Star Force: Paladin (SF94) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  “What else can we do?”

  “Stand beside her and make sure no rocks fall,” one of the hastati said. “We’ll make sure no reavers can get here, but we do need an assessment of the chamber and any connecting tunnels. This entire area looks unstable.”

  The constructors quickly split up their responsibilities with several creeping around her on all fours with their bulky exoskeletons, ready to form an arc over her if necessary if any shifts in the rock occurred. How she’d gotten here or where she’d come from they didn’t know, but without her telepathic call for help they would have tunneled right under her and missed this makeshift shaft entirely.

  It took a long time for a medic to get to her, for there were none within miles given the length of the tunnels, and when a group of them did come, carrying all sorts of portable gear, they found her in the same statuesque pose…lying naked on an angled slap with her right hand perched in the air and her elbow resting on the edge of the rock, with the constructors still dripping water into her hand.

  “We are here, Archon,” the new Paladin said as he crawled up to and replaced one of the constructors in the inner ring around her. He attached a small circular device to the side of her head and suddenly got a plethora of readings on his helmet’s HUD indicating how and where she was damaged.

  “Massive nutrient depletion,” he said, with another medic digging into a pack of supplies. “I think she cannibalized parts of her body to partially repair these wounds. Her tongue is swollen, so she can’t eat. We’re going to have to inject.”

  “She’s been taking water through the hand,” a constructor said.

  “The hand?” he said, seeing a newly placed puddle disappearing. “I…don’t know how that’s possible.”

  A canister was passed up to him and he put his confusion aside as he placed the pointed end of it against her neck as gently as he could and emptied its contents directly into her blood stream, with her stats jumping almost immediately as the nutrients were spread throughout her body.

  “She’s low on blood,” he said, with another canister already being passed to him, for the other medics were seeing the same stats on their helmets as he was. He went to inject the synthetic blood supplement but the Archon moved, shocking everyone. Her hand fell to the ground and her body curled up in obvious pain.

  “Shock release. We need to knock you out, Archon. With your permission?”

  Myra didn’t say anything. Not even a telepathic peep for nearly thirty seconds before the medic made the decision. The next injection caused her to pass out, and it didn’t even take the whole vial to do it.

  “She needs to be carried back by someone out of armor. Her body has taken enough damage as it is.”

  “I will,” one of the constructors who had already donated his water said, pulling apart his own armor and walking out into the hot, dry air and feeling the rough rocks on his feet. “Strap her on.”

  The medic looked at him oddly, then understood.

  “Good idea,” he said, getting all sorts of things handed to him that he used to attach a medical cloak to the Paladin’s back like a saddle, putting as much stuff under it as they could to make a mostly flat platform onto which they picked up and laid her body. Another cloak was spread over top of her like a blanket that would shield her from the excessive heat, then that cloak was strapped down with her body in between the two layers and her head resting on a pad placed on the back of the Paladin’s neck.

  “She’s secure. Follow us.”

  The medics moved back to the ramp-like incline that the other constructors had been working to smooth out in preparation for her move with her carrier crawling in quadruped mode with her body strapped to his back and only her head being visible. He moved carefully down the incline, trying to keep her from sliding out of position on his back, but when he got to the bottom of the rock pile and onto the smooth floors of the recently reconstructed tunnel he picked up the pace, finding a way to run with the awkward pack as the medics led the way with hastati preceding them to make sure the path was clear.

  Then the impromptu honor guard started making their way back through the long tunnels and up towards the surface, some 28 miles distance just to get to the nearest Paladin subsurface outpost that held a full medical station.

  10

  July 24, 3534

  Tekin System (Rim Region)

  Plataro

  Myra was posed in a shaky handstand when John and Tia found her onboard the warship’s sanctum, her burns gone and her muscles rebuilt, but clearly her composure was off after her near death experience. None the less, she’d called for them and they’d delayed their underground campaign until they could get back, not wanting the Paladin to go up against the toughest resistance without their assistance, though lesser assaults were still ongoing.

  “Myra,” Tia finally said when she didn’t notice their arrival outside the meditation chamber.

  The word knocked the titan off balance and it took a sharp leg kick to pull her back in alignment, which she held a few more seconds before rolling her legs down in a controlled manner and standing up. She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly as her fellow Archons waited for whatever it was she wanted them for.

  “The reavers were acting under orders.”

  John frowned. “Meaning?”

  “Not the hive mind,” Myra clarified. “I found the people manipulating them and they blew up themselves and their facility with me still inside it.”

  “Who?” Tia asked.

  “They’re called the Ionvan and they’re very powerful. Not on our level, but this entire attempted extinction of the Vitti was an experiment. A weapons test. They found the reavers and upgraded them, using the hive mind to add additional commands lost in the mess of signals that hid their presence. A lot of the reavers’ tactical skill was coming from them, and now that they’re gone we shouldn’t face as much resistance but we’re still going to have to take them out. I got the feeling they wound them up so tight there’s no coexisting with them, and whatever means they were using to influence them were destroyed.”

  “That explains the block in the overlord,” John said, finally connecting the dots. When he and Tia had captured and then killed their 7 overlords to date, they’d never been able to take full control of their minds in order to likewise control the other reavers through them, and it was due to an impulse in the overlords that fought the Archon’s orders. They’d tell it to do something but it would deny them, for there was a greater influence inside them, and it having been designed rather than naturally occurring made a hell of a lot of sense. The overlords had two ropes pulling on them and cancelling each other out, and if that other rope still existed, bred into them, then they weren’t going to be able to change anything with further attempts.

  “Who are they?” Tia asked again.

  Myra shook her head. “I didn’t get much, but they’re a very widespread race that keeps to the shadows. There wasn’t a colony here, only a research team. They have a ship hidden elsewhere on the planet and I need you to find and capture it if possible. I think it’ll be empty.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Shaky.”

  “We could see that.”

  “I can fight if needed, but I’m weak.”

  “We’re winning,” Tia commented. “How fast we win is up to us. Take your time. Did you learn anything else about these guys?”

  “They’re basically Spectre.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bond movies,” Myra said, seeing that John caught the reference. “They don’t have visible territory to go after, not much anyway, but they’re working behind the scenes to exert their power. I don’t know how much, but they’re definitely a region-wide power with tendrils going out to a lot of different places and conflicts. They’re not someone we can take lightly.”

  “How big a threat?” John asked.

  “We’ll know more when we find their ship, but their biotech is significant and their lair was
well built. I don’t think we have to worry about them here anymore, but elsewhere they’re going to be a problem and not in a direct way. I think they’ll work around us rather than punch us in the nose, and that’s going to make Randy’s efforts that much harder.”

  “What do they look like?”

  Myra sent visuals into their minds with Tia cringing.

  “Ugly mothers. Don’t look too tough.”

  “They had a self-destruct that did all the damage.”

  “We should try to get another overlord,” John suggested, “and confirm whether or not their influence over them has been weakened.”

  “If you want to try, go ahead. But get their ship first.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Hidden on the surface. I’ve got an orbital sensor scan going, but so far nothing obvious is showing up.”

  “We’ll find it,” John promised. “Now, tell us what happened down there?”

  Myra shrugged. “I moved out ahead of the Paladin, snuck into their lair, then found their leader and had him Vader-choked in the air asking him a few questions when he tried to use a self-destruct trigger in his pocket. I got it away from him, but another one of them used a control panel that started a short countdown. I ran, but didn’t get far enough away and the whole place came down. I was trapped in the rubble with magma seeping in and barely wiggled out, losing my armor in the process. Luckily I found a maintenance tunnel, or whatever it was, and worked my way back towards the Paladin. When I got within Ikrid range I called to them and they dug me out.”

  “And?” John pressed.

  “And I was hurt pretty bad, but I nearly died of dehydration. That’s not a pleasant way to go.”

  “How close?”

  “Too close. I’ll admit, I’m still rattled from it. I keep thinking through what I did wrong, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that the Ionvan were planning to blow the place before I got there to cover their tracks. They didn’t set that up for me. I got in cleanly and then…” she said, trailing off with her vexation showing on her features. “Never let anyone tell you that Rensiek is overrated. It let me survive when my armor didn’t.”

  “Noted,” John said, not wanting to have to find that out for himself someday.

  “So you think the reavers will just keep attacking even without someone prodding them on?” Tia asked.

  “I do. I got the impression they were designed to fight autonomously. Release and kill without any oversight needed, but with a backdoor control mechanism to protect the owners and to allow for modifications if things didn’t go according to plan, such as our arrival here.”

  “A quiet little backwater world with a high population to practice on,” John said with a hint of anger.

  “Why’d they come looking here anyway?” Tia asked. “If the stories of the reavers are true, then the Ionvan didn’t bring them here. How’d they find them?”

  “I don’t know,” Myra admitted. “My interrogation of them didn’t last very long.”

  2 years later…

  Randy sat on a swampy plain, his armored butt resting on a half rotted log as he ran through status reports in the field as his Clan Star Fox troops were finishing rounding up wounded Jadshiga and taking them prisoner. The fighting hadn’t been intense, but there had been a lot of it and he hadn’t been able to sleep in the past 32 hours and wouldn’t be able to for several more, needing to stay on station in case more of their burrow worms were still nearby. The biological tanks had a habit of pushing up through the muck right beneath your feet and took a lot of firepower to take down.

  Right now Randy’s psionics were the best early warning against them they had, so while he kept his Ikrid peeled he rested on the log and reviewed updates coming down through the battlemap and into his armor’s HUD, including reports from a variety of worlds that were still off the growing Clan comm grid. Patrols would go around to them, checking in periodically and exchanging information packets that he was now reviewing, including one from Tekin that was disturbing.

  What had been a natural disaster in the making with the reaver uprising had since been determined to be a weapons test by a previously unknown race not native to the planet. Their research team had killed themselves with a self-destruct along with the Archon that he’d sent to lead the planetary rescue effort, though somehow she’d been able to pull herself back from the brink of death. An addendum indicated that she’d been off combat duty for 8 months afterwards but had returned to the fight for the final 3 month push that had eradicated the reavers entirely from the planet.

  Well that was good news…the latter part anyway. As he read through the mass of data he saw that they’d found the ship the Ionvan had left behind. It hadn’t been destroyed in their base’s self-destruct because it was on the surface, not buried deep within the crushing rock of the planet where orbital sensors couldn’t find these guys. The camouflage technology of the hangar was disturbing, but nothing that Star Force hadn’t encountered before. An adjustment to the standard Star Force sensor package was included with the data along with the recommendation that it be implemented fleet-wide in order to detect hidden Ionvan assets.

  Why that would be necessary Randy wasn’t sure until he got through the full report, having to remind himself to keep on the lookout for burrow worms as he found his split concentration fading. From the brief telepathic interrogation Myra had managed before she got her ass blown up she’d identified the Ionvan and their modus operandi…they worked with and manipulated other races across a large region without having defined territory of their own. They were a shadow player, and the Spectre metaphor included seemed to fit aptly.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, pulling up a tiny starmap on his HUD and starting to highlight systems where he’d already encountered unusual resistance and problems. He didn’t know for sure if this was due to the Ionvan, but in his spare time he’d been studying reports from the other 2s and had started to think he’d gotten a tougher region to handle than most of them…yet he didn’t have any obvious cause for the bulk of the instability arising. Opportunists were there, certainly, but it seemed like worlds that should be stable enough were getting enflamed and going after each other without cause.

  If there was a silent player involved it explained a lot, and the fact that they were using the Vitti race as cannon fodder to test their reaver bioweapon suggested they intended to use it elsewhere if it proved successful, and that was one headache Randy was glad his team had prevented, for there were enough worlds dying as it was that he couldn’t save for lack of resources. Some were being exterminated, others conquered or enslaved, while a great many others were simply unknown to him. He had scouts everywhere, but there was simply too much territory to keep watch over with the limited number of ships that he had and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

  He was winning the battles that his Clan was engaged in and creating small ‘safe’ pockets within his assigned region in addition to holding onto all of Teowan and Neenan territory. Those two had been headaches initially, but since he’d got them locked down and able to hold their own defenses for the most part, his Clan was somewhat free to troubleshoot in other areas while most of his Paladin were gathering resources to feed all concerned.

  If there was a shadow player involved, and a major one according to his report, then he didn’t have vision on all the enemies capable of doing his two major races damage. These Ionvan could even be operating inside Teowan or Neenan borders, and that worried him. He had things hanging together by a thread right now, knowing that the longer they did the more stable they’d become, and the more noise he could cause with his Clan the better, for it would distract or intimidate others from attacking the other races, but if there were…

  Something clicked in his mind and he suddenly stood up, dismissing the reports from his HUD and getting on the comm to his ships in orbit. As soon as he was finished fighting burrow worms here and the prisoners were secured, he was bugging out and heading for
his Clan command center in Neenan territory.

  “I have never seen tis before,” the hulking Neenan General told Randy when the Archon showed him an approximation of what they looked like, “but tis ship is familiar. Several were captured from black market dealers who claimed to have salvaged them from an orbital battlefield.”

  “Yes,” Randy agreed. “That was what caught my attention. Those ships were not part of either side of the battle and were found destroyed, but empty in the aftermath. What does that suggest?”

  “They were stripped by salvagers.”

  “And no bodies?”

  “Not all salvagers desire technology,” the General said gravely.

  “A fair point,” Randy conceded. “But given the camouflage technology that we recovered in their intact ship, they could get within close sensor range and not show up on either of those two races’ screens.”

  “You are suggesting they got caught in the crossfire?”

  “I think so, then their surviving buddies cleaned out the ships of everything they could without being able to tow them away.”

  “And the significance of tis?”

  “If they were in that close proximity to the battle it had to be for a reason.”

  “They were attempting to manipulate the outcome…”

  “How many missing ships do you have?” Randy asked the Thing-like General whose skin looked more like green rock than flesh and stood twice the Archon’s height. “How many unexplained losses of power, vanished supplies, dead personnel? How many instances of things going wrong in supposed ‘safe’ areas that remain unexplained?”

  The massive triped ground his three fists down into his three hips. “You are saying we are already under attack by a foe that refused to show their face?”

  “It’s a significant possibility, and if these Ionvan aren’t responsible directly they may be aiding others who are. There is definitely a shadow war going on, and I am worried that it may be designed to weaken the Neenan from the interior enough to allow for a major overt attack from the outside to be successful.”