Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (10 page)

beacon of civilization amongst the lizard hoards, and vice versa. Not only were

they more powerful working together, but they kept each other sane as they

became the slayers that they needed to be in order to take some of the burden

off the Regulars and keep them from dying from these never ending infantry

waves.

Just then Riona spotted a det pack approaching, with

Paul switching off his death sabers as he stepped over to her and wrapped her

up in a hug, layering his bioshields around her as she telekinetically picked

up the lizard and threw it back through the air over the others. Realizing what

was happening in an instant, the lizard detonated itself after only getting a

few meters away.

The blast killed hundreds of lizards around the

detonation point and knocked both Paul and Riona away, with the two tumbling

along with the dead bodies…but they rolled out of it and split again, alive and

still with some mechanical shields remaining thanks to their linked bioshields

taking most of the hit.

With a whole area of lizards now dead and lying on the

ground, those behind them suddenly had open lines of fire and dozens of phaser

blasts lit up the area. The two Archons took hits, but jumped up high into the

air and let the blasts track underneath them, some taking out friendly targets

before they landed again and began dashing towards one side of the blast area,

getting tripped up a bit by all the bodies.

Riona’s shields went down before they made the edge,

with Paul telekinetically picking her up and throwing her like a ball into the

lizards ahead. Her armored body hit them and knocked more than 20 over as the

others focused their phaser shots on him until he slipped in amongst the hoard

and got back to cutting them up at point blank range, once again with the nearest

lizards blocking the firing lines of the others in the staging area.

And the process repeated. Riona got to her feet and

reengaged her blades with a bit of bioshield covering her armor to give her

primary shields a chance to recharge. She took a few melting hits anyway, but

it was going to take an awful lot to get through the Archon battle plates,

which over the years had gotten strong and stronger. Had the lizards been using

plasma she could have attacked them with no shields at all and gotten about the

same result, but even with their upgraded rifles they weren’t going to get

through to her flesh without them standing and pounding on her for several

minutes.

Neither Archon was going to give them that opportunity

for they were constantly on the move, even if it only be a few steps here and

there. The fought so closely together at some points that it looked like they

were going to hit each other, but battlemeld meant they were of one mind and

essentially one body, knowing where the other’s limbs were and where they were

going at all times, allowing them to fight at an insanely efficient level in

close quarters.

The lizards that were diving at their legs were a real

nuisance though, with Paul having to kick or peel off several multiple times.

One dove down and wrapped up his left leg now and he sliced it in half with his

left blade. It squealed in pain, but the arms didn’t release for a second or

two, allowing another to jump in in its place with similar results.

They did slow him down enough that three others jumped

towards his head, but a telekinetic block stopped them dead in the air, acting

like little blast shields floating around him, then he summoned a Jumat blast in

his right arm and held it up, blasting them all back and into the others as he

kicked the upper torso of a lizard off his right leg.

Piece by piece the master and apprentice killed the

lizards, leaving such a body count behind that the incoming reinforcements were

having a hard time reaching them over the mounds that were building. Every now

and then a det pack would go off changing the landscape, but the sea of blood

always flowed back in. Paul and Riona were walking in it with every step, now

half an inch deep and being added to by the corpse piles that the living

lizards were scrambling over to get to the Archons.

It was mindless killing, but Paul would rather take it

on himself to do rather than leave it to the Regulars who might get injured or

killed in the process. The more he fought these battles the more he hated the

lizards. Their civilization was impressive in some ways, but he had long lost

any appreciation for them in that regard. They were barbarians, pure and

simple, and didn’t give a damn about the lives being lost. Their people were

expendable, and apparently even these infantry thought so. There wasn’t a

discord amongst the grunts and the leaders, they were all on the same suicidal

page.

After hours of fighting in that chamber something

changed…the wall of lizards coming at them ended, with only a few stragglers

left. Those stupidly still came at them, having no chance at all of succeeding

but apparently wanting to go down fighting. The Archons obliged and cut them

down quickly, then stood still breathing heavily as they searched with their

eyes and minds for more targets.

There were none. The entire chamber was empty of the

living save for a few nearby on the ground that would exit that category soon.

Most of the blows the death sabers landed were spot on, but occasionally they

only maimed a target until they bled out. Paul would have finished them off

sooner than that, but both he and Riona, having been battlemeld linked for

hours, just stood there looking at the literal hills of chopped up bodies

surrounding them and stretching across the entire length of the chamber.

They were now standing in several inches of blood,

splashing around like water with severed arms and legs and heads of lizards

scattered around. Now that their minds were coming out of threat aversion mode

both of them were stunned at the sight of it all. It made them both sick to

look at, but they were so numbed up by now that they avoided puking in their

helmets. Focusing so that didn’t happen as their adrenaline began to taper off,

they both just stood still and looked around, feeling each other and helping

one another to snap out of the funk they were in.

After more than a minute Paul finally shook himself

loose of the spectacle and walked over to a few of the lizards that were

immobile on the floor but still alive. He mentally linked to them and numbed

out their pain, then put a few final slashes through their necks and saved them

the final agonizing minutes. Riona did likewise with a few others, then their

Ikrid radar was clear as far out as they could stretch it. They were totally alone

behind enemy lines because…there was no one left to kill.

Theyboth walked towards one another, flicking aside a

few corpse pieces so they had somewhere flat to stand, then they both retracted

their helmets. The stench was bad and would only get worse in the days to come

but they didn’t hide from it. They leaned on each other in a loose hug and

touched their foreheads together. No tears came, but both were emotionally

spent. With the area clear of threats they took the moment to collect

themselves rather than numbing it out. Better to do it here and now than wait

until they were back, because they could not let themselves become jaded.

Other elite Archons were now pairing up in a similar

manner to help them handle the load, staying linked to one another during the

fighting for both combat and emotional support. Paul and Riona had gone on many

of these missions now, usually at least one every two or three days, but none

had been as gruesome as this one. Everything around them, every cut in those

bodies had been their doing. They’d created all this, and damn the lizards for

forcing them to do it.

The two Archons took several minutes, taking solace

within each other’s minds and focusing on the skin to skin touch to override

the oppression of everything around them and put it into context. Once they had

themselves grounded again and their heartbeats and breathing had returned to

normal they broke contact and their helmets reformed around their heads…then

they began hiking across the mounds of dead and through the shallow lake of

blood until they got to and had to clear away more bodies from an exit.

After that they left the gore behind in lizard

territory, knowing that they’d have to get a cleaning crew on it as soon as

their lines pressed this far forward, because the lizards didn’t bother

cleaning up their dead. Paul and Riona made sure to not pass back by this way

again until it was cleaned up. They’d had to create it in the first place, and

now that they were turning their backs on that travesty they weren’t going to

lay eyes on it again, for sanity sake.

October 12, 3106

Solar System

Earth

Wilson walked up the circular stairway into Davis’s

office, finding him in the middle of a holocom with a Hycre so he turned the

corner on the railing and headed for the empty opposite side of the office.

Never in his memory had Davis put anything here, leaving it open space with

only the staircase and his desk breaking up the observation platform that he

ran Star Force out of. Wilson headed over to the curved window opposite the

Director and looked out at the not so busy cityscape below.

There was a fair amount of air traffic, but not nearly

as much as there had been back in the day when Atlantis was the primary

spaceport on the planet. Now it was hallowed ground with the busy commerce

centers located elsewhere, though a stream of dropships and assorted craft were

coming and going nonstop to service the capitol within the capitol. This had

always been the nerve center of the empire, but now it lacked the added energy

of a tourist resort.

Wilson waited patiently until the conversation ended

and the hologram disappeared before he left his vantage point and headed back

over to Davis’s desk.

“I didn’t realize there were any Hycre in the system.”

“There’s a single jumpship here on special permission.

There are some future plans of theirs that they needed to discuss with me in

person.”

“Anything I need to know about?”

“Mostly economic. Now that their war with the lizards

is all but at an end they’re retooling and want a bigger role in the Star Force

economy.”

“Last I checked the war was far from over.”

“For them it is. Their systems are secure and while

they’re still patrolling and intercepting an occasional ship, they’re not

actively hunting or attacking lizard worlds as their border gets pushed further

away. They don’t have the weaponry for it anyway, and we’re not upgrading them

again.”

“Did they ask?”

“No. They helped us long ago, we’ve repaid the favor.

They’re moving forward with their own agenda now that they see we’ve got the

lizards beat and that they can’t really contribute much to that going forward.

The H’kar are in a different position, with their original territory still in

lizard hands, but the climate within the ADZ has been developing into one of

apathy regarding the lizard threat now that it’s away from our borders. We’re

the ones that are doing the fighting, so everyone else is doing other stuff.”

“Begging for some of that prime lizard territory?”

“The Hycre…no. They can’t really use it anyway, and

we’re not keeping too strict a hold on the gas giants. They are negotiating

deals for some of the prime ones, but overall their proposals are more goods

oriented. They want to integrate further with Star Force without actually

joining and we’re hammering out the details. They’ll be here for another week

at least and we’re done for the day. What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve finished my theoretical retooling.”

Davis’s mood perked up slightly. “And?”

“We have some options.”

“I’ve got time,” Davis said as he sat back down in his

chair. “Lay it out for me.”

Wilson sat as well. “As Star Force grows we have an

increasingly difficult task of command and control, which we’ve dealt with by

developing and maintaining a core group of trustworthy individuals, whether

they be Archons, Monarchs, Administrators, etc. Everything functions off of

them, and remove that spine and you’d see the empire fall apart. Not

immediately, since the factions and systems are redundant and somewhat

self-sufficient, but we are the glue that holds it all together and the larger

our territory gets the more glue we need.”

“Agreed.”

“The question has been whether that glue needs to be

Human. The answer is no. It needs to be Star Force. Already you have a few

non-Human Monarchs, so there’s no issue there, but with regards to the Archons

it’s not so simple a matter because of their psionics. Ask yourself this

though…could you ever see a very skillful Calavari becoming a trailblazer?”

Davis frowned. “We aren’t producing any more

trailblazers, Calavari or Human.”

“Kara says otherwise. Special circumstances elevated