Star Force: Crusade (SF93) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 8

  Palo checked in with a few friends in his unit on the way out, saying some hasty goodbyes, then he walked over to the nearest spaceport and boarded a flight that took him out of the system and headed towards Beta Region.

  Palo had to change ships many times with a few layovers in temporary quarters on planets along his path, but eventually he ended up on The Line and in Ninja Monkey territory, then he was loaded onto a military jumpship that was part of a convoy being escorted out to the new Zordon System through existing lizard-held territory.

  That wasn’t too surprising, since the lizards didn’t really have any way to stop them, but it still felt exhilarating and typical Ninja Monkey. Their reputation was one for daring to go where no one else would, and when he arrived over the planet named Alpha he got that sense in a very unexpected way.

  There wasn’t a colony here, but rather a war zone. The planet was shattered…or the lizard structures anyway. It felt like Palo was back on the front again, here to drop down and hunt survivors buried underground or hiding in the rubble. He hadn’t expected this mess when assigned here, for there should have been a cleanup crew working to recycle the…

  Then he saw them as the jumpship’s orbit came around. There was a cleanup crew here eating away at the ruined cities bit by bit, and just beyond it he saw the first sign of Star Force infrastructure. Or rather 6 bits. There were 6 new colonies here, and using the battlemap data on the screen he was watching from he saw that each belonged to a different Clan. Ninja Monkey and the five new ones it had spawned. This was apparently the epicenter of their endeavors and, seeming so fitting, the Ninja Monkeys weren’t wasting any time waiting for the reclamation of the planet to finish. They were setting up shop while some of the ruins were still trailing bits of smoke into the upper atmosphere.

  “Keep up or be kicked back to the ADZ,” he reminded himself, now getting the very real sense of danger here. Both from the proximity to the lizards and the invisible wall of failure chasing him. He didn’t know what he’d have to do here, but if he didn’t meet up to their expectations or their timetable for improvement that wall would catch up to him like a predator and strike him down. He had to keep moving, keep improving, keep learning in order to stay ahead of it.

  That was what a lot of former Clansmen had described it as, both those that washed out and those that made it. Once he got strong enough and far enough ahead of that wall he could relax a bit, but he could never stop. If a commando stopped improving they’d be put on notice and flagged as needing assistance, for just maintain the status quo wasn’t permissible in the Clans. If you weren’t improving then something was wrong with you, and you’d either correct the problem or be booted out. Either way you’d be pulled off normal duty, so even if Palo made it into the established ranks of this new Clan he could never stop moving forward.

  And that was part of the appeal of the Clans. There was no stagnation here. No rest. No reward. No civilians. Everyone here was on a mission and wired for high output.

  Right now he just hoped that he could measure up, for he knew most of his skillset did not match the others that had been recruited. He had one ace in the hole…his sharpshooter rating…and he didn’t know why it was important to the Ultrazords, but it made him feel inadequate but given a chance none the less. Now he just had to figure out what it was he was supposed to do.

  As the dropships began to release from the jumpships parked in orbit he finally got his own boarding orders. Leaving his quarters neat and tidy, he grabbed his duffle and found his way to his assigned hangar bay and ship, getting onboard with a lot of other commandos. None of them were in armor, and he had his tucked away in his duffle as he assumed they did. All of them boarded without chitchat, taking their seats and sitting their personal cargo either on their laps or on the floor beneath their feet.

  The dropship just got partway out of the jumpship when a holographic image appeared in the air at the front of the passenger compartment.

  “Recruits,” the image of their Clan founder Cressie-10001 said. “Your indoctrination into Clan Ultrazord will begin in a few moments. Leave your personal belongings where they are and proceed to the exits.”

  Palo exchanged glances with those around him, but they looked as confused as he did as they all got to their feet leaving their duffles in or near their seats as they shuffled out into the walkways and lined up in front of a closed boarding ramp and side ramp, with Palo in the line for the former. They waited there without further word for many long minutes until the hologram reappeared.

  “Your orders are simple. Jump…survive…and find your way to base. Good luck.”

  The boarding ramp hatch opened and a gust of wind hit them, signaling that they were already in the planetary atmosphere. The start of the line moved out, disappearing from view and heading where Palo didn’t know. When he got near the head of the line he saw that they were jumping off and falling down below view, and he only got a brief glimpse before he too leapt off and fell down to the ground several meters below as the dropship coasted forward, leaving a line of its occupants on the dirty, wet soil below.

  Then when all occupants were offloaded the dropship took off back into the sky, leaving them behind with no gear and no further instructions.

  9

  April 2, 3483

  Zerus System (Alpha Region)

  Char

  Arch Duke Karthen paced around a large holographic map in his office on the Bsidd homeworld, the windows blacked out so he could focus entirely on the subject matter at hand and not get distracted with the busy cityscape around him. Like Davis’s office on Earth, Karthen’s was atop a Bsidd spire in the heart of their densest city, giving him a chance to look out on everything from a bird’s perch of a vantage point, but that wasn’t needed now.

  What he was looking at was a map made up largely of the ADZ and surrounding regions with every Bsidd system highlighted in purple. Other Star Force systems were blue, allies green, and neutrals yellow with the mass of uninhabited systems appearing grey while the lizard border and a few other places glowed hostile red.

  But it was the grey that dominated the occupation zone and was sprinkled throughout the ADZ. Even after all this time spent colonizing what otherwise would have been useless planets to allow for population expansion there, empty worlds still remained. Some were so hazardous to pose a challenge for colonization, others were simply too small or hadn’t been gotten around to, and yet still there were systems with no planets in them whatsoever.

  Canderous occupied a great number of those systems for Star Force and secured trade routes where their presence was needed, for without a planet to base off of all you could do was place a fleet in holding orbit and continually run supplies out to them. Same thing with a space station that wasn’t self-sufficient, so Canderous went and dominated places like that, filling in the connecting puzzle pieces on the major trade routes and ensuring that every stop from one end to the other had Star Force assets guarding it to ward off pirates or other malcontents, not to mention providing search and rescue for damaged or stranded ships. As bad as it sounded, there were some that simply ran out of fuel because their crews had miscalculated, and if you ended up in an uninhabited system you’d starve to death if someone didn’t stumble across you.

  But they weren’t Karthen’s interest today. Most of his Bsidd worlds were located in the outer half of Alpha Region and further rimward into the aptly named ‘Bsidd Region’ that was far less populated. He’d claimed the most valuable worlds there and was responsible for its security along with a great many other tasks. The Bsidd were the backbone of Star Force now, despite the contributions of the Kiritas, who just weren’t quite as good at everything as the Bsidd were.

  The Kiritas had their special roles, but the Bsidd did everything and did it well. Having multiple variants to specialized was such an impressive attribute to their race it would be hard for them not to be good at everything, especially when Star Force had altered two variants into new forms for just that pu
rpose. In addition to that the Bsidd were strong for their size and low weight, loyal and decently intelligent. They also worked together as a unit easier than Humans did, but not nearly so good as the Elarioni who had a slight telepathic edge to their coordination. All the Star Force races had some advantages over the others, and it was through the combination of them in very deliberate and delicate ways that Star Force gained its true might.

  But the Bsidd had a reproductive advantage greater than even the Kiritas. Only the lizards could reproduce faster, and that was still a point of contention amongst some. Lizards grew from genetic samples that were pre-made and shipped out like frozen food to be cooked to readiness in short order, but Bsidd reproduced via Queens that could generate an alarming number of eggs in a short period of time.

  Karthen had been utilizing that ability to grow the Bsidd as quickly as possible, and even now he was searching for more planets to colonize. Doing so was tricky, because you had to balance between putting too few resources into a world and too many. It was true that a Star Force colony could be started with very few population and grow over time, but it was the speed of growth that mattered as well and Karthen had learned long ago about how much of a logistical commitment was necessary given the conditions of various planets, but it wasn’t an exact science. He had to guess, and if he guessed poorly he’d be wasting time or resources, for running supply convoys was the biggest joke in the galaxy as far as he was concerned.

  Interstellar convoys carried so few resources it was laughable when compared to what was needed to develop a world. Almost everything had to be harvested locally, then processed and produced into the supplies one needed because shipping from one star to another was so damn inefficient.

  One wouldn’t think so to see the size of the Bsidd cargo fleet. The jumpships they fielded were enormous in and of themselves and able to carry enough foodstuffs to feed an entire planet out in the lesser inhabited regions of the galaxy on Star Force’s borders…but a fully developed Bsidd world could not sustain itself off of cargo runs, and that huge dropship of foodstuffs would make for a nice appetizer at best considering how much food the Bsidd consumed when they sported a population of over 50 billion.

  That was the norm for his Bsidd worlds. 50 billion once fully constructed, though there technically was never ‘full’ construction. You could always tear down a 100 story building and put a 200 story one in its place, but the way Karthen worked wasn’t concerned about squeezing the maximum number of people into a square mile. Rather it was about ease of movement and efficiency of production.

  That was another thing about the Bsidd. There was very little ‘civilian’ to them. They all wanted to work, so on Bsidd worlds most of the population was contributing to the industrial machine that was providing the parts, ships, foodstuffs, and supplies that were being shipped out to other portions of the empire that badly needed them.

  And then there were the troops. The Bsidd made up the bulk of Star Force’s military, numbers wise. They weren’t as good as the Archons, but then again what race was? When a Human fleet went into a large scale battle it was often with 20 Bsidd fleets supporting them. That was common in most theatres, and Karthen had so many fleets deployed in the Rim Region and other places it was hard to keep track of them all.

  But he wasn’t their military commander. He was the guy making sure the gigantic machine that was the Bsidd faction continued to function smoothly and had all the resources and backing it needed to accomplish the bazillion missions it handled on a regular basis. Other factions were contributing as well, and some like the Trinx were just too small to really do much yet, though Karthen knew it wouldn’t matter in scope, for as fast as those little guys were growing the Bsidd were expanding much, much faster.

  And it was time again to add more worlds to his domain. He could do that within the Bsidd Region, but there were far more valuable locations within the occupation zone that he had his pick from…the question was where to expand and how many to claim. Resources devoted to adding more worlds meant resources taken away from the warfronts…and vice versa. There was no perfect formula to follow. He simply had to follow his gut instinct, and right now he was taking the whole of Bsidd holdings into view in order to try and feel out where to add a few more purple dots on the map.

  He was but one of only a handful of Humans on Char, with most of the higher positions having been relegated to the Bsidd themselves once sufficiently experienced candidates became available. The Human administrators then moved on to other assignments within the empire, but Karthen’s job was one that none of the Bsidd could handle…for it was a challenge even for him, and he had a vast amount of experience that they did not. That said, without pulling on their skills and abilities he could never make this juggernaut function. He led, but they did the work, and there was a lot of administrative duties that they expertly carried out for him so he could keep an eye on the big picture and troubleshoot.

  And that was what he was doing now. Focusing on the big picture. With the bad news of a potential Skarron Crusade coming their way he had some hard choices to make. He needed more supplies, but in order to get more he had to spend them on worlds that would slowly develop into exporters…but the Rim Region needed as much as they could get, and despite the inefficiencies and travel lag involved with getting them there, a single Bsidd cargo convoy could mean the life or death for a number of systems that were teetering on the edge.

  But focusing only on the now and not planning for the future would damn far more people, so Karthen had to be cagey. Supplies would continue to flow out to the Rim Region, along with numerous points on The Line and a scattering of locations across the ADZ and even all the way down to the Voku border. Star Force had so many projects ongoing in so many locations that Karthen had convoys headed every which direction…all of which were fed by worlds like Char that produced far more than they consumed, but getting a world to this level took centuries at the minimum.

  But did they have centuries to wait before the Skarrons came knocking?

  He could start stockpiling reserves now, building up a huge treasure trove of resources and equipment to pull on later, or he could spend those resources to build up more worlds or send them to the front lines…and right now he knew he needed more worlds. The Rim Region was keeping threats at bay on that side of Star Force territory and The Line was doing the same on the other. The flanks had varying threats that his Bsidd and others were monitoring, but Char and the Bsidd Region were in about the safest spot you could get, meaning that he had to use the cover the rest of the empire was giving him and grow as fast as he could.

  But that growth always had to be controlled, else the Bsidd would consume themselves with overpopulation. That had never truly been a threat so long as the original Queens knew what they were doing, but it had been the bane for the Kiritas once and that lesson had never been lost on Karthen. Insane numbers required insane skill to manage, or you’d die under the weight of incompetence along with a lot of other people caught up in the downfall. The V’kit’no’sat records had indicated that had happened to so many races over the history of the galaxy that they weren’t all worth recording.

  You could fake it only so far, but as a civilization grew and seemed to be on autopilot there was a dangerous undercurrent growing. One that if misdirected would erode the power base until you had nothing more than toothpicks for supports…then when one of them snapped it would come crashing down in horrifying carnage.

  But Star Force was too good for that and Karthen’s Bsidd faction was had a very strong foundation and a major reason for that was the experience depth. Other races had so much turnover outside of Star Force simply because they did not achieve, or even know of, self-sufficiency. It was beyond sad to see, but a lot of the problems those civilizations suffered from disappeared along with the population turnover as more experienced leaders and workers didn’t make the same mistakes novices did.

  And the Bsidd were no longer novices. They were a late addition to
Star Force, but they’d grown and developed to a point where they could hold their own against the Calavari, Kiritas, and Axius. The Human faction, key as it was to the continuing prosperity of the empire, was both superior and inferior compared to the Bsidd, and in that it was hard to size up. Sol was the center, and the Bsidd and everyone else knew that, but when it came to numbers the Human faction was tiny. Extremely valuable, but tiny, and the combination of the Bsidd, the Kiritas/Kiritak, and Axius gave Star Force the raw power in resources and population that Humanity alone never could achieve.

  If half of the Bsidd dropped dead tomorrow it would be a horrifying loss, but so long as the infrastructure still stood he could replace their numbers rapidly. They’d be inexperienced younglings, but if you were just counting heads he could replace population very fast if needed. The Bsidd maturias only grew as many eggs as needed and could jack up those numbers if resources allowed, so replacing population there wasn’t an issue. You couldn’t cheat the experience losses, but where the Bsidd could replace so many using just a handful of Queens, Humanity did not fare so well.

  As fast as some thought Humans reproduced, the truth on a galactic scale was that they were below average. All races with internal reproduction were on the slow side while egg layers saw such a huge advantage in rate and numbers. If Star Force had stayed Human only and turned a cold hand to the other races of the galaxy so long ago, it would not have grown into the behemoth it was now. Even if it had aided other races as allies and neighbors and helped them to survive it wouldn’t have been enough. Humanity wouldn’t be much larger than it was now, and probably smaller taking into account attrition.

  No. Davis’s decision to annex other races and rebuild them had seemed to be a huge gamble back in the day, but it had proven to be a stroke of genius and was now the foundation upon which Star Force was built. Had he let the other races do as they please it would have been a disaster, just as if he’d let the nations of Earth persist. All those in Star Force were truly Star Force, and Karthen’s Bsidd were no exception. They were all united in both loyalty and culture. But had it not gone down Davis’s way when others argued against the idea of bringing in other races that would ‘muddy’ the waters, the lizards might very well have won the war and destroyed Humanity.