Star Force: Temple Wars Read online

  The few exterior weapons left were still active, and he had given orders on what to do with them until they were destroyed, but all crew that were not essential to that operation were now being summoned to the armories to gear up to fight other Neofan…and that was something equally unheard of. There had never been a full civil war within House Atriark, but it looked like there was one now, for Truven’s allies were crazy enough to start one rather than submitting to the rightful Reignor’s return. Neofan law was on his side, but they didn’t care…and he knew Plausious no longer cared either, for as soon as he had the chance he was going to rewrite Neofan society in a major way that was going to destroy the past in order to save their future.

  The Gjardan had professional brawlers onboard. All of them did, for just such a boarding action, but there was no guarantee they would win out against their opposites, especially when there were twice as many ships in play to send boarders over from, so all of his crew was being assigned to assist, including himself. This ship could not fall. Plausious was depending on it, and if a fight had to occur hand to hand, the pent up ire of his ship’s crew at the obnoxious overbearing Overseer’s previous actions already had them spoiling for a fight that was long in the making, but one that no one ever thought would actually happen.

  Yuer didn’t have time to get into a Berserker suit, nor did he want to deprive the brawlers of one, so like the rest of the crew he grabbed a negation staff and began to charge it with their personal Essence on the way to the 6th shell where the fighting had broken out. When he got there a wall of Neofan were absorbing Essence attacks on their overlapping staffs, each of which created an aura around it that would deflect or shield against anything coming their way, including energy or physical attacks of speed, but would not interfere with slow moving attacks such as punches, kicks, or grapples.

  The staffs were an easy way to negate an enemy’s advantage for a short period of time, and right now his crew ahead of him just looked to be trying to hold the hallway as they were slowly walking backwards under the assault.

  He couldn’t see what was ahead. Too many grapple fields overlapping for him to sense through, but his telepathy and theirs was working once he made contact, and he was able to see through the eyes of those in the front row as several fallen crew were visible being trampled by their opposite number, all of whom were equally armed with no Berserker units.

  “Make a hole!” he yelled, charging his way to the center of the line and going through with two others following him who had not yet fought. They were fresh and could have the most impact, and he knew this was no time to be conservative, so he ran with his staff held out in front of him vertically as he charged the two ends into glowing topaz crystals that had nothing to do with Essence, but rather were stun nubs.

  As soon as he got into the gap his staff took hits, each glowing red in an umbrella of energy before him, but they didn’t slow his movements and he shot through the gap so fast that he was up to the opposing troops in three heartbeats, with him dipping his staff down and jabbing it forward at full run with his target taking a step back in shock…but that was all the opening he needed.

  The staff made contact with the other’s body and delivered the massive dose of stun energy required to render him unconscious in a single blow…after which Yuer swung the staff around to parry a jab at him, following by many more interlocking slashes and uppercuts trying to move his staff out of position so they could get to his body, but he was too experienced in this form of combat to lose to this Truven trash.

  The two Neofan with him did less well, but the focus was on Yuer and he used that to their advantage, punching through their three deep rows by using his staff as a ram, holding it horizontally and just pushing forward. Nobody could use Essence attacks at this close range, for the staffs would negate them, so they all fought hand to hand and frantically tried to make strikes against each other.

  And many did, for the bodies were hitting the floor rapidly, but Yuer was older than Plausious and not one of the more subtle commanders. He kept himself physically fit beyond the minimum standards, and it was paying off now as he got behind their lines and downed several before they even realized he was behind them…then the attrition started as his own crew were dropping as fast as the enemy, with his presence being the deciding factor.

  Soon the hallway was quiet, with 6 of his crew remaining conscious, but there were many other points of contact where fighting was happening in the ship and any one that broke through could eventually gain access to the critical systems and disable or commandeer the ship.

  “Stay here and restrain them,” he told his crew. “Once down, I don’t want them returning to the fight. When our people wake up, stay here until called for. This may be a long fight.”

  One of his crew picked up the staff of the enemy that appeared to have ample charge still in it, and tossed it to Yuer. He nodded his thanks and took off running with a staff in each hand backtracking the enemy’s movements by the scattering of bodies laying around, few of which were dead, but some Essence attacks had landed, and he couldn’t tell from the tattered uniforms to which ship they belonged…

  Plausious watched the warship battle from below ground using the Temple systems. The ships loyal to him had outperformed his expectations, but they were not winning. It looked to be more of a stalemate as the boarding actions were taking place on almost all vessels, but very few of Truven’s because he had more people to board with.

  But this was also happening almost directly above them, which meant they were in range to send help if the shields were down…and Plausious had been waiting for the right opportunity to move as even more Gjardans were heading their way, having to travel slowly across the center of the Temple or more rapidly around the outer curve. Either way, it was gradual travel with so little gravity, and before long it looked like most of the 73 warships were going to be involved, though two were still holding position far off, perhaps not wanting to pick a side.

  Yet while Truven’s people were sending the warships to fight, Plausious had been communicating with other Neofan in the cities and outposts across the Temple…and not using transmissions visible to all. Even now people who had been informed of his intentions by the released prisoners, and then those who had seen him and the Ren’mak fight and win the attempted execution as it was stupidly played for all to watch as an example before Yuer even had a chance to release it, were choosing sides with many random fights sparking without the Reignor even ordering it.

  He was monitoring those while making contact and directing some of them…so this civil war wasn’t just happening in the Gjardans, but also in the cities across the Temple and the rest of the infrastructure. Pretty much wherever the Neofan were, and Plausious was getting his people to claim strategic areas before Truven’s forces even knew they were under attack.

  But the Gjardans were the key, and whoever possessed them could bombard the surface to their hearts’ content, for the Caretakers would not intervene from damage caused by Neofan ships…nor would it matter if they did, for the Gjardans were far more powerful than any technology donated to the construction of the Temples.

  That was why, when most of the 13 Truven warships were damaged enough for the holes in their outer shells to be easily visible from the ground, Plausious readied those converts that had submitted to him at the platform and received his graft at the backup portal position, with them all standing next to the wall as he mentally altered the targeting protocols.

  “My friend, you are exhausted,” he told the Ren’mak. “You have to stay here. You fought well, but you can barely fly now. I won’t be long. I promise.”

  “How long?” it asked.

  “Long enough to capture those,” he said, pointing to the cluster of white balls high in the sky. “Stay here and rest. I will need you later.”

  “I will stay,” it said, flying up and landing on the top of the wall where it perched and rested its fatigued wings. “Destroy them all.”

  “
Hopefully I won’t have to,” he said, telepathically gesturing to the others. “When we get onboard, it is the ship we want, not the crew. Disable them and move on quickly. We must be in and out before they know we are there.”

  “Do we kill them?” of the professional brawlers asked.

  “Disable them, and only kill if absolutely necessary. If we cannot take those ships, they can and will use them to destroy us. We must take control of them, and if they put up enough resistance to delay us, then we do what we must. Our objective is to save our race, and I want no unnecessary deaths. Understand?”

  “We do, and we obey.”

  “We move with speed or we fail,” Plausious said, getting the portal to lock on to all 219 of them. “Charge weapons.”

  The group did so in unison, with a wide variety of rifles, gauntlets, staffs, and a few exotic weapons, but no Berserker suits. When they came across those, they’d have to work quickly to subdue them, and Plausious knew better than most how to do it.”

  “For the future,” he said, triggering the portal with all of them blinking out of view in a cascade of air pops that made the Ren’mak jump from its perch in reflex…

  9

  The portal system was more than just the connection between two points, though it was rarely used any other way. One of those ways was to ‘transmute,’ which involved having one fixed point and one calculated one. The portal ‘arch’ that was the machinery that made it work was also fitted with sensors that could cover a significant distance over the surrounding area. If an ‘empty’ region was identified, the portal could yank you into the Essence realm and throw you towards that point at a specific speed, then cause your trip to be terminated at that spot.

  It didn’t work as well in reverse, for the reversion was not controlled as much as it was timed, so what happened on the far end was not something the distant portal could reliably affect. In this way the Gjardans could board one another without an airlock connection or landing craft or free space transfer, but only if the shields that prevented such things were not active.

  Those shields created a ripple in the Essence realm that would bounce a bubble off it and not allow it to pass…in which case you would revert at the edge of the shield or somewhere else, which often would be lethal, and in the case of a transfer in space, if you didn’t have vacuum-protective armor, you’d die instantly outside the ship.

  But with the damage done to the ships, the portal on the surface could do the same thing at the cost of a significant amount of Essence…which is why such travel was not regularly done. The Gjardans had portals of their own that could be used, but those would either be locked down or guarded, and were the point of transit for the boarding parties to go from one vessel to another.

  Plausious knew better than to try and use them, even though they were currently unlocked for the most part. Two ships did have them locked down, and he chose one of those to board first, expecting the heaviest resistance there…or the least if they sent most of their crew to fight Plausious’s ships’ crews.

  The transit between surface and ship took a matter of seconds, then he was popping into a cargo area that was empty along with his troops…then they got moving through empty corridors heading towards the nearest Essence signatures and several key points in the large ships where they could disable their combat ability entirely.

  Plausious’s team disabled two Berserkers that were still onboard ship with some effort, but most of the rest of the crew surrendered without a fight, not truly wishing to fight the Reignor anyway. Some even helped them take over the ship, and Plausious had to make some on the spot judgement calls on who to trust and who not to, for he couldn’t remain on this Gjardan.

  Leaving behind three of his men and several converts to hold a ship far too large to control, he took his loyal followers plus new additions to another nearby ship…and another, and another…growing his troops faster than he lost them, for the enemy was out to kill rather than disable, and as well as this boarding action was going, it was not bloodless.

  The remaining intact warships were fighting it out during this time, with the final one loyal to Truven backing off before it could be disabled, but a team from one of the other ships managed to sneak a small team onboard through a gap in the shields when they weren’t looking…who then sabotaged the shields and called out to Plausious’s team with one of the portals on the fleeing ship.

  Portal to portal transfers had far more range, and even as the ship ran along the inner edge of the curved landscape at decent speed, the movements were not only calculated, but one portal was able to steer the ‘package’ towards destination to insure it didn’t miss.

  Plausious didn’t go with them, as his men feared it might be a trap and begged him to let them go alone. He agreed, staying behind with his captured fleet as some of his original ships needed help fending off the enemy boarders there, and split his troops. Some went to the fleeing ship, others were divided into strike teams with at least one grafted individual on each of them and dispatched to the fighting that remained.

  Plausious went to Yuer’s ship, and got into some heavy fighting as his loyal commander was pinned down into one of the critical areas in the ship. The last scrap he got into didn’t have the element of surprise, and his team of 18 Neofan came up on a sealed area that was leading to Yuer’s holdout position, with the fighting happening within.

  The Reignor didn’t even bother trying to cut through the doors, and jumped right through them, dipping into the Essence realm temporarily and popping back out on the other side. If his grapple fields hadn’t been able to scan through he wouldn’t have done so, but the risky maneuver was standard today with everyone fighting at higher levels than normal given the gravity of the situation. Plausious’s own Essence reserves were low, but the troops ahead had to be even lower, including the ships’ crew who had already telepathically reported to him they were about to break.

  When the Reignor emerged on the other side his team came through behind him, popping individually into view as he ran forward single staff in hand and dove into three enemies that had turned to face him, not even bothering to try and stun them with the weapon, but using it to parry their blows so he could step in and punch them with his free hand.

  One he grabbed and threw across the room by muscle alone, and with everyone’s Essence levels so low his muscular advantage held supreme. He broke bones, tore limbs part way off their bodies, and otherwise disrupted and disabled them enough for his troops to come up and stun them as they cleared out the last threat in the ship as Yuer and 6 others were ahead, hidden behind a partial blast door that had been rendered by several Essence attacks and stood contorted and punctured with numerous holes.

  “I wish I had told you to come earlier,” Yuer said, his right arm mangled beyond recognition and shrunk by half its usual mass.

  “What did they hit you with?” Plausious asked.

  “Somebody used a Breinar Strand,” he said, spitting some blood from a small gash on his face that was leaking into his mouth. “These traitors have no honor left.”

  “Shall I remove it for you?” Plausious offered, referring to the dead arm that hung at his side.

  “Save your Essence. I can deal with it later. There are still more ships out there.”

  “Not anymore. We have them all.”

  Yuer’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “We boarded them from the ground, and significant portions of their crews did not want to fight us. The two ships that did not engage were apparently fighting onboard, and our loyalists won out. There’s significant damage and moderate loss of life, but the fleet is ours.”

  “Yours,” Yuer said with great relief and gratitude. “What about the cities?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve been fighting almost nonstop since I left the surface.”

  “They need to know we control the fleet. It might stop a lot of the fighting.”

  “Do you have a transmitter still working?”

  “Use junct
ion 4 auxiliary command node. Everything else is offline from the damage or our sabotage. We had to reduce access points or they would have claimed them. They sent most of their crews over,” Yuer said with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

  “We exploited that miscalculation,” he said, placing a hand on the Commander’s good shoulder as he passed him by and ran with a few of his troops following him all the way to the command node where he accessed one of two intact transmitters on the outer hull from which he broadcast into the Temple comm network.

  “Installation 0193, this is Reignor Plausious. I have secured control over the entire Gjardan fleet within the Temple. We now hold the high ground, and I urge those loyal to the illegitimate Reignor Truven to stand down. I promise there will be no executions for those who surrender, nor imprisonment. You will be sent outside this galaxy and may travel to Yenoiv if you wish. I want you gone, not dead, but continue fighting and killing those loyal to me, and I cannot guarantee you will live to see capture.”

  “To the Vargemma, I know you are confused now. Never before have the Neofan conflicted each other, but know this. I am the true Reignor of House Atriark, and those that called upon you to war against Star Force and your own brothers here in the Temple are traitors. I will not execute you either if you surrender now. Much wrong has been done in the past, and my focus is on the future. Choose now to embrace my rule and you will be absolved for past actions.”

  “I need those who are loyal to secure all infrastructure within this Temple and block usage of it. I want everything locked down until I can remove the disloyal. Do not attack the Neofan if you have a choice, for the Caretakers will target you in response. I have not yet had a chance to reprogram them. But you can block portals, seize transports, and communicate to help identify where the pockets of resistance are. I call upon you to do this so we can secure this Temple in as efficient a manner as possible.”