Star Force: Battlemeld (SF45) Read online

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  October 2, 2476

  Solar System

  Earth

  Karen stood in front of the wall, facing it from only a few inches away and raised her right hand up, touching it above shoulder height and tracing a zigzaggy path with her palm all the way down to the base before letting go. She stood up and pressed her left knee against the wall, then fist bumped three vertical taps at torso as if she were punching the lights on an old school stoplight before dropping to the ground and resting on her ankles before pushing both knees in and leaning them against the wall. She followed that with both hands pressed flat wide above her head, making her feel like a tree frog.

  How much longer do we have to do this? she asked her brother telepathically.

  No clue, he answered from the other side of the wall, choosing the various body positions she was to mimic just as she’d done for him several times over the past hour. The wall was solid and sound proof, with them unable to see or hear the other, and their Pefbar blocked by the material of the prototype psionic cage that a number of techs had recently constructed by incorporating one of the new arc elements into an already discovered design. The chamber was one of a handful of initial projects to get their limited but growing supply of the elements, and given that it had been constructed in the pyramid Paul had decided to make use of it for the twins’ unique training.

  The shielding was designed to prevent Pefbar only, which in turn would render Lachka useless without the controlling mechanism of the Pefbar, but Ikrid wasn’t blocked, meaning that while Karen and Travis had limited Pefbar abilities sufficient to ‘see’ through a normal wall they couldn’t use them here. None the less, Karen was mimicking Travis’s body placements almost perfectly, with cameras set up on both sides for monitoring purposes.

  I heard that, Jason told Karen telepathically. You’re transmitting in the open again.

  The adept frowned even as she was continuing to match Travis’s movements, searching out the location of Jason’s mind and sending him a direct reply. How do you know that?

  A direct link and a broadcast feel different on reception. Focus is something you have to develop over time, and right now yours is lacking.

  Can you give me an answer then? she asked, still playing mime against the wall.

  Another 10 minutes.

  Karen sighed. Alright.

  Some place you’d rather be?

  Practicing combat applications, she said honestly.

  Combat applications run off of base attributes, the trailblazer reminded her.

  I know, I know, she said, reaching up high and tapping on the wall four times, copying Travis’s hand on the opposite side. She couldn’t see him through the wall, but she could feel where he was and how his body was moving almost as if it was an extension of her own. They’d been able to know where each other was within close proximity as long as she could remember, never having given it much thought, but now that she didn’t have sight or sound for the sense to piggyback on the extra perception was coming through much clearer…and weaker, forcing both of them to push to try to retain constant perception.

  Normally it operated in blips, like someone blinking their eyes constantly, and training themselves to keep a steady flow of position information through their normally subconscious link was meaning they had to assert conscious control over it, both to maintain and boost the signal…which was something this training drill was frustratingly accomplishing.

  But both she and Travis kept it up until Jason finally called them off and back over to the sanctum they’d built inside the pyramid, meeting him in one of the many sparring chambers.

  “Tighten these,” he told Travis as he walked over to him.

  “Ok,” the adept said, cinching up the cuffs on Jason’s wrists until they were bound together in front of him with only a half inch of separation. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m tired of having to hold back against you two. Cramping my style,” he said, pulling a blindfold over his eyes. “This should make things more even.”

  “Seriously?” Karen asked.

  “Knockdown,” Jason ordered, walking over to the center of the ring and dropping into a light combat pose. “Let’s see if you can do better this time.”

  “What good is the blindfold if you can see with Pefbar?” she complained.

  “One less sense to use. Something you won’t understand until yours develops further. Now, be warned, I’m not pulling my punches like normal. So expect to get knocked on your ass harder than you’re used to. If you two can’t take me down at least a few times…well,” he said, letting that thought/insult hang in the air.

  “Always like to make things interesting, don’t you,” Travis said as he and Karen split up and walked around to different sides of Jason.

  “It’s called training,” Jason said as Karen suddenly moved towards him in a feint that drew a wrist block from the striker. Travis moved in and struck at his back a moment later, with Jason whipping around, grabbing his leg, and pulling him in even as Karen jumped on the pair of them and tried to get him in a stranglehold.

  A moment later she was flying back through the air and landed on her ass four meters away, suddenly realizing that Jason hadn’t been kidding about not holding back. She got up and moved back into the fight, intent on rising to meet the challenge.

  Paul looked up from the lounge chair in his quarters as Jason walked in, his blonde hair still slightly wet from the shower he’d just taken.

  “They do any better?”

  “Not good enough,” he said, sitting down in an identical chair set across a low table that held a plate of biscuits, two glasses of blue, and a second datapad. “But they’re starting to get innovative…not that it helped them.”

  “Did they get any hits in?” Paul asked with a smile.

  “A few, but no knockdowns,” Jason said, picking up his sugar-laden drink. “Karen has a habit to transmit in the open. Not sure if that’s all newb or she’s missing a few neurons.”

  “Just been working through their latest data,” Paul said, gesturing to the datapad on the table. “I think they’ll be needing another adjustment in a few days. About half of the new tissue is running smoothly, but the rest is normal trash, with about a third really getting junked up this time. Have they been complaining about headaches?”

  “Not to me, no,” Jason said, exchanging his drink for the datapad. “Travis hasn’t had an incident recently either, and I’m starting to wonder if we accidentally knocked him out of alignment.”

  “I hope not,” Paul said earnestly.

  “Or maybe Karen is.”

  Paul frowned slightly. “You think her learning to restrict their link is suppressing him?”

  “If the trigger is erroneously reading both of them…”

  “Good point, but she shouldn’t be doing anything consciously.”

  “Unless she’s learned to do it subconsciously. Not block the whole link, but just the component that gets her body thinking it’s his.”

  “Damn…didn’t see that coming.”

  “Just a theory. We still don’t know what’s provoking the trigger anyway.”

  “Actually,” Paul said, raising his datapad symbolically, “we have a partial answer.”

  “We do?”

  “It’s syncage.”

  “Is that even a word?” Jason joked.

  “It is now. The techs haven’t been able to identify the type or intensity required, but it’s definitely occurring when they’re of one mind, so to speak.”

  “We’ve been of one mind before,” Jason pointed out. “So have a lot of the others. Aaron especially. Why haven’t one of us triggered this?”

  “I have a theory.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “We coordinate, they meld.”

  “Explain,” Jason prompted when the distinction didn’t immediately sink in.

  “Everything we do is based off of individuality. They’ve been a pairing since before birth. Eve
n during basic training they were in the same class, same team, and have been giving the same assignments since. I’m thinking their individuality has a different meaning than ours.”

  Jason shook his head slowly in disagreement. “The triggers all have something to do with the abilities they activate. I’ve been through the list multiple times and I can’t find anything like a tandem skill.”

  “Neither have I, which is why I said it was a theory.”

  “I think it’s time we tested another theory.”

  “Which is?”

  “This supposed resistance to Fornax.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “News to me.”

  “Just one of the rumors floating around the Clan regarding them. It seems they don’t go down as easy as they should when they’re fighting together.”

  “Resistance…or a calibration point?”

  “That’s what I was wondering.”

  “Let’s add the element of surprise.”

  Jason smiled. “Way ahead of you.”

  The next morning Karen and Travis were finishing up a run around the pyramid’s command deck and nearing one of the internal buildings Star Force had constructed, about half a kilometer from the Archon sanctum when a buzz went through Karen’s head, nearly tipping her over into a faceplant…but she caught her balance and ran on, onto to realize that Travis was no longer beside her.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was down, so she skidded to a stop and turned around just as he was getting up…only to have her body go twitchy limp with her legs collapse underneath her.

  Travis likewise stumbled when she was hit, but he kept his balance and started to walk over to her, pounding a hand against the side of his head to try and realign his brain that seemed to be malfunctioning violently.

  “Are you ok?” he asked as she climbed to her feet.

  “What the hell happened?” Karen asked as he got to her. “Did you black out again?”

  “I don’t know, I…” he started to say when both of them got wobbly at the same time and dropped into each other, clawing for balance until the mental maelstrom finally stopped and their heads fully cleared.

  “Sis, I think we’re really screwed up.”

  “What did we do to bring this on…we were just running.”

  A sound to their right turned both their heads, just in time to see Paul standing up from a crouch in front of the V’kit’no’sat pedestal he’d just jumped off of. “Morning.”

  “What the hell was that?” Travis demanded.

  “Fornax,” Jason said from the top of the gigantic, dinosaur-sized lounging pad as he too jumped off and dropped a few meters into a soft landing crouch.

  Travis and Karen exchanged glances. “I didn’t think it would be that…intense,” she said.

  “You guys suck,” Travis said angrily, finally letting go of Karen and standing on his own balance. “You could have at least let us stop first.”

  “We wanted to catch you off guard,” Paul explained.

  “Congratulations,” Karen said vehemently, her head still hurting from where she’d smacked it against the stone-like floor. “Other than you two are dicks, what did we learn?”

  “If we hit one of you, the other one feels it,” Jason said, ignoring the insult.

  The twins looked at each other oddly. “That’s never happened before,” Travis said warily. “Is it the new tissue growth?”

  Paul shook his head. “No. It’s because you’re also using each other to resist the Fornax effect. When you lose bodily coordination the world seems to spin out of control, but unlike the rest of us you’ve got your sister’s body as a stable point to steady yourself on. That means you can take a Fornax hit and not go down, and vice versa.”

  “But we did just go down,” Karen argued the obvious.

  “That’s because we hit you with a lot more than normal,” Jason admitted.

  “Oh, duh,” Karen said in a moment of mea culpa. “Acolyte Fornax and Striker Fornax…I should have expected this.”

  “No, you guys can’t be that strong,” Travis argued.

  “Correct,” Jason agreed pithily, waiting for him to come to a conclusion or for Paul to speak. Travis wasn’t sure which at first, but the lingering silence inclined him to think the logic through, though Karen got it first.

  “I got hit with mine and a part of his,” she said, thumbing her right hand towards her brother.

  “Technically no, but fundamentally right,” Paul half agreed. “The Fornax didn’t transmit across your link, but the messed up sensory data did. That said, you were both recovering from the effect even though I was emitting a low level field continuously after I took Karen down. Even disrupted, you were pulling orientation data from each other.”

  “Wait, you haven’t had time to analyze the data,” Travis said, gesturing to the biomonitor on his head.

  “We don’t have to,” Jason said confidently. “It’s logical deduction. You both have the ability to help each other weather a single or double Fornax attack so long as it doesn’t completely overwhelm you…”

  “…and when it does,” Paul finished, “it becomes a disadvantage by backflowing.”

  Come with me, Jason told Karen telepathically as he turned and jogged off in one direction, with Paul doing the same going the opposite way.

  Karen took a step towards Jason as Travis did likewise towards Paul, then they hesitated for a moment, exchanging glances before following the trailblazers off.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Karen said as they split.

  “Ditto,” Travis agreed, racing to catch up with Paul. “What are we doing now?” he asked.

  “Getting you out of range of your sister.”

  “So you can knock me out again?”

  “Yes, but you can stand this time,” the striker said as they ran off across the huge command deck, zigzagging their way between pedestals in long, smooth turns.

  “Wonderful. This is payback again, isn’t it?”

  “A part of training is trial and error.”

  “So you’re not still ticked we beat your record?” he asked bluntly, looking across his shoulder at the slightly shorter man who seemed to embody a raw power that made Travis feel infinitely smaller this close to him.

  “Nope.”

  “But you were earlier?”

  “Of course.”

  “What changed?”

  “We found out you cheated,” Paul said lightly.

  “What, you’re going to erase our scores?”

  “No.”

  “Then…I don’t get it. We either cheated or we didn’t…which we didn’t.”

  “Yes you did, and no, your scores stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you beat it fair and square.”

  “While cheating?”

  “Yep.”

  “You lost me.”

  “That seems to happen a lot.”

  Travis snarled. “If you weren’t so strong I’d hit you.”

  “That wouldn’t stop me,” Paul teased.

  “Probably wouldn’t,” Travis said with an ounce of grudging respect, even though he was still sore at both of them for ambushing them like that. “So why no payback?”

  “There’s nothing to pay back.”

  “We beat your record.”

  “And kudos to you for that. We’re glad you kicked ass. We’ve got too many weak Archons as it is.”

  “Wait, you want people to beat your records?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you got upset when we did?”

  “Yep.”

  “But not now?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is this some sort of love/hate thing you got going on?”

  “If someone beats our record that means they’re better than us…but no one is,” Paul said cockily.

  “We did.”

  “But you cheated.”

  “Oh, I get it now. Our scores count, but they don’t really count as far as you’re conc
erned.”

  “Bingo, kiddo.”

  “We didn’t know we had a link back then.”

  “I know.”

  “And we couldn’t have turned it off if we did. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Never said you did.”

  “You said we cheated.”

  “You did cheat. And please continue to do so. The more cheaters like you we have the stronger Star Force will be for it.”

  “So cheating is a good thing now?”

  “When it helps you defeat the enemy, yes.”

  “So why were you sore earlier?”

  “You broke our record.”

  Travis felt like smacking himself in the head. “Why won’t you give me a straight answer?”

  “I’ve been giving you nothing but straight answers,” Paul reminded him.

  “You’ve been giving me nothing but gib…” Travis said, suddenly falling over as Paul slowed to a stop.

  “This is far enough,” he said, releasing the Fornax field as he knelt down next to the adept. “Looks like we were right. You went down with a much weaker hit now that your sister is out of the equation.”

  “I hate you,” Travis said, pulling his feet up under him but resisting the urge to stand for fear of Paul knocking him down again.

  The trailblazer half stood up and offered him a hand. “On your feet. You need to fight for balance as I lower the intensity level and see how much you can withstand on your own.”

  Travis grabbed his wrist and let Paul drag him up on his feet, then out of spite Travis summoned up the strongest Fornax field that he could muster and released it, knowing that at this range Paul would get the full brunt of it.

  Stoically, Paul didn’t budge, with little more than a forehead crease to suggest that anything had happened at all. “Wow. That almost tickled.”

  “Just get it over with,” Travis said with a sigh.

  “Brace yourself…” Paul warned before emitting a field approximately 3/4ths the strength of his last one, which also took Travis straight to the ground and half blacked him out as Paul held the effect a moment longer.

  “…record breaker,” he finished with a smirk.

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