Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) (6 page)

She didn’t know what Tom was doing other than what the
battlemap showed her, but there was a beehive of activity all around and she
just did her job and focused on what was affecting her mech and what targets
she could hit without jeopardizing their safety. There were a lot of tanks out
there, in the hundreds, so she chose the ones that were separated from the
others and took them on while the flanking drone mechs stayed alongside or
drifted off slightly to go after other targets, always cycling back around into
formation.

Tom was controlling them as well and it made her
wonder why she was even here when he could have controlled this mech just as
easily. It would have meant a few less sparks under his control but she didn’t
really see the need for her to be here up until a large group of tanks came
straight for them and the infantry bots shifted, heading kamikaze towards the
drone mechs and firing some unknown weapons mods at them…which amounted to tow
cables wrapping around their legs.

“What the hell?” she said, turning her maulers at the
infantry in addition to the
sammies
to try and thin
those around the morpheus and prevent any of them getting close enough to fire
the cables, for they all looked the same externally so she couldn’t identify
which they were and pick them off prior to firing their concealed weapons.

But as it was there were none coming at them anyway.
They were meant to disable the
morpheus’s
escorts while the tank formation headed to pick off the quarterback.

Victoria knew that as long as she kept them moving and
in play that Tom would take care of it, so she didn’t try to head towards the
tethered mechs as the enemy would expect, but rather went the other way and
waded out into the infantry battles expecting the leonardos to pick off the
tanks or the sparks to swarm to their defense…except that the help wasn’t
coming. There was no change in the flow of battle other than the enemy tanks
moving faster than they were and encircling them with the infantry actually
being stepped on as they tried to slow the
morpheus
through sheer numbers grouping around its feet.

She turned the mech’s torso and blasted two tanks with
her maulers, one shot each, then got slammed with a series of blasts in the
mech’s back and the shields nearly breached. Twenty seconds later they did go
down as the tiny little phaser blasts added to the continuous tank hits and the
rear of the mech was exposed, now taking armor damage.

And still there was no help coming to their aid.

“Tom, we’re getting cooked!” Victoria warned, hoping
her voice would bring his attention to them. She waited, fighting it out but still
seeing no response. She was about to ping him on the battlemap but decided to
go the drastic route since this was a training fight and used the emergency
override, pushing a button that momentarily severed Tom’s connection to the
army around them.

“Feel like covering our ass?” she asked as he snapped
back into awareness of his body and what was around him.

“What happened?” he asked, quickly seeing the status
displays around him and noticing the mess they were in. “Why didn’t you ping
me?” he said, reconnecting to the sparks nearest him as well as the leonardos,
with two of them popping tanks immediately.

“Why didn’t you see it happening?” she countered, then
remained silent as they both had to focus on what they were doing. Tom got them
the reinforcements they needed before their armor was breached, then they
pulled back and recharged their shields before diving back in for the last
round of fireworks before the enemy forces were spent and the battle wore down
to a few handfuls of units.

Eventually the end signal was given by the opposition
and Tom put all his remaining units into standby as he pulled out of the
intense control mode and returned it to a chess game, telling units where to
move and letting them float there on their own.

“I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“How’s your head?”

Tom didn’t respond for a moment, flicking away several
layers of numbness before the pain materialized. “Worse than I thought. I think
I zoned that out too.”

“That was very
untrailblazer
-like
of you,” Victoria noted. “You guys are usually on top of everything before it
happens.”

“No argument there,” he said with a sigh as he
massaged his forehead with a pair of fingers. “I guess we’re a lot further away
from a working prototype than I thought.”

“You can’t fight like that,” she warned. “You have to
know everything that’s going on or we’re going to get slaughtered.”

Tom smacked the back of his head against his seat in
frustration. “I know. I know.”

6

August 11, 2825

Hyperion System
(Zeta Region)

Yert

Mina
Delari
stood on the
stage in front of the crowd of some 238,458 people singing the last song of her
concert, hand reaching toward the sky boxes overhead as a waterfall spilt out
over her, drenching her from head to toe as the chemical it was laced with
dissolved her hair tie, her shirt, shorts, shoes, and every other thing on her
body over the course of the following 15 seconds, leaving her fully nude and
‘exposed,’ as the song was titled, in her signature finish to her performances.

The Human female stood there as the last of the water
washed the scraps of clothing off her and the crowd roared so loud she could
actually feel the stage vibrate. She stood there smiling as she dropped her arm
and posed, letting them get a good look at her as the song music ended and a
finishing theme took its place, signifying the end of the concert and her
farewell to the crow. Mina lingered for more than a minute, then walked back to
a circle on the ground that only she could see and turned to give them one
final pose, this one an X with arms raised and legs spread wide, then columns
of steam rose up from the stage floor obscuring her for several seconds before
dissipating and revealing her to have vanished.

Mina rode the lift down into the floor, stumbling
slightly as it had to accelerate fast to get her clear and the hatch covered,
then it slowed to a stop and she stepped off into the prep area below with
assistants waiting for her. Per usual she didn’t accept any clothes from them,
for once she ended a concert in the nude she remained that way until she got
back home. One of her maturia handlers had told her during sexual training that
if you had ‘it’ don’t be afraid to flaunt it, and she’d taken that advice to
heart over the past two years.

She did accept a mug of
Xerta
,
which was one of the current soda pop flavors popular amongst the Axius
colonies that she was a native of. It had only been 6 years ago that she’d
graduated from the maturia without a credit to her name and only a small, basic
quarters module to live in and now she was touring the ADZ in her own private
jumpship.

Mina took a couple gulps, knowing it would help her
slightly sore throat from getting any worse and looking forward to a day of travel
so she could get some sleep. This was the 18th concert on this planet in the
past 10 days and her voice was nearly spent, but she’d made it through and
would have a bit of respite until her next concert series on
Priot
, including two on the new tier 3 continent. She’d
never performed for the ‘elite’ before and had actually thought they just
worked round the day without any entertainment facilities but apparently she’d
been wrong. The professional concert circuits were starting to go through the
new regions now that they were getting established and that meant there were
credits to be made, else they wouldn’t have bothered.

Mina’s team escorted her through the stage facilities
with lots of workers pausing to take a few seconds of awe at seeing her naked.
Nudity wasn’t banned in Axius or Star Force, but most people still chose to
wear clothes enough that going in the buff got a lot of attention…then again
she was also in insanely good shape and that never hurt. The floors were clean,
as was the rest of the facility, so she didn’t mind walking around nude and did
so as much for her reputation as for herself. She’d been sexually shy in the
beginning, but now reveled in just being herself and not hiding anything.

She didn’t get a buzz anymore, just a sense of freedom
that felt refreshing. The bath she’d just had helped too, washing off the
concert’s sweaty sheen and leaving her with dripping blonde hair that she
didn’t bother to ring out. It left a trail on the floor but there were no
carpets so it didn’t matter. It’d dry, she’d dry,
all
was good.

After sucking down half the mug she was led to an
exclusive autograph signing for 500 lucky individuals. She smiled and engaged
in a brief bit of chit chat with them and the press as she speedily got through
all of the signings then bid them and the planet farewell as she was taken out
onto a nearby private landing pad that had thousands of fans standing on nearby
rooftops to see her depart. They roared in the brightly lit night sky when she
emerged, shocking her for a moment at how many of them had found vantage
points.

Mina waved at them and blew a few kisses before
walking up the ramp and into her dropship. Once inside she retreated up to the
third level while her people finished loading up. There were two other dropships
on the pad that would be packing up their gear and following them up to orbit
but Mina’s left right away. Before it lifted off she was able to walk onto the
clear upper deck and slide into her private jacuzzi that was not so much right
now for most of the high placed onlookers could see down into that exposed part
of her ship through the glass bubble covering it.

She settled in, smiling but not interacting with them
anymore as the warm water soothed her sore feet. The shoes she had to wear in
order to make the dissolve possible didn’t fit well and always left her toes a
bit raw, and that was one small reason why she didn’t put any shoes on
afterward until she got back to this blissful tub. She looked out the bubble at
the surrounding buildings as they finally began to lift off. Her fans
disappeared from view leaving nothing but the tall spires that probably held a
few more with telescopic lenses.

Those last bits of cityscape finally vanished and she
was left with just the stars above her as the dropship headed up through the
atmosphere and into space, giving her a bit of much needed privacy. Her team
knew not to disturb her after a show and would stay away until she called for
them, which wouldn’t be for some time. Per her usual instructions the dropship
took its time climbing to orbit and then over to the position where her
jumpship was waiting, giving her a good two and a half hours to soak and relax
with nothing but starlight and the occasional passing ship or station to keep
her company…and those were too far away for anyone to snoop on her, not that
they were going to see anything new. That was one advantage of getting exposed
on a regular basis. You had nothing to hide, and when you had nothing to hide
there was no need to worry.

It was a kind of freedom that she’d discovered after
her first nervous nude show. She’d done a short one completely in the buff her
first year, which had ironically put her in the spotlight and sent her career
off at a sprint once people finally got a chance to hear her music
en
mass. A hot body wasn’t enough to get ADZ-wide
recognition, for there were many of them and most of the races didn’t find
Humans attractive anyway, but they did like good songs and that was what she
was good at. The nudity was just an extra and something she did more for
herself than the fans…but if it made their day so much the better. She didn’t
mind sharing her sexuality, visually anyway.

It was in these transition periods from planet to
orbit that she often did a lot of thinking, still with too much adrenaline to
sleep and no more requirements to rigidly constrict her mind. She often
wondered where she went from here. As a minor star in the ADZ she already had
over 4 billion credits to her name and that would easily buy her inclusion in a
tier 2 colony of her choosing for infinity or one of the private luxury
residences in Australia, but neither of those was really a big deal now. She
lived on her jumpship most of the time, traveling from system to system and
racking up the credits for herself and her supporting label. The ship was hers,
as was her team now, though the label still organized her performances and
marketed her music, but they no longer gave her orders.

Not that long ago Mina had worked her ass off to earn
her freedom by graduating from the maturia, and now she’d earned her freedom
from her label, able to do things entirely her own way and being too valuable
as a credit-earning asset to be argued with anymore. She had enough currency to
stop singing and do whatever she wanted, which often made her wonder what she
was doing this for now. There were bigger names than hers, a lot of them, and
the challenge of rising up to that level did appeal to her, but she sensed she
wanted more than that.

And it wasn’t a guy. She could have as many guys as
she wanted, and that kind of ruined the appeal right there. She might be
sexual, but she hadn’t had sex since the maturia and planned to keep it that
way. Too many people she’d followed had gone off course once they’d coupled
with someone, and her maturia training had made it clear that maintaining one’s
individuality was key to achieving self-sufficiency.

That was her primary goal, and anyone who thought
otherwise was just plain stupid. But there was something else nagging at her,
and though she had a well-defined schedule ahead of her plus next year’s
concerts to choreography and a list of other important to-do items, Mina felt
like she was treading water and not really headed anywhere. That thought kept
nagging her as she soaked in the
jacuzzi
, with her
dipping her head under the water and coming back up into the cooler air with a
sense of aloneness.

Her team was just below decks, meters away if she
needed them, but it finally dawned on her that they were all here for the job
and not her. They were her friends, for sure, but if she stopped singing they’d
move on to assist others and that’d be the end of that. Mina was around people
constantly, so much so that she’d never really felt alone, but now that her
maturia classmates had gone on to do whatever with their lives she’d been so
busy with building her career she’d never thought about it.

With trillions upon trillions of people in the ADZ she
didn’t matter. If she quit singing and just disappeared a lot of people would
be upset, but they’d move on. No one really knew her as a person, just a
celebrity, and for the first time she really felt the aloneness…and the fear
that came with it. The fear of no safety net and the galaxy being wide open
before you. The openness was more intense than her first nude concert and it
made her feel truly exposed and alive.

It was scary too, but she wasn’t going to turn away
from it. Even though she had people around her constantly, in truth she was
alone navigating a sea of strangers and she wasn’t going to let her mind veer
from that into the delusions that the masses lived their lives by. Mina clung
to the feeling, essentially placing a wedge in her mind to keep that viewpoint
open as she sat up, bringing her small but chiseled breasts up above the water
line and looking around as the cool air hit her wet flesh.

There was a sound dampener on the doorway so she
couldn’t hear anything from the rest of the ship, so aside from the sound of
the water and her breathing there was nothing else to hear…which was why she
belatedly realized she liked it so much. It was a sanctum away from the hive
mind of society…but that hive mind was an illusion that she was now able to see
through. Even with people around her she was always alone, and that epiphany
was not something she was going to forget.

Mina settled back down into the water as the tiny
pinprick of light ahead of them began to grow into the silhouette of her
jumpship, but even the sight of it didn’t strike her as ‘home’ anymore. It was
a place she stayed and worked out of, traveled on, but her real home was her
body. Wherever she went she was home within the confines of her skin.

No wonder she liked disrobing so much. The clothing
was essentially a hitchhiker on her journey through life.

She continued to ponder her new insights as the
jumpship grew outside the clear canopy. It wasn’t as large as the Star Force
models, nor as fast, but the
Kefron
produced
Nightstalker
model was more than sufficient to get her from system to system in a timely
manner and avoid the hassles of having to book transit on the ADZ grid. It was
her private possession, and since Star Force owned all property on planetoids
the only way you could get your own bit of turf was by building it in space.
Stations required permits and were harder to obtain, but buying a ship and
moving about gave you a little island of your own where you could do your own
thing.

There were no monitoring devices in the corridors like
in the Axius colonies. Star Force might respect a person’s privacy in their own
quarters, but public movements and actions were always monitored so they could
track down problems after they happened by going back through the exhaustive
records…and it worked too, with almost no violations whatsoever in the colony
she’d lived in after coming out of the maturia. But there was something about
being away from observation and on your own that was appealing to many people,
hence the extensive ship building industry outside of the Star Force line.

But now Mina realized that even in the Axius colonies
she was still alone. Watched via people and technology, but still alone. It was
a very freeing realization that stayed on her mind as the jumpship grew to fill
almost the entire forward half of the bubble dome over her
jacuzzi
and interrupting her bathing in the stars.

Knowing that they had only a minute or so before
landing in the bay, Mina stepped out of the tub and walked down to the lower
level of the dropship and the exiting ramp, dripping a trail of water all the
way through the ship and out onto the jumpship’s bay floor that tracked across
to the entry door before resolving itself down to a random drop here and there
as her body slowly dried off. While her team dealt with unloading and other
measures she headed off into her ship alone, always liking the idea of dripping
as she went.