Star Force: Probe (SF42) Page 4

  It was likewise trashed, but like the cafeteria most of the contents were still here, making it look like the Hobbits had just wanted to mess stuff up, or either they were looking for something they hadn’t found. Granted the Kiritak were small, but they couldn’t hide in every cabinet, so maybe the enemy was just having fun trashing the place.

  First off Ben retrieved a mobile med kid, which was a small, flat box that had a concealed strap that he pulled out and slung over his armored shoulder. Into the standardized box he added a few items from the other shelves that caught his attention, including a can of casting foam, and compressed the lot to get it all to fit inside so he could get the latch locked in place.

  With Movo taken care of, the next thing he went for was the auxiliary storage areas, passing one lackadaisical patrol in the hallways on the way by crouched down in a nook and waiting for it to walk past. First thing inside storage that he went for was cargo sacks. They were designed for the smaller Kiritak inhabitants, but they effectively acted like small backpacks made of netting. Ben took four of them with him, then started hunting for random supplies they would need, filling two before he got to the weapons storage.

  Inside the small armory had been turned inside out, with most of the weapons broken. From the debris he was able to salvage ammo clips for the Kiritak pistols and rifles, as well as a few of the weapons that had escaped damage. He pulled open a low cabinet and found several containers still inside and pulled them out, seeing the hockey puck grenade/mines that the Kiritak favored.

  Filling the third sack with as many as he could get in along with the weapons and plasma clips, he held off on the fourth sack as long as he could, but eventually gave in as he came across some spare armored suits, which he disassembled and stuffed inside, realizing he’d have to get more cargo sacks for the foodstuffs and water on the way out, for the planet’s surface was fairly dry with few streams to pull from.

  Not wanting to overstay his welcome, and hoping to come back and raid the place for more supplies later, he avoided the Hobbits roaming the hallways and took a different route back to the cafeteria. Before he got there he smelled smoke and other scents coming from a different area of the barracks, as well as a fair amount of noise.

  He chanced a little exploration, just wanting a peek at where they were and what was burning, but when he came up to a fire-lit doorway and poked his helmet around to see what was inside his stomach sank down to a pit and his ire rose, causing him to clench his jaw to contain his emotions.

  There was a fire, crudely built in the center of what had been a recreation area, on top of which there was a pair of carcasses cooking…Kiritak carcasses, with bits and pieces of several others looking to have already been devoured. The damn Hobbits were eating the dead while there were rooms full of foodstuffs just on the other side of the facility.

  Ben saw a stack of bodies on the far side of the room, piled up haphazardly almost to the ceiling. Blood was everywhere, and it seemed the ‘cleaning’ effort throughout the rest of the barracks hadn’t been for tidiness sake after all.

  Wanting to kill them all but knowing he shouldn’t betray his presence, Ben clamped down on his anger and turned away, heading back down the dark hallway and making his way around to the storage areas, grabbing another three cargo sacks, and returning to the cafeteria where he filled two with foodstuffs and the third with water containers…until he found a portable atmospheric condenser, which he made room for, along with a field power pack.

  With all seven sacks and their chords making for a mess of his armor, he decided to hold them together by hand and toss them over his shoulder, med kit included, rather than try and wear them. He felt like Santa Claus, and looked like it too, after a fashion, given his red armor, and knew he’d be just as conspicuous on his way out, so he took his time and worked his way around the inside of the barracks, looking at multiple exits and picking what he thought was best after doing a few test runs out to the wall and back without his cargo.

  He thought he had the Hobbits’ patrol patterns figured out, so pulling his 8 piece bundle over his left shoulder he decided to go for it and ran for the wall near where a turret had been destroyed. The blast had knocked the top section of wall off, making it low enough that he wouldn’t have to climb as high.

  When Ben got up to it he tossed the bundle over first, then hopped over himself, spotting a sentry to his right that had its back turned to him some distance down. Apparently it hadn’t heard the noise, so the Archon picked up his stash and darted off into the forest, beginning the fairly long trek back to the Kiritak’s hiding spot, though even with the load he was moving faster than he had been with the six little guys in tow.

  “Damn it to hell,” one of the Star Fox control room staff said loudly.

  Sendra-4339 turned away from the star map she was studying and gave the tech a harsh glare. “What is it?”

  “We have another distress call coming in. It’s Ghanis.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sendra bit out as she pounded a fist on the rim of the holoprojector in front of her. “Get a message out to Mensolon requesting their status. If the Skarrons are in Ghanis they might be there too. Hell, they may end up here before too long,” the acolyte said, thoroughly vexed. Randy had left her in charge of Iona after the first distress call had come in from Rotunna, with him leaving with most of the Star Fox fleet that had been in the system, along with calls to pull ships from the other Beta Region systems to assemble at Iona, which she was to bring out to Rotunna a few weeks later once they all arrived.

  Then yesterday, after Randy had already left, they’d received a distress call through the relay network from Brenns…and now from Ghanis. All three systems were on the Calavari side of Beta Region and the closest to the Protovic/Skarron conflict where Kip was leading four Clans on a ‘save their ass’ campaign. It seemed the Skarrons hadn’t liked Star Force getting involved in the conflict and were now striking back at them…only it wasn’t an individual system, it was now three, with who knew how many more to follow.

  She only had a handful of warships within the system, and those had to stay here to defend Iona. She might be able to peel off one to send along with the reinforcements from the other systems as they came in, but the numbers attached to the distress calls from Rotunna and Brenns had been staggering, and she doubted they would be any less impressive from Ghanis once their battle data got transmitted.

  There was no way Clan Star Fox and the 32nd mainline fleet, which had been assigned to Beta Region, could handle this…not even with Kiritak and Kiritas support. Star Force was flat out getting overrun.

  “Prep a message packet to Sol, with a copy to Epsilon Eridani,” she said, heading for a private chamber set off the control room. “Bump it to the front of the line. I’ll have it recorded within 10 minutes, then I want every ship within the system on full alert…and cancel all cargo shipments to Ghanis.”

  Davis sat in his office in discussion with two other Star Force administrators later in the afternoon when his desk suddenly lit up with flashing emergency holographic icons appearing in midair, startling all three men.

  The Star Force Director tapped a few keys and a pre-recorded message began to play.

  “Davis,” Randy’s image said from his office on Kirit, “our Kiritak colony in Rotunna has come under Skarron attack. Information is limited at the moment, but it appears they’ve come with a fleet large enough to overwhelm out local defenses. Shortly I’m going to be heading out with a relief force from Iona, but I wanted to get this message sent as soon as possible.”

  “I don’t have enough military resources to defeat the enemy fleet, but I’ll do my best to chew them up until reinforcements can arrive. I’m ordering additional ships from Beta Region to rendezvous in Iona, then to follow me in. Whether or not that will be enough to deal with this threat I don’t know. Their actual ship count we don’t know, but as of the last update from Rotunna there were over 200 warships, including a pair of juggernauts. See the information
files about those.”

  “I’m not going in and getting ourselves killed, so expect my fleet to be around when help arrives, though in what condition we’re in is anyone’s guess. We know the Skarrons don’t have binary drives, so we can evade them when necessary. I will need supplies eventually, but first and foremost I need you to send ships to reinforce my other systems. I’m shortchanging them to have a response fleet, leaving them very vulnerable. Time is of the essence, so get whatever you have available moving immediately and secure Iona first. It’s the key to Beta Region and we cannot afford to lose the Kiritas.”

  “Sendra will keep you updated as more information comes in. I’m leaving the system within the next two hours, and expect to be engaging the enemy no sooner than a month and a half from now. It’s possible Brenns and Ghanis will have sent limited reinforcements on their own, but I have no way of knowing given the distances involved. Either way, they don’t have the ships needed to do more than annoy them.”

  “You should get this message in 9 or 10 days, so I’ll still be enroute when you’re listening to this. Don’t skimp on the reinforcements. Better to send more and not need them than to have to wait months for more. I also don’t know the Skarrons’ aim here, but there have been rumors that they’re taking out a number of smaller races now that the Nestafar are more or less out of the picture. This could be an attack meant to bloody our nose and intimidate us from getting involved, or to punish us for involvement with the Protovic…or it could be the start of a full scale war.”

  “I’m sending a separate message to Corneria and the other trailblazers, so you shouldn’t need to do anything yourself, I just wanted to make you aware of the situation and the need for as many reinforcements as possible. We’ve been holding back our fleets from the lizard and Calavari campaigns in case of an attack against our own systems, and now it’s happened. Don’t jeopardize Sol’s security, but give me what you can. According to Kip these guys can be beat, but it’s going to be like chopping wood, and I need more axes.”

  “Also, keep in mind that our ability to send cargo shipments back home is going to be hindered, so start taking whatever economic measures necessary. I’ve left orders for Beta Region to continue as much production as possible, but I can no longer guarantee amounts.”

  “And in case you’re wondering whether or not it was a good idea to help the Protovic, put that question aside. It was the right thing to do, and this fight has been a long time in coming. We’ve been staring at each other over the ‘fence’ for quite a while now, sizing each other up. This fight has been in the cards ever since I came to Beta Region, and if we don’t tear these bastards a new one they’re going to continue preying on the weaker races out there. The fact that they’re willing to hit the Protovic says they’re serious about this and have the military might to back it up.”

  “We have to hit them back and hit them back hard…now, else I fear this will escalate out of control. Star Force’s days of sitting back and joining in the wars when and where we choose is over. We’ve been preparing for this, and now it’s time to act. Sorry it had to be on my turf, though. I’d hoped we’d have more time to prepare.”

  Randy hesitated for a moment.

  “I guess that’s it. I’m ticked and embarrassed, because it feels like I just got caught with my pants down. I know it couldn’t be helped, but I still hate being sucker-punched. I don’t have a clue where the Skarrons are basing out of, their territory is nowhere near us, so right now all we can do is face them on our own turf and play it by ear. If the relay in Rotunna is still intact when I arrive I’ll send an update, if not, you won’t be hearing from me for a while and neither will Beta Region. I thought about sending someone else with the fleet, but I have to be the one to go and make the most of whatever situation I find, and you and I both know that I can do that better than anyone else out here.”

  “Time to do what you trained me for. Wish us luck.”

  Davis stared at the message end symbol for a moment, with the two administrators across from him wide-eyed with concern. Almost theatrically slow, Davis reached out and deactivated the hologram, clearing the air above his desk.

  “Who are the Skarrons?” the administrator on the right asked.

  “We’ll get a data file out to all of Star Force tomorrow,” Davis said. “Until then hold your questions…and excuse me while I attend to this.”

  “Of course,” the other administrator said as they both got up in tandem and hurried out of the Director’s office.

  Once they were gone Davis flipped the button that activated his holoprojector pad, retracting a section of carpet to his right to expose the metallic circle. He stepped onto it and began contacting various logistical personnel within Atlantis and her sister cities on Earth, attending to the part of this problem that he could tackle, knowing that the military angle was something that the Archons would take care of promptly.

  5

  June 15, 2467

  Solar System

  Mordor

  Dan-028 played back Randy’s message for a second time, knowing he’d heard everything correctly, but wanting to let it all thoroughly sink in. He’d expected the lizards to be the ones to hit them first, cutting past Paul’s defensive corridor around Namek and hitting the more vulnerable worlds in Alpha Region. Randy’s expansion in Beta Region he hadn’t expected, nor the Skarrons, but given the fact that Kip was fighting them in Protovic territory should have given him some warning, yet Randy’s message had caught him completely off guard.

  Then again they each had their own areas of focus, with Dan’s being the expansion of Clan holdings in the Core Region and extending out into Delta Region, which was above the Core on the galactic plane. There were already Star Force systems in Delta, but since the Clans were mandated to operate independently, their own supply lines differed from those that Davis and his minions set up. While they did work together in many cases, their economies were completely separate, with the Clans having to establish their own trading and transportation networks, though the latter was optional.

  Dan was focusing on expanding his own Clan, the Star Claws, as well as coordinating with 23 others that were interested in pushing up into Delta Region. Establishing independent supply lines meant securing territories in the current Star Force systems, which was doable and the Clans did regularly enough, but the trailblazers knew that the Clans needed to have other options, which meant Dan was overseeing the colonization of less attractive systems in the Core that many others used as transit points or avoided entirely.

  A few were already inhabited with races that hadn’t yet achieved space travel, but many simply didn’t have habitable planets. That didn’t bother Star Force, who more often than not colonized airless worlds, but as gravity drive technology increased and the time delays between the stars diminished, they’d been searching for more preferable worlds rather than just colonizing everything within reach, much like they had in Sol.

  Dan was going the other way and claiming the unwanted systems and establishing at least some presence in many of them, giving the Clans a chain of systems to connect up to Delta Region from, and while there didn’t have to be colonies in a system in order to pass through it, it was preferable in case of mechanical malfunction or damage, such as say hitting a small object during a jump. Better to have a safe harbor nearby to run to rather than be stuck in an empty system.

  It also made sense to have ships and supply sources nearby, rather than having to send for them from multiple lightyears away, so creating connecting lines of Clan-inhabited systems up to Delta Region was useful in a forward thinking manner, though not necessary in the here and now, as Delta Region colonization was already underway.

  Dan had gotten so enthralled in his own work that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to what the others were doing, or he would have realized the Skarrons were a threat…though, by Randy’s tone it seemed he was also surprised to have been hit, so maybe it wasn’t a lack of attention on Dan’s part, but a b
lind spot that Star Force had. Beta Region technically didn’t have an end, but beyond where Randy had established the current frontier systems little was known about who was out there. Some scouting had been done, but with thousands upon thousands of star systems in play, there was just no way that they could get to them all.

  And the further one got out from the Core Region the wider the area became…up until you hit the galactic ‘ceiling’ and ‘floor,’ each of which were about 500 lightyears away and far beyond Star Force’s current reach, meaning the Core Region sat in a sea of systems, and the further away you got the more there were given the spherical expansion. Star Force had always been working in the blind, so to speak, but through diplomatic relations and scouting they’d acquired a decent idea of who was where in the nearby areas…but beyond Beta Region was still largely a mystery, due in part to how far Randy had pushed their borders.

  The Skarrons operated out of that ‘dark’ area, and while the rumors they heard detailed a powerful race, that was nothing new compared to their allies in the Alliance. The previous reports he’d heard of them attacking the Protovic and others suggested that they were only taking the initiative because the Nestafar were diminishing, suggesting that the winged aliens were the stronger…but if the Skarrons were willing to pick a fight with just about everyone in the area, including the Protovic, Dan wondered just how strong they really were, given that they now were interested in coming after Star Force.