Star Force: Perquisition Read online

  “We’re better than them,” the Orange insisted. “It’s just a matter of time until we hold all the top slots.”

  Brad sighed and shook his head. “You think you know better than me?”

  “I am wondering why you are missing the obvious,” he said respectfully.

  “The Commando rankings, along with all others within the military, are designed to mark what you are capable of here and now. They are not determined by past actions, nor by future predictions. A level 10 Commando is the same as all other level 10s regardless of how many years it took them to get to that position. They measure the destination, not the length of the journey.”

  “Our journeys are starting off on a more rapid pace that will continue past them,” Benthral said, pointing to the Protovic that had just finished defeating the other Oranges.

  “You assume,” Brad insisted. “You may be right, you may be wrong. Do not count on anything or you will find yourselves in a world of trouble,” he said, addressing them all. “I have seen many Commandos, Archons even, advance rapidly through the levels to a point, then they plateau until they can find a way past it. Upgrading yourselves is not automatic, nor can you do the same things repetitively and get the same results. You constantly have to adapt and adjust to the challenges before you, and because of that you never know what tomorrow will bring.”

  “But I can see words are mostly pointless right now. Your minds are made up. You are better than them, despite the fact that they just kicked your asses. Perhaps the level of ass kicking needs to be higher in order for you to absorb the lesson in it,” he said, pointing to the ring. “All of the Oranges, now. The veterans get to stand by and watch this one.”

  There were several questioning glances on both sides as they moved, some away from the ring and others into it, packing it full of Oranges whose collective ego was stifling. Brad wanted to beat it out of them, but that wouldn’t work here. He had to embarrass them in order to get them self-analyzing.

  The trailblazer walked to the side of the ring and stopped just outside it.

  “Your mission is simple. Knock me to the ground and you win,” he said, then stepped inside and hesitated for a moment, raising his left hand and beckoning them forward with only his middle finger.

  Before they could even register the insult he moved in a flash to his right and drove a palm into one of their chests, punching him backwards and into two others before playfully hopping back to his starting position.

  “What? You don’t want to play? Or am I just too fast for your superior reflexes?”

  One of the Oranges smirked, finding the sarcasm funny, and jogged towards Brad for a few steps…but the Archon didn’t respond to him. Instead he sidestepped him entirely, darting over to another Orange that was standing still and knocked his legs out from under him with a lightning quick leg sweep that came up into a stiffened knee that knocked another Orange onto his back with a blow to the chest.

  “Come on guys, or are you just going to sit there and wait your turn. If you really think you have superior skills, then impress me.”

  Egotistical as they were, these were still Star Force Protovic and they relished a challenge, suddenly reorganizing themselves into attack groups and communicating with hand signals to try and get a good angle on their opponent. It was rare when they had a chance to spar against a Human, let alone an Archon. The chance to go up against a trailblazer was rarer than rare, and he could sense they figured they had a chance if all 50 of them worked together.

  He didn’t bother telling them in words that they didn’t, knowing that this was a lesson they had to learn directly through experience.

  Making a conscious choice not to use his psionics, Brad gave a taunting laugh and hurled himself ahead and to the right, taking down three of the Oranges so fast the others barely had time to respond, then the Archon moved off and paused just long enough to laugh again, then he zipped to his left and knocked another down, ending with a slow, theatrical twirl that left him standing like a statue in partial bow.

  “I’m getting bored, fellas,” he said as his face was down towards the ground, then he darted to his right and knocked down another pair, one with each hand as he drove palms into torso so fast and so hard they couldn’t have stayed on their feet even if they’d had time to prepare. “Any time now.”

  That last taunt and his dance-like twirl with his hands spread wide spurred all 50 of them into a frenzy, coming at him from multiple directions. He responded with a yawn, covering his mouth with his left hand before whipping it around and grabbing the neck of one of the Oranges. He used the leverage there and tossed him across his body and into two others, knowing that his exoskeleton would keep his neck from snapping in the process. From there Brad made several sharp movements, dodging some of the incoming blows and landing a few of his own that spurted a body or two out above the crowd as the veterans looked on from out of bounds with varied expressions of humor and satisfaction.

  The trailblazer would fight in a flash, then find a brief hole in their group and take a micropause long enough to throw another taunt before returning to fighting. He did it again and again, laughing while he was dodging and doing it literally right in their faces so much that the Oranges were starting to get mad. All 50 of them couldn’t even land a single blow to his body, let alone take him down to the ground or force him out of bounds. The spectacle continued for several gratifying minutes until he knocked several of them back long enough to give himself a bit of a podium to speak from.

  “Enough,” he said, holding up a hand to keep the others back, then pointing to the spectators. “Let’s give you younglings some help, though I doubt it will do much good. All of you come at me, and remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow,” Brad said before lunging back into the Oranges and bowling a dozen of them over before offering another taunting laugh as he danced over their bodies and back into a gap in the crowded ring.

  “Oh great,” Makron said, heading for the ring. “We are so going to get our asses kicked.”

  “Probably,” Laantrel agreed, “but there’s only one of him. Try and grab an arm or leg when he hits you and we might get lucky.”

  “Worth a try,” Makron said as he ran into the ring along with the other 17 veterans, making it a 68 v 1 with Brad continuing to laugh and taunt even though there was virtually no room left in the ring for him to hide in, yet he still found a calm moment here and there to gesture in mocking fashion.

  “Come on, you fight like Gnar,” he said between ducking and dodging several attacks without hitting back. “Are you guys fast or what?”

  Two of the veterans ran towards him with their arms interlocked into a clothesline…the best attempt yet, but he ducked underneath it by dropping down to his knees in a short slide, then kicking back at one of them to launch himself into a handstand that he immediately flipped out of. Acrobatics aside, the longer one spent inverted the more vulnerable they were, especially when he wasn’t using Pefbar to augment his situation awareness.

  Brad dropped back to the mat with his butt kissing his heels as three arms swung above him, missing his head and giving him a good counterpunch opportunity, but he passed on it. He didn’t need these guys disoriented from body blows, he wanted them thinking and hearing his insults clearly, so he rolled out between two of them and ran a couple steps, avoiding their tackle so quick and smooth he barely brushed against their bodies on the way out.

  “You…guys…are so…damn…slow,” he said, weaving in and out of them despite there being no visible room to maneuver, then he got to the side of the ring and almost comically knocked two out of bounds. “Oops…sorry,” he said, ducking back in and maneuvering for moments to utter a word or two between whiffs, “did you…want…to stay in?”

  The two Protovic that got knocked, one a Red and the other an Orange, glanced at each other as they sat on the floor, both perturbed by the mocking, and got back up and moving into the ring again this time focused on getting the Human. Their
rivalry temporarily forgotten, they worked together with hand signals they all had learned in their identical training and began to organize what had quickly become a rabble.

  The coordination and sentiments spread quickly, with the veterans implementing some strategies the Oranges hadn’t thought of…including sending several bodies down to the floor before the Archon knocked them down to act like land mines, trying to trip him up with kicks or grabs as he hopped over and through them. One got hold of his left leg for a split second, turning Brad around but he just spun out of it and danced over the roadblocks.

  “Whoa…that one was…close. I’m…getting…worried now,” he mocked, and continued to do so for more than 20 minutes. Over and over he evaded them, never once using his psionics and relying only on his speed, agility, endurance, and strength, showing up all the Protovic no matter how hard they tried. During the sparring match he kept getting glimpses of their thoughts and emotions, letting him judge when and where to push his taunts. When he felt them finally coming around to the mindset of a proper beatdown he gave it another minute or two then switched tactics…going from evasion to offense and knocking them down with blows so strong that they literally took the wind out of the Protovic.

  And he was hitting them on their exoskeletal patches every damn time, jarring them considerably without damaging them, but giving them the knowledge and fear of what would happen to their bodies should he miss and hit a ‘soft’ section. He never did, and before they realized what was happening they were looking at each other on the ground as the Human was prancing around the ring above them knocking down the last few so hard they had to catch their wind before getting back up again.

  “I think you’ve had enough,” he declared with disdain, standing still and raising his arms above his head in an obvious stretch. “As for me, it’s time to get my workouts started. Thanks for the warmup.”

  The Protovic…Orange, Red, and Purple…sat there gasping from the impacts and their fatigue as the trailblazer hop, skipped, and jumped his way out of the ring over their downed bodies and left them there, disappearing out a side door whistling as he went.

  The Oranges sat there looking around at each other and the Reds and Purples, feeling a newfound kinship centered around anger at the Archon. The disrespect hadn’t been faked, nor had it been sarcastic. He had insulted all of them over and over again, with them being completely unable to lay more than a fleeting hand on him.

  Eventually they all picked themselves up and went their separate ways, but even the veterans harbored a mild disdain for him following that day. Where they had been teammates before, now there was a bit of adversarialism present, and not from the sparring. That was just a part of being Star Force and one could get beat badly and just walk it off as a training exercise. This was different, because the taunts were personal and obviously meant to be that way. The Archon had shown a side of himself that the Protovic didn’t like, and though that didn’t mean they didn’t respect him anymore, it did mean they weren’t going to be so amicable going forward.

  Before now he had been more of a wise mentor teaching them things they needed to know. Now he was that, but also a bit of a jerk, with that putting some iciness in their demeanor any time he was mentioned or they saw him in person.

  But what they didn’t realize was that in the process of him becoming an adversary, all those that had gotten insulted and beat up were now on the same side rather than being rivals. The Human had become an overarching rival, so much so that the lesser divisions between them were gradually forgotten…which was exactly what Brad had intended. Makron understood that, having been around the trailblazer more than others, but some of those verbal stings didn’t fade away even for him

  He put that down to the Archon’s skill in taunting, amongst other things. He had a knack for making the insults stick, and going forward a little wink or gesture here and there would bring that resentment back for all those who had been involved in that fight, like a healing wound that got a knife blade jammed back into it just as the pain was about to fade away.

  Brad kept the wounds fresh, becoming the rival they needed in order for them to gel and stop focusing on besting each other. A few more sparring sessions with other Protovic and some ‘in your face’ spectacles of skill were enough to eventually solve the Orange’s ego problem. When being logical, honest, and friendly didn’t create common ground to bond people together, sometimes you need an enemy to rally around, with your common ground being your pain, insults, and inability to defeat them.

  The trailblazers had learned that lesson well from the Black Knight, and Brad was more than happy to whip out that technique whenever necessary to help his Protovic…though the insults were more of an Archon flare that he’d added on. Vermaire was more the ‘silent and break your bones’ type.

  7

  January 31, 3011

  Deeran System (Benoid)

  Wexfa

  Jarod-896331 slid to the right half a step to allow a Nevvan past him, for the lumbering quadruped could barely fit through the walkways on the Star Force station without bowling people over as it was. The waystation was on the interstellar link between the ADZ and Voku home territory that had become a huge economic boon, not only to the two empires but everyone else along the way. In fact there were far more non-Star Force races passing through than one would think with an occasional, but not too rare, Voku adding to the widespread mix of faces and limbs that the Archon cohabitated with on a daily basis.

  Jarod was a level 96 acolyte assigned as security to this massive pancake-shaped commerce station in orbit of Wexfa, one of the member worlds in the Benoid, which was a miniaturized version of the ADZ situated between that huge bulk of worlds and the distant Voku territories. It was situated out in the middle of nowhere and the main watering hole on the trade route between the two and other branches heading off into the surrounding regions giving Star Force at least a small presence out among the mostly overlooked stretches of this galactic arm that had not yet encountered the lizards or the Skarrons.

  There were no major powers out here, but a lot of lesser races that were using the Star Force infrastructure to strengthen themselves and their economies. This commerce station sat next to the original that had been built in this system and was now woefully inadequate. Dozens of others had also been built in orbit, but this was the largest and the primary, linked to a number of starports that would facilitate any travel down to the planet, but most people weren’t here to land on the surface, merely passing through or conducting business on the station.

  It had become the economic watering hole for many nearby races and a stop off for travelers passing through, so it wasn’t unusual for Jarod to see new races popping up now and again. Whenever he did he made a note to check the database with his helmet cam recordings or, when he was without his armor, pulling up the hallway monitors so he could familiarize himself with everyone who was visiting his station. He was chief of security, in fact if not in name, and he wanted to be kept aware of what all their visitors were capable of just in case he had to take action.

  Normally that wasn’t necessary, but now and then you’d get people here who weren’t familiar with Star Force and their protocols and he’d have to break up a fight or stop someone from killing someone else. That was one of the hazards of dealing with the masses coming in from the wilderness to get a taste of civilization and why this station was here…to screen out people who didn’t belong from accessing the planet or other orbital installations, making this the hotbed of activity and warranting a pair of Archons onboard in addition to Star Force security.

  After letting the bulky quadruped pass, Jarod stepped back into the traffic and made his way out onto one of the main promenades that circled the station’s center like concentric rings. These were much wider and had hundreds of people passing each other every second, coming in and out of kiosks and making for a chaotic, yet mostly tranquil intermixing of races. Jarod was making a patrol, just out walking the grounds to let hi
s armor be seen and to get a feel for what was going on while security manned all the checkpoints and monitoring stations. Jarod was backup, but could take the lead whenever he wanted while his partner was busy training, soon to switch positions in a few hours.

  As he walked through the crowd scanning them visually and with his Ikrid, he sensed so many minds so fast that his first days here had given him headaches, though his skill had increased so much in response that his Ikrid levels were now well beyond the rest of his marks. He wanted to make ranger bad, though was one of the slower developing Archons. He prided himself on the fact that his Ikrid was all the way up to ranger level 77, for before coming here it had been one of his weaker areas.

  Walking through the crowd he picked up a mind that was unusual, given that he didn’t see many of them out here. There was a Protovic somewhere in the crowd that he couldn’t see, and he made a point of heading in that direction and easing through the traffic to get a look and pull a tighter mental scan. He could just be a lone individual on private business, but Jarod wanted to know if he was Star Force or maybe from the independent Protovic nation, for so far they’d had no business correspondence this far out on the other side of the ADZ from their territory.

  Seeing his mind before his clothing, Jarod soon realized that he didn’t think in English. That was a telltale sign that he wasn’t Star Force. Expecting to see an independent Protovic he was surprised when he spotted a robbed figure where the mind was coming from. Rather than a dark interior beneath the hood there was the glow of light typical of their race. Many preferred to wear fully body armor so as not to attract attention, and this one wearing robes made sense. It also wore gloves, leaving only a narrow slit between the dark red cloth to see through, but the light coming out made Jarod frown. The telltale green was there, but something wasn’t right.

  Casually walking towards him but seeming to be going about his business, the Archon got in front of him and tried to look within the folds, having to use a little telekinetic tug to get them to part enough that he could see his face.