Star Force: Trials (SF68) Read online

  “I think that did it,” Randy said, continuing to poke around inside.

  “Who wants to touch it and find out?” Emily asked.

  “No rush,” Paul insisted. “It might take a while for those plates to fully discharge.”

  “Easy fix,” Ivan said, telekinetically snapping a thin branch off the nearest tree and floating it over to the raptor.

  “Poke it with a stick?” Megan asked with a laugh.

  Ivan smiled and moved the broken part of the branch into the side of the raptor. He tapped it three times, then rotated the entire branch over and whacked it a fourth time. “Looks dead.”

  “I’ve cut the power feeds to the armor plates,” Randy said. “But the welds are solid. I can’t pry it open from here.”

  “Do you see what I see?” Emily asked.

  “An Easter egg,” Paul confirmed. “Let’s get this thing open.”

  “What’s in it?” Ivan asked, tossing the stick aside.

  “I think it’s shielded. I can’t sense anything.”

  “Booby trap?” Megan wondered.

  “Let’s find out. Stand back,” Randy said as he walked up to it and the others scattered. “If I wake up naked I’m blaming Megan.”

  “Twit,” she said in a whisper as he knelt down beside it and pressed a finger to the head. He didn’t fall over, then proceeded to tap it a couple more times ensuring that there was no stun charge left, then he held his finger over it a couple of inches and waited for more than a minute. Finally he touched it again, this time with his finger sinking into the thin armor plates amidst a cherry red glow of melted material. He punched through then pulled his finger across it slowly, cutting open the mechanical raptor and creating several seams.

  “Pry these please,” he said, working his way down towards the tail.

  Paul and Jason linked up again and telekinetically pulled apart the metallic petals that Randy had exposed, bending them back and exposing the inner mechanisms. As Randy moved on the duo pulled more and more apart until it looked like a gutted tauntaun from Star Wars.

  Randy pulled his finger out and theatrically blew on it, then he reached inside and started pulling apart the exposed machinery that they intended to make use of however possible. “Make like Legos guys.”

  Dan, Brian, and Megan stepped in and helped him along with Paul and Jason while the other four stood guard. There were some more small melting cuts that had to be made, but between their physical leverage and their psionics they were able to disassemble the thing without too much delay, eventually exposing a small canister tucked away inside that had no obvious purpose within the raptor, though it did have a button on the casing.

  Randy pulled it out and walked away from the others, not knowing what would happen. A stun grenade would be poetic at this point, or a summons for a swarm of stun bugs or a T-Rex to come and stomp on them. But the only way to know was to press it and find out, so after he got about 80 meters away he held it out as far away from his body as possible and pressed the biometric button that required flesh rather than telekinesis to trigger.

  Waiting for a bang, he was puzzled when it simply clicked and the shell cracked a hair. He pulled the top open with one hand and saw a small vial inside with a label that read ‘500 doses.’

  “Guys,” he said, jogging back over to them. “It really is an Easter Egg.”

  “Candy or money?” Jason asked.

  “Better,” Randy said, holding up the small vial of reddish liquid for them to see. “Ambrosia.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Emily said. “Then they did expect us to tear one apart.”

  “Wonder what one of the big ones has inside,” Kip commented.

  “Box of donuts would be nice,” Megan quipped.

  “More like truck,” Paul amended.

  “Don’t suppose they stuck a suit of armor out there somewhere,” Ivan asked.

  “That’d be too easy,” Emily said dismissively. “The stun soak would give us too much endurance. And armor without it wouldn’t do us a lot of good here.”

  “Wilson might have thrown a set in just to taunt us,” Randy added, “just like the weapons.”

  “I still think we can make use of them,” Paul insisted. “And a little live fire test on this one should answer some questions.”

  “So we’re hauling this whole thing back?” Dan asked.

  “Waste not, want not,” Emily said, prompting the others into a team-wide battlemeld link to make the carrying easier. “Let’s get going before the carcass attracts any more critters with the smell of hydraulic fluid.”

  The others turned and looked at her as the pieces of the raptors flew up into the air and back into the main body.

  Emily frowned. “Sorry. That sounded better in my head.”

  “We did kill the transmitter, right?” Jason asked.

  “I got it,” Randy assured him. “Intact but without power.”

  “Good,” he said as they started walking with their floating cargo between two rows of three while the other four circled around as skirmishers but still close enough to help share the telekinetic load. “Don’t want anyone crashing our party when we get back.”

  “I think the trainers already know every move we make,” Megan commented. “This whole park is probably full of sensors.”

  “No need to invite trouble,” Jason cautioned. “And if Wilson is willing to punish us for tardiness by denying us clothes, then I can imagine him sending something after us if we failed to silence a transmitter.”

  “True,” she conceded.

  “You still think this is all Wilson?” Kip asked. “Or are you wondering if it might be a bit Davis too?”

  “This is Wilson,” Paul said with certainty. “Davis may have given him permission, but this level of ‘kick you in the balls’ is definitely telltale Wilson.”

  Just then a thought struck Jason that was profound enough that all the others heard it through the battlemeld link.

  “Oh my god,” Emily said with dread. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

  “It fits,” Randy admitted. “And if he’s here he’ll have armor, I can guarantee it.”

  “What about the weapons? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Decoy?” Paul guessed.

  “They won’t do much to him anyway. We need a game plan if he does show up,” Ivan said, knowing how bad this could get if they were right.

  “In the meantime,” Jason cautioned, knowing they were getting ahead of themselves even if they were right, “we’ve got some dino hunting to do. Let’s bag some more prizes and hope Wilson isn’t as devious as he could be.”

  “Wanna put credits on that?” Emily scoffed.

  8

  “Look what we found,” Greg said holding his hand out as he came back into the trailblazer’s camp where the 2s, 3s, and 6s were either sleeping or building, using the components from trashed dinobots to create a variety of tools, including some physical shields to help block stun blasts.

  Jason raised an eyebrow at seeing the six senzu beans. “Where the hell did you find those?”

  “Inside a T-Rex.”

  “You took down a Rex on your own?”

  “Nobody takes down a Rex,” Rex said with a sarcastic smile as he walked past Greg and pulled a makeshift bottle of water out of a stash they’d made and hauled up here from one of the creeks.

  “The 8s helped,” Greg answered. “A little.”

  “Perfect,” Morgan said, telekinetically pulling all six beans out of his hand and flying them across into hers, which she then cheeked.

  “Hey!” Greg complained. “That’s all of them.”

  “You won’t need them, hopefully,” she said, pulling off her left shoe and tossing it to Dina who’d just returned with the 7s. She took off her right and did the same, then proceeded to take off her jog bra.

  “Whose birthday is it?” Rex asked, staring at her as she also pulled off her pants and rolled both garments up in a bundle and stashed them next to a tree, now completely nu
de.

  “I’m going up the mountain,” she said, glancing at the others who were giving her questioning glares.

  “Jumat or not you’ll never make it,” Greg said, not sure what she was thinking.

  “Continuous emission?” Jason asked.

  “That’s the plan,” she said, not caring one bit that she was naked, knowing her clothes were going to get in the way of her Jumat.

  “You don’t know where to go,” Dina said, slipping on the second shoe and giving her bare feet a badly needed break from roughing it. Both she and the other former prisoners had a variety of cuts on their soft feet, with a generous bioshield usage the only thing keeping them from being totally torn up and their attempts at raptor hide sandals failing badly enough that she’d chucked them earlier.

  “We know what sector,” Morgan said, looking a little like a chipmunk with the beans stashed in either side of her mouth. “The only one the bugs have been in this entire time. The others we got a chance to look around before they swarmed the top. That leaves the few places in that sector that none of us have ran through to look.”

  “You haven’t been up there at all,” Paul reminded her.

  “Show me what you’ve seen, but I’m the only one that can go short of fighting a war that we very well might lose.”

  “And if you get caught then what?” Greg asked.

  “At least they won’t be stealing my clothes,” Morgan said as she started to walk out of camp.

  “How long can you sustain with those six?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, pausing and glancing back. “Depends how much force I need to use. I’ll turn back before I run dry, and at least get a scouting run out of this.”

  “Don’t you think we should wait until everyone gets back so we can be standing by at the border?” Greg insisted.

  “No, but I’ll take Rex with me as an Ensek relay. He can stare at my butt on the way there, and if I do go down he can let the rest of you know to come break me out of prison. Just don’t try it on the mountain. I think this is Wilson’s way of thinning our numbers, and I think I can counter it solo.”

  “Have to now,” Greg said deadpan. “You just saliva claimed the senzu beans.”

  Morgan smirked and looked at Rex. “Come on.”

  “Alright reckless, I’ll humor you,” he said, jogging up next to Morgan with her matching pace as she stayed a step ahead and ran barefoot out through the surrounding brush, with her nude form and Rex’s white uniform disappearing from sight.

  “It’s days like this that make me really wish I had Jumat,” Greg said after they’d left.

  “Ditto,” Paul echoed.

  When Morgan and Rex reached the bottom of the bug zone a swarm of the bastards moved in to greet them, spilling against the low altitude barrier as if it were a glass wall rather than just a geographical line. The path they were on ran laterally, with the higher one doing the same across a gap and uphill. When Morgan had shoes on she could have jumped it easily, but now she was going to lose some power given that her size 8 feet were already starting to get sore and didn’t give her as flat of a platform as she needed, with the balls of her feet sinking into the partially soft soil given the mist showers that had blown in from a nearby waterfall.

  “I could use a boost,” she asked.

  “Sure thing,” Rex said. “Just jump and I’ll do the rest.”

  Morgan repositioned one of her six beans between her teeth and chomped it up, swallowing the very dense ambrosia dose to start the overload process that would kick in after a short delay. She’d already filled up on ambrosia to her normal levels drinking the limited supply of liquids they’d obtained from hunting raptors, meaning that as soon as this bean hit her bloodstream it was going to start giving her overload headaches…but those would diminish rapidly as soon as she started using her Jumat as extensively as she was about to.

  “Might want to step back a bit,” she warned Rex, who took two steps to the side. “Maybe just a little more.”

  He laughed and retreated another two steps, then Morgan closed her eyes and focused. She needed to emit from all parts of her body else some of the bugs might slip through and make contact. Typically she didn’t do this, summoning up strong blasts from specific regions, usually her arms, and pooling the energy in a transfer state outside her clothes or armor. This was going to have to be a direct feed and trying to pool it through a transition phase would have been adding too much difficulty. She was going Amazon on this and had to fully commit, else a lapse might form and she’d end up stung into unconsciousness in short order.

  Rex felt a gentle push of air hit him as he saw Morgan’s ponytail lift up off her neck. It was tied up using a bit of wire from the raptors and held its form, but her bangs flew about wildly as the invisible energy flowed off her, quickly increasing strength. A moment later a surge hit him and he took another step backwards as Morgan was pushing the leaves on the surrounding trees back and bending the branches like a micro hurricane. She dipped down into a crouch then launched her naked body up into the air, with Rex grabbing her telekinetically and pushing her up into the stun bug swarm as requested.

  When she hit it the bugs parted against the storm winds, part from the moving air, part from the concussive energy that was tuned to hit and move large objects rather than air molecules. The atmospheric pressure forced many of them to slip back in through the blasts while the much large stun bugs had no such luxury, being pushed back and thrown aside gently, not hard enough to damage them unless they flew into a rock or tree.

  Morgan’s air supply also diminished due to the lessened pressure. She was pushing out so much that she was essentially thinning the air around her, but enough of a blowback was occurring that she still got the oxygen that she needed, plus she wasn’t doing anything that physically strenuous so she wasn’t going to be requiring a lot anytime soon.

  She landed on the upper trail and didn’t look back, blowing bugs, dirt, and leaves aside as she jogged to the right and disappeared into the tree line from Rex’s position, but she knew he would still be following her mental signature. If she discovered anything she’d send him an update so he could pass the information on in case she didn’t make it back, but right now she didn’t worry about keeping track of him, for all her focus was on the stun bugs and how close they were getting to her.

  The first few wisps of ambrosia overload were now gone and she pulled back her Jumat flow a bit as she ran through the crooked trail. The terrain made it difficult to monitor the bugs, for her body movement affected where they were knocked and every stride she took repositioned her emitters into different alignments, leaving her with a chaotic energy pulse that she didn’t hope to predict. Reducing it as much as she thought prudent, Morgan tried to conserve as much energy as she could while crunching up another senzu bean to stay ahead of the ambrosia need.

  By the time she reached the cave tunnel the headaches were manifesting themselves, which she took as a good sign. She’d never sustained the flow this long before so Morgan was in unknown territory and was glad she hadn’t burnt through two senzu beans already. She ran by and hopped over a half empty crate of supplies that had been left behind and ducked into the tunnel, temporarily reducing her Jumat output now that the walls were covering for her. The air in her lungs dipped a bit and she found herself out of breath, but as soon as she reached the other side the airflow upped again back to the formerly thin level.

  But as soon as she got to the other side she had to pulse a much larger blast into the continuous flow, for the air was so thick with stun bugs that she couldn’t see the trees ahead. That was a good sign to her, despite the danger, meaning that this was where she had to go and she hadn’t guessed wrong. Add in the fact that the lower trail in this section didn’t connect to any below and that meant you either had to hack your way through the brush or enter via an adjacent sector. The memories of the others who had been here guided her up to the top of the mountain, but that’s not where she needed
to go so she headed downhill, plowing a path with her Jumat flow as her Pefbar allowed her to navigate through the dark cloud of tiny machines.

  As she jumped half a step down her foot hit something sharp and she reflexively bent her knee to cushion the blow in a one-step limp. When the object stuck in her foot she telekinetically pulled it loose and let the concussive energy toss it aside before her next step, unable to stop or cover her feet with bioshields. Right now it was total body emission or something far less. She couldn’t do 95% and had never bothered to train herself for that, though she was adding it to her future workload because right now it would have been damn handy.

  Twenty meters down and the trail split, with her now being in unknown territory. She took the right fork that ran lateral rather than down the mountain and pushed her Pefbar out further, not wanting to miss something in the forest nearby the trail if that’s what she was here to find. Fortunately she was able to multi-task both psionics, but her body was already starting to buzz a little from the continuous Jumat production.

  Morgan ran as fast as she could without tripping, following the trail and trying to keep some semblance of her position…which was nearly impossible with all the switchbacks, so she just memoried where she’d come so she could go back if necessary. Get lost here long enough to run out of ambrosia and she’d be toast.

  Traveling the path and racking up meters Morgan looked for something, anything that might be the source of these things but there was nothing to be found. She moved through two more intersections before the density of the stung bugs dipped a bit, which was her first clue. The Archon coasted to a stop and started to backtrack, heading for the last intersection and heading the other way. The density of the stun bugs increased again and she used that as her guide, finding another intersection and guessing wrong only to have to retread ground and go the other way, crunching another senzu bean and putting herself on a mental countdown to when she’d need to start back.

  She kept looking and looking, starting to get dizzy from the sustained effort that she had to keep increasing due to the number of bugs pushing back against her concussive energy, especially across the ground where they tried to slip in under her waves, but they’d always get repulsed when they got near her feet, for they were continuously emitting a mist of blood from the cuts on thorns and rocks as she bled out and the concussive energy wicked it away from her skin.