Star Force: Paradigm (SF35) Read online

  Once she had separation she rotated around so that the planet was below her feet, then using the engine technology within the armor…technology that far surpassed that on the drone warship…she began arcing her trajectory and coming down into the atmosphere at insanely high speed, protected by her own personal shields as she dropped like a meteor down towards the surface.

  Once into the thick of the air and well away from the lizard warships in orbit, Kara began decelerating more than friction alone would allow, and after a long braking maneuver she leveled off some 12 kilometers above the surface of a mountain ridge with a humongous lizard city visible on the edge of the horizon, which was her ultimate destination.

  With her mental link to her armor she could feel the lizard sensor beams hitting her body…and being absorbed, making her as much of a sensor ghost as the lizards had once been to Star Force tech. Her own sensors tagged lizard fighters patrolling in clusters over the city, probably deployed when the drone appeared in orbit, but they didn’t move in her direction, for they didn’t detect her presence.

  They may have seen her fiery reentry into the atmosphere, she acknowledged, but that was now no longer the case, for she was flying level to the ground searching for a nook to set down in from which she could then approach on foot. The city, like most lizard bases, had a shield topping it, preventing her from dropping directly inside, besides which, at that close of range it would be difficult for her to evade detection even with her small size and stealth armor.

  Other than that she had no idea what she was going up against. This system was far inside lizard territory…which she’d had to travel to in order to find infrastructure of this size. She was here for one reason and one reason only, and that was to hunt down lizard variants that they hadn’t encountered before.

  This mission would have been a suicide run for anyone else, but given the Vorch’nas attached to her wrist, Kara had options none of the other Archons had, and she was glad the trailblazers acknowledged that fact and allowed her to go on solo missions such as this…though to be fair this was by far the most risky one she’d attempted thus far, as well as the furthest away from Star Force territory.

  Kara spotted a good looking crevice in the jagged mountains and descended to it, coming down through the yellow foliage that was larger than her body. She dropped to the black soil gently, glancing around at the huge tree trunks surrounding her, then back up at the spherical leaves that could easily have doubled as a blanket for her or the lizards.

  Her sensors didn’t detect any lifeforms nearby, so she retracted her armor, with the red scales pulling back off her body and retreating into the clear gem on her left wrist, leaving her dressed in a skin-tight environmental armor suit that would protect her against cuts and scrapes and little else. Her hands and head were left exposed, and on her back she carried her pack of supplies that contained no weapons. For combat she’d be relying on her Vorch’nas entirely.

  Kara sucked in a deep breath of the air, smelling the odd forest and the musty scent that it contained. The soil was damp, but not wet, though she had seen a storm front approaching from the north as she descended, meaning she was probably in for some rain within the day.

  Visually getting her bearings, Kara walked up the ridgeline, concealed beneath the high yellow canopy, as she quietly made her way across the forest towards the lizard city, knowing that she had 1 week to do her thing before another drone warship would make a collection run through low orbit, at which point she’d have to fly up to it else miss her ride for another full week…and the supplies she’d brought with her wouldn’t last forever.

  Two days later, after walking/running through miles of forest, Kara encountered the first of the lizard patrols surrounding the city. They were situated well out into the forest, with groups of three moving through the more or less clear soil that surrounded the car-sized tree trunks. The canopy overhead was thick, allowing no direct sunlight to the ground, leaving only small plants or mosses dotting the forest floor. The lizards were roaming about on well beaten paths in the dirt, with multiple trios in the nearby area as they crept their way north to south.

  They would have been easy enough to get by or take down, but Kara intended to do neither. Slipping off her backpack and stashing it up next to a tree trunk, Kara used her Vorch’nas to raise her up the length of the tree and into the lowest branches. From there she hopped across the gaps, scattering a number of birds and other critters inhabiting the upper levels of the forest as she stalked the lizards on their patrol routes below.

  Once she was directly over the paths they were traveling she found a nook up against the main trunk and sat down, wrapping her legs around the thick branch and reaching out with her mind. She’d already been picking up the lizards’ presence with her Ikrid, which now seemed to always be on in at least a passive sense. She could turn it off if she wanted, but when her mind relaxed a type of mental radar always worked its way into activity, letting her know when a mind was near.

  Concentrating, she extended that range out greatly, picking up 21 lizards beneath her, all of whom were walking slowly, so Kara knew she had to either work quick or keep pace with them.

  She’d had plenty of experience working with alien minds, not just lizards, but their allies on Daka, some with their permission, some without. Each race had a distinctive feel to it, and then each individual was different in lesser ways on their own. When she touched the lizards’ minds, which were not blocked as Humans were, the feel was what she would have described as ‘purpose.’

  The lizards didn’t think as individuals. They were part of a larger organism, each one with a roll to play, based on their biological variation and their assignments. These lizards on patrol were bored, she could sense, but they were none the less alert and committed to their task, as tedious as it was, patrolling the perimeter on a secure world.

  As she searched through several of their minds, accessing their surface thoughts, she realized they weren’t just here to guard the perimeter against invasion, but against the local wildlife as well. Her skills weren’t developed enough to probe much beyond their current thoughts, but she caught the gist of there being large creatures roaming the forest that on occasion would encroach on the lizard cities and do some damage.

  These lizards, she discovered, were looking for signs of trouble so that they could relay position data to takedown teams that stood ready within the city…which explained why these lizards were wearing only trousers and a belt, rather than their normal vest armor. Each of them carried a comm device and plasma pistol, and Kara could sense that that was far from enough to take down one of the native creatures should they come across one.

  The boredom suggested that they hadn’t encountered a target in some time, and they didn’t think they would anytime soon. The hunters had done most of the hard work already, leaving only the wild regions of the planet as a threat, but the creatures in those areas could still migrate out, hence the regular patrols.

  The lizards kept walking/creeping along, acquitting their task while otherwise being uninterested in it. None the less the sense of purpose was still there, as it had been with all lizard minds Kara had ever touched.

  In contrast the Calavari minds, as far as Kara would describe them, felt like ‘honor,’ whereas the Protovic were ‘curious,’ the Gnar were ‘greedy,’ the Bsidd were ‘calculating,’ the Kvash were ‘committed,’ and the Scionate were ‘eager.’ She’d never encountered a Nestafar after her psionics had manifested, nor a Hycre, which very few Humans had ever encountered face to face. Other Alliance races each had their own mental idiosyncrasies, some which blocked most of her mental control due to their incompatibility with Human thoughts, but the more she worked with them the more capable she became at reading and influencing their thoughts and senses.

  Lizards were easy to read now, and she probably had more psionic experience with them than any other Archon. Still, the raw power the Zak’de’ron had utilized in subduing the Nestafar on Daka still cause
d her jaw to drop, especially now that she had some context with which to define it. She was an ant to the dragon’s very large boot, and there was no question as to who had been in command back in the day, for the Zen’zat simply didn’t have the power to challenge their masters.

  Which made all the more sense to make them immune to Ikrid control, otherwise one race within the V’kit’no’sat could control them, using the Zen’zat as a wedge against the others and create more internal conflict. By keeping the Zen’zat neutral it created an equality between the various races, and an equality between the Zen’zat and the dinosaurs. She got the distinct feeling though, that the Zak’de’ron had simply done it to keep them from being so pathetic, and because a tool that an adversary could take control of would have been a liability as much as an asset.

  The Zak’de’ron didn’t need to control the Zen’zat’s minds…for they were already so dominate it truly didn’t matter.

  But whereas the Zen’zat were the inferiors in that regard, compared to the lizards they were the ones who dominated…even one as young and inexperienced as Kara.

  Sitting up high on her branch she examined the lizards as they passed below, then focused on the rearmost of the lot and linked to its mind, assuming control over its nervous system despite the range involved. She thought it was just close enough and realized she was right when her remote hack gave her access to its body, despite the limited ‘bandwidth’ she had to operate on. Had a Zak’de’ron tried this it wouldn’t have even needed to blink to make the override, but Kara had to focus all of her Ikrid energy to create the link down to the lizard and render it unconscious.

  It tripped over its own feet and sank to the ground, the noise of it falling being swallowed up by the damp soil.

  Kara pivoted around her branch and fell off, pulling a Mary Poppins with her Vorch’nas to drop her to the ground below, where she ran up on the fallen lizard and planted her fingertips against its skull, keeping her eyes and Pefbar locked on the other two lizards in its trio that were still continuing on ahead, ready to take them down if they noticed her or the lack of their companion. They had about 20 meters of spacing in between each of them, so Kara figured she had at least a brief window of opportunity.

  With the direct physical connection her available ‘bandwidth’ shot up exponentially, now that she wasn’t having to transmit across a gap. Linking into the lizard’s brain directly through its own nervous system she dug into its recent memories, locating an outpost not far from here. She followed that memory to others linked to it, quickly getting a crude map of the area.

  Not wanting to press her luck she jumped up into the air and flew back up into the branches, then remote linked to the lizard’s mind and half woke it up, getting it to stand back up and start walking forward before coming back to full consciousness. After that she let go her control but monitored its thoughts, wondering if it would notice anything.

  It did, but not knowing what had happened to make it black out and fall behind the others it shook off the weirdness and jogged up to reform with the others, keeping Kara’s presence undetected.

  She waited a few seconds, then hopped off through the branches and back over to where she left her pack, though it took her a while to find it. Once down on the ground she pulled out a vile that held tiny cubes and slipped one out telekinetically and flew it into her mouth, smashing the concentrated ambrosia sugar cube between her teeth before swallowing as she put the container back in its place.

  Kara slid the backpack over her shoulders and attached the waistband to hold it firmly against her spine, then took off running, crossing the trail behind the lizards and heading in the direction of the nearest outpost on her mental map. As she moved through the very sparse underbrush she was conscious of the footprints she was leaving behind, but hoped the next patrol through wouldn’t notice. If they did they’d be hard pressed to catch up with her, but sounding an alarm would make her jog a lot harder. She needed to remain a ghost on this world as long as possible.

  About half an hour later she picked up a weird mental signature on the periphery of her passive sense, just before a massive spider-like creature dropped down from above in eerie silence and fell on top of her, pinning her inside a cage of ten spindly legs.

  The torso of the creature knocked her down, shocking her given the suddenness of the attack, but as soon as she smacked the ground her instincts took over and an invisible shield covered her body and pack a split second before her Vorch’nas spat out its red scales in a wave that quickly encompassed her body, but even before that happened an orifice on the underside of the spider opened up and a sharp tooth-like spear jutted out, hitting the dirt as Kara kicked her way to the side, dragging her pack across the ground like an anchor.

  She pointed her left wrist up and a weapon formed on it, followed by a quick yet powerful pale green stun blast that rendered the creature unconscious and dropped it down on top of her…but her shields caught it, which she expanded outwards in a sphere to lift it off her.

  “Huph,” she said, blowing out a relieved breath. She had been about to blast it, but then had the presence of mind to go for the stun to avoid a corpse that would have told any lizard patrols that whoever had killed it was in the area.

  Using her shield like a giant ping pong ball, she flew her way to the side, pushing the spider’s legs out away from her body until she got into the clear, then she switched it back to energy mode and got her feet under here, looking back at the ugly critter that probably out massed her by a factor of ten.

  Expanding her mind out she searched for others nearby, finding several lifeforms up in the trees, but none that felt like this one.

  “Guess their hunters missed one,” she whispered to herself, hoping the lizard patrols were more alert than she had been. Enemies they might have been, but she didn’t like the idea of anyone going out that way as spider food.

  Lowering her shields into standby mode and retracting her armor all the way back into her jewel, Kara jogged off, accelerating back up into her cross country cadence as she stretched out her Ikrid senses to a considerable range, actively scanning both the area ahead and above so she wouldn’t get caught off guard again.

  5

  April 23, 2432

  Ventross System

  Albo

  Kara knelt down on a tree branch more than a meter wide, looking out through the breaks in the huge leaves and down on the expansion zone around the lizard city where they were adding another section of buildings, having cut back the forest to accommodate the new construction. The area expanded out from an almost solid barrier wall formed by old building sides across a 3 kilometer gap that stretched out as far as the Archon could see to the left and right, making it appear that the lizards were adding a new ring to the more or less circular city.

  The new construction ended her forest cover, meaning she was going to have to start playing cat and mouse to go any further.

  Before she did that she wanted to get the layout, which involved a slew of partially built structures and a beehive of lizard activity as they delivered parts and crews to the sites. Not all areas ahead of her were currently active, but it was going to be hard to avoid the construction crews all the way up to the pseudo wall that marked the boundary of the original city.

  Most of the structures were typical lizard, yellow/tan in construction with an emphasis on the tan. Some were shaped like bread loafs, others were teepee variety, but Kara also saw numerous combinations of the two, along with architecture that they hadn’t typically seen in other lizard bases. They had reconnaissance from the Alliance about the more heavily populated lizard worlds, and the infrastructure here definitely matched up more with those than the frontier worlds that Star Force had been fighting the enemy on.

  A lot of these buildings also didn’t match the blueprints Star Force had of lizard infrastructure, captured from that first battle back in Epsilon Eridani. Those, they now knew, held the full schematics for the technology the lizard expeditionary team
s had available to them, including the genetic material to grow 11 distinct lizard varieties. Star Force had actually used the enemy’s tools to build their own lizard base on Corneria, learning from their technology and testing their own against it, figuring out where exactly to hit their fighters, predators, coppers, etc for maximum damage.

  Trouble was, useful as those schematics were, they were almost 200 years old and, Star Force had learned, not the full extent of their tech tree…or their biology. A lot of the buildings Kara was seeing now, both those fully constructed and partial ones fell outside the expeditionary tech she was familiar with, meaning this world was definitely higher up the ranking chain, which she hoped also meant more variants for her to hunt down.

  To do that she had to get inside the city, but daytime wasn’t her best option, so she decided to wait out the long rotational cycle in her tree, observing what she could and planning out her infiltration. Fortunately none of the defense turrets in the expansion zone were operational, and she hoped their ground forces were likewise elsewhere…then again, her experience with those came from front line bases, so maybe a city like this had less active defenses. The Alliance reports indicated more large scale defenses on other worlds, but neither they nor Star Force had scouted out this one, meaning she was having to learn everything about it from scratch.

  When night finally came she slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground with her Zen’zat armor concealing her in the deep red scales that she adjusted into a stealth mode. The V’kit’no’sat battle strategy wasn’t one that favored cloaking technology, so they’d never attempted to develop it. Their MO was to come in the front door and kick the crap out of everything that dared to get in their way…and with an attitude like that who needed to sneak around?