Star Force: Battlemeld (SF45) Read online

  Paul reached his left hand over and grabbed a cookie from his tray, but it stopped halfway up to his mouth as a beep sounded from his biomonitor. Jason looked over at him and saw 2 yellow lights glowing, but he didn’t need to say anything, for Paul knew it from his thoughts anyway before he could even have bothered to form the words.

  Jason wondered if it would be enough for Paul to latch onto, but again he didn’t ask the question in words or even telepathically. The thought was just there, for both of them to think, with Paul beginning to grasp hold of the mild instability and channel it in the direction he wanted…which ramped it up to 3 yellow.

  Both of them were excited, but Jason’s biomonitor wasn’t showing any activity and suddenly Paul’s sense of Jason began to blur away as he had to draw more and more of his concentration into channeling the instability. Jason could still sense Paul, but knew better than to interfere unless he asked. He watched through mind’s eye as the Paul controlled and pushed the instability on, then when the biomonitor got up to 2 red he decided to disconnect.

  Jason pulled the gauntlet off and felt Paul’s mind disappear…an odd sensation given how much time they spent linked nowadays. If Paul needed him to he’d link back up and help him as a focal point, but they both assumed, for some reason he couldn’t identify, that it was probably a disadvantage to have another set of biofeedback thrown into the mix, and even if Paul wasn’t consciously trying to read Jason, he probably was doing so at least some subconsciously.

  Right on cue, as soon as he disconnected the monitor went 3 red, with Paul pushing his chair back and dropping to his knees on the floor as he tried to control it. Jason could see his muscles clenching up against the stress, but he made no sound as the 3 red lights started flashing. A few people turned to look, wondering why he’d quietly dropped to the floor, then all of a sudden Jason heard his mental scream and everyone in the cafeteria jerked in shock and fear as they heard it too…with several people dropping trays as the involuntary Ikrid transmission washed over them.

  “Stay put and relax!” Jason yelled to the crowd as he kept his eyes on Paul. “It’ll pass in a moment.”

  He heard a number of questions raised, for the mental scream was painful enough just to ‘hear’ and wasn’t subsiding. It seemed to oscillate and then increase in intensity right up to the point where it vanished…leaving everyone in the surrounding area taking a deep breath and shaking off the effect.

  “Sorry about that,” Jason apologized, “but that’s what happens when you step on an Archon’s toe.”

  He waved to everybody, most of whom got the joke but didn’t know what was going on, then knelt down beside Paul as he continued to rest on his knees with the biomonitor dropping down from 3 red to 1.

  Did you make it? he asked telepathically.

  Yes.

  And?

  Get one of the twins so I can check. I felt the flash growth, but I have no ability to use. It’s like I’ve got a spotlight reaching out for something that isn’t there.

  You staying here?

  It’s not as bad as the bioshield upgrade, but I’ve got quite the headache.

  I’ll be back, Jason said as he stood up and left the cafeteria, leaving Paul to wobbily climb back into his chair and scoot it back up to the table.

  “What just happened?” a woman asked from the table next to his.

  “A spontaneous psionic upgrade,” Paul said, cradling his head in his hands in tripod fashion on the table without looking at her. “Sorry about the scream.”

  “It hurts?” someone else asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, his head throbbing as he felt someone walk up behind him and place a hand on his neck.

  “Do you know what you got?” the medic asked, with Paul recognizing the voice as one of the geneticists on Vortison’s team.

  “I think so. We’ll know as soon as Jason gets back.”

  “You’re really chewed up in there,” the medic said, feeling inside his head with his own Ikrid ability…infantile as it was compared to Paul’s.

  “Flash growth,” he reminded him.

  “Or you’re pushing it too fast,” he differed. “The instability surge is designed, we think, to allow you to partially upgrade in stages. How many times was this?”

  “First,” Paul said with a touch of pride.

  “I’d recommend taking it slower next time,” the medic said in all earnest.

  “We can’t control when it happens, and we’re not going to waste the opportunity,” he said, wincing against the pain.

  “A few dozen repeats and you might not have to,” he said, referencing the data they were gathering with the biomonitors, “but I suppose it doesn’t help your group.”

  “Tip of the spear,” Paul said in agreement.

  “Is there somewhere you’d like us to take you?”

  “I’m good,” Paul said, still face down to the table as he held as still as possible while several waves of pain rippled across his forehead. “Go back to eating.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll go see what new data you just gained us,” the medic said, laying a light hand on Paul’s shoulder before he walked away, leaving him in blissful anonymity until Jason eventually returned.

  “He’s not glowing,” he heard Karen say from beside him, surprising him by the fact that he hadn’t notice her or Jason walk up…nor Travis, for that matter, who was standing behind them as Paul finally pulled his head off his hands and looked at them. He used what he felt like a spotlight and pointed it at Karen, feeling her to be slippery and not wanting to accept his contact, but after some 30+ seconds of trying the link finally took and she began to glow within his mind.

  “What the…” Travis said, flinching as Karen’s glow disappeared.

  “I guess you did join the club,” she said, seeing Paul glow as well as feeling him as she’d only felt Travis before. “Damn, you are in good shape.”

  “So you have the battlemeld?” Jason asked to be sure.

  “Seems so,” Paul said, marveling at the depth of connection it was providing him. Not only could he feel Karen’s body position, the light stress in her muscles from standing and the slight bind of the hair tie in her ponytail, but he could sense what she was thinking similar to the Ikrid link he’d had with Jason…except there was no physical contact here. “I think the meld overrides the Ikrid block. I’m getting more connection with her than I had with you…a lot more.”

  “My condolences,” Jason offered, drawing a glare from Travis, but Karen didn’t seem to mind.

  “Can I have my sister back please,” he said, slightly annoyed.

  “What do you mean?” Jason asked.

  “I’m not connected to her anymore. It shut off whenever Paul did whatever he did.”

  “It’s supposed to work with more than 2,” Paul said, reaching out with his spotlight and finding Travis, who was just as slippery. “Try and connect with me.”

  “I don’t know how. It’s always been automatic.”

  “Just let me in. Karen will try to reach out for you too.”

  Travis stared for a moment, then closed his eyes as he concentrated. His sister was wanting to connect, he could feel that through their twin link, but she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, until he finally found a crack to let Paul in, then they both connected simultaneously forming a 3-way link.

  “Holy shit,” Travis said as both the other Archons’ senses flooded into his.

  “How’s your head now?” Jason asked.

  “Like King Kong is pounding on it,” Karen answered for him, using the phrase he was about to speak.

  “I suggest you disconnect soon and get some rest…alone. You can get me up to speed later.”

  “Feeling left out?” Travis asked.

  “A bit,” Jason admitted. “We didn’t ascend at the same time, and I think it’s pretty obvious why you two did.”

  “Might be true of all their future ascensions,” Paul commented. “Actually, I can feel their auxiliary link now. It’s weaker, but de
finitely there in the background. Encrypted, I think. It’s like they’ve become wireless components of each other’s brain. I think that’s why we couldn’t pick it up before. We don’t have the right context to interpret it because it’s not traditional telepathy. We were looking for sentences and they’re communicating in numerical code.”

  “Fascinating,” Jason said sarcastically, “but this has to be frying your head, especially with 2 people linked in.”

  “It is,” Paul said, reluctant to let go of the new sensation. He concentrated and withdrew from Travis…immediately getting dropped by Karen. That made sense, given that Travis’s connection should trump his since he’d spent far more time with his sister. Then again, he’d been able to trump him to establish a connection in the first place.

  “He’s out,” she said, suddenly missing his presence. He wasn’t half the jerk she’d thought he was.

  “I off,” Paul said, slowly standing and walking away. “I’ll check in with you guys tomorrow.”

  “Night,” Jason joked, then turned to the twins as he grabbed a roll off his plate and took a quick bite. “Try disconnecting from each other again.”

  The twins looked at each other, then both shrugged innocently. “We don’t know how,” they said in tandem.

  “Try,” Jason pressed as he sat back down. “And keep at it the rest of the day until you do.”

  “I think that means we’re dismissed,” Travis quipped, glancing around at the others in the cafeteria, most of whom were not paying attention to them, though there were a few nearby that were listening and pretending not to notice, though their body language gave them away.

  “Want to grab something?” Karen asked.

  “Just a snack.”

  “K,” she said, heading over to the food lines as she examined their battlemeld link. It was firm and constant, and no matter how she tried to manipulate it, it felt like she was trying to grab a bar of soap under water, with it slipping through her fingers every time. With no ‘grip’ she couldn’t disconnect, and short of walking out of range or having Paul bump Travis out again, she didn’t know how to even theoretically go about manually disconnecting from her brother.

  “We’re going to be at this for a while,” Travis said once they were out of earshot.

  “I know,” she said, grabbing a bottle of green.

  It took another 3 weeks of handcuffed training before Jason’s trigger activated, and like Paul he also nailed the ascension on the first try…with an equally nasty headache in exchange, but as soon as it passed the two got back to their normal training with a few additional melding sessions that surged them past the twins’ scores on the challenges that they’d developed for them, and after only a few hours of trying.

  From there it was a constant whirlwind of training, with most of their free time spent either designing new challenges and equipment or kicking the crap out of the twins as Paul and Jason continued to oversee their training, and now that they knew what the melding was like, they pushed them far harder than they’d pushed themselves previously, now with no excuse given that the twins were now on the short end of the psionic stick.

  Or at least they were for several months. With the new training regimens that the trailblazers were creating, Karen and Travis started working on things that they hadn’t even imagined were possible before…like sequenced timing of Fornax blasts, oscillating telekinetic holds so one could rest while the other held an object aloft, allowing both to keep it levitated for far long than either could do individually or in turns, and overlapping Rensiek fields to hyper-compress their heat emissions and turn their limited skill in that area into a metal-melting handhold that, when combined with Lachka, gave them the ability to craft crude objects out of raw materials.

  The twins thought some of the training was downright stupid, but they went along with it and during a paired telekinetic drill involving an overlap of their Lachka energy to try and extend their combined range, they both suddenly found themselves on the floor and going through another ascension…this one a bit quicker than before, but no less traumatic.

  The next day Vortison and his team confirmed what Paul and Jason suspected after running the twins through a few exploratory drills…that they now, through the battlemeld, could produce one Lachka field rather than an overlapping two. Now in perfect sync, the tissue in both of their brains functioned like an extension of each other, producing one field as if they were a much larger individual with greater brain size…like some of the medium V’kit’no’sat races. But more than that, the binary nature somehow enhanced the effect, with Vortison speculating that it had to do with the field being produced at an angle rather than from a single point, in effect giving them the equivalent of more leverage.

  In a private conversation later on between the genetics team and Paul and Jason, they discussed in detail how they thought the twins were leveling up faster due to their non-meld link, with Vortison adding some more tidbits of data that confirmed their ‘duality.’ For whatever reason they’d developed and grown the link before birth, he suspected, and on some level they were operating as a single individual while maintaining the option of individuality when they were separated.

  As such, the genetic triggers were reading them as a pair, which was why they were ascending together and why, it seemed, they had a great deal more aptitude at the battlemeld. Paul and Jason disagreed with that vehemently until Vortison revised his assessment, specifying that the duality that they suspected the triggers were searching for was already partially present in the twins due to their link, letting them get into the specified ‘zone’ with far less adjustment…though with only the four of them to study that was only a little less than wild speculation at this point.

  That grudgingly made sense, and the two strikers left their info chat satisfied. If the twins continued to unlock battlemeld abilities then that would be good for them and Star Force overall…but they weren’t doing it because they were better, they were doing it because they, once again, were cheating.

  Which meant the race was on, with Paul and Jason diving into the challenge. They’d have to work longer and harder to keep up with the twerps, which they’d come to almost like now that they could see them from a new perspective with the battlemeld, but there was nothing that spurred the trailblazers on more than going up against a superior opponent...and one that was cheating to do it gave them an even greater drive to ‘correct’ that injustice.

  That set up a war between the two pairs, with Paul and Jason decided to remain in the pyramid for continuous training indefinitely, knowing that the sooner they uncovered and mastered these new abilities the sooner they could teach others to do the same, enhancing all of the Archons. They both made long term adjustments to their previous assignments, seeing that others could function in their absence, and set themselves in an even more rigorous schedule as they probed their potential in their own unique way while simultaneously getting a read from Karen and Travis and trying to replicate the Lachka meld.

  They would succeed four months later…but only after the twins had unlocked yet another ability, with the two gleefully staying ahead and mocking the trailblazers whenever they got the opportunity, for their own schedule was becoming quite rigorous as they had no intention of letting Paul and Jason catch up.

  8

  May 31, 2489

  Solar System

  Earth

  Greg arrived in the pyramid, haven’t seeing Earth in a very long time and only now returning at Jason’s request, leaving the ever-expanding lizard front in Alpha Region as their enemy was constantly trying to flank the Star Force colonies and push around the edges of their sparse defensive line. He’d been leading one of the roaming fleets hunting them down and pushing them back as the reformed Alliance was extending that line with newly colonized shared worlds along with three Irondel/Star Force colonies that were forming quickly as the physically smallest race in the Alliance was staking out a piece of the shared border to assist in the defense, rather th
an merely hiding out on the interior with the other refuges.

  The chipmunk-sized race wasn’t the only one beginning to pitch in, for there were four more races doing the same…one on the lizard border, one on the Calavari, and two on the Skarron front, though those weren’t originally from the Alliance, but from Randy’s contacts near Beta Region that had fled the Skarron invasion, and still more were talking about claiming their own piece of the ever-growing puzzle that was the Alliance Defense Zone.

  That was the semi-official title, with the Alliance portion of the races still referring to it as the Sanctuary Zone, but with many more non-Alliance races being allowed in by Star Force the term ‘Alliance’ had taken on a new meaning, with the ADZ meaning all of Star Force’s allies, making them the center of power while the Hycre were still the dominating force within the anti-lizard Alliance.

  The recent surge of help from the ADZ denizens had come on the heels of Star Force deploying its first Sentinel-class defense platform that outraged all weapon systems within the Alliance and their enemies…by far. It utilized a new power core and targeting orrery coupled with multiple cleansing beams that could now hit ships in excess of 1,000 miles with the accuracy of what had once been the equivalent of 20. With the promise of several such defense platforms being built, numerous races were now eager to position themselves on the ADZ borders, wanting both a chance to strike back at the enemy and to gain more stature within the quickly growing ADZ community…now that they felt they had a safe haven to run back to, provided by the Sentinels.

  Blade-097 and Zack-085 had been sent to the lizard front to replace Greg and to take care of several new projects popping up within Alpha Zone, with several more trailblazers and other high ranking Archons repositioning throughout the ADZ in a slow shuffle as a new, multi-racial dynamic was forming within what had once been Star Force’s ‘territory,’ though in truth it had been more their neighborhood than their possession.