Star Force: Collaboration (SF90) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Four days ago he’d received a report from Clan RaSeru that they’d also been attacked, though not in these numbers. It’d been a strong hit against one of their outer colonies, but the lizards had gone straight for Morgan’s capitol and her primary shipyards…which they’d managed to damage considerably. They weren’t out of commission, and the Ninja Monkeys had destroyed the entire invading fleet, but Davis got the feeling that there was going to be a lot more attacks coming their way to probe their lines and see how Star Force would respond.

  But what could he do? The further they went toward the core the closer they got to the V’kit’no’sat, and as it was they weren’t exactly hiding. Star Force stood out in the local region and wasn’t silent about most things…then add in the now infamy of housing the Uriti and they were practically waving their arms and shouting at the V’kit’no’sat to come and get them. Their only saving grace was they were so far away they couldn’t hear or see, but the closer Davis reached into the core the greater the chance of that changing.

  The galaxy was just too damn big, and he had a hard time as it was trying to control everything that Star Force had more or less exercised domain over. A lot of it was unoccupied or unaligned worlds that he’d chosen to shield from the lizards, and it needed reinforcing…a lot of reinforcing, so it wasn’t like Star Force was just sitting and watching the lizards conquer a piece of the galaxy.

  Yet the idea of having a line over which the bad guys could operate with impunity was morally unacceptable, which was why he had allowed Morgan and others to blur that line, but the lizards were now onto his game, at least partially, and he was pretty sure they were now taunting him to come after them.

  He had the manpower to do it. Even before the rimward front was wrapped up he could mount a major campaign and drive a knife into the ‘safe’ lizard territory. Part of him wanted to, but he knew it would be fruitless in terms of stopping them permanently. They could just keep spreading further and further coreward, and if Star Force was going to stop heading that direction it might as well be here and now. Davis just hated not being able to go after his enemies when they were at his fingertips.

  That was the Archon in him, but the geography of the situation spoke for itself. Star Force was expanding in 5 directions, not 6, and was already tickling the upper and lower edges of the galactic plane. It was obvious to anyone with access to an even remotely accurate map with time scaling to see that Star Force wasn’t moving in towards the core like they once were, and that begged the question of why.

  Davis wasn’t going to tell the public the real reason, and while Star Force troops were concentrating their efforts rimward not too many people questioned the coreward border. Fighting a war in multiple directions was difficult, so consolidating one’s strength and hitting a ‘smaller’ area, laughable as that was with the scope involved, made sense. Then add the various entrepreneurs that were fighting on the coreward border making it seem as volatile as anywhere and Star Force didn’t have an internal problem with questions as of yet, but to outsiders it had to scream that there was some reason why they wouldn’t keep pushing further into enemy territory.

  What Davis was trying to do by establishing the wall was monumentous…securing so many system in an effective manner and essentially shielding everyone rimward from the lizards’ expansion was not something that anyone could argue was inaction on Star Force’s part, but it still begged the question of why the line instead of going after them wherever they showed their scaly heads.

  This was the Achilles heel to Star Force’s strategy, and it was just something that Davis was going to have to live with. Establishing the line and holding it firm would save uncountable numbers of lives, but having the enemy that close and not going after them just felt wrong. He kept constantly rechecking his logic for fear of making a bad choice, but each and every time it always came back to the same thing.

  Star Force couldn’t risk revealing themselves to the V’kit’no’sat any further. If they came back then everything they had fought and gained against the lizards would be undone. Hell, they might even reclaim their previous territory if Star Force was wiped out or forced to retreat, because Davis knew the V’kit’no’sat weren’t going to stick around and colonize the ‘frontier’ as they thought of it.

  So the only way this would work was if Davis bit his lip and focused on holding the line and eradicating the lizard threat on this side of it. He’d relegated himself to that task previously, but now this obvious taunting by the lizards was making him reconsider yet again.

  He’d discussed this with the trailblazers numerous times and they didn’t have any better options. They didn’t like it either, but Star Force had to mark its territory somewhere and pushing the line any further coreward didn’t make any strategic sense. It wouldn’t end the threat, so the only reasonable thing to do if you couldn’t get to all the lizards was to block off a section of territory and keep them out of it…and Davis had chosen the entire outer rim. That should have satisfied him, but it didn’t. He needed to do more, but think through it again as he would, he’d end up with the same inevitable conclusion.

  They couldn’t keep pushing coreward.

  And if they couldn’t do that, and the lizards suspected it, what were they trying to accomplish with these attacks? It was a goad, obviously, but to what end?

  He thought about that for a while as he skimmed through the reports a second time, trying to glean their intent, then a possibility struck him. If they didn’t actually intend to mount a campaign against Star Force that they thought could succeed…and without the Trinx supplying them with tech their long term plans to do so had already bitten the dust…then they were probing for a reaction.

  A reaction to see if Star Force really would stay behind the line. These attacks were a test of it.

  And they’d keep coming. They had enough troops and ships that they could waste them when they chose to, and he had a feeling they were going to keep throwing more and more troops at Star Force’s defenses, looking for a weakness they didn’t expect to find while trying to provoke him to jump the border and go after them.

  And that told Davis one thing. They didn’t want Star Force to.

  If you’re afraid of the dog biting you, you don’t stay away from him. You get your hand near then pull back. If he doesn’t bite, you get it nearer and nearer and nearer, testing to see if he really won’t bite. If he never does then you can relax around him, and in the case of the lizards that meant…

  “The Skarrons,” he said aloud as he jumped up out of his chair and began pacing the perimeter of his office.

  Of course. It was so obvious now. The lizards knew they couldn’t beat Star Force, especially without the Trinx, and ever since they’d evacuated their templars into the coreward half of their empire they’d probably stopped planning to fight. They needed to survive and expand, conquering weaker opponents and growing their strength. They’d done that while fighting the Skarrons, but as Star Force had learned they’d only been focusing on one region within the Skarron empire and exploiting a political rift within them. So long as they didn’t go after any of the other regions the Skarrons seemed fit to let the one under attack fend for itself.

  But the lizards were only going to play that game for so long. Davis was almost sure that they were about to take on the whole of the Skarron empire in a very grim and bitter war that they might well lose if Star Force decided to hit them at the same time, hence they needed to know whether or not that would happen.

  “So you hit us now to see if we’ll attack. If we don’t come after you you’ll keep it up. Keep probing and taunting and waiting for us to break with protocol. If we don’t you’ll maintain the ruse while you launch your full strength against the Skarrons, leaving your industrial muscle vulnerable to us should we strike. You’re bluffing again, and damn you, it’s a bluff I can’t risk to call,” he said, punching the window with a warbling thud as the safety glass bent ever so slightly.

  Star Force couldn’
t go after the lizards, but the Preema could and had been doing so effectively until they’d chickened out and decided to mount their own line of defense. The Voku also could but had priorities dictated to them by the Zak’de’ron and had plenty on their plate already. Star Force was the dominate power in the region, and the downside of that was that there wasn’t anyone of equal or greater strength to turn to in order to get the job done…meaning the lizards were going to operate with impunity and could shift most of their assets to the Skarron front without reprisal.

  For centuries Star Force had been winning and winning big against the lizards as they took system after system away from them, but in the bigger picture Davis felt like they were actually losing, and all because of a distant threat that may or may not take notice of them staying their hand and forcing Davis to let the lizards go so long as they stayed on the other side of that stupid line.

  There was no way around that logic, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t spend hours upon hours in the future thinking about it and trying to find a solution that was currently escaping him and the rest of Star Force’s leaders from trailblazers to monarchs. No one knew a way to go after the lizards without potentially exposing themselves to the V’kit’no’sat, and until they found one their hated enemy was going to be able to play on the other side of the line without interference, waving and taunting back at them as much as they liked.

  For Davis and Star Force couldn’t go there, and no one else who was willing was powerful enough, and those powerful enough simply weren’t willing to take the fight to the enemy if they didn’t absolutely have to.

  10

  December 23, 3337

  Entor System (ADZ)

  Arbiter (Clan Sangheili capitol)

  “Oh my god,” Emily said, bolting out of her chair in their secret den inside the stature. “We are so fucking stupid.”

  “Oh?” Jack asked.

  “‘Oh shit’ is more like it. We’ve been going at this all wrong.”

  “Enlighten us,” Jason prompted as the 9 trailblazers all turned from their individual projects and looked at their standing, and somewhat flustered, peer.

  “Canderous. Why the hell didn’t any of us see this before?”

  “You want to integrate them into Canderous?” Paul asked as he thought that through.

  “No, Silly. Think. What’s notorious about Canderous?”

  “The most difficult maturias,” Randy said automatically.

  Emily pointed at him. “Exactly. We didn’t think we could push younglings any harder than that, and Canderous has the largest dropout rate of any faction. They lose like, what, 15% of their population to emigration after graduation?”

  “Thirteen,” Paul corrected. “What are you getting at?”

  “We didn’t think we could press anyone harder than that. That we had to let people develop at a slow rate and while some might be able to go faster we couldn’t sacrifice anyone by pushing the group too hard. Allow individuals a chance to excel beyond their peers, yes, but not as a group. Canderous is the hardest maturia group we’ve been able to successfully create, and I think we’re all in agreement that we can’t push the line any more with them?”

  “They’ve pulled back a bit in spots,” Ivan added. “If there’s improvement to be made there it’s in refinements, not a toughening of the program.”

  “Bingo,” Emily said as if the word was a weapon. “Right there. That’s what we’ve all been missing. We can’t go past that line without the risk of damaging those we’re trying to train. We’ve maxed out and, frankly, have given up on younglings being much use in anything. We all know that longevity and consistent training is required to gain true strength, so getting the younglings off on the proper path is what matters, not the speed of that path. Canderous pushes the speed to its limit and has it fairly well defined, so we’ve completely ignored trying to surpass it.”

  “Genetic memory,” Randy said, catching an inkling of what she was getting at.

  “We don’t use it because it’s not the Star Force way…and yet all of us have genetic memory. We just haven’t fiddled with what we started with. Our psionics operate on genetic memory, a little bit anyway, so that we can use them right away, and they’re not natural. So why haven’t we messed with giving people knowledge from birth?”

  “Knowledge given and knowledge gained are not the same thing,” Paul said thoughtfully.

  “People need to learn some things for themself,” Jason echoed.

  “And that’s exactly where we’ve been blind. Yes, people need to learn for themselves, but do they all have to have the same starting point?”

  “Emily, you’re a freaking genius,” Dan said, standing up as well as soon as it clicked for him.

  “If I was I would have figured this out a month ago.”

  “Emily,” Paul said slowly. “I’m still not fully getting you.”

  “Probably because you’re too close to the problem.”

  “Then lay it out for me.”

  Emily raised a hand towards Paul as she suddenly lifted him into the air out of his chair with her Lachka. He didn’t flash his Rentar, not sure what she was doing, but then her hand produced a Jumat blast that knocked him over the back of the chair as she let go of her hold, dumping him onto the floor.

  When he caught himself and started to get up she came flying into view and punched him to the ground, then the two wrestled around a bit until Paul as able to throw her off him. She skidded to a halt on the carpet a meter away but didn’t reengage, merely raising an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m assuming that wasn’t a love tap?” Paul scoffed as he locked eyes with her, ready to defend himself a second time if need be.

  “The Black Knight,” she said, giving him another clue.

  “Enough, you two,” Megan said as she flipped over the back of the couch and interposed herself between them. “Get a room.”

  “Damn it,” Jason said, finally getting it. “You are a genius.”

  “Guys…” Paul complained, standing up off the ground along with Emily as Megan kept them both at arms’ length.

  “We don’t choose where we’re born,” Dan said. “We’re inserted randomly into this universe. The maturia process is the safe way to help those just arriving develop, but we all know from experience that the Black Knight taught us some very important lessons in a very unsafe way. Sometimes people need to be thrown in over their heads in order to learn how to swim, but we don’t do that because some people might drown. Yet that’s what we got in basic.”

  “Yeah, we just had the regenerators handy to patch us up whenever he broke something,” Brian added.

  “More than that, we weren’t given instructions about what to do with him. We just had to do it. Keep up or get our ass kicked. We learned to succeed and persevere because we were put into a very pressure-filled environment and rose to the challenge. If you want to be Archons that’s what you have to endure, but that won’t work for civies. They’ll break. And basic occurs after the maturia training.”

  “The Clans,” Megan said, also catching on.

  “Pressure cookers,” Emily finally explained, but still looking at Paul. “People measure up or get kicked out, which is why we have no maturias. Everyone is recruited in…but that’s not the way it has to be.”

  “Learn by doing rather than training,” Paul said, finally getting the gist of Emily’s physical lesson. She didn’t tell him to defend himself, he simply saw the need and responded. No instructions, just adaptation.

  And adaptation is what the lizards were exceedingly good at.

  He looked at her sarcastically. “Can I kiss you?”

  Emily pointed at him and Megan backed off with her hands raised, getting out of the way.

  “I’m calling your bluff on that one, buddy,” Emily said as she walked over to Paul and gripped his head in her hands and laid a not so short full kiss on him before backing off a step. “You’re welcome.”

  “Ok,” Jason said with a clap of hi
s hands. “Are we all caught up then, Luke and Leia included?”

  “He’ll take that as a compliment,” Megan scoffed.

  “Win, win,” Paul said with a lingering smile as he looked at Emily, “though Riona kisses better.”

  “Hey, hey,” Megan said, stepping back between them as Emily took a step towards him with a balled fist. “Enough already.”

  “Ingrate,” Emily said, abandoning her approach and taking a seat on the back of the nearest couch.

  “Let’s just spell this out so we know we’re all on the same page,” Brian insisted. “Emily, you want to incorporate the lizards into the Clans as their birth entry point and have them opt out rather than in?”

  “Yep,” she answered pithily.

  “They can handle the pressure cooker,” Randy continued thoughtfully, “where the other races cannot, because of their genetic memory. They can be put to work instantly with no training and learn by doing.”

  “Are we seriously suggesting no training?” Jack asked, “because that’s pretty much treason right there.”

  “And that’s why I didn’t think of it,” Paul admitted. “We didn’t learn to survive and beat the Black Knight with training, we learned and adapted through combat. I think Morgan would appreciate this approach.”

  “Uh, uh,” Ivan said quickly. “This is our baby. Our 10 Clans. Leave Morgan’s out of it.”

  “We’ve got a shit load of work to do on this,” Randy added in agreement. “Even if we wanted to share it with the other Clans we need to do the tinkering ourselves.”

  “All 10 Clans?” Jason asked, seeing nods of agreement.

  “Not just the Clans,” Kip said, a few mental steps ahead of the others thanks to him staying out of the playful banter and thinking hard. “The 10 of us. We drop our current assignments and focus this hard…together. Paul’s getting more and more lizard prisoners as the years go by and that’s only going to increase as we clean up the remaining systems on this side of the line, and I’d prefer to get as many of them surrendering as possible. We need a program to put them into rather than just stuffing them away on a few planets for holding purposes.”