Star Force: Trials (SF68)

1

August 18, 2822

Solar System

Earth

Jason ducked under a spinning holographic Zen’zat arm,
dropping down to his ankles before jumping up and backwards into a flip,
kicking out simultaneously into the opponent’s gut with both feet, but he
wasn’t fast enough and the warrior twisted at the midsection and sidestepped
causing Jason’s feet to miss. The trailblazer arched his back midair, not
getting the backwards momentum he expected, then he created a Lachka field in
between the two of them on reflex, knocking them apart before the much taller
warrior could grab hold of him.

He dodged a kick by a few inches and rolled sideways
onto his feet, deciding to stay low and launching himself back towards his
opponent. Jason went for a grapple, throwing in a feint with his hands. He
reached them upwards as he lunged, then snapped them back down and got hold of
one of the giant’s legs. This one was bigger than most Knights by a good six
inches and had the body mass to match. It would have been hard for Jason to
move him if he hadn’t been so strong, but pulling aside and tossing a 320 pound
mass wasn’t a big deal nowadays, even without a psionic boost.

Jason used it though, surging his speed using a Yetu boost
as he stepped to the left and pulled the big leg with him as he also twisted
and extended his grip, throwing the male Zen’zat simulation program across the
ring near to the out of bounds marker. For this exercise it was activated, so
as the very agile giant caught himself in a three point stance Jason launched
into him, again feigning high but dropping low instead. He balled up just shy
of the
Zen’zat’s
feet then exploded upward, shoving
both coiled arms into the man’s pelvis in a Kamehameha-like shove that knocked
the hologram up off its feet and backwards.

The green-clad hologram passed by the out of bounds
line and the simulation ended with the man disappearing as if he’d been
Jedi-ghosted. The control board on the other side of the room lit up with
holographic stats as Jason walked over to it and read the V’kit’no’sat script.
The point of this drill was to keep himself from getting thrown out of bounds,
for the Zen’zat programs didn’t hesitate to use their mass against him and even
one grip point was enough to send him flying into disqualification territory,
which usually ended up with him bouncing off the surrounding walls.

Jason had to move quickly and not make a mistake, but
so long as he could do that he owned this program, for his
Sav
made everything look like it was in slow motion. The fighting never overwhelmed
his mind causing him to miss things, and even when he did get hit in the head
or otherwise disoriented he recovered so fast he didn’t miss much. This
challenge would punish him handily if he made a single mistake, but this time
at least he’d come out on top, making him 11/5 today.

That should have been a clean score, but if these
training simulations were accurate then the Zen’zat were beasts where commando
skills came into question. There were 6 basic tiers to Zen’zat strength levels,
which translated into status positions. Level 1 and 2 constituted the bulk of
their forces, as of 100
millenia
ago anyway. Level 3
was their elite class, with the others being rare to acquire and making up less
than .5% of their number.
Ironnsey
had been a level 6
and over a million years old when the
Zak’de’ron
had
killed him in an orbital bombardment during one of several civil wars, though
it had also been their largest and most costly internecine.

There had been two more previously, with the known
Raptor Rebellion later that had led to the abandonment of Earth. Jason knew
most of the elite Zen’zat had been killed when the V’kit’no’sat had tried to
destroy the
Zak’de’ron
, and thankfully so. With any
luck the Rit’ko’sor had knocked off a few more, but even Zen’zat being born on
the day Earth was abandoned were now more than 100 times older than Jason and
the eldest Archons, which worried him considerably.

However, he and the trailblazers did now have an
advantage on most of them, for it wasn’t typical for Zen’zat to possess as many
psionics as the mages now did. Zen’zat had to individually discover each beyond
the first tier and battlemeld didn’t exist as far as they knew. That meant an
opponent with roughly equal hand to hand skills as Jason would be a pretty easy
takedown with the psionics added on top…though it’d depend what the other guy
had as well, not to mention to what level he’d adapted them, for the psionics
had a great deal more potential than even Jason had attained.

The telekinetic wedge push he’d just used was such an
example and was something that he could not have even attempted to do when he
first developed Lachka, for he had to project the field independently of
himself. That little trick had taken a long time to learn, then even longer to
develop to sufficient levels, and there were many more in the database that
he’d not yet figured out, plus who knew how many other applications that had
yet to be discovered.

The Archons were basically writing the book on the
battlemeld customizations since there were no records in the pyramid, but so
far they hadn’t created any new tricks with the known psionics, for the Zen’zat
had millennia to figure out, work on, and refine those. That said, Jason and
some of the others were seeing potential in some places now that they had
Sav
to work with, and that was an ability that few Zen’zat
had ever achieved.

The training program Jason had just used was a tier 3
level 82, and had he not possessed
Sav
there was no
way he could have held his own. Though there was no true translation between
Zen’zat levels and Archon ones, for they both trained and measured skills
differently, a level 1 mage was roughly equivalent to the boundary line between
tier 1 and tier 2 Zen’zat. Throw in the slew of psionics the mages had and that
meant that, per their levels 100,000 years ago, the mages could best more than
half the Zen’zat population…in theory.

Archons were smaller than Zen’zat, and that factored
in heavily in a way that the V’kit’no’sat measurements couldn’t fully
anticipate. Jason knew that with their smaller size they would have an easier
time attaining the mobility and agility necessary to really put
Sav
to use, though individuals like Vermaire had shown that
the extra bulk didn’t mean one was slow and the thought of Zen’zat like him
coming after them really made Jason worry, for right now he couldn’t take him,
nor could most of the trailblazers unless they were working together.

Now, that was because they weren’t using psionics when
they sparred, and Morgan especially with her Jumat could take Vermaire down
with little trouble, but in sheer hand to hand combat the Black Knight was
superior and Jason knew he ranked somewhere in the 2nd tier of Zen’zat levels…and
that was without
Sav
, which presently only the
trailblazers possessed.

Their battlemeld skills gave the trailblazers the
ability to take on higher level Zen’zat in groups, so Jason felt fairly
confident that if/when they faced them they could hold their own, but the real
problem now was the fact that the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t just deploy a small
team of Zen’zat, they’d deploy them in the millions if necessary. They were
their infantry, and the Archons were not for Star Force. They had the Regulars
and Knights for that, so when you compared apples to apples it was still going
to be a slaughter.

Time. Time was what Jason and the others needed. Given
that, he was confident they’d find a way to defend themselves, though how that
was going to work he wasn’t sure. And the Zen’zat were the least of their
problems.

Jason went through another 12 rounds in the small
sparring chamber then left the upper levels of the pyramid, running down the
ramp system until he got to what had originally been the Oso’lon section. Given
the huge size of the Brontosauruses their chambers were likewise large, including
their own holographic training chamber. When Jason got down there he coasted to
a stop at the entrance and saw a group of Clan Metal Gear Archons going through
some sort of joint challenge against what looked to be three Zen’zat.

“Jason,” one of the Metal Gears who was standing off
to the side observing said when he finally noticed the sweat-drenched Archon.
“You need this room?”

“Yeah. How close are they?”

“They just started a 45 minute drill.”

“
Oooh
, yeah. I’m not waiting
that long. Sorry.”

“Not a problem,” he said, turning around and walking
over to a very large control board that was set into the floor. “You’ve got
priority. Mind if we stick around and watch?”

“Just stay out of bounds,” Jason said as the Archon
brought up a much smaller holographic interface that was built for Zen’zat and
deactivated the current program. The three Zen’zat disappeared and one of the
Metal
Gear’s
who was throwing a punch at the time
tripped forward when the blow hit air instead of body. He recovered going
through a somersault and flipped back up onto his feet as he looked over to the
side in question and protest.

“Clear the ring. Jason’s called dibs.”

“Sorry guys,” the trailblazer apologized as they
walked off the parking lot sized sparring area and over to the control station
near the door. Once they were all outside the designated area he stepped up to
the holographic controls floating in midair and pulled up a different training
program with the Metal Gear’s training officer’s eyes going wide when he saw
which directory we was accessing.

“I thought those were banned?”

“They are, save for us,” Jason said as a 4 meter tall
Voro’nam appeared in the center of the huge ring, which had been designed for
combat training amongst the larger V’kit’no’sat races.

“Holy shit,” the Archon whispered, then turned to the
others. “Grab a seat and some popcorn fellas…up next to the wall.”

“Thank you,” Jason said as he headed towards the
holographic Pachycephalosaurus. Like the Zen’zat holograms this training
program had no safeties involved, meaning this monster was quite capable of
stepping on him and breaking bones in the process. Jason wasn’t wearing armor
either, which made things even more dangerous, and was why the trailblazers had
banned the use of any of the programs other the Zen’zat ones.

As soon as Jason stepped into the ring the Voro’nam
charged him, lowering the bony dome atop its head into a battering ram as the
Human likewise ran towards him, crossing a football field before the two met.
Dangerous as the head dome was, the spikes coming out the back of it were quite
lethal, even if holographic, though with regenerators handy it was unlikely
that any V’kit’no’sat actually died during training. Star Force kept several
here and the medical staff running the facility were amongst their best, trying
to decipher more of their secrets as well as to aid the numerous teams that
were both training and analyzing the small city built inside the V’kit’no’sat
structure.

Jason knew what recovering from that level of an
injury would mean and didn’t want to go through losing more of his hard earned
levels with new tissue having to be grown, so while he wasn’t worried about
dying he really didn’t want to get jabbed. That said, he did have bioshields
that could block him from getting spiked if he made a mistake whereas most
Archons did not, but still this was risky and he was intentionally doing it
without armor.

And it wasn’t the first time either, which was why he
was confident that he could handle the basic level training programs of the
much larger race. Voro’nam had a variety of sizes, growing larger with rank
rather than years, and this one was a third tier, which made it larger than
most of the skeletons found on Earth and easily outmassed him equivalent to
that of an elephant, save this one wasn’t slow at all.

Voro’nam were amongst the most agile of the
V’kit’no’sat races, and the head butt attempt the hologram tried was merely a
feint with the biped twisting around on its feet in a level spin at the last
moment, swinging its thick tail around and trying to roundhouse Jason. With his
Sav
and well-trained reflexes he could see it coming
a mile away, for while the Voro’nam were fast by the big guys’ standards they
weren’t nearly as fast as Zen’zat or even Rit’ko’sor.

But they were strong, and had that tail hit him Jason
would have been sent flying and possibly cracked a few ribs. He jumped over it,
then landed in a spring hop that brought him up and over the Voro’nam’s head as
it rotated around to nail him a moment later. With his Pefbar on Jason could
see everything as he flipped over in midair, knowing where he was coming down
so he could juke to the right before that tail came at him again.

When it missed he shot forward, jumping into a kick
that hit the Voro’nam in the left side of its body between foreleg and aft. The
impact barely moved the big thing, and Jason had to retreat quickly to get out
of range of either tail or head, which is what the program typically fought
with.

Crouching down so that its front legs touched ground
and it momentarily became a quadruped, the Voro’nam loaded its back legs into a
power crouch as it oriented towards Jason. He held still for a moment then
tweaked his Yetu to launch him into a power jump up and over the Voro’nam as it
flashed horizontally across the ground towards him in its own power jump.

Its head crossed a meter underneath Jason and he came
down on its flat back, for it had no spines or tusks other than the four on the
back of its head. He landed well away from those and let himself slide off to the
right before latching on with his left hand. From there he quickly pushed off
with both feet and landed hands first on the ground beside the Voro’nam,
springing into a second bounce that landed him on his feet and he ran for
distance.