Read Star Force: Internecine (SF55) Online
Authors: Aer-ki Jyr
“Damn it,” Paul swore angrily. The Dvapp planet was
some 13
lightyears
away and the next planned stop for
the
Excalibur
after securing
Plenx
, but apparently they were too late. He stood still
for a moment, then took a step to the left and punched the wall with his
armored hand while the Admiral patiently waited nearby with other passing
members of the crew giving them both a wide berth.
“Where are they headed?”
“The
Dvapp
to
Keema
, the Clans to Metropolis,” Caster said, referencing
the still intact Dvapp capitol.
“How much is left?”
“About twice what we have here, ground wise. Shall I
have their naval assets transferred to us?”
Paul pulled his helmet off and blew out a sigh. “Feel
like going hunting?”
“Always.”
“Give me as many full jumpships as you can, send the
remainder on to Metropolis.”
“Rendezvous here or at a neutral location?”
“Here. We’ve still got a few locals to run down now
that we don’t have a blockade to maintain.”
“Shall I wait on that?”
“No, my young apprentice. You may begin causing havoc
immediately. Call me if you get stuck. I’ll be doing some badly needed
training.”
“Nice work down there,” Caster added. “You pulled out
a victory single handedly.”
“No, not single-handedly. I just carried.”
“Impressive none the less.”
“Gave me a headache,” Paul mildly complained.
Caster smiled then nodded, touching two fingers to his
temple in a brief salute before heading back to the bridge and leaving the
trailblazer to start getting himself back into shape.
Paul didn’t even bother showering before heading to
the sanctum. He got out of his armor and into fresh clothes then hit the track
immediately, intent on running the stagnation out of himself. Almost non-stop
combat missions had been taxing on him, but not in any beneficial way. Having
been away from his normal workout routine he’d gotten rusty and sloppy, but he
knew his body and mind would readjust quickly enough, but it was going to be an
ugly process and he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible.
And when Archons wanted to get through something
quickly, they hammered.
Paul spent the next 6 hours in high cardio training, a
mix of running, swimming, and agility drills before finally retreating to his
quarters and logging into the terminal to begin checking updates and messages,
with a lot of backlog to get through. He’d had access on the surface via Star
Force facilities, but he’d had such little downtime that he had passed over
everything that wasn’t priority flagged.
He wasn’t going to get through it all now, but he worked
through the recent stuff and got himself up to date on what was happening on
the ship and across the ADZ, including the stupid war occurring on the inside.
If the Scionate were still here where they belonged they’d have punted the
Skarrons out of Dvapp space by now rather than having lost another world to
them. That put the count at 3 now, giving them footholds on this section of the
border that needed to be routed out sooner rather than later.
But Paul didn’t have the troops or ships to do it, and
was barely hanging on to what they did have. The incoming Sentinel would help,
both for the planet and his sanity, reminding himself that the longer they held
on to territory the more of them would be made back in Sol and transported out
here, fortifying the border worlds they possessed, so he wasn’t fighting a
pointless campaign, as much as it felt sometimes.
Plenx
was so weak right now
that a healthy Skarron sneeze would take it, but thanks to the Voku the
Skarrons were as starved for reinforcements as Star Force was.
He saw a new message from Cal-com, dated 28 days ago,
and pulled it up, intent on it being the last message he read before heading to
bed for his eyelids were getting so heavy he wasn’t sure how productive he was
going to be if he kept pushing through his stack of mail.
What it contained was a bit of
intel
taken from the Skarrons, indicating a troop shift
spinward
,
which was in the direction of Zeta Region from Earth’s point of view. The
Skarrons were redeploying, and it didn’t appear to be related to the ADZ or the
Voku.
That caused an eyebrow to raise, despite his fatigue.
If the Skarrons were redeploying away from the ADZ that was definitely good
news, but if they had somewhere else to go where was it and, more importantly,
who were they fighting that was of higher priority?