped but he could still feel the searing looks of those that considered this whole village to be heresy.

  “Where have you been?” Trey asked Viron when he came back up into the dropship where the Archon was sitting chewing on a snack bar while the crowd outside stayed a respectful 4 meters back beyond the line he had drawn in the sand as he had instructed them to do. They were not to come into the dropship or even touch it without permission, and so far there hadn’t been too many violations of that edict.

  “Impregnating some locals,” the Commando said deadpan, walking in out of armor. Dangerous as that was it had become imperative that the villagers interact with him on a more personal level than the hardened battle plates allowed. “What’s up?”

  “How do you feel about a camping trip?”

  “Here or somewhere else on the planet?”

  “Here. I want to bring down supplies and send the Ma’kri back for support. We need a digging team and…a lot of other things.”

  “And you don’t want to leave?”

  “I’m worried about what will happen if we do. Take away our protection and I get the feeling that some of the outsiders would torch this place and everyone in it.”

  “I have been getting some strange looks from them, but I’m not in their heads like you are. You think a fight’s coming?”

  “They’re too afraid with us here, me in particular. But if we leave I’m not sure what will happen, but I fear something bad.”

  “You want more time to work on the other villages before we pack up for good?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “We can’t stay here forever. If a fight’s coming we can only protect them to a point…unless you want to take these villagers with us back to the ADZ.”

  Trey tapped a finger on his own head. “Now you’re thinking…but too small.”

  Viron looked at him for a moment, then his glowing purple eyes widened. “The whole planet?”

  “Why not? We can’t fit them on the Ma’kri, but after processing 3 trillion Veliquesh the 428,000 on this planet will be a piece of cake.”

  “Just like that? We take them away from their homes without even asking them if they want to go?”

  “Annexing this planet is out of the question. Too far away and we’d be dependent on The Nexus grid point system.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  Trey sighed and gestured out the open dropship hatch to the villagers standing there watching them talk but unable to understand their words. “Look at their living conditions. They’re dying from injuries and illnesses that we can squash with a single medpack. Their huts are sturdy, I’ll give them that, but they’re little more than crude tents. Their food supply is partly meat, which is unacceptable, and pathetic beyond that. Leaving them here would be cruel.”

  “I can’t argue with that, but it is their world. Shouldn’t we at least ask them?”

  “Feel free to explain what Star Force and the ADZ are. And even if you convince some of them to go, what about the rest that are too scared or stubborn to come. More importantly, what of their children? Should they have to live like this because of their parents? And what of those yet to be born? We were lucky being born into Star Force. These people weren’t, but we can fix that problem right now…or in a handful of months anyway.”

  Viron shook his head. “I don’t think stunning them is the way to go about it.”

  “For the grumpy ones it will be, but yeah the rest will need to be handled differently. You’re their favorite, so…”

  “I still can’t talk to them, so what do you want me to do?”

  “I’d like you to volunteer for a follow up assignment…noncombat.”

  “This isn’t exactly combat, you know. What do you have in mind?”

  “A friendly face to walk them through indoctrination. Even if they want to go it’s going to be traumatic to them.”

  “Do we have facilities to handle them?”

  “If not they can be built quickly enough for this small a number. The travel lag will afford that. I’m putting together a report to be sent back with instructions. The return convoy won’t come until everything is set in motion, though the digging crews will come immediately. I want a look at those ruins before we pack up shop.”

  “How do I babysit 400,000 people?”

  “For those who want to come, personally. For all the rest via recordings. Better to have you speaking their language than a Human or even another Protovic. The more familiarity the better.”

  “You’re right about this, but it’s still going to be a punch in the gut that I hate to give these people. They don’t deserve that…some of them anyway. A few I wouldn’t mind punching the old fashioned way.”

  “Do you know a better way?”

  “Other than claiming this planet and upgrading them here, no. How much would it cost to do it that way, as a transition, with us abandoning this world eventually after they adjusted?”

  “Time.”

  “Time?”

  “No matter how we handle this there are going to be transitional pains. Do we let the newborns of the next month be raised in these conditions or do we send them straight back to the ADZ or a twin maturia built here? Either way their parents are going to throw a fit. If we camp out here and do it the slow way we’re holding back the next generation in favor of easing the transition of those that are already here. If someone has to take the hit, better it be the adults.”

  “True, but something about this still sucks.”

  “We didn’t put these people in this situation, and they’ve done well to just survive whoever attacked them here. If you get a thorn jammed into your foot it needs to come out, but pulling it out is more painful whereas leaving it in is less so.”

  “Healing doesn’t always feel good,” Viron agreed, “but it has to happen regardless.”

  “There are so few Protovic here that we can evacuate them all straight back to the ADZ. In this case, their primitive state is to their advantage, because we can’t do this with the Shanplenix or other more advanced Protovic civilizations.”

  “Because they’d shoot us if we tried?”<
br />
  “Pretty much. And on that point, when the day comes, I’d put your armor on. Those arrows they use aren’t plasma rifles, but they can still do damage.”

  “Ok, bigger question…what about our workouts?”

  Trey cringed. “Makeshift setup here. Lots of running, sparring, and making do until the Ma’kri gets back.”

  “You’re willing to put up with that?”

  “To bring these people back with us? Yes.”

  “Alright then. Consider me volunteered.”

  “I figured you would…if only to spend more time with your girlfriends.”

  Viron glanced outside. “I will admit, I’ve never been this popular before.”

  “And you’re going to get a whole lot more popular when the rest of the planet gets to know you.”

  “Yeah, but then they’ll be integrated into Star Force and realize there are a lot more handsome Protovic out there.”

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” Trey said, finishing his snack with a swig of water from a bottle.

  “So ordered,” Viron said with a smirk as he headed back out of the dropship to mingle with the natives and continue adding to Star Force’s limited database of their language and culture. They were going to need all they could get if they were really going to try and create an indoctrination program for these people in a matter of months. He knew there were experts for that sort of thing, but mastering their language was going to take time no matter how many Archons they had to help them with their psionics. Telling someone to do something was totally different than explaining concepts, and to do that you needed to understand the finer details of the way these people communicated.

  It was those finer details that were totally lost on Viron now, but he’d been teaching these Protovic some of his own words and gestures. That wouldn’t work for the entire planet’s population, so whoever Trey called for was going to have their work cut out for them. If they wanted him to be their mouthpiece so be it. He’d do what he could, if only to make the transition a little less traumatic on his new friends.

  “Got a package for you,” a junior tech said, walking into Vortison’s research chamber. It was a private room with more displays than actual experiments, but there were numerous racks of canisters containing tissue samples from every race in Star Force, the ADZ, and as many outside it as they had collected to date, including the more recent ones from the Shanplenix.

  “Oh?” the geneticist said, turning away from his holograms and looking at the box she was carrying with both hands.

  “Number 4,” the medtech said with eagerness as she set it down on a nearby table and let him open it.

  When Vortison pulled the lid open he saw dozens of smaller canisters that held tissue samples, along with data chips stacked in racks beside them.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “An expedition into The Nexus.”

  “Which variant?” he asked as he pulled out several canisters and took them over to an empty rack on the wall.

  “Protovic Orange, I’m told.”

  “Orange? Do we have a map location?”

  “I assume it’s on the chips.”

  “Begin downloading them and find it for me. Have Jenson and Melly help you. I want it prepped to our purposes as soon as possible.”

  “On it,” she said, scooping up the data chips and heading to another room in the lab.

  “Alright, Orange,” Vortison said, holding up one of the tiny canisters in front of him and looking in through the clear cube at the spec in the center. “Let’s see what secrets you hold.”

  “Wait, say that again?” Clark insisted, holding up a finger in front of him for emphasis.

  Vortison cringed. “I…was…wrong.”

  “See, that’s what I thought I heard. But that can’t be true, you guys never make mistakes.”

  The medtech sighed. “Not so much as a mistake than I was looking in the wrong places and making unwarranted assumptions. Label it as you like, but I’ve learned that the 8 variants are not identical copies with different easter egg puzzle pieces. The physical attributes of the Orange variant are too high for gravity alone to account for. Once I realized that I began reassessing previous data on the others and found some minor, but significant differences.”

  “Kind of counterintuitive there.”

  “They’re ‘minor’ until they become ‘significant.’ I think, and be aware I could be wrong again, that they’re a timelock. The Orange variant samples that I was sent indicate that their lock has been opened, thus activating physical upgrades. The Purple and Red variants have not been so unlocked, but I have been able to identify that they are there and they are not strength upgrades. Purple has a latent sensory package and Red has a higher cognitive level akin to your Sav. Not anywhere in that magnitude, but similar in structure. It’s hard to say without actually having active samples to analyze, but the coding is similar enough to your psionics tissue that I’m fairly certain I’m interpreting it correctly.”

  “You’re saying they’ve got a suppressed version of psionics?”

  “On a much lesser level, yes. And each variant has something different. Orange has increased strength, speed, flexibility…not exactly a traditional psionic but somewhat similar to your Kex.”

  “Not mine. You haven’t found the trigger for that one yet,” Clark pointed out.

  “Your in the plural. They’re similar to V’kit’no’sat psionics in that they are enhancements, so you might want to refer to them as such going forward.”

  “What about the Shanplenix?”

  “They have one too, but it’s too unfamiliar for me to isolate…yet. It’s there and locked down, but I need more time to figure out what it is.”

  “And you’re sure it’s different from the others?”

  “Positive.”

  “Are these ‘enhancements’ shared once all the puzzle pieces come together?”

  Vortison shook his head with a rueful smile. “That’s the curious thing. I have a hunch that the transformative code will give an individual all of them in addition to other things, but as is they do not factor in to it. This is code that is complete and present in each variant as of now, and thanks to some of the medical scans made of the Orange variant I can conclude that the enhancement comes along with the activation key.”

  “Activation key?”

  “Remember when I said that even if all the variants came together there would have to be a means of sharing their code?”

  Clark frowned. “Timelock or earned advancement?”

  “An interesting point. Whatever the case, Orange has achieved it and is spreading a virus-like key that will transfer to all other Protovic that come in contact with them.”

  “Do we need a quarantine?”

  Vortison bit his lip as he thought. “No, I don’t think so. Even if we had all 8 variants the transformation can’t trigger without them all being active. Only Orange is so far, and we only have 4 of the 8 located.”

  “Any problems with integrating Orange in with our Protovic faction?”

  “Other than them being stronger and faster than average? No.”

  “How much superior are they?”

  “I don’t have enough data to say for sure, but I’d say they might have 50 or 100 years head start on other Commandos if they chose to train in that discipline...where base stats are concerned. Skills will be unaffected, unless they have a greater aptitude. I’ll need training data on them as soon as you have any.”

  “You’ll get it. This mystery keeps getting deeper the further we dig.”

  “We’ve got something big here, Clark. Maybe not V’kit’no’sat big, but in the ball park would be my bet.”

  “Big good or big bad?”

  Vortison shook his head. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  5

  July 19, 2970

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  Brad-050 sat in his tower-top office with his feet up on his desk looking ou
t the panoramic windows at the Protovic planet. It’d been 117 years since he’d taken on the task of building a Protovic faction within Star Force, and in all that time he’d never left them. It had been his job to get them started, but unlike the origin story of the other factions this one had seen him continue to guide the Protovic forward personally rather than from afar, such as Larissa had done with the Bsidd. They were pretty much independent now, though she kept tabs on them and helped them out from time to time.

  The Protovic had developed quite far over the past century, but Brad still felt like they weren’t out of the woods yet, and not because of any lingering problems with the Veliquesh. That civilization and culture had been destroyed completely, but his Protovic were still young compared to the rest of Star Force and he never felt like he could leave them on their own. He’d grown more attached to them than he had his own Clan Beyond, which was about the same size to date. Unlike the Bsidd or Kiritas, the Protovic didn’t reproduce annoyingly fast and the vast majority of the 3 trillion Veliquesh that were rescued and imprisoned in the Broj System had never left there, dying out within the prisons when they refused to earn their freedom or attain their self-sufficiency.

  Some that did had went to the ADZ, into Axius rather than to Aphat and the new Protovic faction. None that he knew of had gone to the independent Protovic, for they had wanted none of the Veliquesh to coexist in their society given the horrors that had occurred. A good number were still in Broj, on the Axius colony on Onyx where the prisons had been built and then slowly dismantled as they were no longer needed, leaving Brad with a far smaller population than most people thought given how many Veliquesh had been captured and brought back from that war.