Star Force: Perquisition Read online

  Clan Beyond currently had a mixed population of 5 billion and was one of the midlevel Clans as far as numbers went. Clan Star Fox was the true juggernaut, with over half a trillion members at present and rising fast, made up mostly of Kiritas, while the overall Human population in Star Force had only risen to 23 trillion. They were still the minority within the empire, with the Kiritas outside the Clans numbering 189 trillion, the Kiritak at 237 trillion, Axius at 431 trillion and the Bsidd at 598 trillion, who were growing more rapidly than any other faction with resources from across the empire being funneled into creating the infrastructure to hold them all.

  Growth within the ADZ had been moving at a furious pace the last 200 years for both Star Force and others, with a decent percentage of that still being made up by immigrants fleeing the lizards and other dangers. How Davis had managed to keep the cities building fast enough to hold them all was still a mystery to Brad, but he knew that the Kiritas/Kiritak populations, along with the Bsidd, were handled in a nonrandom fashion, meaning that all reproduction occurred under controlled situations and the number of eggs fertilized was the exact number that Star Force wanted, else those two races would have spread beyond the empire’s ability to feed and house.

  Other populations like Humans, Calavari, and the Protovic reproduced randomly. All infants, or in the case of Protovic egg sacks, were taken into maturias but no population control was in effect. Sexual excursions and the choice of individuals wanting to reproduce dictated those numbers, meaning that Brad’s Protovic population 4.8 billion wasn’t going to be expanding rapidly. They weren’t a powerhouse in the empire and wouldn’t be in the foreseeable future, definitely not population wise, but Brad wanted to carve them out a niche of their own and still felt like the task was undone, hence his staying in direct control of them longer than even he had initially anticipated.

  But today he was glad he was still here, for there was an issue on the horizon that required a trailblazer’s touch. Trey had reported back the situation the Protovic civilization he’d found in The Nexus was in and that he wanted them all moved into Star Force. 428,000 wasn’t a small number, but given the populations both he and Star Force were used to dealing with it was almost an afterthought. Fortunately not all of the facilities in Broj were dismantled, and he’d already ordered some of them to be prepped for the incoming ‘Oranges’ but with a different indoctrination program that he was still in the process of making.

  These Protovic weren’t prisoners, but they did have a culture that needed eliminating…that being of the primitive mindset. Without a full linguistic write up that Trey had said would be forthcoming it was going to be difficult, if not impossible to fashion a full program, but he knew from his experience with the Veliquesh what the first few necessary steps would be.

  Instead of isolation, these Protovic were going to be kept together in small groups for the duration of their indoctrination, save for those labeled troublesome. Brad was keeping some of the isolation wings as is in case they needed to be sent there, for he wouldn’t have one person holding up another’s progress if they proved disruptive. That said, if a group was committed to making the transition it would sometimes be preferable to have them move through the process together…in theory anyway. That was something he’d never been able to experiment with during the Veliquesh indoctrination, though in their case it was more about unlearning what they’d already learned.

  For these Protovic primitives he figured it would mostly be a matter of teaching them what they’d never been exposed to and Trey said efforts to do that on site were already going well with a good portion of them, so he’d let them keep familiar faces around while they learned of Star Force and the way they lived, for that was what indoctrination was. Without it they’d be fish out of a barrel if they were just thrown into the Protovic society here on Nym.

  Brad was willing and a bit eager to get his hands on another group of Protovic and to meet the challenge of bringing them into the fold, but it also opened up a larger question, and that was about their race in general. He’d been following the discoveries and questions flowing out of the research being done in Sol but the biggest question for him was whether or not they were going to start collection Protovic from across the galaxy and bringing them into Star Force?

  Groups like the Shanplenix weren’t joining, though a small delegation had been sent to learn about Star Force via becoming residents in an Axius colony. More like obvious spies than anything, Star Force had welcome them in like many other refugees but Brad had no doubt they’d be filing reports about everything and everyone Star Force had access to and filling out more regions on the Shanplenix maps than they’d had to date.

  That wasn’t a problem, for Star Force and the ADZ in general was an open society where information wasn’t withheld, but as of yet there were no actual migrations coming from the Shanplenix and he didn’t think there would be going forward, though he hadn’t written it off entirely. Immigrants from the independent Protovic had come over to join the Star Force faction in a continuous trickle of numbers, some coming through Axius first, but others specifically requesting to be allowed to join his people here on Nym.

  They all had their own indoctrinations to come through, even those coming out of Axius that already were part of Star Force. What Brad had built here was unique, as was each faction, so he had a playbook already written as how to send people through their indoctrination cycle and get them up to speed so they could hit the ground running when they arrived here. All indoctrination facilities were in other systems, mainly Broj, and he intended that to remain a constant, meaning that only full Protovic citizens were allowed on Nym so there would be no ‘newbs’ around to slow things down.

  He didn’t know how long it would take for these Oranges to get here, but he was certain they would and any stubborn ones would be accommodated elsewhere. They would not be confined to the prisons that most of the Veliquesh had lived out their lives in, but if there were some Oranges that didn’t want to become part of Star Force he’d make sure they lived better lives than they had back in their primitive villages. Brad would consider them a ward of the Protovic faction and leave the door open for them joining the rest of them on Nym at some point if they later made the choice, but he expected most of them to be eager to learn, based on Trey’s reports, and that meant a whole new avenue for population growth might be knocking on the trailblazer’s door.

  As the search for more Protovic continued Brad was being fed the intel coming in even though he wasn’t handling any aspect of the searches and he knew that the Protovic colonies were starting to pop up like weeds on the map. There were at least rumors all the way from the home Voku territory out to beyond the Preema, and the deeper they dug, with currency rewards made public for any tips that resulted in a positive find, the more they were beginning to realize that there were Protovic spread all across this arm of the galaxy shotgun style.

  Should they be inviting them to back to Star Force? They certainly couldn’t extend their borders out to them, at least not without creating supply problems. Yes, Star Force colonies were self-sufficient by design, but Davis kept them reigned in for a reason with the exception of the Tether. Star Force colonized regions rather than an individual system here and there, and Trey’s planet was a good example as of why. It was located within The Nexus’s domain, and Brad agreed they didn’t want to get into a potential conflict out there with no backing. Bringing these Oranges back was a good idea, but what about the others?

  Should they offer it as an option? If they did he’d have to come up with a much more robust indoctrination program, for he couldn’t just let them move in here and make this into an Axius for the Protovic. That would undo a lot of what he had built, for they were a single unified faction with no exterior ties. Axius was a mix of more races and agendas than you could count, though after living there long enough they all tended to gel together, due in no small part to the enforced maturia system. Parents couldn’t raise their own offspring and p
ass on their bad habits, so long term problems tended to dissolve within Axius.

  Brad didn’t want any of those problems coming here, but the more he learned about the Protovic the more he realized that they had been genetically engineered specifically to be reunited someday down the road. They still didn’t understand the particulars of that, but something big was going on here and he was sure that each of these long lost Protovic colonies were a seed put down to build or regenerate something very important sometime in the future.

  Star Force was going to find out what that was, no matter how long the search took to find the other 4 variants. But even then, what he did with the Protovic faction was another matter, and it was days like today that he just sat in front of his office windows thinking for long blocks of time trying to figure out what the best way forward was, and what he wanted the Protovic to become within Star Force.

  Right now they weren’t specialized. They had achieved economic self-sufficiency for the most part. Arc elements, Solari, Corovon, etc were still having to be shipped in, though he was in the process of locating a nearby system where he could put down a corovon mine. There were a few sites available, but he was still looking for the concentrations he wanted. There was none to be found on Nym, and only the barest of traces elsewhere in the system. Too small to be worth picking up, so he was going to need another source.

  Right now he was importing it from the rest of Star Force and exporting very little. He’d wanted to go broadband and built up naval, aerial, mech, aquatic, and commando units of decent size from the get-go and had done the same with their industry. They were a ‘jack of all trades’ right now with nothing special about their faction, save for the robust commando tactics that their exoskeletons allowed. Other than that the rest of the factions did everything better than them, making the Protovic the backup band rather than a headliner.

  Brad wanted to find them something to latch onto, but so far he hadn’t discovered it. Whatever these upgrades were could be their defining moment, but he wasn’t counting on that. It could also be something nasty that Star Force would need to wipe from their genome, so he was looking at it as a possible bonus rather than something he was planning on. Interesting to no end, but he still wanted to build up the Protovic in another way that he hadn’t quite put his finger on yet.

  But regardless of what that path eventually became for them, he did need a higher population. He’d been tempted to offer incentives for reproduction, but didn’t want to reward such things. Getting laid and giving birth, even if it was to a fleshy egg sack, wasn’t exactly something of merit, just a function of biology. An important one for any civilization, granted, but with all of Star Force geared towards earning advancements the idea of giving rewards for reproduction didn’t feel right so he had never gone down that path. One needed to train to improve themselves in order to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency, not turn their body into a baby factory and wreck it by pumping out too many too fast and precluding any long training blocks.

  Cloning was always an option, but one that Davis had warned against. He’d stated that Star Force was going to allow natural birthing procedures rather than trying to automate it, and they’d held to that with the development of each faction. For the Bsidd that didn’t mean much, for they laid eggs and that was the end of their natural procedure. In the case of Human and Calavari they carried their young internally until they were fully developed, then gave birth to functioning, albeit marginal, individuals.

  The Protovic had the same procedure, only it was halved. They carried their young through the first phase of development, then gave birth to the egg sacks that operated independently through the final phase. Cloning, in this case, would involve bypassing that first stage and creating artificial wombs to grow the egg sacks in and, like Davis, he didn’t have a good feeling about that even if their biotech was to the point where that was possible.

  But the more Protovic that he brought in from outside sources would mean more egg sacks that would then be fed into maturias, in addition to the individuals that had to go through indoctrination to enter. That would certainly help the Protovic’s population rate increase, but there was something appealing about the idea of gathering up the scattered remains of ‘lost’ colonies and rescuing them from their plights. Because, let’s face it, sending out or setting up colonies across space and letting them fend for themselves against who knows what was just plain cold.

  Trey’s notes had said that these Oranges had once been a highly advanced civilization that had been blasted back into the stone ages. No one had come to help them, and the few that had survived had spawned the primitive people that he’d found and come to be friends with. In his gut Brad knew he wanted to bring in everyone like that they discovered, but what about the others?

  He still wasn’t sure, and their independent Protovic ally wasn’t about to join Star Force. That had been established long ago and they were basically brothers sharing the same dorm room that was the ADZ. More than neighbors, but they weren’t going to be annexed into the empire. How many others out there should be, or would want to be? For that matter, how many of them were out there in the first place?

  Brad had more questions than answers at this point, but the first Oranges should be reaching Broj within a month and he was curious to see how well they adapted and hoped he could learn enough from them to build a larger program to help reunite at least some of the scattered Protovic, regardless of whether or not they were able to collect a full-colored deck.

  6

  February 27, 3007

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  Brad watched from the side of the sparring ring as one of his senior Protovic Commandos was taking on two of the Oranges in hand to hand combat and having a tough time at it, but moderately prevailing. He was the stronger of the three, but not by as much as he was used to. These Oranges were only a few years out of the maturia and yet the pair were giving him almost as much resistance as he could handle, with only his experience allowing him to take advantage of their coordination issues to let him get the best of them.

  Undaunted, every time one of the Commandos in training were knocked down they’d spring back to their feet like a veteran, save for the fact they weren’t. Such reflexes and agility were typically reserved for those who had put in a century of solid training, but as Brad had seen for himself throughout their maturia development the Oranges were different from the rest of the Protovic and he was glad that he’d kept them all grouped together rather than mix the maturias, else there would have been problems.

  All Protovic used the same standards, but he’d had to constantly revise the maturia program for the Oranges to take into account their physical superiority. Integrating them into the rest of his civilization was less of an issue, for there were other Protovic stronger than them but at the cost of years. A lot of the Oranges were leaping ahead in the Commando division because of their advantage, though the other segments of the military and society overall didn’t focus selectively on the physical skills were only moderately affected. More of a nice bonus to the skills they had to learn and develop, but with the Commandos there was an inequity involved that was resulting in the development of egos.

  All of Star Force was predicated on earned advancement, which these Oranges were essentially skipping in the early stages. That gave them a false sense of superiority that Brad needed to quash while his Protovic civilization was still young. Give it enough time to develop some depth and this wouldn’t be an issue, but with very few veterans that could surpass the Oranges at present there was a lack of understanding on their part when they weren’t being given equal assignments and being treated like the younglings they were.

  So Brad had brought the top 50 Oranges here for a lesson, beginning with his veterans showing them that they were still ahead of the newbs with orders from Brad to expose as many of the Oranges’ weaknesses as possible, both as a cure to their ego and as a way of making them solid enough that he could
entrust them with some of the leadership positions. Right now Makron was doing a good job of proving that he could handle not one, but two of them at once, though what he was reading in the Oranges’ minds that were watching the sparring match and waiting their turn was not what he wanted.

  They were finding excuses where they didn’t exist, lying to salve their egos…and those had to be removed, one way or another.

  When Makron was finished with this pair he took a break and another veteran, this one a Red, went one on one with an Orange. Hadrick was younger than Makron, but still one of their top Commandos with more than 4 decades of combat experience against the lizards. He was part of a small unit that had fought in the Gvaris System alongside the Clans and was thoroughly ticked at the attitudes of some of the Oranges…which he was taking out on them now, though he couldn’t handle a 2v1 like Makron could.

  He did take on three in a row, then one of the Oranges that hadn’t fought yet walked up to Brad and stared him down.

  “If the point of this is to show that we’re not the best, you’re wasting your time, Archon. We already know that.”

  “Do you?” Brad asked quizzically as the 50 Oranges, 12 Purples, and 6 Reds took notice and started taking a few steps closer as they listened.

  The Orange, Benthral, nodded. “Yes we do. We’re close, but not there yet, though it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Your advantage is a head start,” Brad corrected him. “Do not assume you will level up faster than the others.”

  “But we already have,” Benthral countered.

  “No, you passed through levels that you only had to work on a few skill areas to complete. Only now are you reaching levels where nearly everything requires an enhancement to achieve. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that you will level up through those any faster than the others, Protovic or other races alike.”