Star Force: Paradigm (SF35) Read online

  But that could wait till later. She didn’t know how much time she was going to have with this one so she didn’t want to waste what she did have speculating. Kara searched for more high level tech, coming up with a slew of different ship variants, some combat capable but most were mission specific, such as dedicated mining vessels, couriers, and whatnot. It was their infrastructure tech that blew her away, with so many ground-based weapon systems that she literally blushed from embarrassment at having thought Star Force might one day make an excursion into the lizards’ home worlds and knock them out of contention before they could destroy the Alliance.

  It was the Tiers…it was all about the Tiers. Each level up they progressed they opened up more tech options, meaning the longer you left a lizard world alone the more powerful it would become.

  As soon as that thought hit Kara’s mind it triggered a strategic memory within the lizard, and a galactic battle plan emerged like a mental map…and she suddenly realized what the lizards were doing.

  “Oh shit,” she whispered, realizing how much trouble they were in. The lizards weren’t aggressive brutes…or, well, they were, but that wasn’t what was driving them to expand. They were builders, engaging in frontier wars while they strengthened their core worlds. Their entire fight against the Alliance was to keep them preoccupied, which was why they were sending lower tech forces out to face them.

  If they lost, they’d gain information on the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, then send another assault force to experiment with modifications. The fighting would keep the enemy on the enemy’s turf, not the lizards…and the lizards had so many midrange worlds surrounding their core that even if the enemy pressed in they’d have star system after star system to hack their way through to get to the prime lizard defenses.

  And the lizards were adding midrange worlds. What was once frontier, if left unchecked, would grow new lizard colonies. Those colonies would push out, planting outposts and probing the surrounding systems as a distraction of their own while they advanced to the next Tier, adding yet another line of defense to the overall lizard empire.

  If the lizards won worlds in the frontier wars, so much the better, but either way they gained time to strengthen and grow their core…and it was a strategy that they’d been employing for millennia, going all the way back to their original homeworld when they had to fight against three other races across 5 continents.

  The lizard’s mind flashed back to those stories, seeming to cement the strategy into the very fabric of their race. They’d only had one variant back then, one that they didn’t even use now. All the others had been genetically engineered over time as needed, with the aquatics version being the most recent addition.

  Following that thread Kara pulled the identity of this lizard’s superior, discovering that it wasn’t one that grown. Almost as soon as she made that realization the mastermind’s memories linked all the way back to its beginning and Kara could see the flash of light as its development cocoon was opened to air and it stepped out into the cold fully mature, driven by genetic knowledge and a singular sense of purpose as it worked its way through basic orientation drills and exercises, then within only a few weeks it was given control over this world’s strategic workings, learning and growing along with the colony.

  But now it wasn’t in full control, for a higher ranking lizard had been brought in…not grown, but brought in from the lizard core. It was one of the ruling brood that, unlike the rest of the lizards, was part of a bloodline. Kara loosely translated its title as ‘templar’ and dug into the mastermind’s assessment of the one on Albo.

  It was not the intellectual equal of mastermind, and the lizard knew this, but it did serve a purpose…a very important purpose. Whereas mastermind had been grown on this world, never having seen the core worlds or anything else of the lizard empire, the templars were the glue that held their vast interstellar empire together. Like Star Force’s Archons, the templars were all family, and viewed each other as such…not as competition.

  That was key, Kara knew, for otherwise it would have been very easy for one region or system to break off and go rogue, given the travel times and comm lag between one part of their empire and another. All the genetically grown lizards had a purpose in serving the mission needs of the local region, while the templars functioned as their link to the commonality, focusing on empire-wide concerns.

  The templar here had a purpose, as did the mastermind, and ironically there was no clash between them. Sometimes the templar would need resources to be dispatched back to the core, which the mastermind would supply, or specific systems to take, guard, or abandon…all according to the overall strategy of the empire, which the ruling brood kept to themselves. The masterminds were the warmasters, and the templars were the ones who moved them around the galactic chess board assigning missions, leaving the genetic constructs free to micromanage as they saw fit, for the templars knew they were not as brilliant as those they commanded, and kept to their designated roll within lizard society.

  Higher up their ranking, amongst the ruling brood, was another lizard variant…this one a biological upgrade to the templars, keeping to the live birth bloodlines. The lizard Kara was probing had never seen one, nor probably ever would unless this world rose to a very high Tier. They were the uber-leaders of the lizards, which she dubbed ‘sovereigns,’ who oversaw legions of templars.

  Kara knew that the local templar could one day upgrade into a sovereign, but the mastermind’s memories said that was a distant possibility, tagging this one as very green, thus it had been given a periphery command where it could learn and develop while still serving the empire’s overall purpose…which Kara realized was to spread out and dominate the galaxy. Lizard society was all they knew, and all they would tolerate.

  This mastermind knew that enslaving other races was one option it had, but they could never be treated as equals…only tools.

  That meant the Nestafar were going to get backstabbed themselves, because the lizards would never tolerate another power within their borders. She rather liked that apart, aside from the fact that it meant the lizards could only be stopped through defeat and probably annihilation. There was no diplomatic channels available…they were what they were genetically designed to be, and unless those handcuffs were removed their individuality was not going to surface. Without it, they couldn’t be reasoned with, and were essentially slaves to their own race.

  That both saddened and impressed Kara, for all they’d accomplished, dishonorable as some of it may be, they deserved a nod of respect…but the idea that they could have come so far and yet be so blind at the same time made them pathetic, which Kara felt that any advanced race didn’t deserve to be.

  Both sentiments faded as the strategic implications of her newfound intel rose back to the forefront of her mind, along with the immense danger they posed to the Alliance and Star Force. Both had time to counter the lizards, given their current lackadaisical war strategy, but it was only a matter of time before they escalated the conflict, multiple times, until they overwhelmed their opposition.

  Kara desperately hoped the H’kar could give them more trouble than expected, but she didn’t hold out hope that the once great rimward race had any chance of winning…not now that she knew what kind of tech the lizards were holding up their sleeve.

  The Humans’ greatest asset was the fact that the lizards didn’t perceive them as a significant threat, coupled with the fact that their territory was on the frontier and farther away from the lizard core worlds than that of the rest of the Alliance. That made it all the more imperative that Star Force suck more technological upgrades out of the V’kit’no’sat database and set up a solid line of defense before the lizards got wise to their true potential.

  Kara realized for the first time that the Alliance, her team that she’d never give up on, was going to get beaten, and beaten badly…even if the Nestafar had stuck with them. Knowing that, Star Force had to adjust its plans…and Kara made a mental note
to have a very long chat with Paul about that when she got back.

  She started digging into recent memories, trying to soak up some tactical knowledge of this mastermind’s plans in the local region, hoping to remember the flurry of images she was seeing when her spidey senses started to tingle with Ikrid contacts outside the room she was in.

  “Damn it,” she whispered, trying to gleam the current location of the templar then giving up as armed lizards came in and found her kneeling over what looked like their dead superior.

  Kara knocked them down with a Fornax field as she sensed hoards more surrounding the chamber. She popped out her forearm weaponry, resealing her armor over her hands, and shot the downed guards with fast firing blips of green energy. She glanced down at the mastermind unconscious beside her feet and considered killing it, but a part of her didn’t want to, given how advanced it was. So out of professional courtesy, and the fact that they’d just grow another, she gave it a swift kick in the abs for all the trouble the lizards had caused, then ran off towards the main entrance where the other lizards were now coming in.

  She fought her way through them with relative ease, given the fact that they couldn’t get past her shields, let alone her armor in the small hallways that diminished the number of weapons they could bring to bear on her simultaneously…and then add in the fact that she was knocking most of them down with Fornax blasts before they could even pull the triggers, and she made her way to an exterior room rather quickly.

  Kara shot three lizards inside then extruded a different weapon on her right wrist that wrapped around her hand and created a hard circle in her palm. There she produced a small orb of green/white energy as she threw her hand forward towards the intact window as she ran, releasing it a meter prior to impact.

  The window vaporized in a flash of energy that also melted the rim around it…then her armored form shot through into the night air, falling a couple of meters under the influence of gravity before she shot off in a straight line like a missile, abandoning stealth in favor of distance and hoping that the alarm the lizards were sounding was contained to just the building behind her and that they hadn’t put the entire city on alert.

  Dropping low, she moved down into the city streets, hoping to keep beneath their sensors, and flew Ironman-style right through the lizard infrastructure, moving so fast there was a boom of compressed air whenever she flew past.

  Her black form didn’t go unnoticed, and before she’d managed to zigzag a third of the way back towards the city’s edge a repetitive screech sounded throughout the city and a number of blips showed up on her armor’s sensors, indicating that one of their fighter patrols had been pulled in and were angling towards her approximate location.

  “Time to dance,” she said, pulling up out of the streets and accelerating into a blur as she hit clean air.

  7

  “Stay low, stay low,” Kara said as she zipped across the lowest rooftops within the city, bouncing between one canyon-like area to another while avoiding the taller buildings as her armor tagged numerous anti-air batteries scattered across the cityscape.

  She’d accelerated up to more than twice what her speed had been flying through the streets, but she still couldn’t take a direct line to the city’s edge without exposing herself…meaning it was a race between her and the fighters moving towards her position, despite the fact that she had her sensor-dampening ‘skin’ on.

  Kara was flying so close to their equipment that she knew she was impossible to miss, but get those fighters over her head and a lack of restraint in firing down onto their own city and she’d be in for a world of hurt, for these were just the first few, with new contacts popping up on her sensors from numerous hangars…meaning she had to get out of here fast.

  Weaving her way below the firing lines of the anti-air batteries, Kara got halfway out to the city’s edge before the first stunted green plasma lance flashed by her and hit a building ahead, melting into the rooftop.

  Instinctively she pulled off to the right, feeling the excess aero drag of her pack underneath her armor coating, but that couldn’t be helped now. A couple more flashes hit behind her, then she pulled a hard left turn and shot off down a row of low buildings with the wisp turning more sluggishly to follow behind her as it leveled off at nearly the same altitude and started firing at her feet.

  Kara kept dancing about, all the time keeping under what her armor showed to be the anti-air altitude boundaries that kept changing depending upon what battery she was nearest. That still left her a lot of wiggle room in between the taller buildings, given her small size, but another pair of wisps came up from high overhead and started making strafing runs so they could fire down on her, adding to the green streaks hitting all around her…then one hit her in the shields covering her feet.

  “Oh no you didn’t,” Kara said, registering a significant chop in her shield strength just before she flipped over onto her back and put her palms together, forming a green orb that she cradled in both hands as more plasma came her way.

  Ignoring it and sighting the wisp behind she sat up a bit, still flying level to the ground and backwards across the building tops as if she was coasting, and stretched her arms out in front of her as she got a mental lock on the target, releasing the energy orb like a bullet popping out of a gun. The glowing ball of light slightly smaller than her head shot back in a straight line and sank into the hull of the lizard fighter, then detonated in a bright puff of confetti that had once been the wisp’s hull.

  Kara smiled momentarily, then flipped back over to fly chest down, letting the tiny bits of debris left over from the shredded fighter fall in her wake as she saw more fighters dropping in behind her, as well as some gathering ahead, having predicted her course across the lowest building tops.

  Rather than facing them head on she made a detour, cutting close to the edges of lizard structures when she turned, hoping to get lucky and peel off a fighter in the process, but unfortunately their pilots weren’t clumsy enough to run into their own buildings. Some of them went high and wide, while a few others kept on her heels, all the while more were coming in from the periphery and boxing her in at a respectful distance.

  Kara could do the basic math in her head and knew time wasn’t on her side, so she tucked her arms in close to her body and eyed the nearest anti-air battery, plotting a course directly underneath it and up out the other side, then she accelerated hard, feeling the air dragging against her shields as she zipped down across building after building until she had no more room to maneuver and it was either slow down and turn or ram into one of the taller ones.

  Kara arced up and into what was soon to become a firing range above the city, putting herself through a wide spiral as the anti-air battery that showed up directly behind her spat a slew of plasma shards, each similar in size to the stubby lances the wisps fired, at the shrinking dot that was the armored Human as she tore across the cityscape gradually gaining altitude and speed.

  The buildings began to whip by her, with the forest ahead seeming enticingly close, then what looked like the fourth of July broke out ahead of her and the air was filled with plasma shards…with the lizard fighters wisely holding back and letting the city defenses take a swipe at her.

  Kara’s only saving grace was her tiny size, because even with her ever increasing speed the batteries were still able to accurately track her. She took a hit early on, then got by most of the short flight to the city edge without incident…then took three hits over the course of 2 seconds that nearly penetrated her shields.

  Before she even realized what was happening most of the anti-air fire cut out as she reached the construction ring around the city, with her dropping back down in altitude and skimming the partially constructed buildings to cut out most of the rest…which was when the now swarm of fighters moved back up in pursuit and began taking long distance shots at her, all of which missed initially, but sooner or later they were going to get lucky just through sheer numbers, as there were now well o
ver 200 fighters on or near her tail.

  Every second that passed her shields regenerated…far faster than any Star Force shields, or even those of the Kvash, so she dropped low to canopy when she crossed over the boundary from lizard construction sites to forest, trying to use the limited topography to her advantage, but the mountain ranges were a bit further off yet, giving the lizard fighters a large field of yellow trees to fire down upon in the hopes of hitting her, now without having to worry about collateral damage.

  The sky around Kara lit up in green, and she took another pair of hits, both grazes, to her arm and leg, but her shields held…then she hit the brakes as fast as her armor could manage and her tiny dot of a body sudden fell back into the lizard fighters and collided with one.

  It exploded in a puff of confetti-like debris, then another one nearby did the same…which sent the others into a frenzy, zipping about every which way as they tried to track her movements while avoiding running into each other at the same time.

  Kara killed two more of their fighters at pointblank range before accelerating off in a straight line again, leaving them to come to their senses and reform their chase pack, allowing her to get some quick distance. She pressed her acceleration hard, building speed with every second as the air tugged heavily on her shields…which she reformed into a pointed tip to give her a more aerodynamic profile, feeling a sudden rush of speed accompanying it.

  The wisps were fast too, and a dozen or so of them began closing on her, but she’d gotten far enough ahead of them to almost be off their sensors. A few wiggles here and there, along with dropping down and literally skimming the treetops, and she was able to subtly veer off their current flight line, which told her she was almost in the clear.

  She held her line, letting them get further and further away…then they broke up and went multiple directions, trying to reacquire her signal.