Star Force: Mantle (SF92) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  “You have a few minutes to think it over,” Greg said, sending a countdown clock along with the transmission. “If you surrender you will not be killed or enslaved. If you do not surrender you will be killed, so the question is whether you want to live or die as target practice. Your choice, and make it quick.”

  He’d given them 20 minutes, but it only took 4 before he received a response that was all venom and defiance. The trailblazer sighed, then went ahead and held to his 20 minute mark anyway as he gave the fleet firing orders to destroy and hopefully kill the inhabitants as quickly as possible rather than leaving pockets around to slowly die from the long list of ways one could expire stranded in space.

  Less than 2 minutes to go he received another transmission from a different source on the planet requesting to surrender. He inquired as to the circumstances and found that there was a difference of opinion involved.

  That settled the orbital bombardment, for even if one person wanted to surrender he was going to see they got the chance. He made arrangements for those surrendering to evacuate certain areas, then he began destroying those piece by piece until he started to receive more surrender requests in other areas. Greg continued the herding method until all the Zargor that wanted to live were in four different zones, all of which held spaceports. He let them board the cargo ships and leave the planet, not caring how tightly they had to pack in together to fit.

  When they were gone he sent down a team do a psionic sweep for others and sure enough some had been left behind. Greg took those captive and brought them up to his command ship for safekeeping, and upon further interrogation found out they were the ones who had arranged the surrender. Their peers had deemed them unworthy and left them to die while they fled in their place.

  Greg found that not only dishonorable but in denial. The surrender was the only reason they’d been allowed a chance to escape, but they’d labeled it as an act of cowardice then used it to survive. It was hypocritical and a sign of how the Zargor thought. Their way of doing things had to be proven correct, even when it obviously wasn’t, so they’d rewrite history and utterly deny what was right in front of them to make it fit…then eliminate anyone who pointed out otherwise.

  No, these weren’t the lizards. Lizards were too damn efficient to waste time on lies, save for the templars. The Zargor were ego incarnate, and the lizards had none. The lizards would adapt while the Zargor stuck to their assertions, making the technologically superior foe the less dangerous. The Zargor were bullies in every sense of the word, and while not every person in a race or civilization was identical, he was getting a clearer and clearer picture of how they thought and operated.

  These guys had to be defeated. Not just turned back, but taken out altogether. That would require going beyond the Rim Region, but it was something that had to be done eventually. There was no coexisting with them when they had what they thought was an advantage, and no negotiation was possible. The only way to make them back down was to show superior strength so vast that they wouldn’t dare strike. The Nexus was that power previously, but now it was gone and Star Force wasn’t dominant in this region. This war was going to be fought, bitterly, for a long time to come…and after all that, there was no way the Zargor were going to pull back and be allowed to retain their sovereignty.

  They had to be taken out, and what was even worse was that there were other races out there just as bad. This entire region was full of weeds and thickets that had to be cleared away and Star Force didn’t have the resources to do it. Maintaining their allies and transforming them into true Star Force expansions was the immediate goal, and a tough one at that, but looking ahead as a trailblazer always did, Greg knew there was a bigger war that was going to have to be fought.

  And it involved Star Force heading into the heart of Zargor territory and kicking their ass on their own turf.

  9

  January 3, 3464

  Attikca System (Rim Region)

  Outer Zone

  Taria-38GV-97 was riding a dropship over from the mining complex on asteroid 3109 when a yellow alert pinged. She saw it on her armor the same as everyone else, but the pilot made an announcement anyway.

  “Non-Star Force ships in the system. Shouldn’t affect this trip,” he said, referencing the distance between the red star where the alert had been triggered and the location of this strip of mining occurring in one of 219 different asteroid belts in the dead system. There were four gas giants that had probably eaten up some more of them, but there wasn’t a habitable planet amongst the rubble, let alone even a planetoid round enough to bear that label, and that was probably the reason why no one had colonized this system until Canderous had moved in to set up shop and built an impressive shipyard that was still being expanded upon as it produced badly needed drones for the Star Force fleet.

  Taria wasn’t wearing combat armor, but given that the asteroid she’d been working on had no natural atmosphere they all wore work gear that was self-contained and doubled as low grade protection against weaponsfire, though it was more designed to resist cave-ins. She and the other miners were careful enough not to really need that function, especially with such low gravity to work in, but you never wanted to get caught between two pieces of rock without an exoskeleton. Human flesh ripped and squished easily, and without protection you’d just have to hope there was enough left of you for the medics to put back together later.

  But compared to the hellish assignment she’d previously had in the Deterious System this was a walk in the park. There was no massive gravity wells to deal with, just a bunch of rubble floating around the system with a treasure trove of resources to plunder and more corovon than you could shake a Bsidd appendage at. It was also a very primitive system as far as neighbors were concerned, with little traffic passing through. Actually none, which was why any ship that did wander out this way would trigger a system-wide yellow alert, letting people know that there was another player on the field because Canderous had so many exposed work spaces that they were easy targets to anyone that got in close enough.

  But there was a Canderous fleet protecting the system and Taria’s position was far outside stellar orbit. The yellow alert itself was laggy just traveling that far. If ships proved to be hostile or interested in snooping around the alert would go up to red and work groups like hers would stop what they were doing and get to shelter…but she was already on her way back to the seda, which is where the dropship would go even if the alert had been red.

  The big green sphere was also the ship that brought her into the system, along with the 538 others in the Canderous convoy. Each of them had a beefy gravity drive that made them far more than space stations and had carried them all the way out from the ADZ where they were built. They were all newer constructions, for the older gravity drives just didn’t have the speed needed for such a long journey and a lot of them were too big to be carried on the grid point system. That meant they’d had to take the long route, though they’d managed a few black hole jumps on the way to speed things up now that Star Force had secured and was routing as much connecting traffic as they could through those speedy links.

  But this system was far from any of them and situated in a dead zone within the Killik subregion that was overseen by Clan Joanna, though Canderous wasn’t officially working with them. They were an independent placement by Director Davis in order to give the subfaction/faction a base of operations in the Rim Region and this system was definitely well stocked for that purpose.

  As for their status as a faction…that was still largely debated. There were never any official pronouncements of such things, but a faction was the highest level within Star Force and was said to cover all 5 areas of combat…naval, aerial, mechs, commando, and aquatics…which Canderous did, but they did not put down permanent residences on planets and therefore did not have any aquatics colonies, only a handful of mining outposts. That was a point of contention with those people that said Canderous was a subfaction because of that limitation, but the
Canderians were adamant that they could fight anywhere at any time and that was all that was necessary for faction status.

  And they were a faction that kept mostly to themselves. There were no non-Humans within Canderous save for a rare few advisors or work-related partnerships that they formed. All Canderians came through their own maturia systems which were onboard their sedas, which meant that all the population in this system was going to be grown right here on these massive space stations. A population boost order had been issued once they’d arrived, making it official policy to get as many females pregnant as were willing and Taria had given birth to another Canderian just three months ago, but she wasn’t going to do so again for some time. She’d contributed to the order, but she didn’t want the layoff from work that it’d mandated for her happening again.

  There were population limits on the sedas, for there was only a set amount of space to be used. Flexibility was designed into the stations but for the type of growth that was being requested one needed to build more sedas…which was already underway along with the drone production. The first thing they’d done when they’d gotten here 29 years ago was to set up mining operations, into which they funneled the raw materials to a shipyard construction project. Now that shipyard was the largest in the Rim Region and was producing the sedas they needed to expand their operations.

  But they would not be alone out here. They were but the foundation for which many more Canderians would be traveling out to once they got a proper transit system established, and it was rumored that The Nexus was going to move one of their grid points all the way into Star Force space to link to the one in the H’kar territory. If and when that happened, or a formalized trade route was established, Canderian ships that were far faster than the sedas would be bringing out the experienced combat personnel needed in what was a candy zone to the Canderians.

  They lived and breathed war, in all its forms, but they’d had far too little to do in their long history up until they were really let loose against the lizards, but even then they were often holding the line rather than pushing combat on the front, for that’s what sedas were good for. Holding territory.

  Now that was exactly what was needed out here, and Canderous thrived more in frontier regions than it did in civilized ones. For that region the Sen Legats had insisted that Canderous be included, and heavily included, in this war theatre. Taria had been quite pleased when the announcement came through, as were most Canderians, and she had been even more pleased when her requested transfer orders arrived.

  You couldn’t move planets, but Canderous didn’t live on planets, so if you needed to bring civilization to the barbarous regions of the galaxy who did you send? Not the Bsidd, or the Calavari, or the Protovic. You sent Canderous, and the moment they arrived they were just as strong as when they’d left, because they took their homes and military bases with them…but what was needed out here was much, much more, hence this base of operations that was going to be making a lot of the equipment that the soldiers being shipping out here eventually would use.

  At which point they’d begin expanding their powerbase outward and locking down the surrounding region, daring any malcontents to challenge them and eagerly awaiting their stupidity in doing so. Canderous wanted to fight, and there was no shortage of enemies out here in the Rim Region. Far more than anyone could handle, hence Canderous was in a state of glee, with only the limiting factor of building new equipment putting any damper on their collective state of euphoria.

  But their infrastructure was stretched out here, in this empty, out of the way system in order to maximize the speed of the mining process. That left them vulnerable to a savvy opponent, which was why they were taking any ships jumping into the system serious, even if all they were doing was passing through.

  Yet her dropship returned to Seda DSB without incident, sliding into one of the hangar bays and dropping them off on full gravity plating before shipping back over to the asteroid. There was a constant flow of the little ships running around the clock, for Canderous had no ‘night’ in their civilization. Everyone worked and lived in shifts that overlapped to keep the faction running at peak efficiency nonstop.

  So when Taria got back she immediately headed to a cafeteria to eat before returning to her quarters and getting some sleep before tomorrow’s shift. As she sat at a table and slowly mowed down her impressive tray of foodstuffs the Dapifer watched a news report that detailed mostly internal activities among the sedas, but it also had a substory about the yellow alert that she was watching when it suddenly turned red.

  Nearly all the heads in the cafeteria turned to look as their attention was caught over the next few seconds as images from the star showed not one, but hundreds of ships coming out of a jumppoint in staggered convoy. They didn’t match any known design or affiliation, and nor were they simply transitioning around the star to another jumppoint, for some of them were headed further out into the system to where the closest sedas were in the innermost asteroid belt.

  Taria watched while she ate as the newsvid detailed the warships being sent to intercept them prior to their arriving at their sister sedas.

  Legat Narion-127CT-19 was in the Canderian command ship at the center of the 18 vessels that were moving to intercept the arriving fleet. The other ships in his group were all remotely controlled from his vessel, but it wasn’t a jumpship and they weren’t drones. All of them were warships Cruiser-class and above, with his being a battleship that rivaled even the standard Star Force command ships for size and strength, though it wasn’t donut shaped. Rather it was shaped like a hammer with a Y-shaped tail coming off it, and on the reverse side of the hammer were two large bays that contained starfighters, all remotely controlled, but a piece of technology that the rest of Star Force did not employ.

  Narion didn’t release them early, knowing they were safest inside the warships and realizing that deploying them in the wrong situation would quickly mean their destruction. How a naval commander utilized starfighters was a sign of prestige among the Canderians, for the Archons didn’t think they were worth the effort and whenever someone successfully utilized them it was a mark of pride for their entire civilization…and a mark of shame if the Archons were proved correct and they were just wasted.

  As the Legat brought his battle group in towards the approaching ships other battle groups were repositioning around the system, but he was to have first contact. As eager for battle as the Canderians were, they were still Star Force and they were going to make sure that whoever they were about to attack deserved it, hence a range of communications inquiries were sent out in multiple languages and formats.

  But before their signals could even reach the interlopers the Canderians received a message. It wasn’t on Star Force frequencies, but it was partially formatted in their style. The language wasn’t immediately recognizable, but the Canderian linguists quickly narrowed it down to a hybridized version of a local language they had in their databanks and worked out a decent translation, which they sent to the Legat’s personal display on his command chair.

  He read through it, his face grim. It wasn’t a declaration of hostilities or a threat to remove them from the system, nor was it a request that they do so. This race was called the Bwetti, and the still materializing fleet arriving at the jumppoint was all that was left of their civilization. The Hasgoul, another race that was just a mere mention in the Canderian notes, had invaded and taken over their world, with this fleet being made up of now refugees who had come here deliberately seeking Star Force.

  Apparently the Canderian presence in the system wasn’t as low key as Narion had thought, and as he read through the long message his hopes of seeing combat today withered, for the Bwetti stated that they’d been traveling for some 8 months without pursuit to get here. That meant no Hasgoul or anyone else to fight…and a growing fleet of people looking for help that the Canderians probably couldn’t provide, but that wasn’t for him to decide. He was tasked with this battlegroup, not the logist
ics of the star system.

  Narion set a return message, scripted as best the linguists could manage, and defined a set of holding coordinates for the arriving fleet while sending some of his ships to guard the jumppoint just in case the Bwetti were wrong about being followed. He also put ships into a perimeter around the holding area to make sure they didn’t go beyond it, for the status of this race wasn’t certain. They could still be enemies, and he wasn’t going to take any chances with this system.

  Kit Legat Isha-83Z-01 was in charge of all the Canderians in the system, as befitted her ‘Kit’ rank, and it was to her that the arriving fleet’s message was relayed along with as much tactical data as sensors could pull on their ships. Almost all of them were unarmed or lightly armed, with only a handful that looked like warships and those were showing battle damage. There were varying sizes and makes of starships, all very hodge podge, and probably all running out of food, water, and air if they’d been in space 8 months already.

  For Canderians that wasn’t an issue. They could live out here indefinitely via recycling measures, but Isha knew well that most races couldn’t, and even a lot of Star Force ships were not so designed. The Canderian sedas were special, and it was that special nature that told her this fleet didn’t have the luxury of being directed elsewhere…and given the crappy situation the entire Rim Region was in, no one else would probably help them. The question was, could Canderous?

  Isha’s first order was to send a courier to Clan Joanna, making them aware of the situation and ultimately leaving their fate in trailblazer Megan’s hands…but right now these people, whatever they were, were here and her problem. And if they were also running out of fuel they’d be stuck here indefinitely. Star Force didn’t just turn a blind eye and let people starve to death, but there were limits to what Canderous could do and if others became aware of their location and came running here for help…