Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (4 page)

shields kept most of it off, but he’d taken on such large groupings that some

of them had managed to peel that defensive layer off him a few times, resulting

in a bloodbath as the precision cuts left the lizards’ dismembered body parts

spurting blood as Paul passed through them.

This group was about six or seven hundred strong, but

they didn’t prove a challenge…nor did they flee. They all just stayed put and

kept shooting him, despite the fact they had no chance of stopping him. It was

mindless slaughter and the lizards were forcing it upon him, but when he got

finished with this group and was then going to be on his way back for a rest

and a new power pack something inside him snapped.

When he got to the last three lizards he slashed two

clean in half with a single move, each arm holding a blade that passed through

two lizards’ midsections and cleaving them as well as a couple of wrists in the

process. Rather than jump through them to the last lizard Paul checked up,

yanking the rifle out of the lizard’s hands and tossing it aside.

The standard variant snarled and ran to the side,

picking up another and aiming at Paul. The Archon let him fire twice, then he

also ripped it out of his grip with his telepathy.

The lizard did not run, instead scrambling around to

find another weapon in the bloody mess that was now the floor. This time Paul

wicked it away from his hands before he could get to it, then he froze the

lizard in place with a telekinetic grip around its waist.

“Why do you keep

fighting and dying?” Paul asked in lizard. “You can live. You can all live if you would just surrender. Why are you

forcing us to kill you?” he demanded, though he already knew his reasons.

After so many deaths by his own hand today his nerves were on edge, for enemies

they might be, but he did not like killing them, especially when they were this

helpless.

The lizard squirmed around, trying to wiggle out of

the Human’s invisible grasp.

“Answer me!”

Paul yelled, retracting his helmet with an energy shield still covering his

head just in case he’d missed another threat. He stared into the lizard’s pitch

black eyes with his own twinkling grey orbs. “This world holds billions of you. Do we really have to kill you all to

take it?”

The lizard snarled something in its own language that

translated as an insult but Paul didn’t let it go, nor did he kill it, he just

held it still and stared it down. Several minutes passed before he spoke again.

“Why are you

doing this?”

“I may not kill

you, but one of us will eventually,” the lizard finally answered.

“We are here to

stop you from killing everyone in the galaxy,” Paul said icily. “We don’t want your deaths.”

“Your words are

meaningless, Star Force. You will die like the rest of our enemies, no matter

how many of us it takes.”

“Do you care

nothing of being in the right?” Paul asked, sensing that he didn’t

understand the concept. “Are you certain

that we’re the enemy?”

“You kill us.

You are the enemy.”

“We only kill

you because you force us to. Surrender and you will live.”

“We will not

submit to you or anyone else. One may die, but the collective will survive.”

“You don’t care

about dying?”

The lizard didn’t answer, just trying to extricate

himself from the invisible hold, and Paul sensed that this conversation was

over, so he shoved him back a few meters and dumped him on the floor. He

tripped, with his tail catching on a corpse and flipping him over.

“Not today,”

Paul said, turning around casually and walking away. A few seconds later a

phaser hit struck the shield covering his head, but he ignored it. Several more

impacted his shields before he got to a doorway and disappeared around a

corner. A few seconds later the lizard came after him, getting another line of

sight on the Human, but before he could fire at his back both he and the weapon

were picked up off the ground and thrown back out the door.

The lizard immediately got back up and in pursuit, but

when he got around the corner the Human was gone. A short chase followed, but

he could find no trace of the slayer that had killed everyone else in his unit

but had left him alive. Eventually he retreated, falling back to find another

lizard unit to incorporate himself with and to receive new orders. Unless he

had a mission that required solo action, there was no benefit to operating

alone. Better to pool his strength with the others, which was the only way to

take down the heavily armored enemy infantry.

Paul made his way back to friendly lines…which was

kilometers away through the interior of the ring. When he got there he bypassed

the sentries and heavy defense posts as usual, but instead of checking into one

of the relief areas onboard that held Star Force facilities, some prefab, some

custom constructions, he headed to one of the protected hangar bays and boarded

a dropship. He had it deliver him back to the nearby parked Excalibur and went straight into one of

the most remote parts on the ship.

It was in the sanctum, a little corner of it that was

reserved for high ranking Archons. There was a special meditation chamber there

that had several different themes to it, with Paul heading for the one that was

based on Dagobah.

The entrance was open, with only an energy shield

separating the artificial corridor from the interior. He stepped through hit,

having to push a bit to allow him passage, for it was keeping the dense fog

contained within the ‘natural’ environment of the little park. As soon as he

got inside he did an about face, immediately stepping back outside the energy

barrier. He hit the release for his armor and had it peel apart across his

chest, arms, and legs with the helmet disappearing behind his neck.

Walking out of the metallic scarecrow he went back

inside, this time feeling the warm fog hit his face as soon as he entered. He

stood there for a moment, breathing it in and trying to get it to wash through

his senses. When it didn’t fully work he felt a pang of panic, but locked down

on it. Dropping to a knee, his sweat soaked uniform picked up a bit of mud from

the contact as he ran through a mental reset that he’d had to do a long time

ago.

After a few minutes that worked, but it wasn’t enough.

He needed to disconnect, think outside the box as he often did here, but even

though his armor hadn’t let any of the lizard blood through to his skin he

still felt covered in gore. The bastards were making Star Force fight like they

did in order to stop them, and even though he knew that wasn’t entirely correct

there was enough of it that was true to unsettle his stomach. They were taking

planets from them, but he still felt like they were losing, in ideology anyway,

and he had to find a way around this.

But as he thought it through he came to the same

conclusions he always did…if the lizards wouldn’t surrender and they wouldn’t

stop attacking people then they had to be destroyed. Unlike other races, if

they took them prisoner anyway they’d just kill themselves, so there was no

indoctrination/imprisonation option with them, nor was there an option of

taking their younglings away from them. Lizards didn’t learn their cultural

core through experience, but rather through genetic knowledge placed into their

coding before they were even born.

So there were no untainted younglings to rescue.

Lizards were produced as a product from genetic seeds. They were engineered to

be this way, and even if Star Force could find a way to fix that genetic code

to undo the inhibitors it would do no good for those alive and the planets not

under their control. Star Force could create a new lizard civilization, in

theory, one day but it wouldn’t change a damn thing. The current one would

still have to be fought or destroyed, meaning that this blood bath had to

happen or these bastards would continue to conquer and destroy all the weaker

races they came across until they consumed the galaxy…or ran into the

V’kit’no’sat.

But by that time they’d have grown so large that it

almost wouldn’t matter. Not for the little guys out there. Paul and the others

had to take these bastards out now before they could kill more, but they were

forcing Star Force to make it a blood bath and something in Paul’s gut didn’t

like the feel of that. In the past he hadn’t like it either, but when they were

a greater threat it seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

Now though, these lizards honestly didn’t stand a

chance against him aside from some fluke. He could kill them so easily, in so

many ways, that there was literally no point in fighting. It was an automatic

loss for them, but they were forcing him to kill them anyway, wasting their

lives by the trillions in this war.

Paul had killed so many over the past couple years on

this ring that he had no idea how many he was personally responsible for, but

he may very well have been in 7 or 8 digit range by now. And while he wasn’t in

much danger he couldn’t say the same for his troops. They were hard to kill and

this station was confined compared to ground combat, but there were still

casualties mounting. In order to protect them he had to kill as many of the

lizards as he could, and right now he should be back down there, resting up for

a bit then going back out again, but something inside him was throwing up a red

flag.

So he’d come here, and now he couldn’t get his head

clear. And not because of something unique to today, but he was realizing that he

had been blind to something for a very long time. He didn’t know what it was, but

he could feel a little corner in his mind starting to peel back, one that

suggested he had a sheet of fog over his mind and now that he’d noticed it he

couldn’t let it go.

The little peak he was getting made him feel like he

was mentally suffocating and hadn’t even realized it previously. He had to get

a clean ‘breath’ in, but right now he just knelt on the ground unable to

mentally figure out how to do that with the lizard gore all over his state of

mind.

On impulse he stood up and began stripping off his

uniform. Shirt, shoes, pants…everything went in a pile on the muddy ground and

he walked off through the fog feeling his toes sinking into the grime.

But it was a cleansing grime, a ‘holy’ grime, and Paul

felt his mind slacken just a touch more. He got the feeling he needed to run

away as far as he could, so to that end he headed past the partially submerged

X-wing to the back side of the chamber…which had holographic walls and cleverly

designed terrain to give the feeling that you were on a wide open planet. He

could see through it with his Pefbar but he never turned it on in here, wanting

to drink up as much ambiance as possible.

Paul found a little pond, barely an offshoot of a

larger one, with holographic frogs, snakes, and other wildlife surrounding it.

The sounds of the swampy forest were all around him as he sat down on the edge

of the pond, barely bigger than a hot tub, and slid in feet first underneath a

thick root. He had to wedge himself through the small gap, but when he got

underneath it he found it was deeper than he’d expected. He went all the way

under and held himself there, hiding from the planet, the fleet, and even the

other Archons on this ship.

He mentally made himself so small he disappeared, and

even through this chamber was shielded against telepathy he engaged his Kgat,

making his mental signature vanish had there been any telepaths within the

chamber. Paul let himself go anonymous, disappearing from anywhere and

everywhere while sinking into a seated position on the muck at the bottom of

the dirty water hole with a cage of roots over his head.

The trailblazer held his breath, but it wasn’t much of

an effort. His focus was on disconnecting from anything and everything, even to

the point that he wasn’t planning on going back to the fight, the war, or even

the ADZ. There was no tomorrow, no duties, missions, or have-tos of any kind.

All there was was this moment, and everything that had an influence over him,

directly or indirect, he released. No one in the universe mattered right now,

it was just him and his little pond on Dagobah. He even let himself forget he

was on a ship, soaking in his surroundings on the mysterious world from Star

Wars lore.

Before his lungs ran out of oxygen he slowly came to

the surface, the top of his head poking out of the water until his nose cleared

the waterline. It bumped against a root and he held there very still for a

moment, eyes closed as he felt the air on his wet forehead that was dripping

rivulets off his bangs. He was silent, but the forest around him was not. Wisps

of fog flowed past him, interfering with his vision and sometimes completely

eclipsing his sight…which finally sold his mind on the disconnected thing.

Paul was a Jedi in the swamps of Dagobah, and suddenly