Star Force: Symbiosis (Star Force Universe Book 72) Read online

  Ren popped another food cube into her mouth and chewed…feeling her chest gain a bit of mass as soon as the material hit her stomach where the Regenerator grabbed it and put it to work filling in the gash in her left breast.

  5

  Jason climbed outside the dropship before it reached the converted Caretaker vessel, clinging to the hull like spiderman until he got around to the side he wanted…then he jumped with as much force as he could get and went ballistic, floating across the void towards the 22 mile long warship Blue Miona. It was a long way away, but he didn’t have time to wait for a ride and a ship that large was going to be hard to miss so long as he didn’t terribly misjump…but he wasn’t betting his life on that. His Yen’mer was good enough to tug him about a tenth of an inch per minute at maximum power…which meant it was basically useless. However, after several miles of drifting a mooring beam shot out from the Iron Hammer and accelerated him while also doing some small course corrections.

  The trailblazer flew through space as the fighting ahead of him continued, but he was on the quiet side with all the carnage taking place inside the mag jump dish. No Caretaker drones could get to him where he was, for they couldn’t fly where they didn’t have a short range mooring beam connection either, so he was safe from their firepower, but not the enemy warships’ long range weaponry.

  He’d calculated that before he jumped, hoping to stay anonymous all the way to the Blue Miona, which was now out of the fight. Only two weapons batteries were still operational, and probably on backup power at that. Huge chunks of the ship were gone, and by the time Jason got halfway there he started to encounter dust-like debris all over his armor.

  He flicked on his shields, knowing that his speed was going to decrease slightly, but the tiny collisions deflecting him off course was his larger worry…though the closer he got and more of his view of the starfield was eclipsed by the ship, he knew he was going to make it there, even as it drifted away from the mag jump dish due to the all the explosions it had undergone.

  The drift wasn’t much, but given time it would be lost to space. His people on the mag jump station had indicated that the end of the enemy convoy was coming up, for their numbers had been transmitted prior to arrival for coordination issues. Unfortunately they hadn’t found those earlier, buried in the programming as they were, and Jason was confident his remaining ships could take what was coming, though barely. Most of his converted ships were already destroyed, and the Iron Hammer was venting atmosphere from multiple hull breaches, but none were too large. The weaponry being used on the Founder ships was different than what was available in the Temples, but after seeing it in action the Naval crews were quickly adapting their shields and firing patterns to compensate.

  They wouldn’t be caught off guard by the overly large pulse cannons again.

  The battle wasn’t over yet, but Jason was fighting the one yet to come. More reinforcements would be coming, over and over, as the Founders’ troops on the Coin responded to this unacceptable incursion. He’d gleaned that much information from his prisoner, and he knew that the next group would kill whoever was left here twice over, so they had to leave immediately, and that meant evacuating the dead warship and recovering all crew onboard…which was where he needed to be.

  The last Founder ship arrived just before he got there, and a huge flash of its already charged pulse cannon momentarily blinded him as it reflected off the shields of the Kionana, which was going to be their primary ride out of here. The warship was mostly undamaged, but the Iron Hammer had just taken a huge hit according to the battlemap, though he couldn’t see it. What was left of the Blue Miona was eclipsing his view, and soon a mooring beam from the Kionana reached out at far range and grabbed him, slowing him down over the next few seconds before releasing him again.

  A few moments later he hit the hull feet first, taking as much of the impact on his bent legs as he could, but his momentum was still too high and he fell, bouncing off the hull back the way he’d come…but not before he used his Tier 4 psionic Ty’vo and extended his own form of a mooring beam to the hull, with the hazy green conduit sticking to the hull plate while yanking his right arm so hard his shoulder popped out of socket.

  But his momentum was stopped, and he reeled himself in until he got to the hull and got an armor lock on it, then he felt the pressure in his shoulder build before his Regenerator finally popped it back into place, then quickly repaired the damage surrounding it…which saved him the trouble of having to do it himself.

  Jason ran across the hull, making sure to keep one foot in contact at all times…then got tired of going so slow and started jumping, using his Ty’vo to pull him back down each time, and was able to build up a considerable amount of speed all the way up to one of the smoldering craters in the hull.

  He passed through a plume of smoke that was slowly eeking away from the ship, then slung himself down into the wrecked section, using his sensors and Pefbar to look for the best way inside, eventually finding an airless corridor open to space…or mostly, for there were bent bulkheads and other stuff warped over most of it, but Jason was able to slither through to the far side where there was pieces of shrapnel imbedded in the walls everywhere.

  He floated, bouncing his way down the hallway that normally would have had anti-grav, until he got another 180 meters in, then he suddenly fell to the ground as he reached an intact pocket of gravity. Not far beyond that he found sealed bulkhead doors, on the other side of which he could feel air with his Pefbar.

  Thankfully Star Force had a long history of ship design under their belt, so each emergency bulkhead door was also equipped with the means for individuals to pass through, so he opened a hatch and input the necessary activation code…which was little more than a few buttons to insure it wasn’t accidentally activated from debris, and a piece of the hatch slid aside, with an enviro shield keeping the air and heat within.

  Jason walked through then sealed the hatch again, confirming that the air in here was still good and warm, which meant power was still available.

  He reached out to the ship’s computer, finding most of it non-responsive, but the local nodes were still up and tracking some of the crew, allowing him to sprint off in their direction as he started to broadcast telepathically, not trusting the comm systems to be fully working, though he also used them too, knowing that both probably would not reach the entirety of the massive ship.

  “Evacuate immediately. The ship is to be scuttled. We must leave through the mag jump before the next wave of ships arrive. Get all crew to the intact evac craft in the hangars or escape pods. Leave no one behind. I’ll handle the sensitive equipment in the ship. Everyone get moving, now!”

  Jason repeated similar orders as he traveled, moving from place to place and not having too much trouble getting around the missing chunks of ship, though there were some areas that were entirely without power. The redundant comm nodes allowed him to stay linked to the battlemap most of the time, and he monitored the crew actions, having to stop off and beat his way through a malfunctioning blast door that was trapping 23 people on the other side, but after he freed them he made his way to the computer core…and began slagging everything in sight.

  He didn’t know if the Founders would be able to retrieve this ship or not, but if they did he didn’t want them having access to the Star Force databank, which each warship contained a fairly complete copy of. After he finished there he hit several other critical areas as the crew took care of their own and rounded up everyone who was still alive while searching the devastated areas where the sensors were not functioning. 8% of the crew were still missing, though they had most likely been in the areas of the ship that no longer existed. Blown apart by the explosions or thrown out into space in the aftermath.

  The other two warships were not reporting any emergency beacons free floating, so it looked like they had all the survivors rounded up, but they couldn’t be sure without bodies to count…except by reviewing recorded battlemap records to de
termine where each person had been prior to the damage occurring.

  “Jason, we have two possible survivors,” Captain Jannice’s voice said through his helmet comm. “Relaying location. I have nobody on that side of the damage. Can you get to them?”

  “I’ll find a way. Do you have enough craft to get everyone clear?”

  “Now that the fighting’s done out there, yeah. With the help of the other ships’ mooring beams. We can fit everyone in the dropships. Do you want us to leave one for you?”

  “Put a pilot in it and have it crawl along the hull tracking my location. Take all the others. Don’t leave anything behind.”

  “Are you going to scuttle the ship?”

  “Partially. Enough to move it away from the stations. If it gets far enough beyond I don’t think they’ll be able to reel it back in. Make sure everyone is accounted for.”

  “Those two possibles are the only ones left. Everyone else was in the blast zone,” she said with a hitch in her voice.

  “If they’re alive I’ll find them. Get going as soon as you can.”

  “Copy that,” she said firmly, leaving Jason to redirect towards another wrecked section of the ship, but one that was somewhat intact due to the explosion on the outside that crunched inward the neighboring sections rather than blowing them out into space. When he got near to it he passed through an enviroshield that was tinted yellow, indicating partial atmosphere on the other side…and when he got there his armor readings said it was already below freezing, meaning there was a leak, but not a big one. The ship was trying to pump new air in there to compensate, but it was only reading at 63% pressure.

  Jason scanned as he went, finding one leak and pulling an intact wall panel off only to shove it on the other wall where the leak was and quick weld it into place with his bioplasma. He couldn’t delay too long, but if the survivors weren’t in suits they needed as much air as they could get.

  The section of the ship that needed searched was nearly a half mile wide, and Jason’s Pefbar didn’t reach that far, but his telepathy did, and he searched for active minds, finding none. That didn’t stop him, for unconscious people barely registered telepathically, so he kept moving through the damaged areas, having to backtrack three times to get around clogged corridors, but eventually he came across one body pinned against the wall with an angular piece of metal shoved through her abdomen and pinning her a few inches up off her feet.

  She was dead, but Jason went up to her to check anyway, because her emergency envirosuit was on, and that usually wasn’t the case unless they expected a hull breach. He reached for her mind…and felt a static buzz.

  That made no sense. It shouldn’t be transmitting anything unless…

  Yep. Her head on the other side had a piece of shrapnel in it that was connected to a broken power cable and it was pumping electricity into her brain. That was causing the telepathic buzz when he tried to connect.

  He was standing a few inches away, sticking his head around her helmet so he could see the other side, when a hand grabbed his arm.

  “Shit,” he said, realizing his mistake and quickly cutting off the shoulder of her envirosuit as he peeled back the armor on his right hand…feeling the frigid temperature and low pressure immediately. He made skin to skin contact so he could get an accurate assessment of the damage to her all the while scanning the metal pinning her with his Pefbar.

  He didn’t know how she was alive, other than the damage was pressure locked because the debris was still inside her rather than hitting and pulling back out…which is what he couldn’t do right now.

  Jason used both his armor’s Regenerator and his Haemra healing psionic to make enough repairs to keep her alive, then he began hacking away at the metal pinning her with his death saber, first at her head then her abdomen, and when the chunk of debris was removed from her head and the electric current was shut off, the women suddenly died.

  Her heart, brain, and internal organs all shut down in sync, with his Regenerator immediately restarting them all manually, meaning if he let go of her shoulder the tiny tendrils crossing from his body into hers would break and she would be a goner, so he worked with one arm and his Lachka to cut away the rest of the debris pinning her, including a crushed left foot, and pulled her free, having to carry her in a telekinetic grasp due to her very fragile condition.

  Jason worked on her for a long time right there, a few meters away from the damage, then had to retreat with her back to the heated and full pressure area as the air continued to leak out faster than the ship could replace it. Once he was sure the women would live, he left her in a coma on the safe side and went back to look for the other person…eventually finding a dead body that could not be revived.

  He left the man there and went back for the survivor, only to find that she had died again.

  “What the fuck…” he mumbled, bringing her back again, thankfully, and not understanding why the repairs to her body didn’t hold…then he realized that her brain was missing a lot of programming due to the lost tissue that the regenerator has replaced with default growths, and there was probably an incompatibility in inadequacy somewhere.

  Which meant he wasn’t going to be able to leave her again or he was going to lose her…but he had to get the ship out of enemy hands.

  “Screw it,” he said, deciding to stay with the woman as he hauled her through the ship to an intact emergency airlock and signaled the dropship trailing him outside to dock there ahead of him.

  Jason ran into the ship with the women, his hand still on her exposed shoulder so his Regenerator could connect along with his Haemra, but he knew the Regenerator onboard the dropship wouldn’t be enough because his was saying she was fine. He had to stay with her and make manual adjustments or she’d be lost.

  “Captain Barre,” he said over the comm to the Kionana. “I can’t get to the Blue Minoa’s tender spots. I’ve got a crewman hanging on by a thread and am in a dropship heading your way. Pull us there immediately, and once this warship is evacuated, you’re going to have to use your weaponry to explosively propel her into deep space where the Founders can’t recover her.”

  “I understand. The crew are not clear yet, and the mag jump dish can’t reorient without pushing the entire area clear. We have to move off before that can happen. And there are readings of survivors on the Founder ships.”

  “We don’t have time to play games,” Jason said angrily. “Override the protocols on the dish and move it without clearing the area.”

  “That may damage the dish.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “I have a bad idea, and it involves losing the Iron Hammer.”

  “Shit,” Jason said to himself off comm. He should have seen it sooner, but part of his mind was inside the woman fighting a battle to keep her alive and his tactical sense was compromised. “Bumper cars?”

  “We have it take the hits as we move the dish. I believe its magnetic drives will survive long enough to do what needs to be done. Captain Ollo concurs.”

  “Does he?”

  “We must leave, and he does not want to expel the surviving crewmembers on the enemy ships to be lost and unrecoverable in deep space. Getting our personnel out is our top priority. The ships are secondary, and our conscripted vessels are not powerful enough to move the debris in time.”

  “Captain I’m having to use my psionics plus a Regenerator to keep this crewman alive. I’m distracted. Do what needs to be done, just get that dish repositioned or we’re all going to die here. You have temporary command.”

  “Understood on both counts. I’ll have our top medtechs waiting in the hangar bay when you arrive. Barre out.”

  Jason kept glancing at the battlemap as he worked, but he still didn’t understand why this woman wasn’t able to stay intact with a Regenerator connected to her. He felt like he was playing whackamole with a partner and barely staying ahead of her next crash, and that didn’t change all the way up to their landing on the Kionana with a trio
of medtechs rushing up to where he had her laying on the floor.

  “Brain damage,” he told them as they whipped out a variety of mobile equipment. “Her organs keep shutting down, and I think it’s a programming issue. Probably something the Regenerator is creating by accident.”

  “Regenerative feedback,” one of them said after a few moments. “I’ve seen it once before, in the records. We need to insert a cyborg implant now, then rebuild her later. We need to move her.”

  Jason lifted her telekinetically with his hand still connected to her shoulder. “Lead the way…”

  By the time they got her to the medbay and had made her brain into a true cyborg that was capable enough to sustain her, Captain Barre already had cleared out the half of the dish arc that had to move up to reposition for their exit vector. The other half was still cluttered, some with dead ships, others with enemy crew still clinging to life onboard disabled ones. They’d have to make do on their own until their reinforcements arrive, because Jason had to get his people out of here now, for he didn’t know how long they had before the dish would rotate back with or without their permission to handle the incoming ships.

  The Iron Hammer, now looking like a mashed up paper bag, had several enemy ships imbedded in its hull and sticking out of it at too many angles to have been an accident as it maneuvered within the dish arc on the powerful magnetic fields it produced, but there was no way to disconnect the enemy ship debris from it, meaning it wouldn’t be jumping out with what remained of the Star Force fleet…which was one large warship and 3 converted Caretaker ships.

  Once all crew had been moved to the Kionana and all dropships were recovered, the intact warship and the smaller escorts moved to the far side of the debris where the magnetic field was a bit weaker, but no matter. How long it took them to reach the other end was inconsequential. Only how fast they got out of here ahead of their impending doom was relevant.