Star Force: Axius (SF47) Read online

  It was all a la carte, but Mark was now leading the advanced teams personally, flying an Alliance Valerie as much as he was a skeet, for both the Protovic and Humans had endorsed the model for the standard aircraft for the new Alliance they’d forged…albeit with some additional tinkering. It was those Valeries that the non-Star Force pilots trained in, plus the Calavari and a handful of Kiritas, leaving the skeets as the signature aircraft for the Humans, to which Mark had added a few others.

  The original gunships had been retired, replaced with three different heavy fighters. One was anti-infantry, one was anti-mech, and the last one was anti-air. Each could take on other rolls, but were specialized in those areas, giving Star Force additional flexibility and punch while the skeets remained the multitasking workhorses that they’d always been.

  The Valeries that they now produced had 12 different models. The race-specific ones that the Calavari had originally designed for the Urik’kadel and others had been eliminated, with cockpit modifications for all versions becoming modular, giving the smaller races the ability to fly the same craft with the added armor protection rather than shrinking the entire fighter. Star Force produced four versions of Valerie for sale to the Alliance, while the Protovic and Calavari now built their own. The blueprints were available to all Alliance members, but most preferred the ease of purchase rather than building the necessary production infrastructure, and Star Force was happy to oblige them.

  One difference from what the original Calavari had been selling was that Star Force didn’t sell starfighter models, for they didn’t want their allies wasting lives by putting them into space combat. What they did offer were attack drones operating off a small carrier, using outdated communications systems far inferior to the interlinking that Star Force used, but still more than advanced enough for the use of their allies in short range engagements. The fear of many races was the control signals being jammed, and it was a legitimate concern, but over time many got over that impediment and began purchasing them for defensive deployments around their various Alliance Worlds and for excursions beyond the ADZ, for apparently they’d gained a reputation for being good at fighting off pirates.

  That was another thing that had increased in the fall of the major powers. Pirate raids in star systems had increased outside the ADZ, and those that attempted some within it were heavily hunted by both Star Force and the Hycre, ensuring mostly reliable jumplanes to travel on, but you could never know for sure, even in Sol, which occasionally had an unwelcome visitor.

  Things were so bad outside the ADZ that Star Force was getting requests from races to purchase the same weapons, which wasn’t allowed. Star Force only sold to the Alliance members, and in general practice didn’t sell weapons to the public. There was no stopping the other Alliance members from doing so, and some had tried to become middle men, buying Star Force tech and then turning around to sell it to outsiders…but they hadn’t gotten far with that before Star Force security found out what they were up to and sales were temporarily suspended to those races involved.

  That in turn had led to other races outside the ADZ requesting to become members of the Alliance, most of which were located above and below on the galactic plane and not directly in contention with the lizards or Skarrons…yet. Each of those requests were handled individually, with a high amount of scrutiny. Many were denied, but some were accepted, despite the fact that they didn’t plan to move their entire population into the ADZ, but rather establish a foothold there in order to join the community of races, gain access to Star Force markets, and in some cases to create a fallback location in case the lizards or Skarrons or other nasties out there moved into their territory.

  It was a pilot from one of those races that was waiting for Mark outside the simulator complex, along with a host of others wanting to catch a moment with him for a question, autograph, photo or what not, though those in this area of the colony had to have special access rights, given that the training areas were off limits to most of the visiting public.

  Dealing with the crowds was something that he had to get used to, so with a now practiced grace he engaged a few of those waiting outside while bypassing the others…that was, until the Voku pushed its way through the others and shoved Mark into the wall.

  “Yu wil listen,” it said in crude English as the shorter Human went ramrod still and slowly turned a glaring eye on the alien with a look that would have made Clint Eastwood proud.

  “Watch it, punk. Do that on a bad day and you’ll end up with injuries.”

  “Yu moost listen to mi,” the thickset alien insisted, its pitch black muscles easily twice the size of Mark’s…with the trailblazer sizing him up and not really worried about a conflict. He could take him down easy enough, but he sensed the alien’s intent was not to bully. Mark didn’t recognize the race, but whatever it was, it had something it thought was important enough to say to risk the insult.

  “This had better be worth my time, youngling.”

  “It es impotant.”

  “Follow me, then,” Mark said, forcing his way through the crowd until he came to a room in the hallway that was unoccupied. He pointed the alien inside and walked into the four-pod simulator chamber, shutting the door behind him so the crowd couldn’t follow. “Talk.”

  “I am Voku. Wi are eh race noot in yur alliance. We ass, but noot allowd. We want…no, we ned to proov we can help. I am sint to proov or pilots are stong.”

  While the alien spoke, Mark telepathically dug into its mood and memories, trying to piece together what it was after, quickly learning that it didn’t know the trade language or any other that Mark was familiar with, which made sense, given that it had come from a place outside Gamma Region and far down on the galactic plane…so far down, in fact, that its home was on the edge of the galaxy and well outside the range that Star Force mapping expeditions had gone.

  Which was also why their request had been turned down.

  “Why do you need to prove yourself to us?” Mark said, leaning back against one of the pods as the Voku stood tall in front of him.

  “We are warrier. We are peece keeper. We are told by old ones to protect. We are told yu protect to. We are told to help yu.”

  Suddenly a link clicked in Mark’s mind, remembering a file he’d read on their race. He hadn’t remembered them looking like this, but then again there were so many out there that it was hard to remember them all. What struck him was the mention of the old ones telling them to join with Star Force, because he had wondered at the time how their elders had found out about them, and just how far word of Star Force had travelled…and were they in danger even now of accidentally tipping off the V’kit’no’sat to their existence simply by word of mouth.

  But now Mark knew that wasn’t the case at all. Reading the Voku’s mind he got an image of the ‘old ones,’ with a prickly sense of foreboding going along with it. Whoever had received the Voku request before apparently hadn’t been very strong in Ikrid skills, or maybe hadn’t been an Archon at all. Then again, the request could have come in through comm channels rather than face to face, because Mark knew that none of the trailblazers would have missed this connection, and a lot of the more skilled second gen wouldn’t have either.

  The ‘old ones’ were linked to an image in the alien’s mind, a recent image, of a recording made and kept secret amongst the Voku leadership. An alien from another race, one that the Voku revered deeply, had visited them and given them the directive before disappearing again, insisting that they keep its knowledge a secret…a secret that now Mark had pulled from this one’s mind, and he sensed that letting him know would cause a heap of trouble for the alien, so he decided to play it cool.

  “You’re a pilot?”

  “Yis.”

  “Are there other Voku here or just you?”

  “I am one on tis plant. But others are in obit.”

  “Did you bring your fighters with you?”

  “Yis.”

  Mark nodded. “I will give yo
u a chance to impress me. Since you’re not familiar with the simulator controls, I will give clearance for you to bring your craft down to the planet and we will see what you can do in the atmosphere.”

  The Voku bowed deeply. “Thenk yu. Yu wil noot be sorrie.”

  “We’ll see,” Mark said, heading for the door and pushing his way through the crowd outside.

  When Mark got back to his temporary quarters later he sat down at the communications terminal and went through the somewhat lengthy process of logging into his own account, given that it had extra layers of protection since it saw multiple users. What he’d just learned was that Star Force had made a mistake…a big mistake in turning down the Voku, something that he was about to fix in a hurry, sending out a message to the other trailblazers and Davis, detailing the extent to which the Voku could help them.

  For starters they were excellent pilots. The one they’d sent to find him was almost as good as Mark, as were the others that had joined him in the air for maneuvers. Their technology was also superior to what Star Force was using, as far as the fighters were concerned, and after a quick visit to their ship in orbit he saw that it wasn’t a fluke. Their technology was well beyond what the Alliance had, and about equivalent to some of the upgrades Star Force was only beginning to employ…but tooled in a very different direction.

  The V’kit’no’sat database had thousands of weapon systems from various races, not all of which matched up with the way they liked to fight. The Voku likewise held a very different combat philosophy from Star Force, but one that wasn’t totally incompatible. In the description he was about to write out, he was considering going with the metaphor of ‘transformers’ but was still working to find a better word. Everything the Voku used was manned, no drones of any kind, though heavily armored and protected, but they were all built…from fighters to warships to aquatics…to be components.

  And by components he meant that they fit together to form larger ships. Two fighters combined to form a heavy fighter, four formed a gunship and so on, and the same was true of their warships. They had basic units equivalent to a Star Force light cruiser, which then combined all the way up into Death Star-sized conglomerations with equally terrifying firepower…for each component piece was identical, with small segments of machinery that wasn’t useable on a small scale and only came together in large numbers, literally having the pieces transform rather than just ‘Lego’ themselves together.

  The Voku, based on the information they’d given him, were stronger than both the lizards and Skarrons combined, and dominated their region of the galaxy in a diameter of approximately 800 lightyears. They’d already met the Skarrons in battle, briefly, and had repulsed them easily, with their common enemy not having tried again…or at least delaying such an effort until they had more favorable terms.

  The Voku weren’t interested in colonizing the ADZ, they wanted to ally themselves directly with Star Force, and given that they saw that Star Force was the controlling factor within the ADZ they had approached them in that regard, having their emissaries even learn enough English to communicate…and somehow it had all gotten mixed up between the two races to the point that Star Force thought they wanted to join the Alliance and turned them down because of their distance from them…a distance that Star Force couldn’t monitor.

  Now Mark was very glad that the Voku had shoved him in the hallway…and even more glad he hadn’t kicked his ass on the spot for doing it. Their communication capability was still limited, with Mark pulling a lot telepathically to try and gain context, but he was about to assign a Star Force linguistics and tech team to the new project at once, getting them up to speed with the Voku language and computer systems, so at least they could get a translation program up and running…because they were going to need it, badly.

  Mark had spent some 3 hours onboard the Voku ship, during which they attempted to give him as much information as they could, including star maps of areas that had been beyond the V’kit’no’sat survey. They contained several black hole links that the Voku had used to get here, with him identifying the ‘highways’ that would link the two races together across a considerable chasm of territory inhabited by many other races, some of which were powerful and none too friendly…as seemed to be the case across the galaxy.

  The Voku were peacekeepers in their region, harboring and protecting hundreds of other races. They didn’t form an alliance with them, but looked after them more like pets or children, keeping the predators at bay…all because they had been told to do so long ago by a parent race known to them as the Fa’gon’stek, which Mark would have bet a million credits translated as ‘Keeper.’

  The old one that had visited the Voku and told them to aid Star Force, the one that the Voku had in its mind and was sworn never to reveal, had been a Zak’de’ron. The same one, he believed, that they’d encountered on Daka. It had given Kara some advice when she’d interacted with it, advice that had proven to be true regarding the Calavari, then it said that their battle against the V’kit’no’sat was hopeless and that they’d never see the dragon again…and they hadn’t, for it had disappeared, ostensibly out towards the rim, after coming to Earth to unlock the database in exchange for a glimpse at the ‘updated’ records.

  But it seemed that for some reason the dragon still favored them, and above that it wasn’t just hiding out in the rim either, but rather pulling invisible strings that Mark had fortuitously stumbled upon, thanks to his psionics…for he knew from the Voku’s state of mind that it would never have given him that information.

  What the dragon was playing at Mark couldn’t be sure. The Voku didn’t stand a chance against the V’kit’no’sat either. Maybe it saw the threat of the lizards and Skarrons and didn’t think the Humans were strong enough yet to defend themselves against both threats…which would mean it had kept an eye on the region, which, with its insanely advanced technology wouldn’t be hard to do undetected, making Mark wonder if there were any dragons wandering around the ADZ right now, keeping tabs on them.

  Mark had a lot to tell the others, plus he needed to get the ball rolling with the Voku, who had gone to long lengths to contact Star Force, and then continue to push the issue after having been stupidly rebuffed. The full dynamics of their relationship to come Mark couldn’t be sure, for he needed the others to weigh in and develop the possibilities, but he had a few ideas bouncing around his head already that he wanted to send out to the others through the relay grid as soon as possible, along with his report.

  When he logged into his personal comm account he stopped short, seeing that a new message from Randy had come in since he’d last checked. It was a text message, one line only, but was marked as urgent so he pulled it up before starting writing.

  The Dvapp have engaged the Borg.

  10

  One week earlier…

  The oceanic world of Tetteras sat in the midst of 12 large moons, all of which rotated around it in erratic orbits, dismissing any notion of an orbital plane as some moved in polar, equatorial, and elliptical orbits. As it was, in recent history a 13th moon had crashed into the planet’s surface, puncturing the crust and melding with the interior, triggering cataclysmic changes across the planet and creating a hemispherical clump of matter that stuck out from what had otherwise been a sphere.

  But that was in the past, and mathematical projection had the other moons’ orbits ‘stable’ for the next hundred years or so, more than enough time for the Dvapp to chorale them into more preferable orbits as they grew their colony on the 8th one, with splinter settlements heading down to regions of Tetteras to harvest raw materials and construct shipyards while their population resided safely on the moon as its infrastructure continued to grow, literally, from shipments of materials coming in from the planet.

  The multi-colored cities were grown from a crystal tech, covering a wide range of functions including orbital defense. Their surface batteries had the range to reach orbit, foregoing the need for defense platforms to reinforce t
heir fleet of warships in low altitude around the moon, which were the only spaceborne assets the Dvapp had in play. Their cargo ships were gone elsewhere, being used to ferry more survivors from their original homeland across the war zone to the ADZ, leaving only a handful here to carry resources from the planet up to the moon, though more were being grown in their surface yards to fill the void.

  It was those yards that saw the first strike from the Skarrons, with their fleet of warships escorting transports down to low orbit where they proceeded to land troops within a few kilometers of the land-based settlements, taking fire from a scattering of weapons emplacements on station. Those small beams burned into their shields, but didn’t puncture those on the transports before they released their Type-3 and Type-4 walkers, at multiple sites, with following drops delivering infantry.

  With the walkers taking the lead, they picked off the defensive batteries and proceeded into the crystalline settlements, heading for the shipyards and what were other key facilities that they had determined from reconnaissance in this system and others prior to launching a three pronged ‘shark bump’ attack, of which this was the first of the nearly simultaneous system assaults.

  The Dvapp fleet around the moon responded instantly, dispatching ships towards the Skarron fleet and meeting them head on, despite their numerical disadvantage. The Skarrons had brought some 231 warships, with the Dvapp having 173 on hand. The Skarron vessels also outmassed the Dvapp, who also didn’t have anything of scale to contend with the juggernaut the enemy had leading its fleet. What the Dvapp had were mostly uniform cruisers and an integrated command system that let them maneuver and fight their ships as if they were one massive vessel separated into autonomous components.

  As the Dvapp approached they began firing en mass before they even came within the enemy’s heavy lachar range…but they didn’t slow their approach, instead pulling right up in front of the Skarrons’ bigger warships and engaging them at pointblank range, already having taken down a good number of their shields with their equally uniform weaponsfire, all of which was topaz energy beams coming from their green, glowing warships.