Star Force: Empire (SF58) Page 6

  It was the small ones that were winning the lizards the most territory, and there it was that Canderous had to counter them, at least in this small piece of the galaxy. And as was typical of the Canderians, they were eager for the lizards to get to them, for as many engagements as they’d had against the Skarrons they’d seen less combat than others. And for a purely military civilization that just wouldn’t do, hence their volunteering for this part of the master plan before Paul had even had a chance to suggest them for it.

  Within two days the first of the processed ore shipments arrived in the seda and the factories began to come alive, building structural components and other parts needed to begin constructing larger mining facilities on the moons. Those would then produce more output and the process would snowball as it had many times before as Canderous followed well-established colonization protocols. It would be a few years before they had another seda built, but once they did the personnel reinforcements would start flowing in from the ADZ and the Point 6 outpost would continue to grow, eventually producing its own starships and everything else they’d need, increasing the patrols and area around the system that they were monitoring.

  Like little balloons, their detection and monitoring range grew out spherically, creating a ‘safe’ zone for the locals that the lizards were not aware of. It would be 16 years before Point 6 saw their first sign of enemy incursion, but when it came they’d be ready and the lizards wouldn’t know where the resistance was coming from, further confounding their expeditionary forces as to the location of the enemy and where the weak spots were for them to spread into.

  Naru flew a few feet over the floor, carrying a small satchel as the Nestafar’s hummingbird-like wings accelerated to compensate for the extra weight. She was on her way to a birthing ceremony and had forgot the gift, scurrying back to her quarters to get it and hoping to arrive in time. One of her maturia sisters was giving birth to 3 new members of the Nestafar civilization, with each one celebrated as a blessing now that word of their race’s extinction was common knowledge across the ADZ.

  Most didn’t know that some of them remained, as wards of Star Force and tucked away on a private planet with a few other races that had suffered similar ill fate. Those were either in a waiting state, with their future uncertain, or they’d chosen to remain wards and forgo any ideas of independence. Star Force was gracious enough to extend that option, with their needs being taken care of in perpetuity, with no worries about surviving into the future.

  The Nestafar were past the waiting stage now, and chose to live in seclusion. Their population was small, small enough to fill only three large cities on the planet with a fourth slowly under construction. They had no dreams of one day rebuilding their huge civilization, but in simply making a place for themselves to live here, peaceably, and to do their small part in helping the overall empire and ADZ thrive…but from a distance.

  Part of the desire for seclusion was the lingering resentment in the ADZ against the Nestafar, but as that gradually died out over time along with those who had lived during that era, the Nestafar that had turned their backs on their own empire and fled to Star Force simply no longer had the desire for glory. They wanted to build, but not expand, making their granted cities a new home they could be proud of, and welcoming each new member into the fold immediately as they arrived.

  The birthing ceremony was one of Naru’s favorites, but one that she’d only been on the other side of once. It was pleasure mixed with pain, but it marked not only the end of the pregnancy but the beginning of the younglings’ journey as they were transitioned into a maturia within minutes, and all done in ceremonious glory. The mother would then be allowed to rest, with her responsibilities complete, and would be showered with attention and gifts as a show of compensation for the duty to her people that she had just acquitted.

  And it wasn’t a pleasant one, for a Nestafar womb could hold up to as many as five infants simultaneously, turning the mother into more or less a fleshy orb in the final stages. Naru hadn’t liked that at all and didn’t intend to go through the process again, but she recognized the importance of it and figured that the four Nestafar she had acted as a conduit to bring into the universe were enough to acquit her duty…but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to support and praise those that continued to reproduce, knowing the toll it took on them.

  With that thought stuck firmly in her mind she flew as quickly as she could, arriving at the ceremony as the first of the younglings was born. No one could see the actual birthing, for those involved were behind a screen, but the first of the transition canisters came out with the youngling inside and ceremonial guards flanking it as the hover pod was taken across the chamber for all those gathered to see, then off down a special hallway to the nearby maturia where the little one would begin his life and eventual training.

  Naru cheered along with the others, then did the same as the other two came out in sequence. Once they were gone and a few minutes passed the screens lowered with the mother now visible and clearly fatigued, but the onslaught of well-wishers surrounded her and she received them with joy and thanks.

  Naru was relieved she’d made it in time and gave her sister the gift she’d been working to make for the past three weeks. It was a head piece with an ornate script across the front and sides with several jewels inset, and it had cost her quite a few credits to acquire the pieces, after which she’d done the construction and inscribing herself.

  The gift went over well and Naru was pleased, then she excused herself from the remainder of the ceremony and rushed over to another part of the city…the bioharvest zone, where she had taken a short break from work to attend. The Nestafar dropped to the floor at the entrance and proceeded on foot the rest of the way into the harvesting center, then made her way over to the section she’d been working on before and stepped up to the control cupola that had another two people inside working the remote controls.

  “That was fast,” one of them said, his attention focused on the displays.

  “The ceremony is still continuing, but the younglings have been born and I didn’t want to delay things here so I hurried back.”

  “Good, because we lost one harvester already.”

  “What happened?” Naru asked, activating the controls to one of the full growth pods.

  “One of the tines snapped. First one I’ve had in years do that.”

  “What did it hit?”

  “I don’t know. We couldn’t find anything in the pod. Must have just been a freak thing.”

  “I don’t like that. How far behind are we?”

  “Enough,” the other Nestafar said, taking a brief break to move his harvester from one pod to another.

  “Let’s get to it then,” Naru said, passing her armature that was attached to the ceiling down through the open top of the pod, which now only had a thin energy shield keeping the concentrated CO2 environment inside. The Tanazi bushes within were stacked thick against one another, but with just enough of a gap that Naru could push the harvester down between them, bending aside some of the supple branches. Using camera relays she began cutting off certain branches and leaving others, with the severed pieces going into the harvester and being transported up a conduit and into the ceiling.

  The trick of it was to cut the right branches without killing the Tanazi, and to date computerized harvesters had a less than stellar success rate than guided ones. It was labor intensive, but the Tanazi branches provided three major foodstuff components used across Star Force and were grown virtually everywhere. This bioharvest facility was different in that it only grew Tanazi, with the intent being to export the products off planet after all local needs were met.

  Those needs were exceeded by other facilities, with this one and others like it being the Nestafar’s means of contributing to the empire on the whole. They were ill-suited for combat, at least when armored up to Star Force’s standards and taught to fight in honorable ways that didn’t involve massive risk and sacrifice, but in t
ruth most of the Nestafar here weren’t interested in fighting. Those few individuals that were had left long ago, to where Naru didn’t know, but virtually all of the others simply wanted to be left alone and live in peace, with foodstuff production allowing them to help repay Star Force for all they’d done and were continuing to do for them.

  And Star Force seemed happy with the arrangement, for they made no demands on the Nestafar. They expected them to produce what they claimed they would, but beyond that there was no pressure put on them to do more or other things. Regular shipments of the Tanazi components would be seen leaving via dropship almost round the clock, but other than the cargo ships there was virtually no orbital traffic. The Nestafar and the other wards on the planet were kept isolated and secure, with Naru and the others glad for their little bit of tranquility in an otherwise chaotic and violent galaxy.

  7

  August 3, 2652

  Solar System

  Ganymede

  Arvil Netherson was walking down one of the main promenades in the Clan Saiyan capitol city, heading to catch a few friends at the theatre for a newly released vid when he passed by the 9 foot tall statue of Vegeta that marked one of the city’s status boards. More like a wall, the glowing panels held up to date information on the Clan and its rivals and Arvil swung over to it, knowing he had a few minutes to spare. He worked in the fabrication division of the Clan, building structural components that techs would later use to create new infrastructure, and their output was continually monitored along with the rest of Clan activity.

  On the status board he went to the fabrication panel straight off, knowing its location by habit rather than reading the tiny icons on display, for there was a huge amount of data being presented with everything from naval ship count to the latest trials results on display…all of which was translated into points that made up the power ranks that the Clans obsessed over. It was friendly competition, but it drove them to be better than the rest, keeping the Clans ahead of the rest of the empire despite their smaller size.

  Arvil saw that in overall fabrication rank the Saiyans were still sitting in 36th position, but their lead over Clan Mantle had diminished, due no doubt to the new production facility the rival Clan had built in the Istar System. Numbers from outside Sol were always laggy, but the small jump in their output score was no coincidence. The new facility must be up and running, adding a bit more industrial muscle to Mantle, but the question was, was it fully operational yet?

  Arvil didn’t like the idea of them slipping any further than they had. 8 years ago they’d held the 31st position and were 18th in infrastructure production, which his division directly fed. Saiyan operations hadn’t lessened, in fact they’d slowly been increasing both the efficiency of the facility that Arvil worked in and were adding a handful of others, bumping up their score but falling behind a few other Clans that were growing faster than they were.

  Some were doing it, he knew, simply by building a slew of new facilities. On Ganymede that wasn’t an option, given that most available land space on the moon had already been exhausted. It was mostly one endless cityscape now shared by several Clans and a few others, with any building being done requiring the upgrade of existing facilities or the demolition thereof to make room for larger, newer models.

  The Saiyans had been upgrading their capitol in such a way for centuries, choosing to stack as much of their powerbase here and a few other locations rather than going for the shotgun approach and spreading throughout the Core Region and even the ADZ as other Clans had. That was both a matter of defense and pride, for the Saiyans wanted one central location that they could call home and one that would serve as a stronghold upon which the rest of their Clan could center.

  Arvil had been working long and hard to help his Clan build up their production rates, even though he was only involved in a tiny bit of it…but that was true of everyone, for while the Clan was nowhere near the size of, say, the Calavari, it was a large, interstellar civilization of its own with considerable resources, not to mention military assets.

  Those were displayed on another panel, with Clan Saiyan being ranked 84th in naval power, but with a skill score of 56th. The skill score came from the Trials, in which both Archons and other military personnel participated. They were challenges and war games meant to test and hone one’s skill absent actual combat, and the Clans took them very seriously, even more so than the sports leagues that had the Clan competing against each other through civilian tournaments. The Trials were watched by virtually everyone in the Clan, with Arvil rooting on the Saiyans whenever he could.

  The Clan was like one giant team, no matter what you did, and they all had each other’s back automatically. That was the culture in the Clan, and as such everyone wanted to know how their ‘team’ was doing, hence the status boards, which were constantly changing. Some trends held true, such as the Sabers always being in the top 5 in the naval categories. They had the most skilled fleet on a regular basis, but they would burn off a lot of drones in real combat, diminishing their fleet strength scores and dropping them in rank.

  That didn’t affect skill scores from the Trials, but how much a Clan had in terms of resources was also tied to how much it lost, and the Sabers were more involved in defending the front lines than most Clans. That was due, no doubt, to Archon Paul being the mastermind behind the current war plan, but his Clan was getting hit with losses sufficient to knock them down to the 3rd spot presently. Arvil knew the Sabers had a huge industrial base that would replace the ships that were lost quite quickly, but with other Clans not getting so hard hit with the brutal combat their fleet numbers were increasing, and hence their rank was eclipsing the otherwise dominant Sabers.

  There were thousands of ranks displayed on the board, some in broad categories, but more in the breakdowns of those categories, letting each individual be able to track his or her own contributions and see how others were doing, both in their own Clan and others. Some of the board panels were mutable, with a touchscreen that would allow more detailed information on other Clans to be brought up, but at the moment Arvil wasn’t interested in those stats…his eyes were drawn to the news panel, which was detailing various current activities that his Clan was involved in.

  A breaking news beacon was flashing, indicating that the status update was less than 60 seconds old. Arvil and the others nearby, including those just walking and not paying any attention to the numbers, all stopped and looked at the flashing lights that also were accompanied by a small chime that quickly disappeared. Someone near that panel touched it and amped up the volume, with a reporter standing inside a holographic map detailing the location of a system within the ADZ near the border.

  “We’ve just received word that a Clan Saiyan fleet stationed at Oxion has responded to a lizard incursion of the ADZ. It was detected early by the stellar monitoring system and relayed through the comm grid, allowing the Saiyans and two Axius fleets to respond before they could gain a sufficient foothold. The following images come directly from the Saiyan flagship involved in the fight, and as you can see there was orbital bombardment of multiple surface sites on the uninhabited planet.”

  “The images you’re looking at now are without context, for we’ve only just received them, but what we can tell you is that the lizard incursion was successfully uprooted and their base destroyed. No word yet on numbers of casualties or ships lost, but the Saiyan fleet we know to have been comprised of at least 20 Warship-class jumpships in addition to the Command Ship. That underscores that this was not a small incursion, and is to date the furthest inside the border the lizards have attempted to jump.”

  The reporter went on, with multiple battle footage displays popping up giving those watching views of both orbital and surface combat, all without tags or context, but it was enough to make Arvil’s skin crawl with a mixture of fear and anger. Star Force and its allies maintained a neutral zone around the ADZ where they kept back lizard forward bases through a nearly continuous cycle of battles. Cl
an Saiyan was involved in some of them, from time to time, though the Clans were used more as defensive emplacements within the ADZ while the mainline fleets were the ones taking the offensive.

  But for the lizards to have bypassed the neutral zone and the border worlds to set up an attempted foothold inside the ADZ was a very bold attack. Star Force obviously squashed it, with them unable to resupply that far inside without their convoys getting picked apart on the way in, but the mere fact that they’d tried and had gotten as far as they did was ominous and Arvil had to remind himself that the front wasn’t an armored wall, but rather a collection of tiny dots…and there was nothing keeping the lizards or anyone else from moving between or over those dots.

  Any system in the ADZ could theoretically get hit, but with monitoring systems around most of the stars any attacking fleet passing through would be detected and the word would spread, albeit slowly due to the lag, but that meant the enemy couldn’t sneak inside and set up a base with years of anonymity to work with. Arvil didn’t know how many systems still lacked the monitoring devices, but he knew there were regular patrols going through them to prevent just such a thing and give Star Force a heads up if someone was trying to grow a forward base behind their defensive ‘lines.’

  There was no way the lizards had more than a few months to get set up before they were confronted, meaning that they must have smuggled in a huge fleet as opposed to the single ships that were reportedly conquering entire systems elsewhere, planting a colony somewhere out of the way and growing the troops and building the ships that would then conquer it over subsequent years. That couldn’t happen here, so the lizards had to take another tactic, but what the hell had they been thinking?