Star Force: Symbiosis (Star Force Universe Book 72) Page 6

  They went in series, with the smaller ships going first, but after the first two winked out as they launched themselves off the magnetic springboard, an incoming signal indicated the upcoming arrival of the another fleet 27 minutes away.

  Jason had to remotely hit the override on the dish as it began to move again, putting it back into alignment for their exit vector. After it was within 16:23 of the arrival time even the override wouldn’t work, for the machine was configured to catch what was coming in no matter what.

  But he didn’t need more than 2 more minutes to launch the last Caretaker ship and then the Kionana off the aligned magnetic field…after which it was a long coast across the blackness of deep space to another mag jump station that would automatically reorient to catch them regardless of what the crew onboard it had to say.

  Those should still be Star Force personnel…he hoped.

  6

  October 7, 128888

  Happhetima Nebula (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Gamma Tricumbda Temple

  It had been more than 4 months since the temporary truce in the Temple, and since that time Kara had returned to her training grounds with Strovok to wait. Morgan was off doing other stuff, but still in the Temple, as Kara had to remain here. Her location wasn’t a total secret, due to the ‘no go’ zone hovering over her as far as the Vargemma were concerned. And if she was going to play bait, the bait had to stay put to be found.

  Kara sat on a flat rock, sitting cross-legged in the nude as she soaked up the sunlight as still as a statue. Only the gentle wind rocked her twin blue braids back and forth microscopically as she sat, apparently calm, but actually nervous. The Nu’avi had remained inside the canyon perimeter for the better part of three months, then they’d abruptly left through the underground portals.

  All 59 of them.

  They had to have known Star Force had some surveillance down there, so their leaving was more of a public spectacle than an actual departure. All 59 of them had in fact left the Temple, to where wasn’t known other than the fact it was on the same vector as they’d given Jason to investigate, but there was no word from him or his people yet. It was early, given the distances and comm lags, and she hoped he didn’t run into the Nu’avi wherever there was.

  But the fact that they’d quietly left one of their original 60 behind said all that was needed.

  There was a hunter here, operating in the dark with the departure of the others probably being a distraction or a useful coincidence. Ever since learning of that Kara had been waiting for the missing Nu’avi to show up on her doorstep, and despite the tracking programs set up around the containment area and elsewhere, they’d failed to detect the missing Nu’avi, so everyone assumed he was still underground in the containment area.

  Everyone that was gullible, anyway.

  “How strong are you?” Kara asked loudly, though her eyes were still closed and there was no one to be seen, but she could feel his presence nearby.

  “Far beyond you,” a voice spoke back in her own language, but he remained invisible. “Have I been anticipated?”

  “You want my siphon ability for something, I assume.”

  “Your kind are rare, and must be preserved at all costs.”

  “Preserved or imprisoned?”

  “Trained to serve in the greater war. Far beyond anything you can learn here. I must take you beyond this galaxy where the true masters will instruct you in developing powers beyond your imagination.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I will take you willingly or unwillingly. You do not understand the magnitude of the potential you possess, nor can I explain it. Thus you must come with me, by force if necessary.”

  Kara still hadn’t moved. “Do the Nu’avi have it?”

  “No, but yours is so undeveloped that you are no match for me. Come quietly and I will not have to harm you.”

  “Don’t you mean us?”

  Suddenly another disturbance manifested itself nearby, and Kara finally rose to her feet and turned, all in one smooth motion, as her Vorch’nas multiplied outward and covered her pale flesh head to toe in crystal-like white armor. “You missed one.”

  Strovok appeared out of his Essence concealment as Kara threw a javelin-like Lachka construct using her tier 4 Si’mosa towards the invisible presence, only to have it caught there as the tailed biped became visible, holding the energy field in his right hand before crushing it into non-existence and leaping towards Kara.

  Strovok slammed an Essence wall up in between them that stopped the Nu’avi cold, only to have him then lash out at both targets with some kind of Essence attack that Kara didn’t recognize, but she took it on her inefficient Essence barrier as she unleashed a salvo of mental disruption attacks using her psionics as Strovok closed on the enemy…with at least some of them hitting long enough for the Nu’avi to half fall to the ground before he was able to cleanse his mind of disruption.

  That allowed Strovok to get in close enough to deliver a Hard Light ‘Hammer’ blow from a few meters away, physically hitting the Nu’avi without actually touching him…and the attack knocked the smaller race’s body flying, out of which he did something that blinded both of them and had Kara retreating backwards as her Pefbar indicated he was diving towards her.

  She shoved a wide Jumat blast that direction as she washed her face with an Essence technique designed to negate and strip away other Essence…with her vision returning just as a crippling hold enwrapped her body outside her Essence barrier. It pinned her arms to her sides and her legs together as the Nu’avi tried once again to get to her…but Kara could still fly and took off straight into the air, leaving the Nu’avi on the ground where he couldn’t reach, at least not with his body.

  Kara got yanked down hard, all the way to the ground where she slammed into it feet first and they sank into the dirt a good 5 inches, all the while her body was still restrained despite her nibbling away at the very thick and rigid Essence binders…that Strovok then destroyed with a wave of his hand as he threw his Essence on her and dissolved them away while reeling in and tackling the Nu’avi long enough for Kara to get back and throw as large of a Fornax blast as she could into the very small spot before her that contained the Nu’avi’s head.

  Her aim was true, and Strovok got several punches off before he was thrown skyward and Kara was knocked back by an Essence blast so strong it was beyond anything Strovok had shown her. Trees toppled everywhere in an expanding ring, and had she not been able to fly herself to a standstill she would have been ricocheting off them instead of steadying herself and firing Dre’mo’don blasts from her wrists in a hail of small shots designed for area of effect and not precise targeting.

  The Nu’avi blocked them and raced towards her, jump/running in large lunges before Kara caught him in her Ubven as she raced backwards, spreading her arms wide and bringing her legs up as she unleashed her Final Spark technique right into his face…

  And it did absolutely nothing.

  He clawed his way free of the heavy Lachka field restraining him, but not before Strovok got off a shot from behind that did something. Kara saw the Nu’avi wince, so maybe her attack had served as a distraction, but once he was free he didn’t go after her again…instead he went after Strovok and Kara trailed him, reaching out with her Lachka and Essence enhancing it to grab at the Nu’avi’s body and only succeeding in making him twitch…after which the two of them went at it melee style, with Essence techniques enhancing their body’s movements as well as casting others from point blank range.

  Kara threw a tier 4 Takbri stun pulse at both of them, and somehow it got through, because they flopped to the ground long enough for Kara to telekinetically drag the Nu’avi off Strovok a few steps before he broke loose of her grip again.

  Kara fired her Dre’mo’dons and her bioplasma out of her palms into the gap between them, making the enemy dive into the fire to get at Strovok…which he did, and she saw at least one impact on his bioarmor that smoked on contact as her fr
iend backpedaled heavily, and she could sense he was in a panic.

  That made Kara go ballistic, channeling all her Essence into one torrent and pushing it into the remaining gap between them, catching the Nu’avi just before he got to Strovok and pushing him several meters to the side…at which point the Mek’tal added his own movement attack, and together they succeeded in throwing him back into the downed trees, with him disappearing inside the brush that audibly broke as he was rammed through it.

  I cannot take him, Strovok told her telepathically. His generation capability is higher than mine.

  Then we go for longevity?

  Or we run.

  Run, Kara said, flying over the ground as Strovok took off, leaping over trees and getting some help from Kara to keep from getting mired in the brush as she lifted him over some obstacles with her Lachka.

  The Nu’avi came after them with amazing speed, running so fast that Strovok was not going to be able to stay ahead of him…but the fleeing pair kept throwing Essence barriers and binding techniques backwards, forcing the Nu’avi to slow to deal with them long enough that they got into the standing trees again and were able to run freely…until Kara’s feet were grabbed again, this time from very long range, and she had to fight with her Yen’mer to keep moving forward.

  The delay was enough for the Nu’avi to catch up to them again…but a combined Jumat and Essence blast from the pair knocked him backward again, and the chase continued.

  Minutes went by, with so much Essence being thrown off that anyone watching from a control room in the Temple would have thought some form of overload was occurring in some of the equipment. All the trailblazers would have been bone dry at this point…combined…but Kara’s siphon kept refilling her almost as fast as she needed, with only a few small breaks required to get back to full when she had it wide open.

  And right now ‘wide open’ was her natural and permanent setting for her siphon as they tried to delay the Nu’avi as much as they could, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He kept getting closer and closer, always grabbing for Kara, probably fearing she would fly off out of reach, but there was no way she was leaving Strovok here.

  The trap they’d set was nearby, they just had to get there in time, and it didn’t look like they were going to be able to do so, for a few seconds later he got a grasp on her that Strovok couldn’t cleanse in time, and the Nu’avi was able to lurch forward in a massively fast jump and get up on her…only to be blown back from a spherical Jumat blast, yet he deflected it underneath him so it elevated him like a pole vaulter, and launched him ahead of her.

  He spun around and knocked her backwards with his own version of a kinetic attack, and it broke through her Essence barrier in a fraction of a second…after which her mind came under assault and she was swallowed in blackness…

  Morgan had left Kara alone, but was never too far away. When she pinged the arrival of the Nu’avi via her Vorch’nas, the trailblazer was stunned that he was able to get this far unnoticed, and even when turning full sensors on the area she couldn’t see him until he revealed himself.

  Morgan was in a warship high above them, but as soon as this brawl began she jumped out the nearest hangar bay and flew down towards the surface as fast as she could, becoming a meteor in the atmosphere due to the friction as she raced to get to the pair before one or both of them could be killed.

  She didn’t know if the Nu’avi would do that, but if he was losing he wouldn’t hold back. Morgan didn’t know the status of what was going on until she was nearly on top of them and having to brake hard to slow down…and missing as she overshot their position.

  Morgan slammed into the trees, breaking through several that actually helped cut her momentum, then she ran/flew through the forest back towards the trio trying to connect to Kara with a battlemeld technique, but the Archon wasn’t responsive. Her mind just wouldn’t connect, so Morgan went ninja and employed her psionics, cloaking device, and Essence techniques designed to hide oneself as she stopping stepping on the ground and flew only through the trees, finally getting eyes on the target without Pefbar that might give away her position.

  She knew he might sense her anyway, given how rudimentary her masking technique was, but the trio was fighting on the move with Kara knocked to the ground and unresponsive for a moment as the Nu’avi turned on Strovok and did something to him that caused him to fall over…then the Nu’avi got knocked backwards and Kara stood up, with that cycle repeating as they all three kept going down and up as Morgan slowed and dropped to the ground, running with soft footsteps as she engaged her Saiyan genetics.

  Her cells amped up their already rapid pace to hyper mode, with her steps becoming so slow to her perception that she had to speed up just to feel normal. Saiyan 1 did that on its own, but when they got the upgrade to Saiyan 2 their ability to process increased greatly, making them faster than before, but also with the optional switch to power enhancement. It ate up a lot of their speed, but they were still faster than when their hair was not blonde. Essentially pulling double the energy production in her cells, Saiyan 2 put such a strain on the body that one had to master Saiyan 1 to such an enormous level that Wilson himself was required to personally sign off on the upgrade to Saiyan 2, if and when the time came.

  It was literally like flying yourself into pieces, and Morgan had worked a long time to get to the point where Saiyan 2 felt natural, whether she was using the strength upgrade or not. It required so much fuel that her body was now riddled with little nodules that soaked up and stored ambrosia for such a time as this. She literally could not hold enough in her bloodstream to fuel her Saiyan mode for more than a few moments, let alone Saiyan 2 which ate it up at nearly twice the rate.

  Her nodules began releasing the extra ambrosia the moment she transitioned into the advanced state and her running speed sent her into an invisible streak through the trees, having to dodge this way and that to avoid hitting them…something she could not do when flying with enough accuracy.

  But Morgan had long since surpassed Saiyan 2, one of only a handful of people…Archons or otherwise…to do so, and her Saiyan 3 upgrade had put an even greater strain on her body, which she had slowly adapted to over time, but Saiyan 3 still felt like a temporary high rather than a normal state. That was why she didn’t activate it until she got very close to the fight, and kept her Saiyan 2 mode all routed into speed and none into strength.

  Saiyan 3 upgraded the existing cells more, not as much as Saiyan 2 had, but on average a good 13%. The bulk of the upgrade, though, was not in the muscle, tendon, and other movement tissue. It was in the psionic tissue, and allowed it to operate on the Saiyan level as well, both with a decent upgrade in firing rate, but primary in power generation.

  Morgan didn’t even try to use her Essence to upgrade her psionics, which might have given away her presence coming up behind the Nu’avi. Instead she ratcheted up her metabolism to Saiyan 3, pouring the extra speed into her already blur-like movement as everything around her seemed to slow down a little bit more.

  All three individuals ahead of her were moving in slow motion, and Morgan was the most vulnerable of them. The Nu’avi could kill her in a single shot that she did not have the Essence nor the technique to fully block if her assessment of his abilities was even halfway accurate.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous, and like a ninja, one didn’t start a fight they didn’t know they could win. She remembered that from an old kids movie called ‘Three Ninjas,’ and it had stuck with her throughout her life. This Founder bastard was far beyond her skill in Essence, but he was slower than her Saiyan genetics…and he was distracted fighting the other two.

  Morgan ramped up her tier 2 Saven psionic, creating a far larger Ikrid flash bomb than any Archon had ever hoped to, and launched it towards the Nu’avi as he continued to move, fight, get knocked down, and get back up again…but he was moving so slow Morgan couldn’t miss, and she was gambling her disruption attack would hit without him seeing it com
ing, and if it did it would allow her the last few steps she needed as she sprinted towards him and dove towards her target…

  7

  Kara knew they were in trouble. The trap zone was another 2 miles away and they were barely moving meters now, getting knocked down, grabbed, disoriented, and just about everything they were throwing at the Nu’avi he was throwing back at them twice as strong. If he wasn’t trying to capture Kara, she had the feeling he would have killed her already…but capture was often much harder than killing, and so far she and Strovok were able to disrupt him every time he got on top of one of them.

  Their teamwork was annoying him, for the Nu’avi was hitting harder and faster now, with Kara’s Vorch’nas already having to repair a fractured skull, broken leg, busted ribs 3 times, and who knew how many other little injuries she was incurring as she got knocked around. Strovok had no Regenerator on him, nor armor, but his Essence defenses appeared to be holding up. Kara couldn’t know for sure, because she barely had time to notice what he was doing between the mental jamming that kept getting dropped on her.

  If it wasn’t blackness, sonic pierces that drowned out the rest of her senses, or the half dozen other tricks the Nu’avi was making her cleanse from her mind, it was brute force collisions with hard light walls or elongated limbs, including a tail whack that smacked her across the face despite it ‘missing’ by two meters.

  Kara ended up face first in the dirt, only to spring back up and dodge a smackdown she saw coming with her Pefbar. As she rolled out of the way she threw an Essence-enhanced Jumat back up into him that caught him off guard, knocking him head over heals, but the Nu’avi landed on his feet just as Strovok hit him with something that gave Kara a moment to think…which meant running a few more meters away towards the trap.

  Both of them did, but they didn’t get more than 150 before the hard light walls they threw up behind them to block the Nu’avi failed and he got another grip on Kara’s feet…then the whole brawl started over again until they could break free, gain more ground, and get a little closer to the buried equipment in a clearing that, in retrospect, was put a little too far from their training grounds…though they’d expected to get a heads up on his approach before he got within speaking range. The fact that he’d been able to sneak as close as he had gotten before she sensed him with her Pefbar had messed up their plans…but they could be rectified if they could just get this brawl into a chase, yet their enemy wasn’t complying.