Star Force: Nemesis (SF3) Read online

  Several long seconds later the Black Knight slowly pulled himself out of the mess of bodies and stood, shaking off the stun charges he’d been absorbing. He took a moment to clear his head then walked off towards the staircase, gaining strength with each step, as he went to hunt down Megan and retrieve his sword.

  “Heard you came close,” Greg asked Paul and Jason as they came into the lounge area late. Jason had stayed with Paul after the challenge while the medics had repaired his six cracked and one broken rib, and as a result had been last in line for the showers.

  “Not really,” Paul said, appropriating a nearby chair and spinning it about to face Greg’s. Jason likewise grabbed one.

  “I heard you took him to his knees,” Greg went on, “after stealing his sword?”

  “Don’t ask me, I was unconscious at the time,” Jason said after a questioning glance.

  “We succeeded in stunning him enough to make it show, but we didn’t hit him enough,” Paul said, thinking back through the brief, but intense fight for the 6th time since being revived from his stun-induced coma. “But I think we have another problem.”

  Greg stiffened. “What?”

  Paul and Jason exchanged glances. “I think he might have stun gloves.”

  “Gloves?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t remember being stunned, unless I accidentally hit myself after he punched me,” Paul explained. “I also think I heard him activate them.”

  “Which, if true,” Jason added, “means we can’t disarm him.”

  Greg thought hard. “How would gloves work? Did you see him turn them on?”

  “I think there’s something on his wrists…it all happened so fast I’m not really sure.”

  Greg shook his head in dismay. “He’s never lost his sword before, which is probably why we’ve never seen him use them.”

  “Still,” Jason said, “we’ve got some idea of what it takes to disable him. What’s the ratio of stinger to stun stick?”

  “I don’t think they’ve ever said,” Greg noted, glancing at Paul for confirmation. “But I’d guess 4 to 1…maybe 2 to 1 for the shotgun.”

  “Something like that,” Paul agreed.

  “Well, what’s that put us for a shot count?” Jason asked Paul.

  Paul mentally recounted the approximate number of hits the Black Knight had taken. “Best guess…50+ to visibly weaken him. I’m scared to think how many it will take to knock him unconscious.”

  “Still, it’s some valuable intel,” Greg said, nodding appreciatively.

  “Given the right situation, I think we can amass that much firepower,” Jason said, already thinking through their options. “It’d have to be on one of the park courses, where we can keep our distance. So far we haven’t seen him with any ranged weapons.”

  “But he is quick,” Paul pointed out. “We can’t hit him fast enough to keep him from getting at some of us.”

  “Depends on the terrain,” Greg countered.

  “Blood gulch?” Jason suggested.

  Greg nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Problem is,” Paul said, “he picks when and where to hit us.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t plan ahead,” Jason reminded him. “Anyone feel like a little extra practice time?”

  “I’ll grab a few guys,” Greg said, getting up, then looked down at Paul. “We’ll get this figured out.”

  “You…stay and rest,” Jason told Paul as he started to get up out of his seat. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Will do,” Paul relented, sitting back down in the lounge chair. He leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to bleed off the mild stun headache. He licked his lips reflexively, then caught himself and stopped. The damn regenerator always left him tasting metallic coconut.

  7

  The Black Knight continued to harass the trainees at random for the following three weeks on varying team challenges before he finally got around to hitting them again on the ‘blood gulch’ park course. The 8s were running a ‘gauntlet’ scenario, in which they had to make it from one end of the park to the other past an undisclosed amount of hidden snipers, when the Black Knight showed up again, appearing from behind one of the large boulders in the center of the park and taking down Nik without warning.

  “Knight!” Rafa yelled out, aiming and firing off three quick rounds from his stubby rifle as he backtracked. “Scatter!”

  The others trainees, save for Vic, took off for cover, hoping that the snipers would leave them alone until this was finished. That hadn’t always been the case, but more often than not when the Black Knight arrived the trainers were content to sit and watch.

  Vic was the Knight’s next target, and the mass of black armor was on top of him in three quick lunging steps. Trainee 086 was fast enough though to drop his rifle and unclasp the stun stick attached to his belt that the team leaders had encouraged them all to wear when the challenge allowed, just in case the bastard showed up again.

  Vic didn’t have time to turn it on, as he immediately had to deflect a long reaching slash from upper left. He twisted with the direction of the hit and backstepped in a graceful spin that bought him another meter of distance. Had he wanted to strike at the Knight he never would have been able to reach him, the stun sword he carried had too much length, as did the man’s arms, but fortunately that wasn’t his mission…buying time for the others to set up was.

  Vic danced around as much as he could, deflecting and dodging the furious blows from the black sword, which the Knight swung far too easily for its weight and size. He knew he didn’t have long before his luck would run out, but he did hold on long enough to see the first few stingers begin to coat the black armor with spots of green.

  He ducked underneath one wicked lateral slash, but lost his balance in the process and landed on his back, quickly trying to roll out of the way but knowing it would do no good. The Black Knight was faster than any of them and Vic knew in a moment he’d feel the tip of the stun sword dig into his chest or back just before he blacked out.

  But that didn’t happen this time, as a wave of incoming stingers prompted the Black Knight to disappear behind the nearest rock. Vic just caught sight of the back of his armor as it disappeared around the boulder and wanted to count himself lucky, but he knew better and quickly looked around for his rifle.

  Rafa pelted the Black Knight with six shots, missing twice more as the Bastard ran for cover. On one level he was glad they’d scared him off and kept Vic in the fight, but Rafa would have traded that minor victory for a chance to shoot him up in the open. Right now he had to reposition to higher ground.

  The others were doing likewise, climbing up on top of boulders and atop of ledges…using the terrain to put some obstacles between themselves and the Knight to give themselves a chance to retreat if and when he came after them. Mark took a position atop a pancake-looking angled ledge then immediately jumped off it, completing a full forward twist to awkwardly land on his feet and fall to the ground as the Black Knight raced up the backside of the ledge and jabbed forward with his sword.

  Rafa didn’t wait till his black armor came into view and started firing at the sword as soon as he saw it extend from behind the boulder blocking the rest of his view. By the time his first stinger arrived the Knight had moved into range and it hit him square in the head, splattering a bit of green over his faceplate. Four more shots from other 8s hit him in the torso as he distractedly swiped at the paint partially blocking his vision and jumped down off the ledge in pursuit of Mark.

  Rafa’s next two shots missed the moving target, but a few of the increasing number of paintballs zinging his way hit the Knight, but they didn’t slow him down. Mark had gotten to his feet and ran towards a group of boulders on which three of his teammates stood firing, but the Knight quickly tracked him down and knocked his legs out from under him with one quick flick of his wrist, accepting the dozen or so hits on his chest to make the kill before darting off again in search of cover.


  He didn’t completely find it, trading the firing lines of five trainees for two others, who quickly retreated back behind cover when he rushed them, which then brought him into the firing lines of four more of the ever-repositioning trainees. The 8s had practiced this sort of cat and mouse harassment many times with the other teams and knew which spots in the rocks made for good firing positions, as well as where to run when they needed to get out of the way.

  The Black Knight wasn’t confused, however, and picked one target to track down, knowing that the trainees were trying to distract him long enough to rack up a lot of hits. Rafa recognized this immediately as the Knight jumped up on top of a boulder with stunning ease and height, exposing himself to a hail of shots to chase down Andy who’d dropped off the other side.

  That took the Knight out of sight for the moment, but Rafa held his spot, perched atop another boulder, knowing that the Knight would either reappear on his own or one of his teammates would draw him out. Even so, as he waited, Rafa could see and hear several of the others shooting down into the rocks at the target. A muffled groan preceded Oni jumping back off her perch and the Black Knight appearing on top of the rocks in pursuit, suggesting that now Andy was down too.

  The Knight took four more hits while passing up into view, one of which came from Rafa. Oni disappeared from view and ran through the rocks, rounding a curve and heading straight for Rafa. Her pursuer appeared two seconds later, charging hard and a bit awkwardly towards the trainee.

  Rafa unloaded as many shots as he could into the Knight’s chest, firing directly over Oni’s head, the last of which was joined by four other shots that hit his black armor just as he caught up to and swung at Oni, missing by inches as she instinctively dove into a somersault and rolled through the grass just in front of the boulder that Rafa stood on.

  The Black Knight stumbled as more stingers hit him, but succeeded in bringing his sword down on top of Oni and taking her out of the fight as two more trainees climbed up on nearby rocks and added their fire to the small kill zone in which the Knight now stood. He slashed up at Rafa, but didn’t quite have the reach, then fell to a knee as the repetitive stinger hits took their toll.

  Rafa pumped his rifle’s trigger as fast as he could, adding more and more paint to the already green-plastered black armor, combining his shots to those of the five other trainees as they brought the Knight down to both knees. When his sword fell out of his hand Rafa’s heart seemed to do a double pump out of sheer joy, but he knew better than to celebrate and kept firing.

  Thirty seconds later Zack lowered his weapon and held up his open palm in a signal to stop. He climbed down off the rocks and cautiously approached the Black Knight, who was lying prone on the ground, apparently unconscious. Rafa and the others also climbed down, belatedly realizing that there were still snipers about, but so far they hadn’t opened fire on them. Perhaps the trainers were as shocked as they were that they’d actually taken down the Black Knight.

  Vic carefully walked up to the armored giant and picked up his long stun sword and pulled it out of his reach…but the Knight didn’t so much as twitch in response. “This thing is heavy,” he commented, swinging it about experimentally as a blue paint splatter hit the rock wall beside him. On reflex all the trainees dove for cover.

  “We’ve still got a challenge to complete,” Rafa yelled to the others. “Let’s make good on it.”

  The surviving six trainees began working their way through cover, Vic now carrying the Black Knight’s sword in place of his stun stick, and tracked down the closest of the snipers. One good thing about the stingers was the paint smears they left behind on the rocks, which made it easy to identify the angles of fire and backtrack them to their sources.

  Rafa took down the first sniper from the flank as the others drew his fire. The trainer slumped over in his harness, attached to an elevated branch in one of the trees, and Rafa moved under his position, sighting the next sniper as Vic motioned in the approximate direction. The moving leaves in another tree made for a dead giveaway each time the sniper fired, now that he knew where to look.

  He exchanged hand signals with Lens, who was closer to the target than he was, directing him to the spot. On cue, Vic popped out of cover as a distraction, drawing the fire of not one, but two snipers as Lens took down the first.

  Now where’s the other one? Rafa thought.

  Back in the small grassy clearing between the rocks the Black Knight lay still on the ground as his armor slowly absorbed the stun charge saturating its hardened plates. When the stun-hungry material had finished eating up the latent charge, it began pulling the energy out of the Black Knight’s body, returning him to consciousness within twenty seconds. He stayed on the ground for another minute as feeling returned to his body and the trainees moved on, tracking down the snipers.

  Once adequately destunned, the Black Knight climbed to a shaky knee and held the position, needing a few more seconds before he could walk again. He pulled his arms together and touched his wrists, activating his stun gloves as he listened for the sounds of weaponsfire and deduced the approximate location of his targets.

  Rafa and the rest of the 8s were halfway through the park when Hans made a quick dash between rocks and the snipers didn’t fire at him. Rafa thought maybe he’d caught them off guard, but when Vic advanced a few seconds later and there was still no shots fired he wondered if the snipers were repositioning to flank them or had pulled back to towards the finish area to double up their firepower just when the Black Knight caught up to them, punching Zack in the back before he could even turn around.

  Rafa glanced to his right in disbelief as he turned around out of reflex and fired on the Knight. He hit him with two shots before Vic came into view from behind and hit the black armored giant with his own stun sword.

  The Black Knight stumbled forward a bit, then casually turned around and caught Vic’s next swing on the blade and held it firm. He yanked the sword towards him, bringing Vic with it when he refused to let go. The Knight kicked out his legs and dumped him to the ground while shrugging off the stingers coming from Rafa and now Hans as well. He reached down and punched Vic in the chest, stunning him unconscious.

  The Black Knight touched his wrists together, deactivating the gloves and picking up his sword by the hilt before running after Hans, who quickly retreated out of view, but he didn’t last long. Without the ability to sustain massed fire they knew they had no chance against their nemesis.

  Rafa was the last of the trainees to be taken down, running across the park in a vain attempt to reach the finish area, hoping either the snipers wouldn’t fire and give him a chance of winning the scenario, or that they would take him down before the Knight did. Attacking him one on one was futile…at least against the snipers he stood a small chance of evasion.

  Neither possibility came to pass. The snipers held their fire as the Black Knight used his superior speed and ran Rafa down some 200 meters before he got to the finish area. The last thing he heard was the quick stomp of boots behind him before a blunt tip lodged itself in his back and everything went black.

  8

  Paul and Jason exchanged lunges and parries with deactivated stun sticks in one of several small sparring rooms in Atlantis, trying to expand and sharpen their skills. There were three individual challenges that directly involved the short weapons, but it wasn’t for the sake of increasing their scores that they were practicing…both they and the other 98 trainees were desperate to find a way to defend themselves against the Black Knight.

  It had been four months since he’d first appeared, and to date none of the teams had been able to take him down. The 8s’ brief moment of glory had been their last, and no one had been able to render him unconscious since then. It seemed he was learning as fast as they were, and every technique they used to try and counter his attacks he eventually adapted to…if not outright shrugged off.

  They key problems when facing him were his speed and skill with the sword. While the Black Kn
ight’s lack of a ranged weapon was the trainees’ biggest advantage, his speed countered it in most cases, allowing him to close ranks alarmingly fast and dispatch with any snipers they attempted to deploy, and ever since his near defeat on blood gulch he’d taken care to keep out of the open save for when making a kill. As a result, it was nearly impossible to amass enough firepower for a prolonged period of time, sufficient to disable him.

  The stun sticks, however, held much more charge than the stingers did, so the trainees could conceivably disable the Black Knight quicker if they utilized hand to hand combat…preferably in concert with ranged snipers. The problem was, the Knight’s blade was more than twice as long, and he had the strength to break through any ‘stops’ the trainees could make with their stun sticks, meaning every attack he made had to be diverted away at an angle since the massive amount of force he delivered couldn’t be abruptly canceled out with a conventional block.

  Even when some of the trainees had stood toe to toe with him, they hadn’t lasted more than a few moves, for the Black Knight wasn’t only stronger and faster than they were, he was also more skilled. That, Paul and Jason had come to believe, was where they needed to focus their attention. If they could improve to the point where they could last 10 seconds against him, or 20, or 30…then he would either have to retreat or stay in approximately the same position while their snipers picked him apart. Combat duration, it seemed, was the only way to counter his omnipotence.

  The pair of 2s had been sparring for over an hour, utilizing one of two individual training blocks allotted to them during the day. Their schedules varied wildly, but they always had at least one 2-hour training block during which they could increase their base fitness or hone their skills. There was no testing involved during these hours, and the trainees could proceed as they chose. Paul, as well as most of the others, got in a daily run of at least 10k under 40 minutes. Some of them went longer, some shorter, but 6.2 miles seemed to be the agreed upon standard.