Star Force: Veracious (SF48) Read online

  “Meet me in the hangar, full gear, scout protocol, stun weapons. We’re going down for a closer look.”

  Ready sis?

  Always, Karen replied, standing in the rear of the dropship that was descending into the atmosphere over the western side of the surface complex in a none too subtle nose dive. Bri was standing in front of them as they looked out the rear hatch into the sky, seeing a few stars hanging onto view as the atmosphere thickened under the morning sun, into which she ran out, jumping the last step in the artificial gravity to get some separation speed.

  She shot off out the back, but didn’t fall ‘down’ given that the dropship was technically below here. Karen and Travis followed her out, passing through the inertial dampening field and into freefall as the dropship seemed to be heavier than them and continued to fall faster. That was an illusion, for in fact it was simply holding its line while the three Archons were caught up in the atmospheric friction and pulled backwards, though they too were still falling at a high rate of speed.

  The two specs of silver armor adjusted their fall rate and angle by altering their body positions, using their arms and legs like rudders and flew after the green spec that was Bri, coming up behind her in a wide-spaced triangle formation as the dropship began to pull up out of its dive and shoot farther north, leaving them behind.

  The atmosphere on this world was thick, thicker than Earth’s anyway, and they’d come out at significant altitude, giving them a long way to fall. Their armor blocked the wind from their eyes, with them seeing through the faceplate and on the HUD where they were headed to, with the Twins following Bri’s course corrections as they descended over one of the many hexagonal fields below.

  They had detected a single anti-air turret on the trip down, hence the off-center drop. They estimated the range of the weapon to be about 2 kilometers, maybe 4, given that it was a plasma design and the atmosphere was going to mess with the trajectory. The Archon armor could take a hit on its shields if it was just spit, meaning they were good to drop so long as they didn’t get too close.

  The fields below stretched out for some 30 kilometers to the west, and once the trio descended down to 5 km Bri gave them a telepathic heads up, then angled her body and started to bring herself out of the fall, using her momentum and the friction of the air to start creating lateral speed towards the complex. As she did she monitored her altitude closely, adding a bit of anti-grav from her jump pack later on to further stall the fall.

  By the time the Archons reached 500 meters they were moving almost full lateral and hung onto it with a combination of aerodynamics and jump pack until they came down to within a handful of meters of the grassy fields and moving at well over 100 miles per hour. Bri adjusted her body line out of ‘bullet’ shape and feathered her arms and legs while pulsing the jump pack, forcing her up into the air again in a skid that slowed her down and regained some altitude…but hopefully low enough not to attract the attention of the turret which they were still outside the prime range of.

  “Bri, how are we supposed to stop?” Travis said as they mimicked her maneuver, trailing some 20 meters back and losing speed, but still traveling quite fast.

  “Run or roll rookies,” Bri said, finally dropping to the ground when her jump pack capacitor exhausted itself. She managed to come down feet first, with the trickle of recharge energy being fed into the anti-grav to cushion the drop. Her first foot strike she managed to turn into a jump. The second hit and stuck, flipping her over but she managed to jump it into an aerial flip and land on her feet again at a sprint as the twins flew past her overhead.

  Her long, awkward strides smoothed out as she slowed down to an easy 30 miles per hour and had to start working to maintain the speed rather than just peg legging it to keep up with the terrain. The ranger continued to slow down, settling in at 20 miles per hour and huffing it across the grasses as she followed the others, watching them come down in a similar manner some 300 meters ahead of her, except that they weren’t fast enough on their feet to match their landing speed…with both of them tripping into falls.

  Bri saw them tumble violently, flipping heads over heels until the combination of armor and ground finally bled off their speed. She continued to run forward, letting her run continue to slow until she finally came up to them at a 10 mph jog.

  “You guys alright?” she asked over the comm.

  Karen looked up at Bri from her sitting position, seeing that the green armor didn’t have any dirt/mud marks on it, whereas hers and her brother’s were covered in abrasion grime. “You didn’t fall?”

  “Almost, but I stuck the landing and ran it out.”

  “Wish I’d been able to do that,” Travis complained as he stood up and felt around his back rack. “I lost something.”

  Bri pointed ahead of him.

  “Thanks,” he said, walking over and picking up the stun pistol that had dislodged when he’d hit. Apparently it had better aerodynamics than he did, for it had traveled further on impact.

  Karen also retrieved of a couple pieces of gear that had got knocked off their attachments and stretched her neck, feeling a bit of a crimp from when she hit her head, but her armor had protected her from snapping it or anything else by not mechanically allowing any abnormal bends.

  “You guys need a minute?” Bri asked.

  “We running?” Travis asked.

  “Yep.”

  “How about a minute or two of jogging?”

  “Deal,” the ranger agreed, taking the lead at a very slow pace with the twins dropping in behind her and moving a bit awkwardly for the first few steps. She gave them some time to get the wind back in their lungs then accelerated up to a decent pace that she thought they could handle over the slightly rolling terrain. There was nothing but grass around them, all of which was knee high and flowering with tiny seeds that broke off as they ran through. It wasn’t until more than a mile later that they came up on one of the captive herds.

  Bri avoided the thickset quadrupeds that looked like they couldn’t run if their life depended on it. They had narrow heads and a huge chest that tapered back to narrower hips and no tail.

  “Bernen,” she identified as they swung around the herd of 200 or so that was chewing on the grass in a small hollow that also had a tiny pond at the center.

  “Never heard of them,” Karen commented as they ran past.

  “They’re not very intelligent, but they are strong. They’re also burrowers.”

  “Those things go underground?” Travis asked, looking to his left at the hippo-sized creatures.

  “Hence the leg strength,” Bri added as they passed them by, with two more herds visible within a kilometer, the furthest one clustered up against one of the boundary fence/walls. “They’re a favorite foodstuff of several races.”

  “Let me guess,” Karen said. “Kitty food?”

  “There are Scionate here,” Bri confirmed.

  Travis frowned inside his helmet. “How do you know that?”

  “Ikrid. These bernen have seen them.”

  “You pulled a mental download on the run?”

  “Not hard when you go to what they fear the most. Spread out for the jump and let me go first. I’ll let you know what’s on the other side,” Bri said as they came up to an empty area of fence. It was a solid wall of synthetic construction with a flat top some three meters high with periodic spikes spaced out several hundred meters.

  “Are those cameras?”

  “Maybe,” Bri said, knowing that meant the owners were going to be able to keep track of them as they ran across the fields. “Can’t be helped,” she said, motioning for the three of them to split up.

  Bri kept running on a straight line, ready to activate her jump pack but taking a moment to look at the wall with her Pefbar from range. As it turned out it was quite thick, actually wider than it was tall. Then in the last few steps she pushed her Pefbar ‘cone’ down through the ground and saw that the wall extended into the ground further than she could see, pos
sibly built to keep the bernen from burrowing out rather than a concern about them going over top.

  The ranger released the effort when she jumped, sailing up easily to the top and choosing to land on the wall for a single foot hop with a second floating jump bringing her across and down to the other side.

  “Clear,” she told the others, seeing a herd nearby but not close enough to give them landing problems. The two acolytes came over a few seconds later, one to either side, then they sprinted to catch up to Bri as she continued to run on, diverting to her right about 15 degrees as she headed them towards the buildings that were barely visible in the distance over the next wall…still multiple kilometers away.

  “Company,” Travis said, seeing a hover vehicle whipping across one of the walls ahead of them and dropping back down to about a meter above the grass as a huge fan blade on the back encased in a ring provided propulsion, signifying that the anti-grav was probably basic and not able to do more than provide vertical lift.

  “I see it,” Bri said, slowing down just a hair so the twins could regain some strength. “Time for meet and greet.”

  “Orders?” Karen asked.

  “I’ll disable it. You stun everything in sight.”

  “It’s armed,” she pointed out.

  “I know,” Bri said, launching into a sprint at the top of a small rise and surging out ahead of the twins as the vehicle redirected its line and came to a halt with its side facing her. On top of it she saw two small tripod-mounted guns swivel towards her as the armored bipeds behind them took aim.

  The next thing she knew they were firing some form of bullets at her, not the traditional plasma that almost everyone seemed to use.

  Bri caught a round on her leg, which deflected off her shields and caused her to trip. She landed face first on the ground but managed a somersault roll and came back up on her feet and resumed her run at a much slower pace. She took three steps then juked left, with a spray of bullets passing by her with only two hits to her torso. Those didn’t take her down but they did drop her shields under 50% and she was still well outside her Ikrid range.

  Knowing that she sprinted hard, attempting a few Fornax blasts and missing badly, then got clipped again by a three round buzz saw on her left shoulder that flipped her around and took her to the ground again. This time she rolled out of it to the side, staying low to the ground for an extra turn before getting her knees under her and sprinting out again…now at an angle so the gunners would have a harder time shooting what had previously been a more or less stationary target from their point of view.

  A few seconds later she saw the right-side gunner twitch when she threw a Fornax blast at him, meaning she was getting close…but then the vehicle accelerated slightly, allowing it to move and shoot and keep some distance between her and them as they quickly saw that she wasn’t going down like they’d expected.

  A telepathic message from the twins told her that they were moving the opposite way, so Bri continued to sprint forward, feeling the strain in her muscles as she fought her armor to get up over 35 mph. She could go faster than that on the track for short periods of time, but the footing here was crap and the grass was slowing her down too…whereas the hover truck was gliding along easily, with her only gaining a handful of meters on it.

  She caused the gunner to twitch again, throwing off his aim, and she started throwing out Fornax blasts at where she felt the driver was sitting inside a concealed cockpit. It didn’t seem to help, but the vehicle wasn’t getting away either, making her think it was just going to play with them and keep its guns out of her range while they chewed her up.

  Bri adjusted her line, seeing the vehicle likewise adjust its, then she took another hit and her shields dropped to under 20%. She slowed her run as she came to a downhill section that would cause her to temporarily disappear from view in a small hollow. When she hit the bottom she went back into full sprint, climbing up the far side and coming out the top with greater speed, catching the vehicle off guard and allowing her to get some 20 meters closer before it adjusted.

  She hit the gunner with another Fornax blast and saw his hands slip off the tripod as he pitched forward onto it. The ranger hit him again and again, taking him down and keeping him on the deck of the vehicle until the range increased and she lost her ability to keep him there. He got back up, clearly shaken, and reclaimed his weapon…only to have the vehicle lurch to the side violently, knocking both gunners off their feet as it turned towards Bri’s left.

  She continued her sprint, now closing distance on it as she saw the twins much closer. Apparently they’d gotten to the driver, and as Bri got within range she reached out to the mind in the cockpit and linked in to it, unable to do little more than cause it some grief at this range, but a few more steps closer and she was able to freeze it in place, with the vehicle drifting lazily across the grass.

  Bri held that mental link, ignoring the gunners and trusting the twins to get to them…which they did soon after, knocking down both with Fornax blasts before they jumped up onto the flatbed section of the vehicle and shot them unconscious with pink energy blasts at pointblank range. Karen disappeared from view for a moment, then Bri felt the driver’s mind drop out of her vision.

  She released her attempts to reacquire the connection and scanned the rest of the vehicle as she approached, finding no other minds there and only barely picking up the three unconscious ones. When she got up to the vehicle and took a jump pack-assisted hop up on top, Karen had already pulled out the driver, also a biped, who wore a hodgepodge assortment of armor and trinkets similar to the other two but not identical.

  Travis pulled the helmet off of one of the gunners, revealing a glowing purple/green face.

  “Protovic,” he said, pulling a pistol and a bandoleer of ammunition off the man and tossing it to the side.

  “This one’s Gnar, I think,” Karen said, lightly kicking the stubby driver, but knowing better than trying to remove its breather mask.

  Bri knelt down and pulled the helmet and scarf off the other gunner, seeing that it was a race that wasn’t part of the ADZ.

  “Drepwen,” she said, recognizing the race notorious for generating pirates.

  “More where these came from, I assume?” Travis asked.

  “Give me a moment and I’ll find out,” Bri said, pulling her green armored glove off her left hand and pressing her smooth, lightly colored fingers up against the burnt red of the Drepwen’s neck and hacking into its nervous system directly to increase her Ikrid efficiency as she searched its recent memories, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was unconscious.

  That said, this wasn’t her first unconscious interrogation. It would take time, but she’d learn what they needed to know.

  “Keep watch,” she told them, focusing all her attention on the task at hand.

  5

  Bri tapped her jump pack, getting a small boost to her leap and sailing up over a stack of compressed cargo pallets. She landed knee first on the other side on the back of a Scionate, knocking him to the ground as she pumped two rounds from her stun pistol into the thin shirt covering the quadruped’s back. The pink energy soaked through it with ease, saturating his body and causing it to go numb a moment before he blacked out.

  Bri rolled off his body as it collapsed and ducked to the side as a pair of plasma orbs came her way…one red, one orange, and coming from two different shooters. They were both Critel wearing partial armor and firing at her with beefy rifles that were spitting out plasma rapidly…along with several other shooters spaced around the bay trying to keep her from getting to the transport that was about to take off with the bulk of the compound’s key personnel on it, or at least the leadership, for most of the ‘farmers’ were spread out elsewhere as Bri cut to the heart of their operation.

  She’d gotten the location of the bay and the command wing from the interrogation of the captives that they’d dumped in the fields, then they’d taken the hover vehicle all the way up to the comple
x before splitting up, with Bri heading straight to the big wigs…who were now trying to flee after seeing the ranger tear through more than 20 heavily armed mercenaries with ease. These Critel and others were merely delaying tactics, meant to slow her down rather than stop her, and she knew she had to get to the transport within the next thirty seconds, for the bay roof was already opening up and the whine of inefficient anti-gravs was filling the air.

  Bri sprinted forward a few steps, then ducked right before sprinting again, getting within her preferred range before releasing a Fornax sphere that caught both Critel and a couple of other shooters behind a barricade. All four dropped to the ground, momentarily incapacitated as she held the effort while running over them. She stunned both Critel with her pistol, but didn’t turn to get the others. When she released the effort they both got up, one of them clueless as to what had just happened and disoriented from it, with the other taking the opposite approach and seeming to forget it entirely, for he rose up and fired at Bri’s back, hitting her with one of five quick shots.

  The plasma abated against her shields, draining them of more energy that her small power source tried to replenish as she ran. More incoming shots hit her, even as she moved about with random adjustments, throwing off additional plasma orbs and a few lances. The races and equipment here were all hodgepodge, coming from a variety of sources, but effective none the less and the Archon knew that these men had had some type of formal training, for they were maintaining cohesion well and forcing her to run the gauntlet in order to get to the transport…which fortunately her armor allowed her to do.

  As her shields finally popped she tapped the charge button on her pistol and headed for the largest cluster of the mercenaries, having to make only a minor detour to her right. She hopped over another crate and landed in a dive roll, causing a salvo of shots to miss her high. When she rolled back up onto her feet she fired at the group of four bipeds nearest to her, sending out a conical blast that expanded to hit all of them plus several crates nearby. The intensity wasn’t enough to knock them out, but their return fire stopped momentarily, allowing her to run up on them and stun two with pointblank shots before launching herself up and over the crate wall behind them as the roof door finally locked itself open with a loud clank, fully exposing the sky.