Star Force: Shame (SF59) (9 page)

The armored Archon was out with the techs as they
figured out that there was no opening mechanism for the boxes, rather just a
containment sheath that had to be cut through. The futuristic equivalent of
cardboard didn’t take long to peel off and reveal the perfectly smooth cubes of
a greenish metal that was instantly recognizable as corovon in its pure form.

Roger whistled within his helmet, then pulled it off
with a click and looked along with the deck chief at the lowest cube that stood
more than a meter tall, with this crate/box being some 16 meters high and 28
meters long. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” the tech said wide
eyed. “That can’t be corovon.”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Not that much. That’s
gotta
be more than we mine in, what, a decade?”

“You underestimate how much we bring in, but you’re
right about this not being any small amount…and there are four more crates as
massive as this one.”

“What the hell is this for? You give them a star
system or something?”

“I answered a question,” Roger said simply, reaching
out and tapping the lowest cube in the stack with his armored finger.

“Must have been a hell of a question.”

“Let’s see what else they gave us,” Roger said,
curious, as he started walking over towards one of the ‘light’ ones. It took a
few minutes to get the sheath torn off, but before they did it began spilling
out clear orbs like raindrops, with each being the size of croquet balls and
none the less hard.

“I got it,” Roger said, telekinetically catching a lot
of them and holding the dam in place so more wouldn’t flow out. “We need
collection bins.”

“I’ll have some cargo crates brought over,” the tech
said, glancing at the motionless Archon. “How long can you hold those?”

“Not very…they’re heavy too.”

“Right…clear the area,” he told one of his
subordinates before making a
comm
call to someone
else. A few minutes later some car-sized, open-topped crates were flown up on
anti-
grav
and Roger let the top portion of the load
spill out into it, though he had to guide the flow and that further added to
his mental fatigue. He only had so much Lachka energy in his reserves, but he
managed to hold it together until the top portion of the box emptied and he was
able to finally let go.

“Find a better way to get the rest out,” he said,
walking over and picking up one of the orbs and looking it over.

“I don’t recognize it,” the tech commented after some
confused looks from Roger.

“Neither do I, but I think the orb is a carrying case
for those particles in the center.”

“I thought it was an integrated component.”

“Whatever it is, get them collected and out of their
original containers.”

“Will do, but we’ll need a lot more crates shipped in.
We don’t get a lot of call for them in a warehouse, odd as that sounds.”

“Because everything is already shipped in one.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll find you some more. Don’t open too many more
boxes until we get them, all the way at least.”

“You going to peek inside?”

“Are you kidding, this might as well be Christmas.”

“What’s that?”

Roger glanced at him. “Sorry, figured you were older.
It was a holiday where you got presents.”

“What for?”

“No reason, you just got them on that day.”

“Sounds odd. I thought holidays were for parties.”

“Both in some cases.”

“How can you get a present without a reason? That
makes no sense.”

“Just one of those cultural quirks that got lost with
time,” Roger said, walking over to another unopened box. “But come Christmas
morning you felt something like this.”

“But you earned these?”

Roger laughed. “Never mind. If you didn’t live through
that era you wouldn’t understand.”

“Guess not, but I understand this,” he said, stepping
onto a mobile lift and heading up to the top with Roger and a cutting team.
“Surprise boxes.”

“That’s pretty much what Christmas was,” the
trailblazer said, waiting for them to tear the top corner off. When they did his
jaw dropped as he smelled the contents. They were tropical, almost fruity but
with a very metallic/coppery scent that was hard to explain but impossible to
forget.

The tech reached into the packing material and pulled
out a small cube. “Heavy sucker,” he said, handing it to Roger.

“Damn,” he said, taking another sniff.

“What is it?”

“Take a whiff.”

“I can already smell it. Strong stuff.”

“That’s a scent you will never forget…and this,” he
said, holding the cube between them, “is a raw arc element.”

The tech pointed towards it reverently. “You mean
this…”

“Yep,” he said, glancing at the packing material that
held many more of the tiny cubes in regal fashion.

“Holy shit. What the hell was that question you
answered?”

“Something important…that I hope they learn a lesson
from.”

“Expensive lesson.”

Roger’s expression dimmed just a touch as his mind
flicked back to the Dsevmat/H’bat’i battle.

“Very.”

9

February 3, 2659

Fvatt
System (lizard
territory)

Kri’mas

The Hycre scout ship sat in orbit along with the rest
of the debris fields that had once been their orbital infrastructure, ships,
and even the hulks of their attackers. All still floated mostly where they had
been when the Hycre had been forced to evacuate the system, and other than a
few reconnaissance probes thrown into the mix there was nothing functioning or
alive here, from either race.

Those probes were short range, meaning that a lizard
ship would have to come through the system to pick up their records of
activity, from which the Hycre there had been none for the past 164 years.
After the lizards had completed their destruction of everything they could find
they’d apparently been satisfied and left, given that there were no habitable
worlds available for them to colonize. The gas giant of
Kri’mas
was still inhospitable to them, and other than deposing the Hycre, they seemed
not to care about the system at all.

The scout ship had come ahead to survey the location
for a second time so that when the colonization fleet arrived they could have a
sitrep
available immediately to them. The small Hycre
vessel was transmitting it continuously, and once the fleet learned that there
was no enemy presence to contend with they jumped out from the star and began
to litter orbit with all manner of ships, including a
warfleet
composed entirely of Shaven.

Some of them immediately began to focus their
attention on the debris, clearing it away and opening up the sections of orbit
that were tagged as restricted travel zones. They’d want those back after they
got the system in working order, for several of them crossed over major
jumplines out from the planet during various times in the planet’s cyclical
revolution. Meanwhile other ships headed down into the thick atmosphere of the
planet, slowly descending further and further in altitude until they found the
clusters that had been hidden there long ago.

To their relief their hails were acknowledged and
docking instructions were given, with the tightly packed work crews and
colonists crossing over into the Hycre equivalent of cities and meeting up with
the denizens who had volunteered to stay behind and maintain them in the depths
where the enemy could not go. Only a few had remained, with some having died in
the interim, but their preservation mission had been a success and the clusters
hadn’t fallen into disarray and sank to the planet’s core or floated up to the
detection range of the lizards.

They got a welcome committee quickly as the crews
moved in and began to bring the clusters back to life, feeding them fuel and other
supplies as they gradually increased their elevation and brought the clusters
back to their preferred depth. Dozens of them rose up across the planet, giving
the Hycre an infrastructure base that they would not have to rebuild and the
ability to start producing auxiliary equipment that would enable the planet to
return to self-sufficiency on a remarkably short timetable.

Those who had cared for and maintained the clusters in
their ‘stored’ mode had been living off of a modicum of supplies that they were
able to produce for themselves along with the reserves that had been left in
the cluster. Those were near depletion and the caretakers partially
malnourished, but most had survived and would have continued to go on doing so
indefinitely if needed. They were greeted and welcomed back into Hycre society
as heroes as the floating clusters came back to life and the population of the
planet suddenly jumped by some 200,000%.

The lizard probes were found and destroyed, but
eventually one of their ships would come around to find the planet back in
Hycre possession, sitting in the middle of lizard territory as many current and
former Hycre worlds were, but that was part of the plan set forth by Star
Force. The Hycre had always intended to come back and reclaim their dormant
worlds, else they wouldn’t have left people behind to maintain their most
valuable infrastructure, but now they were doing so both to retake what had
once been theirs and to put pressure on the lizards.

‘Pressure’ was the key focus of the overall battle
plan against their common enemy, with the Human warlord Paul having insisted
that they make the lizards play defense rather than dictate when and where the
fighting would occur. Star Force was hitting, probing, and confusing the
lizards on multiple fronts, as were the Voku and Protovic, with the Hycre’s
contribution being the reclamation of their old worlds. The lizards would have
to choose who to push back against, all the while funneling most of their
reinforcements towards the Skarron front whose level of fighting was beyond
anything the Hycre had seen before.

They were continually scouting the regions surrounding
the ADZ and others, including the ever moving Skarron/lizard border, and while
they suspected there were a lot of conflicts they were missing out on, those
they were quietly monitoring and recording were beyond vicious. The lizards had
finally found an enemy that they couldn’t overwhelm with sheer numbers and the
amount of ships both sides were deploying into the war, and subsequently losing,
was staggering.

Knowing this Star Force and the Hycre’s other allies
were committed to pushing back on multiple fronts, not in any big way, but
enough to pressure and test the lizards to see how much they could or would
defend. Already there were gains being made and worlds retaken, but some were
drawing large responses while others were not. One didn’t know when and where
the lizards would strike back, but for the first time the Alliance was getting
a few easy wins in.

The Hycre didn’t know if/when the lizards would hit
them back, or maybe because they couldn’t use the gas giants for their own
purposes they wouldn’t bother trying this time around. Regardless, the Hycre
now had enough Shaven, their line of ships that included the tech gifts from Star
Force, to defend themselves against the lizards short of their enemy throwing
the hammer down at them…and currently that hammer was being occupied by larger
targets.

Kri’mas
was operational
again within 4 hours, but it would not be rebuilt to its former status for
several years to come. Many clusters had been lost in the invasion and the mass
of orbital infrastructure had been wiped out completely. Given what they knew
of the lizards and their tactics the Hycre would not be rebuilding it in their
outer colonies, instead choosing to build their facilities entirely in
atmosphere, even when it was disadvantageous to do so.

They felt the tradeoff was worth the inefficiency and
other hassles that would result so long as they were able to shield them inside
the planet and make the enemy come down to attack them directly, for any battle
within the thick atmosphere was almost an automatic win for the Hycre, and if
the lizards chose to bombard them from orbit as they had done before the Shaven
would go after those priority targets rather than leaving floating stations
that made for easy pickings and locations the Hycre would be forced to defend.

This way the
warfleet
was
free to roam and strike where it chose, and that was the worthwhile tradeoff to
the Hycre, for as the years passed and they began to tinker with the cleansing
beams and mauler cannons that Star Force had given them they were building
stronger and more purposeful Shaven, which only increased their confidence that
they could now retake and hold some of their former worlds.

How many was the question, but the Hycre were going to
get some now to put pressure on the lizards and begin to reverse the formerly
‘inevitable’ advancement they had been making for centuries.

And with every world reclaimed the Hycre had an
additional base behind enemy lines from which to strike out from, not for the
purpose of hitting strongholds but to conduct recon and small scale harassment
attacks, hitting the enemy where they were weak and forcing them to more
heavily defend areas that previously were protected by the intimidation factor
the lizards possessed. With that being the case, the enemy was going to have to
shore up far more systems than they’d become accustomed to, which would drain
even more resources from their overall empire.

There was no mistaking the fact, however, that that
empire was still growing by leaps and bounds in multiple directions. That said,
the Hycre were confident they could hold their own worlds and take back a few
others, no longer having to play the victim and constantly running. They’d held
their capitol against numerous attacks, and now it was their turn to start
returning the favor and make use of the footholds they’d fought so hard to
preserve.

Over the coming years more worlds like
Kri’mas
would be returning into the fold, and from them the
sharks of the space ocean would begin to reassert their dominance, first in
raids and then in organized planetary strikes using the cleansing beams coupled
with the remote mech technology Star Force had also gifted them with to further
harass or wipe out small lizard colonies. Before long the lizards were forced
to increase their ship traffic into full blown convoys else risk ships getting
poached while in transit, making the large region that was dotted with Hycre
worlds hazardous to travel despite most of the claimed worlds in that area
still belonging to the lizards.

Pressure was the key, emphasized over and over by the
Humans, and with the Hycre gradually tipping the scales of naval combat back
into their decided favor, pressure is what they contributed, with the lizards
never knowing when or where the growing ‘schools’ of Hycre warships would
strike next.

Tennisonne rode the civilian traffic ferries across
Earth orbit rather than requisitioning a personal craft to do so, which his
position in Star Force afford him the right to do, but he never liked pulling a
ship off for his own transit unless time was of the essence, and in research
and development it hardly ever was. So he hitched several rides across the
orbital rings of habitats, factories, shipyards, and whatever else people had
envisioned to build that now gave the planet 8 visible bands circling it like
squashed hula hoops, each at different altitudes.

That left huge areas empty to allow for traffic coming
off the surface to head directly for jumppoints or the outer halo of starports,
but maneuvering within the rings was slow and tedious work. Virtually all
altitudes running from Earth to Luna were occupied, with each band of
infrastructure rotating around a fixed axis so they wouldn’t collide with each
other.

A few facilities were located outside the bands and
used anti-
grav
to augment their irregular orbits or
lack thereof, but the small artificial moon that the tech was heading towards
wasn’t one of them. It was situated within the third ring and was one of the
largest sedas built to date, easily
outmassing
the
Death Star from Star Wars, though to the Archons’ disappointment they hadn’t
been able to include a
superweapon
in the design.

Actually, this station wasn’t mean for battle. Rather,
it was a massive industrial station that fed a lot of the higher end materials
to Star Force and included research and development facilities that focused on
just that purpose. Tennisonne didn’t come here often, but every now and then
some project he was working on would take place on the small moon, or rather
within, and today was one of those days.

The recent ‘bounty’ given to Star Force by the Dsevmat
had been brought here for both analysis and use. Roger had ordered it inspected
just in case it contained some sort of Trojan horse, but that was just the
Archon being paranoid as usual. That was his job, and Tennisonne was glad he
was there to do it, which left the level 6 tech free to focus on the scientific
endeavors without worrying about something blowing up…unless he was causing it.

His last leg of the journey up from Earth was a short
hop via dropship from a nearby civilian terminal station, passing him through
the restricted zone around the station and inside one of thousands of hangar
bays that had a continuous flow of ships coming in and out with either raw
materials or finished products, most of which were building materials of sorts
or processed materials that other facilities would use to produce more specific
items.

Once onboard he was greeted with a reception committee
made up of other techs and quickly escorted through the internal city to the
special hangar were the rarer items in the bounty were being held and
inventoried. A lot of the corovon cubes had already been sent off for
processing, but there were plenty still left for Tennisonne to see. Though it
was nothing new to him, the sight of so much corovon in one place was still awe
inspiring…and underscored just how far Star Force had yet to grow. They’d come
a long ways, with Tennisonne doing no small part in giving them the tools they
needed, but the scope of a civilization that could trade away corovon on this
scale was downright impressive and beyond anything they could currently field.

Star Force shipped corovon in ingots the size of his
thumb, for that was how rare it was. Then those ingots were almost immediately
used to produce compounds that had corovon in them, meaning the raw element was
hardly ever seen outside of select facilities and research departments. The
giant cubes littering the deck before him were as much a snub as they were a
gift, declaring in wealthy fashion just how primitive Star Force was in
comparison to the benefactor.