Star Force: Captains Mint (Star Force Universe Book 70) Read online

  He suddenly remembered their interaction, their conversation, and the fact that he’d gotten into a quasi-romantic situation with her before lapsing into some form of pleasureful coma. She’d said something important…then again what wasn’t important coming from an Archon. Something about…

  Viruses. She’d transferred her body’s normal viruses into his via physical contact in addition to what normally moved around in the air. And she’d said she’d used her jewel to upgrade them to…to speed him up or something.

  Han looked at his hand, feeling like all his memory of the past had occurred in a gray fog that had been suddenly lifted and now he could see clearly for the first time in his life.

  “And upgrade…and a shortcut,” he said in the lightest of whispers as his mind raced through all kinds of new calculations, with him realizing he’d gotten a lot smarter in a hurry.

  “Holy crap…she raped me,” he said with a goofy smile cracking on his face, then he started giggling. “And she gave me a parting gift too. I can’t believe this.”

  He swung his legs out of the bunk and felt his socked feet hit the floor right next to his shoes that she’d apparently taken off him when she’d tucked him in. He didn’t even remember getting into the bunk.

  Han moved his toes around inside his socks and just stared at them for a minute, trying to take everything in as his mind snapped to the others. He couldn’t see any other bunks occupied and couldn’t hear anyone talking, so where were they? Had he missed something?

  Han stood up, feeling his spine very sore, and he wondered why. The rest of him was fine, so he staggered through a few steps over to the restroom and got into a shower and let the hot water soak into his new sense of clarity, during which he figured out a few things.

  One…Archons are more awesome than he realized.

  Two…Kara wasn’t just messing with him. Whatever it was she had done had a purpose. The pleasure fest he was only beginning to remember had probably been icing on the cake or a distraction while she poked around in his head and did whatever to his body.

  Three…the viruses were meant for physical changes, not mental, so what she had changed probably was brain structure, because he wasn’t feeling any new superpowers, unfortunately, but he wasn’t going to feel bad about that. In fact, he was so elated he felt like he could fly.

  Four…Kara wasn’t here to say hi, so he was probably on his own from here on out, or at least in the next phase of whatever was going on, so he had to think. She’d said something about him having the potential to be a Grand Admiral, and now he felt an unfamiliar confidence that she might be right.

  That meant he had to earn it, and the first thing he had to do was figure out what the lesson of the Captains Mint was, for none of the others had gotten it yet either as they brainstormed with each other every day.

  Han got dressed and pulled on his armor, going outside to find the others in the middle of a massive snowball fight…except Kara was in her mech and throwing boulder-sized snowballs into the fray that would smash and pin someone into the ground if it hit them.

  He didn’t know what the ground rules were, or how this had started, but he didn’t hesitate to pick up some of the freshly fallen snowpack and begin to craft ammunition. He got an armful of them then ran up and ambushed Dorogu from behind, smacking one into the back of his Bsidd structure, or whatever you called it. He didn’t really have a head, neck, or back, and looked more like a bush than anything, but in his armor he did have some solid spots and Han hit one of them with the snowball in his palm, then added his arm’s push to it, toppling Dorogu over as he ran by so he couldn’t fire back.

  Not long after that he began to take hits as well, but the armor they wore didn’t let them feel anything more than some thuds…unless they got hit by Kara, who was actually goofing off and rolling some of them like bowling balls into people who weren’t looking.

  He decided to head towards her mech, engaging a few others along the way in the big melee, then he stopped in front of her Neo, bowed theatrically, then fell back into the snow and moved his arms and legs around before expertly hopping up and pointing down at the snow angel, then back up at her mech before bowing once again.

  “We have comms you idiot,” her voice said into his helmet. “No need for picture drawings.”

  “I’m not sure what you did to me…but you can do it again any time you like. Thank you. I feel…different. But a good different.”

  “Isn’t that what all guys say after they get virtually laid?” she scoffed.

  “Seriously. Thank you. Now do you mind me asking what…” he said, getting hit from behind and his helmeted face smashed into the ground as Dorogu paid him back when he wasn’t looking.

  “What was that? I couldn’t hear you through the beatdown,” Kara said deadpan.

  Han pulled some snow together and threw a going away present at Dorogu before getting up.

  “I was saying, do you mind me asking what it was you did?”

  “Cleaned out some of the cobwebs in your mind, upgraded your cognitive processors to skip you a few thousand years ahead, and gave you a long series of virtual orgasms. Which were you referring to?”

  “Start with the cobwebs.”

  “Consider it some mental notes of my own I downloaded to replace some of the stupid stuff you had floating around in there.”

  “And the upgrades?”

  “Some physical changes I wanted to add. Since using the battlemap interface is critical to Captain’s duties, I gave you some adjustments that would make it easier and more efficient to multi-task, plus some other odds and ends.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think we have 100,000 years for you to advance the slow way. The Grand Border isn’t the solution most people think it is. Even if we can get it all up before the Hadarak get there, it’s going to be neverending carnage holding it. We have to win everywhere, every time to prevent a breakthrough, and they’re just going to be spawning minions and throwing them at it eventually. Right now they’re busy killing other people, but when they get through with that, we’re going to have to fight them all and hold the line, not for days, years, or centuries. We’re in over our head here, and we need every advantage we can get. Given all that, why would I allow you to grow up the slow way and maybe die before you could be of higher level use?”

  “Right now I feel like I’ll never grow up. You made me younger somehow.”

  “Good. That lesson stuck, at least. We’ll see if the others do in time,” she said, reaching down and picking up more snow that she far too quickly launched over his head at someone else.

  “And the orgasms?”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  “Hell no, I’m just wondering why I got to be so lucky?”

  “I felt like it. No reason other than that. If I can’t use my legendary status and abilities to make a fan feel special every now and then, what’s the fun of being in charge?”

  “Do you have any idea how unbelievably cool you are?”

  “Yeah, I do. I got to see it in your mind. Are you going to fight or just sit there like a newb?”

  “What started all this?” he said, reaching down to craft some more ammunition while looking over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t get ambushed again.

  “Training, Captain. Always training. Now get out there and mix it up before I have to smash you into the ice like a tent spike.”

  “Engaging as ordered,” Han said, feeling like the frostiness outside had been implanted into his very hot head and cooled it down into a pristine focus. He threw a long range shot at Nuomo and barely missed, but found he had more arm speed than normal. “Did you upgrade anything else?”

  “A little general muscle capability. You were soft even for Naval. Make sure that doesn’t happen again. I don’t usually date slackers.”

  “How much side training…” he said throwing another snowball that hit this time, “…are you talking about?”

  “If the bridge of y
our ship is invaded, I want you able to defend it hand to hand against lower level enemies. If you can’t take one of the smaller Paladin unarmed, you’re slacking.”

  “I’ll remember that, thanks,” he said, putting aside the thousands of other questions he wanted to ask her, and hopefully would in the coming days, but right now it was snowball time and he was enjoying the sheer stupidity of it…along with the various tactics and alliances that seemed to be naturally forming to deliver the most badass hits.

  After their snowball fight, Kara let Nuomo take them on a little hiking trip up another ice mountain while she stayed back at the barracks…but not inside it. She went up top, shed her armor, and used her Rensiek to fight off the cold as she also stripped off her clothes and laid them on top of the armor. The others were too far away to see or notice, and rather than flying off somewhere more private, she’d found long ago that being close to people in a place they weren’t going to look was sometimes more private than being in isolation.

  Paul referred to that as ninja skills, and Kara wanted to practice a little sneakiness as well as her Rensiek while she had the opportunity. This trip was about the Captains and helping them realize how much power and responsibility they were placing in their hands, but for Kara it was also about her. She’d been having issues lately, and was trying to track them down. It wasn’t Vorch’nas related. She’d ruled that out a while back, but something was bugging her. Enough that she’d left the front and her Ghostblade fleet to operate on their own, which they were more than capable of doing even without her personal touch being added in.

  So she wasn’t really bailing on anyone, especially since most of Ghostblade work was sneaking around where no one would notice rather than engaging in heavy combat, though they were doing a lot more of that nowadays than before the Hadarak War began. But when you face neverending conflicts, sometimes you have to step aside occasionally before you get too worn down, or in times like this where you need to track down something that the constant duty is numbing up.

  So coming out here in the middle of nowhere wasn’t just for the Captains’ sake, it was also for her, because running around in starships might be isolated, but it was always with a crew that, even if hidden behind a bulkhead, was still there…and Archons could both see and feel through bulkheads whenever they wished.

  But out here, she really was isolated and it was what she now realized was a badly needed change. So much so that she had already logged an order to incorporate mandatory rotations for Ghostblade starship crews to get them planetside every few decades whether they wanted to or not, just to be on the safe side. It would be problematic, but necessary. If she was having issues, then others were as well, though hers were unique as far as she knew.

  Something was itching at her, and since she didn’t have Saiyan genetics it couldn’t be that. Only by calming down, relaxing, and growing silent in body and mind could she pinpoint it…and when was the last time one of the original Archons had done that? But now that she had made the choice and was out here, she didn’t feel the claws of stagnation on her. She felt relief, and that told her that something was really wrong that had been flying under the radar for a long time and taxing her in a way she hadn’t noticed.

  She was naked because the clothing also got in the way. She needed to feel the environment, and anything between her and it would dampen her original senses, and it was those, not her psionics, that were begging to be probed.

  What she’d told Han had been true, but what she hadn’t told him was that she needed to vicariously feel sex through him to see if that was something she needed to pursue again, and thankfully it was not. She needed her senses crisp and clear, not muddled with loopy fun vibes.

  But there was something raw and honest about them that she had missed, and it was beginning to dawn on her that by taking on responsibility for the galaxy along with the other trailblazers, she’d made it impossible to ever just be herself. There was always somebody that needed trained, rescued, mentally recalibrated, intimidated into a wakeup call, or the bazillion other smaller Archon duties beyond fighting wars. Kara couldn’t remember the last time she’d simply been Kara. And while she was a leader and liked it, part of her was saying that it would be better to be a recruit again where she didn’t have to worry about what mission to assign, only how to accomplish the one given to her.

  Kara sat cross-legged with the snow not melting beneath her. The Rensiek barrier prevented that and kept her body slightly warm while she was still able to feel the gentle breeze and the texture of the snow beneath her without being frozen by it.

  Her purple/white hair hung down to her shoulders, and she’d been carrying her Clan colors there ever since this war began, and would continue carrying them until it was over the same way she and the others had done in the V’kit’no’sat war…but that wasn’t going to work now. She needed to unplug completely, and she knew she’d built up her Clan well enough for them to do what needed to be done without her, so on impulse Kara used her Vorch’nas to strip away the color and return her hair to her natural brown, then summoned up an illuminated shield mirror over the jewel on her wrist so she could look at it.

  “Better, but I don’t need to be Kara the Gray, I need to be Kara the White,” she said, referencing Gandalf’s transformation in the Lord of the Rings as her hair changed color again to as white as she could possibly make it.

  Her toenails and fingernails changed too, then she added her nipples and lips while leaving the rest of her skin alone…but then she figured she might as well keep going with the physical changes in an effort to change her interior, and began adding neon white tattoos on her bare feet. Each one was written in V’kit’no’sat script, and was one of their purity tomes. As messed up as their empire had been, a lot within it had been very wise and spot on, especially their tomes. She mentally went through all of them that she’d previously downloaded onto her Vorch’nas’s ample memory core, and whenever she found one that fit her…or more precisely fit what she needed to become, she added it to her skin in luminescent fashion so it glowed brightly in the dark and lit up the snow around her.

  She put three on each foot, then moved up to her ankles, and calves. Knees then thighs followed, with them wrapping around her form on all available skin so that she was becoming a living billboard for the select tomes that continued to travel up her entire body until they got to her neck, then she held off there as she searched the rest of the tomes to find the best remaining before she ran out of canvas to work with.

  The final few, and most important, got etched into her neck and branched up onto her face and ears until the last tiny ones appeared on her forehead and nose bridge.

  Kara stood up and spread her arms and legs slightly wide, feeling the air and stretching out her senses to take in the vast emptiness around her, feeling like a ton of dust and grime was falling off though physically there was none to detect.

  She breathed slowly, deliberately, then began to move through various fighting poses in ultra slow mode before realizing that didn’t really fit what she needed, so she switched to pure dance, which seemed gratuitous in a non-mission sort of way, but that’s what her subconscious was urging her to do, so she did.

  Pirouettes, backbends, arm poses, legs stretches over her head in the most useless and vulnerable of positions…she experimented with it all until Kara had a short list of movements that were beneficial for her mood, and when she had those and began linking them together she felt something click, so she stayed in dance mode for the next few hours until the Captains headed back her way. Before they got close enough to see her she put her clothes back on and had her Vorch’nas return her body back to the way it was, including her purple/white hair, because she didn’t want to get asked questions about why she’d changed it.

  This side of her was something she needed to keep private, and now that she had made some progress and had her settings saved, she could resume them within seconds the next time she could ninja steal some private time to get
naked with the environment without anyone noticing.

  The absurdity of her having to do that when she could go wherever she wanted whenever she wanted didn’t seem so to her. She needed to feel exposed, to strip away whatever was blocking her mind from finding whatever it was that was wrong with her, and having the threat of being seen…as childish as that was…struck a chord with her, making her feel like little Kara fighting the galaxy again rather than a trailblazer trying to hold it up on her shoulders.

  She felt better now than she had in a long time, but it wasn’t enough. Right now though, she had Captains to mint. Later she’d sneak off again, for without them having psionics, being a ninja around this group was painfully easy…which meant she could be bolder than usual.

  And Kara liked bold.

  Yet, how long had it been since she truly was?

  6

  March 22, 128852

  Plucar System (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Idolo Wastes

  They’d moved camp 8 times in the last two weeks, and Han was beginning to wonder how long they were going to stay out here…but in the positive, because he was actually enjoying it like a vacation, as were the other Captains. No one had figured out what the ‘lesson’ was yet, and they were all still trying, but the urgency had been lost and they’d been admitting to each other maybe it was better if they drew this out longer, because no one was wanting this little camping trip to the middle of nowhere to end.

  But then it happened. Someone figured it out as they were sitting around another artificial bon fire on the ice plains in the deepest of night with the stars so clear overhead that you could see the galactic band stretching across the sky like a vertical scar due to the orientation of the planetary fragment on which they sat.

  “No safety lines,” Captain Shoginar said, clicking his joints excitedly as the H’kar suddenly stood up and looked to Nuomo for confirmation. “Is that the lesson?”