Star Force: Captains Mint (Star Force Universe Book 70) Page 8

  The walking quickly rid Kara of her stiffness, but most of her inner peace remained…then when she got to the food she forced herself to eat slowly as she sat on the top of the shipping crate and dangled her legs off the edge, staring at her tattoos and wiggling her toes distractedly as the Archon continued to look more inside herself than at anything on the exterior.

  Her purpose within Star Force early on had been to lead the trailblazers forward using her Vorch’nas advantage, but they’d long passed her up and it was really just useful to her now, though still technologically advanced…yet not enough for anyone to really care. It was just hers now, and not a treasure of the empire, and even after she had returned to leadership of Clan Ghostblade she had largely been unimportant…despite what people like Han Tyver had to say otherwise.

  Every function of the empire could now be accomplished without her. Granted she could probably be more useful in a few situations, but the skill level of everyone that was not Archon had gotten so high, especially that of the Naval division, that they didn’t need Archons for a lot of missions, and there were very few things that Kara could truly excel at now. Trailblazing…which was the primary Archon duty that defined them…was meant to take you into the unknown and explore, learn, and pass that knowledge onto others…but she hadn’t been doing that for a very long time, and neither had the others that bore that name.

  Except they were now busy annexing the V’kit’no’sat and establishing the Grand Border, which was essential to Star Force’s future, but something inside Kara told her that wasn’t where she belonged.

  She laughed when it finally occurred to her, for it was so simple.

  “Am I really that big of an idiot?” she asked, kicking her bare heels on the iced-over crate and splintering some fragments off to land in the soft snow below. “How could I be so blind?”

  “Easy answer, Kara. You’ve been putting the Empire on your shoulders so much you never noticed it could stand on its own now. And with so much death coming from the Hadarak you knuckled down and accepted grunge work in order to save a few more lives. But there will always be a few more lives that need saving, and you can’t get to them all. Racking up the highest score is a challenge worth pursuing if you don’t have anything better to do, and it’s the lack of something better to do that’s been throwing you off.”

  “I don’t belong leading armies. I don’t belong on Earth. I belong on Halo with the Master Chief. Out in the middle of nowhere pursuing ancient knowledge and the secrets of the universe in order to protect Earth. But I don’t belong on Earth, or with the fleet. I belong with my fellow Spartans or on my own, doing the things that only we can do, not backing up the fleet or playing training master.”

  Kara’s voice started to cut out, having gotten so weak over the last few days that she was overexerting it now, but she didn’t care. If she went hoarse her Vorch’nas would fix it, but it hadn’t proced yet on its own, and she was mildly curious how bad it would let her voice get before it automatically fixed her vocal chords.

  “A Spartan without a mission…that’s been me, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Hobbies don’t cut it. Messing with cute boys doesn’t cut it. I need a purpose, and defending Earth against the V’kit’no’sat had always been there for us before…but not now, and fighting the Hadarak is more like pest control than anything. We can’t even talk to them without a Uriti translating, and their minions are so beyond hope they might as well be zombies. The V’kit’no’sat were opponents. The Hadarak are a natural disaster that never ends.”

  “We had to upgrade ourselves to survive the V’kit’no’sat, and they inadvertently pushed us to become stronger by trying to annihilate us. The Hadarak aren’t, and we’re fighting them primarily by spamming drone production more than anything. Not much a single little girl like me can do that someone else isn’t already doing. If it was just me and I had to build an empire from scratch, that would be fun, but we’re way past needing that.”

  Kara sighed. “Its days like this I’m almost tempted to turn on the sex simulators and just lose myself in it, because I can’t see anything else better to do. But stupid me keeps forgetting that I’m not immune to illusions, and if there are new abilities out there to discover I’m not going to know they’re there unless I bump into them or bump into some else who already has them. We’re the top of the totem pole now for most of this galaxy, so bumping into someone isn’t likely to happen unless it’s an invasion force from outside the galaxy. Which means I made the dumbass assumption I couldn’t upgrade much more. I am so fucking stupid.”

  She took another bite of a gigantic ration bar, then swallowed some Red drink before continuing her self-critique without worrying about anyone overhearing her. For her mech wasn’t going to spill her secrets. It’d promised not to.

  “I needed to come out here and try to feel again. To get that Halo feel, and I found just enough to end up with melancholy because I can’t stay here. But I’m not stupid enough to think that there isn’t a Halo out there for me somewhere. I just have to find it, even if I can’t feel it now. Even if I feel dead inside without a mission, without a purpose. It’s just the fog of war blinding me. I have to follow the little clues that I have now, and I can’t do that sitting here…but where do I go next. Come on, Kara. Think.”

  “I can fiddle around with this Essence ‘nipple’ anywhere. Ha. That’s a cute term. Instead of a third eye I got a third nipple. The others will get a laugh out of that…but is this something they can’t access because they’ve gone Saiyan? That would suck if it’s the case, but it’s also possibly the reason why none of them have found it yet. Maybe they can’t. Maybe I’m…the only one that can. Déjà vu all over again.”

  “But where do I belong now? Paul’s out hunting Lurkers so we don’t lose others trying. He’s so good he can’t go anywhere else without disaster following. His path now is clear, but I bet he doesn’t like it either. I haven’t talked to him in so long because of these damn comm lags. I’d go see him, but I know that’d be a dead end. Still. It’d be better than sitting around here.”

  “Jason is out in the Rim somewhere opening up all the Founders’ hidden treasure boxes, and I could help with that…but I’d be redundant again. The others are fighting Hadarak or taming the Dinosaurs, and I don’t need to do either. So where does that leave me? Come on, Kara. Where’s your Halo?”

  It took her a moment, then she smacked her glowing tatted palm against her glowing tatted head.

  “For crying out loud, you are a dumbass bitch,” she said, getting so hoarse that her Vorch’nas finally kicked in and healed her, returning her voice to its normal smooth glassiness. “I don’t know where my Halo is, but on the big fat ones we took from the Vargemma is a waypoint I need to get to. The knowledge the Responders contain is locked unless you can display the prerequisite abilities, and I’m willing to bet I now have one. If this isn’t something brand new to the universe…which I’m guessing it’s not…then the Founders have probably encountered it and left some notes behind on the matter. That’s my next waypoint. Which means I don’t have to keep freezing my ass out here.”

  Kara hopped off the crate, but she didn’t land on the snow. Instead she took flight and rose up high above the top of the mech and kept going for about double the distance. The air felt good against her skin, and as her blood sugar levels caught back up so did her internal heat production, taking the cold out of her skin.

  As she held position Kara lost her touch on the tiny muscle inside her, and the Essence flow returned again without her commanding it to. Not as bad as the first time, but a little unauthorized trickle that she had to focus real hard to lock down, finding that she couldn’t until she landed and held still without using any of her psionics.

  “Ok, that’s not good,” she scolded herself. “I can’t dial back my senses without losing control. Guess I’m not going to be wearing clothes for a while either…and I bet if I’m around people I’m going to numb up way too much too. Wh
ich means I need a private ship. Fuck.”

  She sat back down on the crate again and used her Vorch’nas to link through the mech to the outpost where she put in a requisition order for a personal scout ship, but since there was no comm relay in this system that order would have to go out on the next courier to arrive.

  Meaning she was stuck here until then unless she could hitch a ride with other people…and her gut told her no way. If she couldn’t handle a little flying, then her natural defenses when other people were around would go way too high and she’d lose her control over her nipple again.

  “Well. Looks like I’m camping out here with you for a while,” she said, glancing up at her mech. “I’m not bad to look at, am I? Twelve year old my ass…”

  9

  October 18, 128852

  Happhetima Nebula (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Gamma Tricumbda Temple

  Kara arrived at one of the 2972 Temples Star Force had located and claimed, not through an Essence jump but by the painfully slow spacial tap that was essentially a hole cut in the outer hull of the Temple to allow naval traffic in and out. Star Force had added them to every Temple they’d claimed after deactivating the defensive Essence shield barrier, thus opening up the reclusive locations to their own traffic that was far more active than Essence travel alone would have allowed.

  Kara had chosen the closest Temple to the Captains Mint, but one that was not fully conquered. The Caretakers still controlled most regions, but as long as she played nice there shouldn’t be a problem since the Paladin here were taking over control rooms with the subtle grace of an assassin…meaning the entire Temple wasn’t in Star Force-hate mode.

  When her scout ship entered through the tunnel she felt a sense of dread and awe as she finally got her own eyes on the Temple. She’d never traveled to one before, instead satisfying herself with the numerous reports and holograms coming out of them, but now that she was here the pit of her stomach was doing flips that accelerated into a full on jaw drop when she exited the tunnel into the interior of the Dyson Sphere.

  There were no stars, only land far, far away and in all directions. She really was inside a giant ball that would put Halo to shame, but built on the same principle. And inside this ball was a lot of Vargemma that wanted to kill her the moment she came into contact with them, so Kara was careful to obey the zonal warnings on the battlemap telling her where she could go and where not to.

  She picked a secluded safe area and headed straight there after informing the Temple Commander that she was here on a secret research mission and did not want to be disturbed except via text message, for she didn’t want to hear even the sound of someone’s voice right now. Kara had been tripped up enough when her scout ship arrived and she had a brief conversation with the crew that had brought it, but now she was alone inside and planned to keep it that way.

  Her control hadn’t gotten much better, which was discouraging. If she didn’t keep her senses finely attuned her ‘nipple’ would open and start overcharging her with Essence, so Kara had to keep as low a profile as possible, but fortunately the sight of other ships silently moving around the gigantic Temple didn’t bother her. There was so much empty land space in here she could lose herself far easier than traveling elsewhere in the galaxy, and that’s exactly what she planned to do.

  Once she checked in, the Archon cloaked her ship and disappeared from the tracking sensors of both Star Force, the Caretakers, and everyone else inside the Temple…though she wasn’t completely sure how much in the way of Essence trackers there were built into the Temple itself. Star Force had taken control over the massive constructs, but they were still far from exploring and understanding it all, especially given its anti-hierarchical design. One piece of the Temple didn’t even know another existed, and it was like that for most of the stuff here, with even the well-hidden control rooms only having dominion over their piece of the gigantic landscape that was bigger than thousands of planets’ surface area combined into one unending carpet that looped back around on itself in all directions.

  The small star in the middle was fake, but bright enough to provide light for it all, though it never moved. That was going to take some getting used to, but Kara was immediately feeling a sense of peace here. It really did feel like Halo, but without the mission of galactic importance her Core seemed to need. Yet there was something important here. She could feel it…or maybe hope for it, because if she didn’t get some answers she wasn’t going to be able to do much of anything other than Essence training with this beneficial inhibition.

  She’d already gotten in more Essence practice over the past few months that she had in her entire life, and she’d been leveling up so fast it almost made her giddy…but it wouldn’t stop until she calmed herself down after combat, and that took a long time. She had to use a Magicite ring set to soak up the excess until she’d turned off her combat mode and scaled her senses up enough for her subconscious mind to remember she had the ability to close off the nipple. And right now, she had a collection of full rings sitting in her bedroom onboard the small scout ship with a box of empty ones waiting to be filled.

  The Elcee here would be grateful to have them, but she wasn’t in a hurry to make the exchange just yet. She needed answers and seclusion, so after drifting far from the traffic lanes and out into the deep wilds of the Temple far away from Star Force and the Vargemma, she finally set her ship down near to a location that was marked as having one of the Responder outposts that had been spread across the Temple like the Founders had been carrying a bag of sand and sneezed, throwing it so far and wide they couldn’t have picked them all up if they’d wanted to.

  That’s how someone else had described the distribution pattern in the notes she’d been reading constantly since getting back in connection with the comm network. There was so much material on the Temples now she still hadn’t gotten through it all, even with the mental interlink and Sav upgrade to her mind that allowed her to read books as fast as a civilian could throw punches.

  Kara put that aside for the moment and walked outside her ship through the cloaking field and the second field beyond it that would prevent anyone from smacking into the invisible object and hurting themselves, though there was no one here and not any animals bigger than worms and beetles. Some of the other Temples had some larger critters, but in general those were thought to have been brought in by the Vargemma at some point, for the Caretaker infrastructure had oxygen/carbon dioxide recyclers everywhere to keep the plants alive when there wasn’t enough biological CO2 production to sustain them.

  Still, if an errant bird happened to show up, Kara didn’t want him running into the hardest window ever and cracking his skull, so the dampening shield around the ship would feel like hitting a snow drift, though there was gratefully not a lick of the icy stuff around here. Kara had chosen a heavily forested area with numerous ravines and a rolling terrain that would make it far easier to get lost in…which she wanted, but without the need to use her Rensiek.

  The Archon walked out of her ship, still naked and covered in glowing tattoos, but on a gut feeling she changed the color. Her hair, nails, lips, and real nipples went camo green while the rest of her skin remained the same normal paleness, though the tattoos changed from glowing white to a subdued brown that still glowed, but would be hard to notice unless it turned dark, and according to the information she’d received on entry, this Temple had no stellar zone rotation.

  That meant the fake star wasn’t turning on and off in certain directions, and was keeping the entire Temple in full daylight constantly. So Kara was now a sexy little camo girl walking on her bare feet through the slightly moist forest floor while keeping an eye out for thorns or other not so nice things to walk on.

  She could have used her Pefbar, or put a force field over her feet, but the vulnerability of the terrain was helping her keep her senses sharp so she just rolled with it, walking across a few miles of hilly terrain and having to navigate by sight and memory unless she wa
nted to cheat and use her Vorch’nas…which didn’t seem right given her situation.

  Eventually she came to the small outpost and walked off the dirt and onto the solid stone-like synthetic material that led inside to a glowing red obelisk that she felt scanning her mind.

  Kara expected that and let it access her language memories, after which it relented and started speaking.

  “I apologize for the intrusion. A language download from your mind was necessary to facilitate communications. I am known as a ‘Responder,’…”

  “Yes, I know,” Kara interrupted. “I have questions concerning an Essence ability that I have unlocked.”

  “Please demonstrate this ability on the pylon behind you.”

  Kara turned around to see a rectangular cube rise up out of the floor more than twice her head height.

  “I can’t. It doesn’t do anything other than give me extra Essence.”

  “You are being scanned. Use this ability so that I may identify it and confirm you have earned access to the necessary knowledge.”

  That wasn’t hard for Kara to do, for she was trying mightily to stay focused while talking to the weird device, for it was giving her spidey sense a little tingle, primarily because she didn’t know exactly what it could and couldn’t do. So all she had to do was allow herself to get distracted and her third nipple opened up and raw Essence started to flow into her again.

  “This ability is known as Nuv’ernor.”

  Kara focused again to try and get it to stop, but wasn’t successful. Instead she set one of the two rings she was wearing to soak it up while she talked.