Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 5

  else. I don’t know if the others are the same way or not, but I know you better

  than I know any of them. You came here to get some perspective, but you haven’t

  taken it all the way.

  What am I

  missing?

  You have to have

  someone to take the load off you. Putting it aside for you to pick up again

  later isn’t enough. You’re not fully letting it go.

  I won’t let

  someone die while I take a vacation.

  That’s the

  problem. You don’t trust the rest of us to be able to take the lead. If you did

  you wouldn’t have a problem bailing out now and then. That’s how I can handle

  the gore. I don’t have to worry about our course of action all the time. I can

  just trust in the mission that you’ve given me and lose myself in the

  moment…then walk away from it without having to second guess myself. It’s a

  nasty situation, what we have to do, but the lizards are creating it. I’m

  surviving it. You’re worrying about leading us into those battles.

  It’s my job.

  There’s more

  than one trailblazer, and far more than one Archon.

  But none of us

  have found another way. Until someone does…

  You don’t have

  that luxury. You have to get your head right now.

  I don’t know how

  to do that out there…and I can’t hide in here.

  Yes you can. You

  just need some help.

  Yeah, I could

  use some help. Do you have any to give?

  Cry.

  Cry? Paul

  asked disingenuously.

  I’ve got two

  shoulders for you to pick from. I’d let you use a breast too, but there’s not

  much there to lean on.

  How is crying

  going to help?

  Let go of

  responsibility for a moment. The galaxy is beating the crap out of you, you’re

  not doing it to yourself. You act like everything that happens is your own

  doing. This invasion isn’t your choice, we have to stop the lizards or other

  bad things happen. You can do whatever you want, but you’ve been forced into

  this along with the rest of us. If we had a better way of stopping the lizards

  we’d be doing it already. This is what we have to do, what we’ve been forced to

  do, and it’s tearing you apart bit by bit inside.

  And how does

  crying change that?

  Because you stop

  fighting it. When you’re in combat mode you numb up stuff, hold back, press

  forward. You don’t fully register injuries, and you don’t see the big picture.

  Sometimes you just need to let go and cry, feel the pain and nastiness and how

  badly you’ve gotten your ass kicked. And it’s a lot easier to do that when you

  have a comforting body to sink into…and no, I’m not talking about sex. That’s

  just another distraction. For the record, I used to have a huge crush on you.

  Really?

  Yeah, and I

  wasn’t the only one. But now I don’t, and that’s no slight against you. You’re

  just as hot as you’ve always been, and it wouldn’t be hard at all to get off on

  you if I still did that sort of thing. And I would have, just so you know, if

  you hadn’t started talking.

  It took me a

  moment to figure that out.

  Don’t make a

  promise unless you plan to carry it out. No, I don’t go all fireworks seeing

  you naked. I know you too well for that illusion to kick in. You’re a brother,

  but without the societal social boundaries kicking in. Glad we got rid of

  those, by the way, even if we don’t apply it. No, the sexual attraction is just

  a biological function now, but it still can have a use. Come here, she said,

  despite the fact that they were already on top of each other, but somehow she

  managed to get a bit closer and share more skin contact than they had before

  with her wrapping around his body at an odd angle that kept their parts from

  lining up.

  Just let go,

  she asked him. Let your guard down. Trust

  me with your security, with the responsibilities, with the threats and the

  thinking. Sink into me and just feel the bad things that have happened to you

  and others. Don’t hold them at arms’ length any more, steeling yourself to get

  through the mission. There is no mission here, it’s out there, with other

  people carrying it out. Right now it’s just you and me and this holy mud hole.

  Let go of everything and just feel…and cry. Doesn’t matter if the tears come or

  not, but sometimes the way to fighting an internal problem isn’t to fight it at

  all. You just need to face it. You don’t usually have that luxury because other

  people are depending on you, but right now they’re not. We’ve got these lizards

  beat, you know that, so let go and let everyone else handle this right now.

  Just let me hold you and let yourself enjoy it.

  And if you’re a

  bit more than a sister to me?

  Then compliment

  taken, but it doesn’t matter. If I accidentally pop you off it doesn’t matter.

  You’ll level out eventually, then it’ll just be you and me and no distractions.

  Your body feels good to me, just touching and holding you. The galaxy is a

  messy, nasty, crude place, but you’re not. You’re a shining beacon of light,

  every bit of you from your hair down to your toes. I feel good just being here

  with you, this close, away from everything else. If I can do the same for you

  indulge in it.

  Paul felt himself choke up and it surprised him, then

  he noticed his hands started to shake under the water. At first he though

  something was brushing up against his fingers, but then he felt the shakes for

  what they were.

  He had been holding back a lot, and now it was

  starting to creep its way to the surface.

  Don’t fight it,

  Riona urged him. It’s a form of detox,

  just let it play out. I’ll be here as long as you need and then some. Hold onto

  me or just veg out, either way I’m keeping you in a death grip.

  Paul wasn’t sure what to do, but after a few moments

  hesitation the ‘detox’ seemed to continue on its own without permission. He

  didn’t know if he should stop it so he held himself in check, thinking until

  his walls started to crumble and he just decided to trust Riona and indulge in

  it. She did feel good to his touch, and that comfort seemed to loosen him up

  even more when he stopped resisting it. She did turn him on, but after a few

  minutes that faded into a warm, passionate glow that, like she said, had no

  fireworks in it.

  I love you,

  she said when his tears started to flow and she found herself reciprocating,

  able to feel his pain and stress bleeding off through their mental link.

  Immediately she realized she’d set herself up for an ‘I know’ response, but

  Paul said nothing, which only underscored how much he’d been burying inside

  himself all these years. There’d been rough times for Riona in the past, but

  she was beginning to realize there was a lot more to b
eing a trailblazer than

  she thought, and she didn’t envy him this part.

  As promised, she kept her death grip on him throughout

  the release process…then a bit longer for good measure, along with the fact

  that she didn’t envy leaving their sacred embrace and returning to the ugly

  galaxy either. She’d needed this moment too, and stretching it out a few

  minutes longer wasn’t going to inconvenience anyone else. They had time, and

  the war could wait a few more minutes.

  December 1, 3105

  Tor System

  (Ninja Monkey territory)

  Red Dragon

  Morgan walked into her private command center and

  tiredly sat down on the cushioned pedestal in the center. She’d just gotten

  back from a very long campaign in the Firebird System pushing back a lizard

  advance and finally securing a planet there that the enemy had been stubbornly

  holding onto for decades. Now the system was fully Ninja Monkey territory and

  stellar orbit had been secured, meaning she could get to work developing the

  infrastructure there to add its wealth of natural resources to her little,

  isolated empire without worry of internal ambush.

  Having engaged in a lengthy training session to purge

  the combat-induced stagnation out of her body on the way back, she was likewise

  not going to take the traditional ‘rest’ that she encouraged the others in her

  Clan to soak up. No, she had work to do…always had work to do, and she wasn’t

  going to waste time sleeping when her body could be relaxing here while her

  mind was still working to tie up loose ends and push new agendas.

  She was getting no help from Star Force at all, which

  had been the original agreement, but she found that she was having to do a lot

  of the stuff that Davis did back in the day, especially now since Falconi had

  been reassigned. His promotion to Duke took him elsewhere within the empire and

  Morgan had been assigned a new Marquis…a very green one, literally, for he was

  a Protovic. The bioluminescent patches on his body constantly reminded Morgan

  of his lack of experience and she was badly missing Falconi, though she knew in

  time he’d adjust, for running a Clan wasn’t the same thing as operating a

  planet or system within Star Force’s integrated economy.

  Here you had to keep everything self-contained, and

  you didn’t even have the luxury of trading with other Clans for basic

  necessities as a fallback. That was a stipulation that Morgan had heartily

  agreed to, wanting to do this completely on their own, though there had been

  some swapping going on over the years, with the original shared Ninja Monkey

  capitol of Everlast being traded away to Clan Cortana in exchange for a

  combination of tech and raw materials. The rest of the Ninja Monkey

  possessions, save for their little slice of Antarctica, had also been exchanged

  for badly needed resources now that Morgan had a total of 17 systems under her

  control and some 38 habitable planets to colonize.

  She didn’t need the other possessions, nor did she

  want her people spread out so far. Her Clan had staked its claim along the

  coreward border and held it firm. This was their home now, so consolidating

  their population and resources had only made since, but now that the big pieces

  had been traded away everything they needed had to be produced internally,

  including the new Dre’mo’don-equipped drones. They were running short on the

  necessary arc elements and Ninja Monkey production facilities for such things

  were barely out of their infancy.

  Falconi had gotten the Clan squared away and capable

  of producing a least a little bit of everything on their own, but Morgan needed

  to push her industrial capability as far and as fast as possible, for she had

  plenty of willing volunteers requesting to join her Clan. Not all would

  qualify, and even those that did might not last under her rigid work schedule,

  but for as many washed out or decided to leave to pursue another course, more

  were always waiting in the queue lines for her to select them.

  And she was doing so personally most of the time.

  Falconi had been handling that, but now that she had Yivati trying hard just to

  keep up with everything demanded of him Morgan had been pulling some of the

  duties her way to try and keep him from imploding under the stress. Clan Ninja

  Monkey wasn’t the largest of the Clans, but it was rumored to be the most

  intense. They had long lists of goals and timetables to achieve them on,

  military production requirements heightened by the fact that they were in a war

  zone, and numerous colonies to establish and grow with too few people to man

  the construction crews.

  Morgan had been running her Clan nearly her entire

  life, and this change of venue had been ongoing for almost 300 years now, but

  there was always so much to do. Never a respite. For she wouldn’t allow one.

  They needed to grow larger and stronger and ‘tomorrow’ wasn’t acceptable for

  that. It had to happen now, for the lizards were attacking her Clan whenever

  and wherever they thought they saw weakness, forcing her into losing ships,

  resources, and time to hold them at bay…and then there was the desire and need

  to take more systems away from them.

  Her new Marquis had been thrown in over his head,

  intentionally she thought, and Morgan didn’t like her Clan being used like

  this, but Davis knew what he was doing most of the time. If he thought Yivati

  could handle the pressure then she hoped he’d adjust quickly, because carrying

  him until he got up to speed was wearing her out more than normal.

  As her top ranked Archon body rested in a sluggish

  seated position, Morgan used the telepathic interface and brought up dozens of

  display maps, screens, diagrams, and lists that she had been working on

  previously. Picking up where she left off, the trailblazer continued work on

  colony development plans, designing her worlds rather than leaving that to the

  Marquis or some of her Administrators.

  Everything flowed from her, even when Falconi was

  here, and she’d been implementing a more united grouping of star systems than

  was traditional for Star Force. Typically a system was stimulated with outside

  cargo shipments to get it squared away and self-sufficient, then allowed to

  develop on its own merits going forward. Morgan wasn’t patient enough for that,

  so there was an unbelievably high amount of cargo being transported between her

  17 systems, utilizing their strengths to cover each other’s weaknesses in the

  here and now rather than going for balanced economies straight off.

  Red Dragon was the only world that was truly

  self-sufficient, and it was the current Clan capitol now that they’d abdicated

  Everlast. Morgan was hardly ever here in person, linked into the interstellar

  comm system and issuing orders from afar as she went to put out the various

  fires herself, along with leading the crusades pushing further into lizard

  territory along the border. She hadn’t gone deep into it, but had stretched out

  her holdings in a plane along
the border line, setting Ninja Monkey territory as

  a barrier the lizards had to either take down or bypass to get at the other

  Star Force worlds.

  With detection systems and comm relays set up in

  uninhabited systems in between her own, she had a detection grid that could

  alert the rest of Star Force if a lizard fleet moved through her territory to

  hit them directly, but to date that had never occurred and the lizards seemed

  curiously interested in hitting her territory in an aggressive manner despite

  the fact that they were losing handily everywhere else Star Force was engaging

  them. Even now their core worlds were under assault, finally, after all this time,

  yet still here they were, pressing back on her expansion and challenging her

  ability to hold onto the planets she’d taken.

  Part of Morgan missed the really big battles that were

  going down, but these were personal and hard enough to win as it was. She trusted

  the others to get the job done out there while she pushed the long term

  objectives here…which was, and had always been, preparing for the day the

  V’kit’no’sat came back. Hopefully they had millennia more to work with, for she

  was painfully aware how unready they were now. Her Clan was growing, fast and

  hard, forged under the pressures of constant battles and never having a moment

  of peace.

  She kept the internal pressure up on her people on

  purpose, wanting to see who would break and who wouldn’t. It was done in a fair

  and honest way, with everyone knowing just how hard being a member of Clan

  Ninja Monkey was going to be and the fact that they might not last a month

  here. So long as people were informed and warned prior to inclusion she didn’t

  mind pressing them. They could always opt out, but if they didn’t and they

  stayed, they’d be part of a very elite faction within Star Force.

  But even with 17 systems, all of which were painfully

  undeveloped, including Tor, her Clan was a small piece of the greater whole and

  vastly inferior to the Bsidd. Morgan practically drooled with envy at the sheer

  power and size that faction had become under Larissa’s direction. Their growth

  rate was astonishing, even now that the rest of the empire wasn’t funneling

  resources to them, and the bulk of the troops guarding the ADZ and pressing