Star Force: Revelation (SF79) Read online

  One bounced off his head, brushing his thick and useless skin. A tiny bit of the stun bled off even though the ‘stinger’ didn’t break, but the one that hit his right leg did. A splotch of ugly yellow paint marked the epicenter of the stun effect that passed right through his bioarmor. His leg went partially numb, but he could still walk on it. Jumping was out of the question, so he hobbled forward focusing on his telekinesis to protect him as he headed straight for the meter high cylindrical turret. The single barrel it held was still firing at him nonstop, but the rate was low compared to the much harder training challenges he’d gone through as a Protovic previously.

  The difference was those turrets fired stun energy, not physical goo pellets. He knew the alteration was due to the fact that he now had telekinesis that the Archons wanted to help him develop if only to thoroughly test his abilities, but what was worse was the fact that Brad had gone through this course when he’d first shown it to Radonon and he hadn’t even needed to use his much more powerful ‘Lachka.’ He had been able to dodge the stingers, something that Radonon should be able to do, but now after getting hit that wasn’t going to be possible.

  His anger boiled over and he just charged the turret, deflecting a few more stingers wide of his body and tanking two of them. They stunned his chest to the point he felt like he couldn’t breathe, but his limbs still worked and he covered the last few meters up to the turret, taking one more to the throat that sent his head awash with disorientation.

  With a frustrated yell his shoulder spikes glowed neon green on the tips and jutted forward on either side of his head, hitting and sinking into the turret’s armor casing like it was made of nothing more than paper. He pulled both tips down through the material and crisscrossed them, eviscerating it only to pass through the ammo pouch. When he did he lost the feeling in his mandibles and the numbness quickly shot down into his torso, with him blacking out a few seconds later.

  “Hey genius, that’s not going to work,” Brad’s voice said in Radonon’s head as he suddenly began to wake back up. His senses returned to him enough that he could see the Archon standing beside him and the trashed turret, having just delivered the destunning serum that marked yet another failure on his part. “You have to evade, not crush.”

  “You enjoy flaunting your superiority,” the Chixzon grumbled as he slowly stood up.

  “At least you admit it now,” the trailblazer said, standing a meter away but with no protection or armor between him and Radonon. That had become standard in recent months, with the Archons making it obvious that they weren’t afraid of him. They still kept him separate from everyone else, but with their skills and ability to monitor his thoughts it was unlikely that he could successfully attack one of them. Plus the fact that even if he did kill one he would end up dead soon thereafter.

  He didn’t want to do that though, and not just because of his past association with them. They hadn’t mistreated him since his rebirth, aside from the confinement. He granted that in the reverse position he would have done the same at the minimum, so he didn’t hold it against the Humans. They were even assisting him with his aims to ‘take over the galaxy’ as they called it, offering him bits of current intel on the state of affairs in the galaxy in exchange for training milestones. If/when he completed this course he’d earn another nugget, allowing him to very slowly pursue his genetic imperatives.

  “Your anger is untrained,” Brad added. “Emotions are weapons and must be honed. Yours is raw and a hindrance. Your transformation took you backwards in that respect. You’d mastered your Protovic emotions long ago. Can you not remember the process by which you did that?”

  “I have the memories, but the emotions are not the same,” Radonon said, kicking aside a piece of the turret that he’d destroyed. “I think you’re prodding them intentionally to force me to learn to control them.”

  “Control doesn’t mean restrain.”

  “I remember that much.”

  “And what do the Chixzon teach about emotions?”

  “We operate out of a position of dominance. We are unaccustomed to dealing with failure.”

  “You kill the failures?” Brad asked, sensing a memory surface.

  “Perhaps that is a long term weakness,” Radonon admitted. “We don’t permit large scale failures to endure, so we never learn from them…personally. We do analyze and learn from others’ mistakes.”

  “Can’t do that with emotions, and a great many other things.”

  “So I am learning. Do you have another turret?”

  Brad smirked. “Get back to the starting point. It’ll be ready before you are.”

  “You anticipated this?”

  “Yes,” Brad said simply, summoning a hidden door in the hallway to open and pointing Radonon towards it.

  The Chixzon flexed his newly destunned muscles and thumped his muscular tail on the floor twice before walking out, with Brad following and studying his mandible spikes closely.

  “How long does it take for those to get fatigued?”

  “A very long time. If you want to give me a lot of targets I’ll indulge you in finding out.”

  “In exchange for another data packet?”

  “Of course.”

  “Perhaps later. Though I think you just feel like tearing stuff up right now.”

  “You shouldn’t have to ‘think,’” Radonon reminded him. “You know well how to frustrate me.”

  “It’s something all of Star Force has to learn to deal with. You know that,” Brad said as they came to an intersection that required them to go different directions, Radonon back to the start and Brad to the observation post.

  “I am no longer Star Force.”

  “Yes you are,” Brad said flippantly. “You’re just in denial.”

  “I am not responsible for your ignorance.”

  “Nope, just your own. Now get going…and this time, try to focus your aggression into actions beneficial to the task of completing the course.”

  “No promises,” Radonon said, walking off.

  Brad let him go, suppressing a smile. ‘No promises’ was something Nefron used to say, and this was the first time Radonon had ever chosen to use that Star Force phrase.

  Several days later Radonon ducked under a wall, squeezing himself through a narrow gap between it and the floor only to have it fall down upon his back and pin him to the ground a few meters away from the finish pedestal. This was the first time he’d ever laid eyes upon it, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. The rover chasing him was only seconds away from shooting his lower portion that was still behind the wall.

  A sense of inevitable failure saturated his frustrated mind, but he chose to resist it. Channeling his frustration into anger and focusing it into physical action, he pressed down his arms, legs, tail, and spike mandibles into the floor and forced the wall back up a few inches. He wiggled a knee down for better leverage then let the wall drop slightly as he jutted further through. Repeating the process he got his hips under it and lifted it further, then jumped through just as a pair of stingers hit his tail.

  The wall dropped down with a thud as he tripped ahead of it and in the clear. Standing up with an eagerness he hadn’t felt in a long time, he took a step towards the finish pedestal as the wall suddenly lifted up behind him to give the rover a clear shot.

  Shit, he though, being off balance with his tail no longer functioning. He leaned forward and made an awkward jump onto the finish pedestal, falling on top of it as he was carpeted with stingers. He got one black hand on top of the button and pushed it down…with the incoming fire ceasing immediately.

  The Chixzon slumped to the ground, most of his body not responding to his brain but he didn’t care. He’d made it, challenge completed, and that was all that mattered.

  He sat there in a pile of numbed body parts until Brad appeared beside him and injected him with a specialized probe that could get through his thick skin. Radonon didn’t know how that worked, and it was just another slight nod t
owards what he was realizing was a considerable technological superiority masked beneath a shell of ineptitude that Star Force apparently hid within well.

  “About time,” Brad scoffed, then extended a hand to him. “Good work.”

  Radonon looked at it, getting his head to stop spinning more than anything, then he grabbed his hand flesh to flesh with his poison injector literally touching the Human’s skin. He didn’t know if this was a test or if the Archon had some defense against it, for all it would take was a very fast impulse without any real thought to inject him.

  Radonon looked him at him, knowing his thoughts were in the open for him to see, then decided to accept the gesture for what it used to be and let the Human help him to his feet. With a very powerful yank Brad pulled him up then looked him in the pure black eyes. “Grip the wall and pull yourself through next time rather than crawling under. It’s faster.”

  Radonon released his hand undamaged. “You’ve found a counter to our poison.”

  “Long time ago,” the Archon said with a smirk.

  “And these?” he asked, raising and activating his spike mandibles over his head and pointed towards Brad. They glowed green, as did his eyes, but the Archon didn’t move.

  “Ready for another lesson in true superiority?” he scoffed.

  “I’d prefer a straight answer.”

  Brad sucked in then blew out a slow breath. “Hit me with one.”

  Radonon hesitated.

  “Just once,” Brad assured him.

  “If this is a test to see if I will…”

  “Not a test. Consider it an order if it will help.”

  “You think your Lachka can stop them in time?”

  “I won’t use Lachka, now stop bitching and hit me.”

  Radonon growled. “Very well,” he muttered, then jutted his left spike towards Brad’s shoulder.

  The Archon knew he redirected it away from the easy target that was his head and noted the caution, but it was unnecessary. A pale blue energy shield snapped into place around his body and stopped the spike with a very loud crackle/hiss as the two different types of energy canceled each other out.

  Radonon took a step back. “You are not wearing armor. Is this being projected from elsewhere?”

  “Nope. It’s a bioshield. Jealous yet?”

  “Very,” Radonon said on reflex, then hesitated when the Chixzon in him didn’t approve.

  “Unless you catch me off guard, you can’t hurt me,” Brad said, eyeing the still glowing spikes. “You can put those away now. Don’t hit me again.”

  The two stiff snake-like limbs lost their glow and retreated back behind Radonon’s head like ornamental brackets. “I remember a rumor from long ago. I hadn’t given it consideration because I assumed it was your telekinesis at work. Bioshields are…something I’m curious to see how you manage. That technology is unknown to us.”

  “It’s one secret we’re going to keep, sorry.”

  “Yet you reveal its existence.”

  “Only to let you know how superior we are so you can make an informed choice,” he mocked.

  “To join your empire?”

  “You’re already a part of our empire, you’ve just forgotten.”

  “I have forgotten nothing. I have simply remembered who I truly am.”

  “And which empire is superior?”

  “Apparently you haven’t been studying my memories as closely as I assumed.”

  “We have,” Brad assured him.

  “If I am correct in that you have access to technology that you have not created yourself, your strength is partially an illusion. Ours is not.”

  “No, you just stole a lot of yours.”

  “We learned from others and mastered it. Have you mastered it? I think not, else you never would have permitted my transformation to run its course. Your biological abilities are superior to ours, but they are not your own creations.”

  “Still hoping you’ll get to steal them from us some day?”

  “It’s high on my priority list,” Radonon admitted. “Though I doubt I’ll ever be able to so much as inform the others of their existence. You’d kill me first.”

  Brad raised an eyebrow.

  “You would kill me if needed, but perhaps not when perpetual imprisonment would suffice.”

  “That’s better. Though you’d lost your head for a moment…say, do you guys ever do that? Cut your own heads off with those?” he said, looking directly at his shoulder spikes.

  “No one deserving of the name Chixzon.”

  “So some dumbies have jabbed themselves,” Brad said with a satisfied smirk.

  “Only the ends cut, which makes it difficult to hit yourself…though some have succeeded,” Radonon said with a bit of irony that was yet another inkling of his Protovic self. The Chixzon in him condemned those individuals to nonexistence and mentally ostracized them rather than just labeling them ‘stupid idiots.’

  “I don’t think any race is without morons, though I suppose in some rare cases it could be a plausible accident.”

  “Have any of you telekinetically ripped out your own organs on accident?”

  Brad stared at him with a gruesome look. “No.”

  “Then perhaps it is a good thing that the general Human population does not have your abilities.”

  “Eew,” Brad said, thinking that through. “Has that ever happened to the Chixzon?”

  Radonon smiled…or at least his stiff faced equivalent, and Brad realized it had nothing to do with the question at hand.

  The Archon inclined his head slightly. “Well played.”

  “You’re hard to get information out of,” he added, being gracious in his small victory.

  “So you can’t affect anything you can’t directly see?”

  “Or feel behind us. You can penetrate matter then? Your powers continue to grow more impressive.”

  “Our powers remain the same, your understanding of them grows. Consider it a bonus for the obstacle course.”

  “More likely it’s due to the fact that you did not know how telekinesis could be line of sight restricted. Have you not found any races with a similar power?”

  “We haven’t come into contact with any telekinetic races, other than you.”

  “Good,” Radonon said, accepting that Brad wasn’t going to talk about their knowledge of the rest of the galaxy so freely. “Then we both preserve our advantage. We worried that being out of the loop so long might see the galaxy become stronger than before, with worse threats springing up than before we culled it.”

  “The Hadarak are still out there,” Brad reminded him, using the Star Force word for the Klamensh.

  “In them we have a common enemy, at least,” the Chixzon said as a random thought struck him. “A request?”

  “Ask.”

  “Substitute whatever packet I earned for a genetic sample from the lizards. If you will not pursue a bioweapon I may still be able to provide some insights that your Vortison has missed. I’d prefer to be of some use to the galaxy rather than a total spectator, and they are another common enemy.”

  Brad studied him and his mind closely, then nodded. “Granted.”

  6

  July 2, 3093

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  “Have you seen this?” Vortison asked as he barged into Brad’s office, holding up a data pad.

  “If that’s the overview Radonon provided, yes, I’ve skimmed through it,” the trailblazer said casually. “Was there something significant that I missed?”

  “What’s not significant?” the medtech said, pulling up a chair and sliding a chip into Brad’s desk so they could get a fuller view with a meter high hologram popping up in between them as the nighttime cityscape was splayed out behind Brad through the wide window. “First off the length.”

  “I only looked through the summary,” Brad admitted. “Too long?”

  “He practically wrote a book detailing lizard genetics…and one that the V’kit
’no’sat could learn from. A lot of this is over my head, but I’ve learned more in the past 9 hours about their coding than I have in the past 9 centuries.”

  Brad raised an eyebrow. “Useful then?”

  “As in developing a superweapon against them, no, but in understanding their coding. The genetic stranglehold on their individuality is plain as day to me now. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it once they’re developed…short of cutting out chunks of their brain, programming wise, which Radonon spelled out how to do. We technically have a way to free them from it, but at a loss of a significant portion of their knowledge and abilities. They’d still be functional, not a vegetable, but I don’t see how that’s of any use to us. My point is I can see it now, and I can vouch for the Chixzon’s biotech superiority. They are far more dangerous than I had given them credit for.”

  “Did he give us anything practical to use?”

  Vortison frowned. “You still don’t get it. He gave us everything about them. They’re an open book now, granted a very complex one.”

  “But can we use any of that knowledge in the short term?”

  The geneticist sighed. “Militarily…I don’t know, but as far as advancing our understanding of genetics he just gave us a very valuable addition to our database that we will be learning from for centuries to come. It may not help you when you invade their core worlds, or maybe it will. There isn’t a weapon I can give you now, but when you want to do something in the future, something specific, well, let’s just say we have a lot more options now.”

  “He also outlined the bioweapon,” Brad added.

  “Actually,” Vortison said as he reached across the desk to the trailblazer’s side and sifted through the holographic menu until he found a specific list, “he created, or perhaps recreated, 7 different bioweapons that could be used against them, one of which would render them in a coma-like state.”

  “I didn’t see that.”

  “We can’t use it…or at least I didn’t think you’d want to. If we didn’t recover those infected they’d starve to death while asleep. You said something a long time ago about what constitutes an ‘honorable’ death, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply.”