Star Force: Empire (SF58) (3 page)

Hand to hand was a weakness of quadrupeds, but what
they did have was first strike potential given their running speed and pouncing
range. Once engaged they didn’t have the leverage that a Human did, with their
trainers trying to teach them how to hit and run, then circle back and hit
again rather than trying to lock onto an opponent. It was difficult to learn,
but with the Axius Scionate there to show them what the Humans were trying to
explain helped greatly, though some of the movements required him to think like
a biped and that was a transition that he hadn’t fully made yet.

He didn’t want to raise up and expose his belly, for
one, and his trainers made him pay for that multiple times with overtop attacks
and today was no exception. He knew what he had to do but was still hesitant.
Mentally marking that as a place for future improvement he did his best during
the rest of the day’s training then eventually retreated back to the cafeteria for
a very large last meal, before walking off to his personal den and falling
asleep almost immediately.

The next day he would rise and repeat, for that was
what was required on the fast track to a combat assignment, with only those
wanting it bad enough being able to keep themselves going, and so far Gam’len’wex
was hanging in there, taking it one day, one moment at a time, and finding
himself growing stronger and faster than he had ever imagined…yet with so far
yet to go that it was almost comical.

He’d long ago set aside his concern and trusted in
Star Force, for if they could get the Axius Scionate ready then they could do
the same for him. With that worry gone he focused on doing his workouts,
leaving the big picture to his trainers and thus far that approach had been
working well.

Only time would tell how far he got and if he’d have
to tap out and take the slow route like many of the others, but for now he was
holding par and that’s all that mattered.

3

May 23, 2652

Maxzet
System
(Epsilon Region)

Mazicc

Admiral Laver watched from his jumpship as the
previous
intel
reports were updated with realtime
telemetry. The six locations on the planet’s surface that had been tagged as
containing pirate hideouts were indeed registering infrastructure as well as
some surface activity at one site. A liftoff was taking place, with the cargo
ship in question even now beginning to rise up through the atmosphere to make a
run for orbit and, ostensibly, out of the system.

It took a moment for the Australians’ sensors to
identify the type of ship, marking it as a Lemickas insystem commerce model,
meaning it didn’t have interstellar jump capability. Laver ordered it tracked
and followed, but not intercepted. Unless it met up with a jumpship it wasn’t
going anywhere and they could deal with it later.

Their mission was to take out the pirate bases on what
was otherwise an independent system within the ADZ. The planet was home to a
primitive civilization that hadn’t yet achieved space travel and one that had
wished to be left alone. Star Force had tagged it as a transit only system,
meaning that only passerthroughs were permitted and that the planet itself was
off limits, as was the rest of the system.

There were many other systems in the same situation,
having fallen within the boundaries of the ADZ and not wanting to have anything
to do with the Alliance or the war. Star Force counted them as lucky and left
them alone, making sure that others did as well, but those systems in question
were regularly targeted as places to get off the Star Force grid and attracted
a lot of illicit attention.

The six pirate bases that the Australians had been
sent to get rid of had been identified by Star Force security previously, but
they hadn’t sent their own team to eradicate them. Often they did, but with so
many needs to attend to in the growing ADZ population that was approaching a
quadrillion, they often farmed out such duties to other parts of the empire,
with the Australians finally being able to step up to the plate and contribute
in a significant way.

Admiral Laver had been part of 3 previous campaigns to
hunt down pirates, slavers, and other scum from the ADZ, all of which had been
under the command of an Archon. This tour, however, he was in sole command. He
figured it was due partly to the limited number of the super soldiers and the
vast scale of the ADZ that had them going all over the place with significant travel
lags in between, but he also knew that his fleet would never have been assigned
this duty solo if they weren’t trusted. The previous campaigns had been the
Archon using the Australians in lieu of other ships and troops they didn’t
currently have available, but it had also been a test.

Apparently one that Laver and the others had passed,
for the previous 4 months had been missions similar to this yet lesser in scope
that had the Australians dealing with assignments completely without oversight.
Most were ship interdictions with a few surface raids, but this was the largest
strike given to them yet, with indications that there were thousands of pirates
on the planet below that either had to be captured or killed…and he knew from
previous experience that pirates didn’t like to go down without a fight.

This lot had been responsible for well over 50
hijackings of starships passing through Epsilon Region, all
non
Star
Force, for the pirates weren’t stupid enough to try and take one of
those. No, they preyed on the ever-increasing traffic from the other races in
the ADZ, often picking off ships and getting away before anyone even received a
distress signal. Star Force did belatedly monitor all transit between inhabited
systems and had picked up at least faint sensor recordings of the attacks, along
with the jumplines the pirate ships had taken when leaving with their bounty,
which was sometimes cargo or passengers, or even entire ships.

There were becoming fewer and fewer places in the ADZ
for starships to hide, with virtually every attack that occurred being followed
up and those responsible found and dealt with eventually…yet more kept coming
as if they didn’t care or didn’t follow the news. It was very difficult to
hijack a ship in the ADZ and not have it noticed by Star Force unless you did
it insystem, for it was just a computational twitch to match up entry and exit
signatures and see if there was an anomaly. If there was, that was red flagged
and a closer scrutiny of the sensor logs was taken up, with those in question
having led Star Force security to this planet.

They’d done a thorough recon then left the system,
noting that the military capability of the pirates was beyond what they could
have dealt with on their own, and referring it on to others more suitably
equipped. The mission was eventually farmed out to the Australians, which were
doing a considerable amount of pirate hunting and other cleaning duties within
the ADZ given that they weren’t deemed fit enough yet to take part in combat on
the front or beyond.

That still left the Australians sour, but Laver knew
that they were being slowly let off the training wheels for a reason. No Archon
oversight on this campaign highlighted that, as well as the fact that this
strike was way down on the priority list. Still, it had to be done and done soon
else they’d let the pirates run rampant in the shadows and that couldn’t be
allowed.

Australia was more than happy to step up and
contribute, freeing up other Star Force units for higher priority tasks while
giving the junior members some greater standing within the ADZ. Previously
Australia had been little more than a closet member of Star Force, neatly
tucked away where no one could find them, but over time they’d been stepping
out and attaining some new colonies of their own. Nothing large, but they were
outside the Core Region and allowed them to begin to interact with other parts
of the ADZ as the independent entity that they were.

They were still Star Force, there was no disputing
that, but within the empire they were a semi-independent piece, similar to the
Kiritas but not the Kiritak. Australia had to operate within the boundaries
that Davis set for them, but so long as they stayed within the coloring book
lines they could paint whatever picture of their society that they wanted. They
had taken a lot from standard Star Force protocol but diverged in a number of
places, creating a separate identity that many had not liked.

Australia’s current population now ran a little over
3.7 billion, but with an outflow that at some times had exceeded their growth
rate. Many individuals born into Australia eventually chose to leave for either
Axius or a mainline Star Force colony, finding the pure openness to be more
attractive than the somewhat traditionalized Australian society. It had taken a
lot of trial and error on the part of Australia’s leaders to keep their
population at home, but eventually they began attracting more immigrants than
they suffered in losses…and they did so by offering things that the rest of
Star Force didn’t allow.

They couldn’t go so far as to legitimize contraband,
for that would put them outside the coloring lines, but they did offer
alternatives to many people who didn’t like the Star Force take on life, with
the biggest selling point being hybrid maturias. Nearly all Australians were born
and trained in Star Force standard maturias, or at least the Australian version
of such, but eventually a secondary program was instituted for those
individuals that wanted, and sometimes loudly protested for, the ability to
keep a family connection with their offspring.

What the Australians eventually offered was the
ability for a parent or parents to become low level trainers and work in the
maturia where their child was present, maintaining a connection to them until
they became old enough that they were allowed to live in a separate facility
with them during off hours, yet they would still be part of a maturia and all
the rigorous training that it required.

That familial connection that the Australians allowed
was the first big move the Australians made, with Davis’s approval, away from
the typical Star Force model and it attracted so many immigrants that it
prompted the Australians to begin reshaping their nation into a Star Force
alternative and experimenting with new things to both try and distinguish
themselves from the rest of the empire, as well as to attract more immigrants
to replace those that were continually leaving.

Semi-independence had its privileges, but it also had
its down side as well, with the Australians faced with the risk of losing
pretty much their entire nation if too many of their citizens decided to leave.
And with the Australians having to make every ship and building themselves,
what mainline Star Force colonies offered looked a lot more appetizing to most,
hence the push to attract the discontents and offer them up alternatives.

It had been a long process, but eventually Australia
had etched out an identity for itself and was now pushing for a greater role
within Star Force, with that being them taking on some of the responsibilities of
keeping the spacelanes safe and hunting down pirates where others wouldn’t or
couldn’t, for most races in the ADZ didn’t care about anyone other than
themselves, leaving Star Force and a few others as the guardians of all.

That was a responsibility that Star Force took very
seriously, which further indicated that the Australians’ status was increasing
given that Laver had been given this solo campaign, low key as it was. This bit
of it was going to be a milestone, one way or another, because to date nothing
like this had ever gone down without an Archon running the show, and today it
was going to be an all Australian affair.

He just hoped everything went smoothly.

“Lock in the drop points and get the transports
moving,” the Admiral ordered after watching the track of the ascending
transport for a bit. “Deploy the fleet into standard containment formation and
inform the planet that we’re here to remove some squatters,” he said, almost
word for word mimicking similar orders given by the Archon that he’d worked
with in previous years. “Get me air cover preceding our ships and everyone stay
alert. We need to bag these guys before they get a chance to run and hide.”

The Australian jumpship wasn’t large, for they’d had
to construct it themselves and virtually every ship in their fleet was
undersized compared to the mainline Star Force navy. While they had access to
nearly all Star Force tech, the more recent and impressive developments were
withheld from them until they showed they could master what they’d already been
given…and ‘given’ in terms of blueprints rather than actual machinery.

They had tech assistance as well, with many mainline
and even Canderous techs helping them design and get their own machinery up and
running. Given the necessary disconnect between the two, Australia’s equipment
looked and was designed differently than what the mainline troops had, just as
Canderous’s
differed as well. The Australians didn’t fare
well in the comparison, but they did have competent, solid ships that had gone
through numerous revisions and upgrades as the most junior member of Star Force
slowly cut its teeth on a handful of missions and assignments.

It was aggravating to most Australians how newer
members of Star Force got privileges that they didn’t, with the Lacvamat and
especially the Scionate being rushed into prominence. It was true that neither
of those pieces of the ever growing Star Force
empire
would be independent, but rather constructed and run by the mainline section
just as the Kiritak were. That meant they didn’t have the freedom to experiment
and deviate from standard protocol the way Australia did, but they were being
given so much in terms of resources and tech that it rubbed many Australians
the wrong way.

Laver had once been one of them, but he’d gradually come
to see just how juvenile Australia was compared with everyone else as he moved
around the ADZ with the Archon, gaining bits of insight here and there and
realizing how much the Australians still had to learn. They were like kids
being allowed to play in the sandbox, but when it came time for the volleyball
match they weren’t allowed to play in the same sand at the same time.

Laver was one of the three highest ranking military
officers Australia had, and as such he held a significant voice in their decision
making and future planning, with him lecturing the others constantly on how and
why they were behind the rest of the empire and even falling behind the other
ADZ races. It was simply a matter of drive, for while Australians had
everything they needed others did not and were power hungry. That was not
necessarily a good thing, but it drove them forward while the Australians
metaphorically just laid out in the sun getting a good tan while complaining
about not being treated as equals with the rest of Star Force.

What Laver hadn’t originally understood was that all
of Star Force was working its butt off in some way or another, while Australia
was consumed with the civilian aspect of Earth. Civilians reaped the benefit of
others’ hard work, and if Australia wanted to be one of the big dogs they had
to get out of the ‘taker’ mentality and start becoming a ‘provider.’ There had
been some very long and loud arguments over that point, but eventually Laver
and a few others had made their case and several expansion programs had begun
to be formed and implemented.

They were still in their infancy right now, but first
on the list was an increase in military production. He was pleased with the
fleet that he had, and obviously the Archons felt the same otherwise they
wouldn’t have been calling on them for duties in recent years, but in overall
numbers their fleet was tiny and that had to change.