Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (12 page)

nothing is more intimidating than a Black Knight immune to your powers, and

Vermaire knows the trailblazers well enough to figure out how to hurt them.”

“Vermaire isn’t here.”

“He’s not?” Davis said, raising an eyebrow.

“They came and got him not long ago. Said they needed

him and his best Arc Knights on the front.”

“I didn’t realize that. He rarely leaves Earth.”

“They asked and he went. I don’t know much more than

that.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“To the core world that the 2s are assaulting.”

January 6, 3108

Menchet System

(lizard core)

Tess

“Are we sure about this?” Riona asked, looking down

the narrow chasm that was the innards of one of the connecting columns that ran

from the shipyard ring down to the planet’s surface. It was pitch black save

for the bit of light spilling in from the wall panel they’d cut through,

because it wasn’t meant to be traveled in. It was null space around the

numerous lift shafts with equipment bundles and a very irregular geometry.

“You can stay here if you want,” Paul answered her as

the other Archons caught up with them.

“Not what I asked,” she clarified.

“They won’t know we’re coming. The tough part is what

happens when we get on the ground.”

“That’s easy,” Ginsi said, nudging past Riona and

glancing down the dark shaft. “We kick ass.”

“It’s a one way trip unless we can take down all the

anti-orbital batteries within range,” she said, scoffing at the upstart mage

who nearly equaled her in Commando skill scores. “And that’s a lot of ground to

cover.”

“That’s why we’re going,” Ginsi said, glancing back at

the other high level Archons behind them.

“If ego were a weapon you’d be invincible,” Riona said

grimly.

Paul snickered at that then glanced over at the dark

blue armored mage. “We’re letting you tag along, youngling. Try to keep up and

not get killed.”

“Will do, boss,” she said, looking down the chasm

again. “Can I go first?”

Paul reached an arm out and lazily threw her back into

the group. “No.”

“We go first,” Megan said as she and Jack came to the

front.

“Right,” Ginsi said sarcastically, making way for her

betters. All of them wore equipment packs of various makes, with only a few

Archons equipped with death sabers. The rest had ammunition for convention

weapons while others carried specialized gear and supplies. Riona wasn’t wrong

about this being a long mission, with some 46 sites that they had to pluck the

anti-orbital batteries out of before Star Force could even send a single ship

down to the surface…and even if they did managed to get them all, there’d only

be a very small column of ‘safe’ airspace to travel through with the curve of

the planet blocking the other big guns’ firing lines.

“I’ve got point,” Jack said, stepping off the edge and

slowly falling down a few inches in freefall. The ring wasn’t quite in geosync

orbit, so there was just a touch of gravitational pull exceeding their lateral

velocity, all of which meant there was a very small noticeable gravity effect

up this high, though it’d increase the further down the miles of crawlspaces

they had to travel…with the only way back up being the lifts that had been shut

down and blocked off, unless you wanted to crawl up the walls using the

adhesive panels in your armor for 26,000 miles.

“Keep within Ikrid range at all times,” Megan said as she

gave Jack a tap on the shoulder and pushed him down a bit quicker. When he

dropped below the edge of the floor she knelt down and put herself into a

handstand that she walked out over the edge, then used her hands to pull

herself down the wall and get some speed going herself.

Paul offered Riona a battlemeld prompt and she

accepted it, unnecessary for a mission like this but it was a friendly way of

declaring they were going to be sticking together on the way down. The two of

them let Megan and Jack get a little bit of a lead, then they both dove head

first over the edge, arcing down and towards the far wall where they bounced

off it and began ricocheting their way down until they got themselves

straightened out.

“After you,” Ginsi said to the other Archons,

preferring to stay put and be last car on the train. A line of golden armor

passed her by, leaving the only mage to follow in their wake. She was glad

they’d included her, especially given that her Commando skills exceeded some of

theirs, for she would have been royally pissed if she’d missed this mission.

Three trailblazers, 34 titans, and one mage on a

secret mission behind enemy lines facing off with everything the planet could

throw at them in a race to get the orbital guns down before the lizards

realized they were there or decided to start taking down the support columns to

prevent them from doing something like this with the lift systems. It was a

ballsy move on their part, and frankly they were going to need her help to pull

this off.

Not that she’d be all that helpful given the combined skillset that she was traveling

with, but she definitely wasn’t going to fall behind and could contribute to

the group enough to warrant her inclusion. Ginsi was just a little surprised

the Archons felt the same way.

When the last bit of golden armor disappeared Ginsi

sat down on the edge and slid off head first, pulling on the edge to get her

some speed as she scanned the darkness ahead with her Pefbar and Ikrid, seeing

that the others weren’t wasting any time. She also got an Ikrid ping sent like

a chain through the others marking an obstruction ahead. The leaders would pick

them out and let everyone else know where to avoid, with Ginsi simply having to

stay up and make sure she didn’t hit anything on the way down.

She had a straight line of descent several hundred

meters before an outcropping forced a detour of a few meters to the right.

Further down there was another few, until they got to a clumping of cables that

only had a small pass through. It was wide enough for a tank, but given how

large this null space was that was about as thin of a bottleneck as the

schematics said there was going to be.

Which was why they were constantly speeding themselves

up by grabbing on handholds as they passed and slinging themselves forward. When

Ginsi suddenly was falling behind a bit she got a battlemeld prompt from the

Archon closest to her and they bonded for a moment, just long enough to extend

a Bataf column to her. The energy field linked them like a rope and it pulled

her forward with a surge of speed while simultaneously slowing down the titan.

Ginsi caught up quickly while he managed to speed himself back up with what she

guessed where tugs from others up ahead.

Ginsi used a telekinetic ‘crashbag’ to shove her off

one wall and over to another, grabbing a stubby outcropping and using it to

swing herself forward a bit faster. She couldn’t get much speed from it now

since she was falling quickly, but up ahead she managed to find another bit of

terrain in the form of a support strut along the wall and veered over to get

her foot on the far side of it and push off, accelerating her a bit further and

closer to the 3 Archons ahead of her as one of them shot forward again, with

the other two following shortly thereafter.

Another battlemeld request came and she had to take

it, getting yanked ahead to even more speed as another diversion order got

bounced back from mind to mind and she telekinetically wedged herself off

another wall to avoid a cross beam that would have hurt like a mother if she’d

hit it, for she guessed they were doing better than 50 miles an hour now and

most of that was not due to gravity, making her wonder how the trailblazers

were getting the speed necessary to pull the rest of them along.

Maybe the ‘youngling’ comment was well deserved after

all.

8 hours later…

Ginsi braked herself against another Bataf conduit

from below, counteracting the continual tug of gravity that was trying to speed

them up faster than they reasonably could go. There was no air in the null

spaces this far above the planet, so that meant there was nothing to slow them

down if they didn’t do it themselves and there was only so much speed they

could handle. Fortunately they were passed the tricky section up top near the

shipyard ring, with the connections now being little more than evenly spaced

gaps with occasional supports jutting out in their way. Hit one of those and

they’d be squashed, armor and all, so the trailblazers were holding back on

gaining any more speed as they spotted the obstructions ahead and maneuvered

the group around them.

But they couldn’t be using psionics, the support

struts were flashing by so fast Ginsi only saw a split second blur on her

Pefbar. They had to be using schematics to navigate by and hoping that the

lizards were as meticulous with their construction as Star Force was. Miles

were whipping by so fast it felt like they weren’t even moving at all. The

walls appeared a bit foggy, but other than that they were just smooth

obstructions on either side that Ginsi knew she could not touch at any cost.

The friction would eat through her armor like a chainsaw and send her bouncing

from one wall to the other in a death spiral, and shields wouldn’t do much to

delay that death.

Fortunately her psionics operated differently than

matter. Her telekinesis was able to give her the ability to push against the

moving walls without it dragging her backwards and sending her out of control,

which she needed when the Bataf adjustments came, for they always threw off her

orientation no matter how precisely aligned she thought she was with those

below her.

But everyone in this group was a professional and they

worked the quiet danger without incident, flying a predictable pattern around

the various lift shaft tubes and avoiding the support struts as they continued

to fall miles after miles. The danger was real, but it seemed so quiet and

nobody was talking on comms or telepathically…at least not to her. She worried

that she might fall asleep and bump a wall, for this was boring as hell once

you got past the first hour.

But this was the mission and she was game to see it

through no matter how the challenges presented themselves. Focus was something

that an Archon was used to maintaining in all variety of situations…and in this

one, if you slipped up even once you were probably going to end up dead. And if

you went careening into others you’d take them with you.

Which was probably another reason why it was good that

she was at the back…from their point of view.

13 hours into their fall and the Ikrid orders came for

them to start slowing down, with them nearing the atmosphere and Ginsi knowing

that if they began to hit that the turbulence would put them into the walls.

Not waiting on the others, Ginsi pushed both arms out to either side and

created crashbags off each, touching the walls with her energy fields and

trying to force the contact down ahead of her at an angle. She pushed the

fields out, forcing herself to go higher with the process and feeling the first

tinglings of gravity in half a day, indicating that she was succeeding in

bleeding off at least a little speed.

Apparently it wasn’t enough, for she got three

different battlemeld prompts from below and accepted them all before she had a

chance to crash into anyone. Suddenly she was in a tripod of Bataf links

holding her still and slowing her down, leaving her with nothing to do but hold

onto the links. They were making it easy on her, but like she said earlier she

intended to pull her own weight so she kept her telekinetic vice operating as

much as she could manage while multitasking, lessening her weight for the

others to push on or pulling them up, depending on how you looked at it.

She wasn’t connected with all the Archons, just those

closest to her, but through the mind links she could feel that the others had

different battlemelds overlapping. That was something she’d never tried before,

but she could sense through the ripple of one mind to another that all 38 of

them were Bataf connected to one another and slowing as a fixed group to avoid

bumping into each other.

Impressive as that was, they weren’t going to bleed

off this much speed very fast. It was going to take time, and she hoped they’d

got their altitude guesses correct, for the battlemap signals weren’t

penetrating the column to orient themselves off of.

With the wind whipping by her inside the pitch black

null space, Ginsi finally got the signal from the others to split. She’d

already started spotting protrusions on her own Pefbar and from those she could

guess at their speed, but the irregularity was coming back again as they got

close to the surface and the structure altered into what would be a very wide