Star Force: Axius (SF47) Read online

  Which was what he was working towards. The competition was just extra motivation.

  He flipped off the screen and moved into the small restroom in his quarters, relieving himself before crossing to the bathing chamber and giving himself a good roll in the dust basin before getting dressed. After he stepped into the air tube to remove the lingering dust, he pulled out a fresh uniform and slipped it on, then headed out the door and down the hallway tube in his quarters complex.

  When he got to the main road the tube ended and the massive walkway opened up, rising some 30+ times his height as he ran off along one of the pathways, keeping to the side as a few of the large Urik’kadel passed, not wanting to get run over. They were big brutes, but much faster than the Irondel…and they tended to want to run everywhere, which was why Chitticki kept to the side to give them plenty of room, despite the fact that the road was wide enough for more than a dozen of them to stand side by side.

  Chitticki fell in behind another Irondel, watching his neighbor move forward with the distinctive hop/lurch that they used when they wanted to cover distance without running. True walking was too slow in a colony of this size, with the Irondel being the smallest denizen…and the Humans being the largest. He didn’t see any of the giants out and about today, but then again they never came to these areas unless there was a problem, preferring to keep to their own quarters and the communal areas.

  As Chitticki progressed through the colony he came down a level, preferring to use the stairs than wait on an elevator…which was also a matter of pride, given that he was part of the ADF rather than just a random citizen. When he got to the next level he scurried off across the street, dodging a Gnar in its envirosuit, and got to the far side where he followed a narrow strip of street meant specifically for the Irondel, so the larger races could avoid stepping on them.

  That was no small threat, which was why usually the Irondel didn’t cohabitate with other races, but the Humans had designed this colony to service their integration and so far in the 3 years that it had been operational there hadn’t been a fatality, partly due to the fact that races larger than the Humans weren’t permitted to live on Pollus, just as Irondel weren’t permitted to live in other Axius colonies.

  Chitticki hurried along, not fully running, and passed through a tunnel in the wall while the bigger denizens went through an archway. On the far side he took a shortcut through another wall, turning left and arriving at the cafeteria and running up a plank to get him up to food level. He grabbed a tray and set it on a conveyor, nudging it along in quadruped mode because he didn’t feel like carrying it. Irondel could move on two or four legs as they chose, but carrying the stupid plate made walking awkward, so he just moved it along and put on his breakfast ‘pebbles’ as the other denizens referred to them, given that the smaller races had to have special portions made for them.

  Save for some things. The mashed potatoes he especially liked, and he scooped out a lop onto his tray from their basin. Going up and getting some out of the main one was doable, but the last thing he wanted was to fall into it as one of his friends had done a year ago after first arriving. They’d ridiculed him for that ever since, and Chitticki knew it had taken him days to get the food out of his fur. Irondel didn’t like water, for bathing anyway, and it’d taken numerous dust baths to get the potatoes out.

  Knowing not to load himself up with too much, Chitticki finished his gathering and pushed his tray along to the end of the conveyor, then picked it up and transferred it to another one that he walked out to a series of tables. He pulled it off and sat on the soft floor, nibbling away his breakfast until he was finished. Afterwards he left for the training areas, meeting up with a few hundred other Irondel for some running laps.

  Their track was 100 meters long, with multiple lanes and pacing holos. Chitticki used the control pedestals and activated one for himself in the 18th lane and got going, having to pass only two others also in his lane as his marker overtook theirs. As was traditional, he got a good, long workout in, making his 16 laps/mile in 12:42. Afterwards he pulled off to the side, thoroughly gassed but looking none the worse for it. Irondel didn’t sweat like other races did, instead using their fur as heat dissipaters with varying intensities.

  He shook himself once, forcing the heat out his hairs like he was pushing water out a plethora of tiny tubes, and cooled himself with the single effort. He was still breathing hard, but not as hard as he once had been. He’d gotten considerably fitter since arriving here, more so than he’d ever thought possible…leaving him with plenty of energy for his combat training.

  He left the other Irondel to their running, moving to nearby chambers where he put in a half hour of hand to hand exercises before reporting to the infantry bay along with the other members of his regiment.

  The bay was tall…more than twice the height of a Human, and filled with niches that held the minimechs Star Force had designed for them. Normally Irondel were useless in ground combat against other races, but no longer. Chitticki and the other volunteers were now riding mechanical steeds into combat, and training against Archons no less.

  When he got into the bay Chitticki went straight for the nearest ‘Neite,’ as the Humans called them. They’d designed two varieties, one a biped auto-walker that Chitticki could drive by controls in the cockpit, and one quadruped that linked up to his actual body movements. Few Irondel had mastered those controls, making Chitticki ahead of the others in Alpha regiment. About one of every five minimechs in the bay were neites, so he didn’t have to travel far around the edge walkway before he came to one.

  Taking to the ladder he climbed up to the top platform and entered through the back of the quadruped. Though the mech had a head, the cockpit was located in the body just beneath the neck, giving it the most mass around it in a defense perimeter in addition to the armor shell that he now stood within. Chitticki closed the door and triggered the armor covering to seal him in, then he got hooked up to the harness and powered up the minimech.

  Tired as he was from running, working the neite around wasn’t a big deal. The machine couldn’t move as fast as he could, so he was always having to move his muscles slowly. The attachments to his body pretty much moved themselves, even though they looked heavy. All in all it was a cool way to drive the minimech, but that wasn’t why it had been developed.

  With the holographic displays now surrounding him, Chitticki walked his neite out of its slot in the bay and headed towards the main doors, careful to make sure no one was out on the floor to step on. When he got into the clear he saw a lot of other minimechs out in a huge chamber, along with multiple suits of armor that belonged to an Archon and several other Humans, which they referred to as ‘commandos,’ plus there were three enormous ‘knights’ that stood taller than the biped mechs, which were little more than walking turrets.

  They had no arms and backward-canted legs, with all maneuvering being done by the onboard computer while the pilot drove the mech around. Chitticki was quite familiar with their design and function, having piloted them for a long time before trying the neite in simulators and eventually qualifying to pilot the real thing. Today was just a training day, no challenges to be had for him, so he got up to speed and ran his minimech across the open area with a hop/lurch that somewhat mimicked his own body movements, but was otherwise lethargic.

  He stopped short of the Archon in his silver armor and waited to be given instructions. From his position he had to look up, being about equal in height to the Human’s elbows, though if he wanted he could stand the neite up on its rear legs and get over his head…but it wasn’t designed well enough to operate that way for long, making it a truly quadruped mech, whereas Chitticki himself was bodily capable of both ‘modes.’

  Future design modifications were promised to give the neite that ability, for after all, the Humans had designed it for hand to hand combat so he could protect the ‘chicken walkers’ as they handed out the majority of the weaponsfire. They were easy to tip over, and wi
th no arms they didn’t have much more than their mass to use when an opponent got close…and the Archon had himself and the other Humans exploiting that opportunity as often as possible to teach the Irondel how to compensate for the disadvantage.

  Chitticki had more options in his neite, but less weapons…all of which were non-lethal variants here in training. In the head of his neite he had a stinger weapon that fired little balls of paint laced with stun energy…but that was all, and he had a limited supply of shots. After that all he had to work with was his mechanical paws, but then again, that was what the neite had been designed for.

  The Archon assigned him and two other neites to an area of the training deck that held variable terrain, where they ran through a series of obstacle courses for time before eventually getting into a training fight, whereupon he was paired up with four chicken walkers against two commandos in a series of maze-like barricades that the Humans immediately took to, disappearing from view.

  “Chitticki, how do you want to play this?” one of his Irondel teammates asked.

  “If you go in there you’re an easy takedown. I’ll go in and flush them out. Stay here.”

  “They won’t come out.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, lopping off to one of the entrances. He snaked his head to the left and went inside, knowing that to take him down the Humans would have to eliminate the chicken walkers. He was the escort, so there was no way to disable him…but the chicken walkers were being monitored, and every time they got knocked down to the floor Chitticki’s team lost a point. Lose ten and the drill was over.

  Meaning that he was free to go after the Humans without penalty…which is exactly what he did. He knew they wanted the Irondel to come to them, and they weren’t going to take the bait this time. If they wanted to take down the chicken walkers they’d have to come out in the open, meanwhile he’d hunt them in the maze.

  Or so he thought. Almost as soon as he entered the first mini hallway that led to the right he heard weaponsfire from outside, coming from the chicken walkers, only to find that one of the commandos had gone up over the maze walls and into view, whereupon he came down on top of the neite and knocked it to the ground.

  Chitticki had all four of his legs go wide as he was smashed flat, then he heard three hard taps on the outer shell of the minimech as the Human punched its back in a rhythmic insult before jumping off and running away.

  “Stupid giant,” he grumbled, getting the minimech’s feet back underneath himself as he heard comm calls from the others. By the time the Irondel got back outside he saw all four chicken walkers tipped over on their sides and the two Humans fist bumping each other as they retreated to the cover of the maze without a spot of paint on them.

  Chitticki opened his minimech’s mouth and shot three stingers at them, hitting with only one but succeeding in giving one of the Human’s a limp before he disappeared from view.

  “Curse them,” Chitticki complained as the chicken walkers pulled their legs up underneath themselves and wiggled into an upright position that they then stood up from. He’d planned to be the hunter, but then had become the hunted.

  “I think we have to go in after them.”

  “I know,” Chitticki complained. “Follow me in.”

  In another section of the colony an Irondel by the name of Lissicki showed up for his daily training, already having run a half mile on their track and eaten breakfast, whereupon he entered the pilots lounge with a group of Humans, Urik’kadel, a Gnar, and a Densan. Almost all of them were Urik’kadel, for their race seemed to have an inordinate number of good pilots, and Lissicki was proud to be amongst them…and as an equal, for they all flew the Axius Valerie.

  After a brief meeting they headed for the hangar and boarded their individual fighters. They couldn’t share, given the different biological needs, but Lissicki had the distinction of piloting the most heavily armored fighter of them all…for the simple fact that he required the smallest cockpit, and the extra space had been reinforced with additional armor, meaning that if he was shot down, or crashed on his own, his survival was almost guaranteed…which he greatly appreciated.

  When he got to the hangar he climbed up the ladder and onto the fighter, using built in steps to finally get to the cockpit entrance, which was little more than a small hole in the port side. He crawled through it until he met up with three more tunnels. Two were to other exterior entrance points, with the third being the route down into the cockpit.

  Once he was inside he hit a button and the fighter scanned the entry tunnels. Confirming that there was nothing inside, their walls collapsed until they became solid armor, sealing Lissicki in. He got into his pilot’s couch and powered up the Valerie, then floated it out of the hangar on anti-grav and accelerated up into the planet’s thick atmosphere. With so many people moving into the spinward half of the ADZ, most of the best planets had already been taken, but with Pollus being located in the anti-spinward half, the Axius colony had pretty much had its pick, giving Lissicki and the other pilots a gem of a world to practice maneuvers on.

  Once in the air the differences in their biology no longer mattered, and Lissicki was just as ‘big’ as the other pilots, all of whom were trying to learn the delicate operations of their Valeries in order to pass their qualification tests. So far only two had, both being Urik’kadel, but that wasn’t enough to build a unit around, so they were still training with the rest of them under Human direction, working towards the day when they’d get to take the fight to the enemy…which would come soon for the pilots. Little did Lissicki know, but barely 8 months later he and a group of the others would be leaving for the warfront to support the Protovic as they repelled the withering Skarron invasions.

  So many Protovic worlds were getting reinforced with Sentinel defense platforms and newly built Protovic warships that the enemy was losing the few worlds that it had taken. They weren’t going quietly, making the Protovic and Humans work for every square kilometer of territory they had to retake and beginning new invasions on less protected worlds…some that were Protovic and many others that were not.

  Lissicki and his squadron, the first ADF squadron to go into combat, would help the local Protovic and Star Force fighters clean up infantry on the planet of Chodrar, which in itself would take years to accomplish with the Skarrons reinforcing the ground troops regularly. He and his squadron wouldn’t go near the Skarron walkers, but would be used to help mop up the ‘easy’ ground targets, freeing up the veteran pilots for more dangerous missions and giving Axius its first taste of combat.

  With news of their contribution to the warfront…as well as their success and unique combination of races with access to Star Force technology, the volunteer applications to the ADF and the Axius civilian population swelled, with many more colonies being constructed to absorb the inflow of those qualifying for the program, as well as expanding those that already existed, using resources harvested and produced by Axius rather than putting a drain on other parts of Star Force.

  The snowball that Davis had started took a while to get rolling, but once it did it continually gained speed and prestige, quickly becoming the ‘it’ section of the ADZ where everyone wanted a piece of the action, forcing those individuals to train for and accept the Axius ways, including English, and creating a new Alliance society and culture that flew directly in the face of some of those on the Alliance worlds, starting a true philosophical war amongst the various races as they saw their own kind converting over to the Star Force way of life, whereas before they’d merely put up with the Humans as a generous landlord.

  With the tiny prick of the ADZ population that Axius held being a light shining on the dark cultures of some of the Alliance races, it became clear to all those who hadn’t previously figured it out, that Star Force was going to assert itself as a dominant player within the Alliance, and not just due to its being able to hand out territory allotments. They were attempting to remake the interracial Alliance relations as they saw fit, and it appeare
d that the Hycre and Protovic were willing to let them do it.

  That did not go over well, and set off a social civil war, fought through economics, population, and propaganda.

  Fortunately Star Force had the greatest social warrior on their side, and it was deeply ironic that most of the non-Humans would never even know Davis’s name.

  7

  May 19, 2532

  Shveda System (Zeta Region)

  Wiox (Alliance World)

  The jumpship A392 decelerated against Wiox’s gravity, arriving over the world that contained the standard 8 regions, two of which belonged to the Reen, two to the Gnar, and one each for the Ansp, Nabboni, Prasx, and Etti. It was a Star Force vessel, part of the ADZ transit network that had been set up to facilitate movement between the Alliance worlds and the few racial territories that had been allowed within the region. Those amounted to four, being the Scionate, Dvapp, Hycre, and Lacvamat.

  The Hycre kept to themselves, given the biological differences, so there wasn’t much traffic to and from their worlds. The Dvapp were in a similar situation, except that they preferred to be left alone and traded exclusively with Star Force, using them as a medium to link in to the Alliance. The Scionate and Lacvamat were well connected, each with some original Alliance World slots that provided them with ‘neighbors’ to interact with, but they also opened up their own territories to commerce and foreign relations, seeking to exert their influence over the Alliance community as major players.

  In addition to the four races given permission to establish their own, independent territories within the ADZ, there were more indigenous races that had been welcomed into the Alliance. Some had chosen to have nothing to do with outsiders, but those that did also now had a position on the transit network. Their traffic levels were variable, but they were yet more players in the ever growing ‘game’ that the ADZ political situation was developing into…with more and more refugees pouring in as both the lizards and the Skarrons continued their conquests, driving off those they would not or could not kill.