Star Force: Cascade (SF73) Read online

  “I don’t doubt your skills, and I think if even Aaron had been the one observing he would have been blocked out as well. No, there’s something significant about these dreams that the designers don’t want anyone else to know about. Did you pull anything new this time?”

  “No,” Rio said regretfully. “But I do know it was the same dream and I’ve got a little bit better retention of the details. They’ll probably fade like normal, but right now I don’t recognize anything new.”

  “Show me.”

  Rio took a moment then sent Paul a copy of his recollection. It was about the same as last time, but bits were missing that were there before, along with new pieces having been added. On the whole it was the same, but the fine details had shifted slightly, probably with Rio’s memory slurry having been degraded with repetitive ‘looks’ as he tried to analyze it. Paul sent him a battlemeld prompt and when he accepted they compared mental notes, allowing Rio to reconstruct a bit more using Paul’s perspective on what he’d shown him previously as a baseline.

  The image of the sky over the forest, the supposed important part, added four dots that hadn’t been there before.

  “I’ve seen those stars before,” Paul said, not being able to remember when, but knowing in his gut that they were familiar.

  “Why do you call them stars?”

  “I don’t…no, not stars. Suns. One is white…I don’t remember the others.”

  “A centralized quad system,” Rio added, with the images seeming to pop back into memory…though for some reason he couldn’t make out the colors either.

  “Not too many of those.”

  “Map,” Rio said, glancing at Paula belatedly.

  “I’m thinking I’m out of the loop now, aren’t I?” she asked.

  “You’re welcome to tag along,” Paul offered.

  The striker held up a hand. “No no. You guys run along to whatever it is you’re doing. Are we done with the night sessions or do you want us to keep looking.”

  “Other than counting how many I have there’s no point. So no, we’re done. Thank you.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  “You gave us something useful,” Paul added. “But it looks like something we’re going to have to work from the inside out.”

  Paula threw both trailblazers a two fingered salute as she spun on her heels, then silently walked off.

  Rio looked at Paul.

  “Before training,” he said, with both of them heading to find a secure terminal.

  Kara sat in the command chair on the Clan Ghostblade Ma’kri-class warship as the ship’s captain and crew handled the rundown of the lizard jumpship, confident that they could do the task without her input after all these years of experience. It had already been snared by a slew of namis, now they were in the process of picking apart key systems with precision weapons strikes before it had a chance to flee like the rest of the convoy. The two jumpships that had been carrying cruisers never even bothered to deploy them in self-defense, jumping out along with the other 14 large vessels and abandoning the snared one to the Star Force ship, knowing that they didn’t have a chance of fighting it out and winning.

  Back in the day they would have always gone after two lizard ships simultaneously, so that they could capture both then shunt the lizard crews over to one and send them on their way while keeping the other ship as their prize. But today, and in previous years, Kara had gotten in the habit of being a bit more bold on some smaller raids, and her catching the convoy in this system had been luck rather than planning, so she was going to raid this ship in traditional pirate fashion, with the first task being to disarm the limited defensive weapons it had, including shield generators.

  After that came comm systems and anything else shallow to the hull that could be smashed, but she left the ship’s gravity drives untouched. They were currently dampened by the namis, which had gone through considerable upgrades over the years, and were now sticking to the shields like ticks and emitting their IDF fields to neutralize the drives. When the shields went down they dropped to the hull and likewise held the giant ship in place while the Ma’kri went about redecorating the hull as it liked.

  When all preparations were underway and the system scans were reading clear, for the rest of the convoy had already jumped out of the system onto the next leg of its journey, she called in her own ships that were out on the system’s periphery and waited for the small flotilla to arrive before she stepped out of the hangar bay and flew over to the lizard ship ahead of the boarding craft to follow.

  Once inside it was standard neutralization, stunning everything in sight either through weapons or psionics. The Ghostblade commandos that followed helped to do the same as techs came with them and began looting the ship of cargo that Kara wanted. While the Clan leader and the warriors played tag with the ship’s crew, the army of ant-like workers scurried around the massive cargo holds scouting out what was available and carrying back what they wanted to their dropships, making many round trips through the process.

  Eventually Kara got half the ship napping before her ships’ holds were filled, for she hadn’t brought the necessary vessels to clear out everything, let alone to take the ship as a prize, so once the pirates were done they retreated to their dropships and left, with Kara being the last man out and flying over to the Ma’kri superman style as the dropships returned to their industry ships.

  Kara had 97 of the vessels in this neutral system as a staging point to bring resources to from other raids. Jumpships full of cargo would find the fleet, slowly feed over the resources and receive back the finished products, whether it be machine parts, clothing, or ammunition, with none of the industry ships having the spare space to hold finished goods. They were all compact units designed for the task of creation, not storage, thus all the booty that Kara collected had to be stored on other ships waiting nearby.

  Since she didn’t have any of those here now and had only hopped over to the star to jump the lizard convoy as it had the misfortune of coming through her secret rendezvous spot, what little cargo space they did have was filled to the brim now and would be replaced with the goods as the raw materials that they’d stolen were transformed into them.

  Fortunately the industry ships had their own fleet of dropships and staff of personnel ranging from techs to accountants to warriors. Each ship was a mini-city of its own, small in size but when connected to the rest of the varied fleet became the Ghostblade civilization in a Battlestar Galactica sort of way. Some of the industry ships were ore processors, others were shipyards and bioharvest, while the ones that were eating the finished materials they’d stolen from the lizards were fabrication models. Each was staffed with specialized crew as well as some redundant facilities so people wouldn’t have to be hopping from one ship to another on a daily commute.

  That said, ship to ship transfer via dropship was common, even in a fleet as small as this one. Kara currently had thousands of the industry ships under her command, scattered around lizard territory in a few select spots that kept changing as per her orders. If the lizards ever saw a pattern and went looking for them they’d be too late, for systems like this were only a temporary holding point. The Ghostblade ‘territory’ was actually these ships, rather than any geographic location.

  They’d also been doing a bit of mining of their own in the system, for now that they had a decent sized fleet they weren’t relying on only piracy to fuel it. Kara still wanted to grab as many lizard resources and ships as she could, and even had a few special industry ships designed for the exclusive purpose of stripping down captured vessels for recycling. None of those ‘chop shop’ ships were here though, for this was just an outreach group. The much larger fleets were roaming on the edge of Star Force borders where they could stay somewhat linked into current events.

  Updates would flow out to the other fleets as available via courier ships, so it wasn’t until 4 months after Paul sent his initial message to her did Kara finally receive it two d
ays after the raid when a Ghostblade jumpship arrived bringing with it a load of raw ore and database updates to pass along.

  When Kara checked her messages she found not one, but two from Paul, with the first being his inquiry into Rio’s dreams. He said he also thought he had them but couldn’t remember even the slightest detail without prodding. The second message explained further how the dreams themselves were protected from external viewing and wanted to know if she knew anything about this.

  Kara waited a long moment, hoping some insight would pop up in response to these revelations, but none did. She mentally sorted through everything she had learned over the years from the knowledge implants the Zak’de’ron had given her, but there was nothing relating to dreams that she had ever discovered and nothing new was popping up now. She waited until the next outgoing ship was available before she composed a reply, hoping something would change but it didn’t. Kara had no knowledge of this, nor could she ever remember having the dream, even though she had been given Sav and Rio suspected that was when this had all begun.

  “I’m sorry, Paul, but I’ve got nothing. I’ve racked my brain trying to find even the slightest reference, but nada. I can’t help you with this, and I doubt something is buried inside my head if it didn’t come out now. Always a possibility, but would be a break from form. I’m guessing the dragons didn’t feel like giving me a cheat sheet on this one. I’ll try to be on the lookout in my own dreams, but as far as I know I rarely have any, so I’m not too hopeful there.”

  “Wish I could be more help. Keep me in the loop as often as you can. Maybe something more you learn will trigger a memory down the road. As for the system you described, I checked through the map myself and didn’t come up with anything either. 239 matching candidates and nothing about them stood out to me. I don’t know what else to do on this one other than to wait and cross my fingers, as useless as that sounds. Hope you and Rio have better luck.”

  Paul watched the hologram shrug, then Kara’s image disappeared. He kicked the wall under his terminal in frustration. She’d been their best hope of getting some answers, but whatever this was it seemed they were on their own. He’d had no luck with his own dreams, unable to remember ever having them other than weird corroborations when Rio showed him something. Morgan and Jason likewise couldn’t recall anything, though they hadn’t met up with them in person to get the telepathic images that Rio had given Paul. Maybe when that eventually happened down the road they’d recognize something, but for right now it was all on Rio and Paul…and all he could do was act as a calibrating rod and try to help Rio sort out what he learned and maintain the memory of it better.

  “Well that’s a great way to start the day,” he said as he spun up out of his chair and headed for the door, workout gear already on as he headed for the sanctum and his morning run of 10 miles. He completed it in the standard 42 minutes then headed over to another chamber to meet up with Rio and give him the good news.

  When he opened the door he walked through a short airlock, letting the first door close before the second would open, then he was in the ‘danger room’ with a lot of small, orb-like objects flying around. Paul stayed on the edge and out of the engagement zone, but he could see Rio knocking several of them into the walls with telekinetic blows and knew to keep his eyes open in case one came his way.

  “Need something?” Rio yelled without stopping his engagement with the hundreds of little stun bots that were desperately trying to make physical contact with him.

  Got a message from Kara, Paul telepathically replied. She has absolutely no idea what we’re talking about. Not even a twitch of recollection.

  Rio rolled to the side to avoid a dive of two of the little bots before telekinetically throwing them behind him, then he evaded a few more while he built up additional power in his Ubven nodules. When he peaked it out he batted a few more aside to give him space enough to detonate, then with a flinch of physical effort that Paul could see he released the pent up Lachka energy.

  It expanded out into a huge volume that swallowed up all the bots, invisible to the naked eye but visible to Paul if he’d bothered to use his Rentar ability. He didn’t, merely holding position against the wall as all the bots froze midair, locked into a super dense telekinetic field that lingered on even after Rio released the effort. It’d remain there for several seconds, depending on the size of the field and the density that he’d created, but while everything solid and liquid was physically locked in place as if the room had suddenly filled up with invisible sand, Rio casually strolled through it, immune to his own effect due to a passive emission from his Ubven tissue.

  Had Paul wanted to walk out to him he would have ran into a solid wall around the edges, but able to push his way in slowly if he used his Rentar to ‘melt’ away the Lachka field. Rio’s immunity worked far better, with his stride barely showing any hindrance at all. When he got to the edge he reached out telekinetically to hit the switch on the wall ending the simulation a split second after the Ubven field fizzled and the orbs started to move about very slowly, gaining speed with every tenth of a second until they broke free into normal movement.

  But by then the signal had already been sent out and they no longer angled towards Rio, rather flying up towards wall niches that opened to allow them access to their docking berths.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked, arms spread wide in a gesture of exasperation.

  “I guess we do it the hard way,” Paul answered, not liking it either. “If this is a test, then we’re going to have to pass it as designed…and be ‘we’ I mean ‘you’ for the most part. Kara couldn’t remember the dreams either, and I’m guessing that no one with a single Tier 3 will be able to. Either Ubven is different or it’s just a quirk that you’re able to pull enough to be aware of it.”

  “I hate to say this…”

  “…but what if we need all 8 Tier 3s?” Paul finished for him.

  “It would explain why no Zen’zat ever had to deal with this, and maybe why Kara has no memory. Something so exclusive that they didn’t expect us to achieve it.”

  “He did give her the Vorch’nas before he knew we could cheat our way into new abilities.”

  “Share,” Rio corrected him. “At least one of us has to earn them.”

  “True, and maybe this is the same deal.”

  “Tier 4?” Rio floated.

  Paul bit his lip. “Kara knows about Tier 4, but not these dreams.”

  “She knows about Tier 3 too, but not our eyes,” Rio said, pointing at his own twinkling grey orbs.

  “I really want it to be a gateway into Tier 4 too, but I wouldn’t put any credits on that.”

  “Actually, if it’s not Tier 4 it’s gotta be something else that big if multiple Tier 3s are a prerequisite.”

  “That thought alone is enough for me to keep a dream journal.”

  Rio raised an eyebrow. “You’re keeping a dream journal?”

  “Yeah. I keep a datapad beside my bed and write down whatever I can remember when I wake up before it fully fades.”

  “Worth a try.”

  “It’s still blank,” Paul said flatly.

  5

  March 13, 2890

  Deering System (Core Region)

  Gray (Clan Aquaman Capitol)

  Lens-087 dove off the pier headfirst into the warm ocean that covered only a small fraction of the planet’s surface, but every liter of it belonged to Clan Aquaman while the land, save for a mile deep around the shore, belonged to Mainline Star Force and six other Clans. He’d built several narrow cities on the perimeter of the Tear Drop to function as intermediaries between his Clan and the rest of the planet, but most of his infrastructure and population was situated beneath the waves.

  He hadn’t built any surface water cities, with everything sitting on the seafloor or dug in beneath it. At the center of the Tear Drop was a 19 mile deep hole, at the base of which sat a basin that held one of his largest and most secure cities. In the past Star Force couldn�
��t have built anything that deep, but their technology had progressed to the point where it wasn’t an issue now, though at those depths no free swimming was possible, not even for the scattering of Elarioni in his Clan.

  Those few he’d been able to recruit due to Clan Aquaman still maintaining a narrow hold on aquatic dominance within Star Force, but most of the superior aquatics race that had chosen to join a Clan were now part of Clan Alterra. Erin had beat him to the punch and, as a result of recruiting Ariel to her Clan, had pulled all the best and brightest Elarioni to her save for a few. They’d helped her Clan jump their aquatics division up to rank #2, surpassing Kyler’s Clan Cloud only 9 years ago and creeping their way toward the Aquamen.

  Len’s Clan was superior all around if you took the Elarioni out of the equation, despite the advancements they’d helped the Alterra make in terms of technology and tactics, but now that there were no rules regarding the makeup of a Clan the Elarioni were now counted in the scoring and were giving Erin’s civilization a huge boost…one that Lens was desperately trying to stay ahead of. Some of the Elarioni recognized his methodology was superior and wanted to help him out, hence they’d thrown in with his Clan, almost out of pity for how much the other Elarioni had shifted the balance of power within the ‘JV teams.’ The independent Elarioni civilization still held a considerable advantage, though no actual competitions were held to determine exactly how dominate they would be.

  He privately thought Clan Alterra could best them now, but sadly Aquaman could not. Hand to hand in the water the Elarioni were just too damn agile. Equipment-wise was another story, and even with millennia of fine tuning what the Elarioni had was not necessarily better than what Star Force was using now, thanks to the sharing Ariel and others had done, giving Star Force the benefit of their experience.

  There were still some technological secrets that the Elarioni held on to, but for the most part everything they knew Star Force now knew, and Lens and the other aquatics leaders weren’t squeezing them for details. They were a private race in some regards, though they also wanted to exert influence with the other water dwelling races that Star Force had relations with, so there was a dichotomy in their social structure that inevitably led to a lot of sharing…including Star Force secrets flowing back to them from the Elarioni that served in Mainline and now the Clans.