Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (7 page)

With detection systems and comm relays set up in

uninhabited systems in between her own, she had a detection grid that could

alert the rest of Star Force if a lizard fleet moved through her territory to

hit them directly, but to date that had never occurred and the lizards seemed

curiously interested in hitting her territory in an aggressive manner despite

the fact that they were losing handily everywhere else Star Force was engaging

them. Even now their core worlds were under assault, finally, after all this time,

yet still here they were, pressing back on her expansion and challenging her

ability to hold onto the planets she’d taken.

Part of Morgan missed the really big battles that were

going down, but these were personal and hard enough to win as it was. She trusted

the others to get the job done out there while she pushed the long term

objectives here…which was, and had always been, preparing for the day the

V’kit’no’sat came back. Hopefully they had millennia more to work with, for she

was painfully aware how unready they were now. Her Clan was growing, fast and

hard, forged under the pressures of constant battles and never having a moment

of peace.

She kept the internal pressure up on her people on

purpose, wanting to see who would break and who wouldn’t. It was done in a fair

and honest way, with everyone knowing just how hard being a member of Clan

Ninja Monkey was going to be and the fact that they might not last a month

here. So long as people were informed and warned prior to inclusion she didn’t

mind pressing them. They could always opt out, but if they didn’t and they

stayed, they’d be part of a very elite faction within Star Force.

But even with 17 systems, all of which were painfully

undeveloped, including Tor, her Clan was a small piece of the greater whole and

vastly inferior to the Bsidd. Morgan practically drooled with envy at the sheer

power and size that faction had become under Larissa’s direction. Their growth

rate was astonishing, even now that the rest of the empire wasn’t funneling

resources to them, and the bulk of the troops guarding the ADZ and pressing

into lizard territory were Bsidd.

Humans had become the shock troops, going where the

fighting was the toughest, but the Bsidd now made up the majority of Star

Force’s overall combat troops. Morgan didn’t begrudge them that status…she just

wanted the Ninja Monkeys to rise enough to even be in the discussion. Right now

their role was small, guarding a bit of the coreward border and doing their own

thing while hundreds of other agendas and missions were taking place across

Star Force territory. There were 99 other Clans out there, not to mention

dozens of factions larger than her personal holdings on the starmap.

But she’d put her people up against any others head to

head with equal numbers…that went for her combat troops down to her techs. Her

Clan had no civilian population. Everyone here was working on something to

better the Clan overall and that environment wasn’t unique to the Ninja

Monkeys, but it was the strongest here. Many people had stated in various

public records that they’d worked their asses off to qualify for Clan

membership with the intent on coming here because they were sick of the

‘civilian’ atmosphere within the rest of Star Force and they wanted to be part

of a united community. They wanted to be part of a team with a purpose.

And no Clan had a more obvious purpose than Morgan’s

Clan.

Maybe Davis had seen something in Yivati that had

warranted his inclusion here, but Morgan could vouch that Falconi had not been

twiddling his thumbs bored and needing a greater challenge. In fact the system

Davis had assigned him, while being larger and far older than Tor, was not as

taxing a position as Ninja Monkey Marquis had been. He’d told Morgan that

himself after the fact, making them both wonder why Davis had made the change.

He’d helped her build this new chapter in her Clan’s

history, and she missed his expertise badly right now. Yivati was not an

adequate replacement at the moment. Not even close.

But at the end of the day this was her Clan and was

run her way. People moving in and out wasn’t uncommon in the Clans, though it

was a bit odd at the higher ranks. That had changed once the new mandate had

come out, with a lot of people spending time in the ‘pressure cookers’ to test

and develop their higher end skills before transitioning back into Mainline or

Axius to a more normal posting.

Axius…that was another faction that Morgan was envious

of. Their integrated racial units were something that she’d been studying for a

long time, stealing what ideas she could in her military and civilian

alignments. Culture wasn’t an issue here, for all Ninja Monkeys ended up with

the same one given time. No, it was a matter of biologically fitting races

together into the most efficient packages.

Scionate worked well with Archons because they were

just as fast, if not faster over ground. An Archon could run as fast as they

liked and a Scionate unit could keep pace whereas Bsidd or Calavari were

downright sloths. That said, when you needed to hold a position the Bsidd were

very difficult to dislodge, and they themselves had different variants that

could be reorganized into numerous configurations. They were an army within an

army, and one that Morgan was still learning and experimenting with, for she

had a small chunk of her Clan made up of Bsidd recruits.

Then you had the fliers…Lacvamat, Hammid, and Triari

on the military front, then throw in a dozen others that could be incorporated

into tech or support roles. They were difficult to understand, in a tactical

sense, with the book still being written and new tech developed to allow them

to be efficient and effective rather than just tagalongs. Right now Morgan had

a solid group of Hammids that she was using as battlefield scouts and couriers,

and they too could keep up with an Archon on the run, but in a fight they did

poorly in comparison.

Then again a Human under water wasn’t all that

effective either. Elarioni were far superior, save that they lacked the

psionics that made Morgan a female version of Poseidon. Humans, and especially

Archons, could do everything. They’d learned tricks and how to train for even

the stuff they weren’t well built for, but Morgan knew that while that was a

necessity she didn’t dare do the same with the other races. She had to incorporate

their specialties while letting other Clans work on finding secondary

applications for them.

Morgan wasn’t going to have any fliers swimming, even

though there was some progress on that front elsewhere. And there was no point

whatsoever in having an Irondel trained as a Commando. They were the size of a

football and just as easy to kick. On their scale they definitely could fight,

but so many of the other races in the galaxy were larger than them that there

was little point in her Clan employing them in that regard.

What they were good at was fighting in mechs, or at

least specialized mechs. Because of their smaller size an identical mech to

what a Human piloted could be outfitted with stronger weapons, heavier armor,

or whatever else the extra volume that wasn’t necessary for the pilot to exist

within could be retasked for. That was one advantage she was exploring, though

she also knew that making specialized mechs could be a problem. Better to make

modifications to a Human mech to allow an Irondel to pilot it rather than make

a mech that a Human could not fit into if needed.

That said she was still looking into the possibility

of making stronger mechs for the smaller pilots, along with some other

applications that turned the little squirrel-like race into an advantage for

her Clan rather than baggage they had to carry.

That was one founding principle that she had set down

long ago. No one was carried here. If they couldn’t keep up they’d be washed

out, not in a mean way, because they’d go back into some other part of Star

Force that they were more suited for. They’d even have a chance to come back

later if they improved their skills, so Ninja Monkey culture hadn’t become a

nail biting endeavor with people worried about washing out. No, Morgan had specifically

seen to it that everyone knew and understood that this was a test of their

current abilities, not their potential. If someone wanted to be here badly

enough all they had to do was devote the years necessary to prep work, and even

if they failed in their first opportunity they’d be able to keep improving

until they were good enough to remain here under the increased standards and

schedule.

Her people were the best and not because they were

vicious with each other. They were supportive of one another, but they would

not cheat to keep someone here that didn’t belong. They’d expose weaknesses as

Morgan had asked them to, with those weak links being given a set of standards

to train to with an automatic return ticket if they completed that personal mission

elsewhere within the empire.

And Morgan wasn’t one to talk without doing, which was

why she was always in motion, even when resting, as she was now. Fighting on

the front didn’t allow for her to carry out all the administrative duties

required of her and she had a lot of catching up to do. She get through a few

hours of it here and now before she finally got some food and sleep, then in

the morning she’d be back here after her first round of workouts.

There was no one here to distract her, so even ten

minutes snagged from her demanding schedule could be of use. To that end she

worked now, planning out the development of one of her colonies’ cities that

had only just begun to establish a spaceport. Her plans for it were years in

the future, but she wanted them in place in case the fighting heated up and she

didn’t have a chance to get back to it later. Administrators could design and

build cities independently, but Morgan wasn’t going to leave anything to chance

within her territory.

Every bit of it was going to be by her design, and her

new Marquis and existing staff were here to assist her in fleshing out the Clan

as she liked, not doing it for her. Every unit, every building, every ship that

the Ninja Monkeys had determined how much territory she could take from the

lizards and hold, and Morgan was insistent on squeezing any and all advantages

out of the limited resources and personnel that she had.

Her Clan was badly outmatched by the V’kit’no’sat, and

she couldn’t stand to see the Ninja Monkeys progress slower than they were

capable of. They’d been very fortunate to go unnoticed thus far, and there were

no promises for tomorrow. She had to get her Clan to the point where it could

at least hold its own in a fight, and they were far from that now…against the

V’kit’no’sat anyway.

The lizards were another story, and truthfully she was

using them to hone her Clan for the real war to come. That was the only way

Morgan could stand to see the wall of lizard systems in front of her and not go

after them all. She had to keep the big picture in mind as much as that galled

her…and she was grateful that Davis had given her permission to take down as

many of them as she could, so she didn’t actually have to hold back with

regards to her Clan.

But she was a trailblazer, and all it would take was

one call and she’d have a fleet of Mainline or Bsidd on her doorstep and she

could gut punch the lizard empire before her that was growing stronger and more

bold by the day. Her Clan wasn’t holding back, but she still was, as was Star

Force on the whole. She wished that wasn’t necessary, but Morgan knew they

couldn’t chase the lizards much further toward the galactic core. If they

tipped the V’kit’no’sat off to their presence now it’d be over before the

fighting even began.

They weren’t ready, and damn it all, the lizards had to be ignored on the other side of

the line, but that didn’t meant she couldn’t use them as target practice for

her Clan. Every one of them they killed diminished their strength and could

potentially save some system out of their reach, so Morgan didn’t have any

qualms about poking them in systems that she couldn’t take just yet.

And the lizards were obligingly poking back, giving

her people the challenge needed to continue the transformation process into a

Clan that could one day stand against the V’kit’no’sat.

Sadly, that day was far away and Morgan could feel

their vulnerability as if it were an illness they were all stricken with…which

was why she worked constantly to combat and kill that illness. No one in Clan

Ninja Monkey worked harder or longer hours than Morgan did, and her people knew

it. She didn’t do it for them, but leading by example did have its benefits.

She just hoped that one of those would include her

Marquis living up to her example, and doing so sooner rather than later.

February 9, 3106

Solar System

Mars