Star Force: Trials (SF68) (2 page)

The Voro’nam’s tail swung towards him but missed, then
it rotated around in a full circle and charged after him, head low enough to
the ground to show Jason the tips of those spikes on the back of its domed head.
While the training simulators couldn’t replicate psionics, neither could they
replicate any energy expenditures, leaving them simply hand to hand practice
tools, otherwise a ruby red beam of energy would have been coming off those and
sniping him down.

It wasn’t the same type of energy as what the Hjar’at
had
, but a type of slow moving laser-
esk
bioweapon that could be used to shoot enemies off their backs or tail, but
could also be used in a limited forward arc when they lowered their head such
as this. Rit’ko’sor especially liked to jump and land on the backs of their
opponents, and Voro’nam was one race that had been genetically engineered to
counter that threat.

Jason knew that, but as long as this hologram didn’t
have them then he was still going to hop on and off the thing whenever
possible. He couldn’t beat this thing, and never had been able to pass even the
first level tests due to his simple lack of concussive damage. Unless he could
get some hard hits in the internal counting mechanism wouldn’t give him any
credit for the light taps he was attempting to lay down now and the sparring
match would continue indefinitely.

To Jason that was a challenge he couldn’t refuse, plus
he wanted the practice for if he ever went up against one of these things in
real life. It’d have its weaponry, he’d have his armor, so he figured this was
about as fair of a training
sim
as he could imagine.
And as a
sim
, none of his Ikrid tricks would work on
the thing, so he was going to have to use brute force alone…which was laughable
given the matchup he was in, for he had no brute force to work with, relatively
speaking.

Jason kept playing with the thing, ducking and dodging
for several minutes before he finally made an attempt to land a heavy blow.
After getting use to the Voro’nam’s movement patterns he baited it into another
spin then yanked down telekinetically on its tail as hard as he could, forcing
it to drag across the ground and slow the spin to a stop. The Voro’nam’s legs
got twisted up underneath it and it stumbled for a moment, dropping to a knee
as Jason darted forward with a Yetu running burst and aimed directly for the
top of its horizontal back as it sat head up and tail down.

His sprint arced ever so slightly into a jump that
brought him elbow first down onto the place where tail transitioned into torso.
Without armor on his elbow he impacted the holographic representation of a
hard, callous plate that sent tingles up his arm on impact as he nailed his own
funny bone, but the Voro’nam sunk slightly with the hit, which was enough time
for Jason to whip himself away and kick off into another jump that got him clear
of the damn tail as it swung around again to nail him as the Voro’nam sat on
the floor, leaning forward with both arms and shuffling frantically to create
the momentum swing.

“Check that hit,” Jason said to the Metal Gears as he
continued to evade as the Voro’nam came after him again. He didn’t bother to
look at the distant Archons, knowing that if he lost his focus and this thing
even stepped on him with its small legs he’d end up in the med bay.

“Two point six!” he heard one of them yell back, but
that number impressed him far less than the observers. He was hoping at least
for a 4, with other Voro’nam typically registering 12 or better with even their
light grazes against each other.

Jason kept trying for another half hour then stopped
before he got too loopy and made a mistake. Rather than use the far controls he
simply linked into the telepathic array, finding the node in the ceiling and
shutting the hologram down directly. The dangerous Voro’nam disappeared in the
blink of an eye with just a hint of
pseudomotion
as
it vanished, then Jason walked back over to the very stunned onlookers.

“That’s why we need to shoot the things,” he explained
to the rangers and strikers. “We can’t land blows that do more than tickle
them. If you ever find yourself up against one of these things, run away, find
a damn mech, then go kick its ass. You can’t do it hand to hand.”

2

August 20, 2822

Solar System

Earth

Jason’s dropship flew him across the planet to the
opposite pole, taking him from the Antarctic pyramid up to a brand new city
built in the Arctic Ocean. Technically it was sitting in the ice, poking up
above the surface while its substructures went all the way down into the
seafloor. The city was a third bigger than Atlantis and her copies that covered
Earth’s oceans, but there were no civilians here, nor Star Force employees.
This city had but one purpose, and that was to house the elite Archon Trials.

Davis and Wilson had designed it together, leaving the
Archons out of the equation. The first major Trials had happened 8 years ago
and were located in a number of other facilities reconfigured to utilize the
new challenges Wilson had devised…but he’d gone all out on this facility and
hadn’t let the Archons know what half of it contained. Part of the Trials was
empire status marks, but Wilson had also added individual Trials so that
Archons, like the trailblazers, could rack up scores even when they weren’t on
Earth. Those Jason was familiar with, but everything else here was going to be
a surprise.

The first Trials had resulted in Clan Sangheili
gaining a chunk of the first prize system, which they’d then traded away to
Clan Scorpion, but the biggest winners were Clan Joanna and Clan Badass
Mongoose, who took the top two prizes. Megan and Bo now each had a planet of
their own within the
Neffa
System, while the rest of
it had been divvyed up amongst the other Clans that earned at least small
victories. Given how many subcategories there were some 28 Clans had gained
territory there, but the current system they were working on was
Chorra
and it had more than twice the territory to be
handed out, with a good 60% of it coming from what happened over the next month
in the primary Trials.

None of the Archons had been allowed within the Trials
facility until today, which left Jason arriving more or less at the same time
as the others. As his dropship approached the city that aptly was named
Solitude, there were hundreds of others in the airspace with many more already
on their way down from orbit or across the surface. Jason had arrived early to
get some training in at the pyramid, but the rest of his Clan was coming down
from orbit over the next three days, after which the first round of the Trials
would begin.

He was bringing some 1,023 Archons, Knights, and
Regulars with him, all of whom were upper level and arguably the best the Clan
had. They would be doing what he didn’t know for sure, but as soon as he landed
he guessed he would find out…unless Wilson meant to keep it a surprise up until
the moment the Trial began, which
was a distinct possibility
knowing the man’s tendencies. The previous Trials had been his typical brand of
challenging, with all the Trailblazers feeling like they were back in basic
again. That had prompted them all to return for this one, including Morgan, who
virtually never got involved in the ongoing Trials save for her individual
marks.

Those she was racking up in one of the new Elite
Sanctums that the trailblazers had collectively agreed to build. There were a
scattering across the major Star Force systems like Sol and Epsilon Eridani,
but most of them were within the Clans themselves. His Clan had only built one,
which would service only mages and up going forward. That meant there were only
32 Archons within Clan Sangheili that could use it, yet it was the largest
sanctum they possessed and held a lot of new training equipment and challenge
courses, most of which Wilson was responsible for. He’d really taken Davis’
mandate to heart and was helping the Clans up their game by playing adversary
and subjecting them to a whole new level of
badassery
.

And the trailblazers were losing to his
challenges…which they totally liked. Not the losing thing per se, but what it
meant was they had real challenges to overcome now and that was something
they’d been sorely missing. When Jason and the others had built new challenges
for themselves they always knew how to beat them, in theory anyway, once they
got strong enough, but with Wilson you had no clue what was coming and had to
figure it out on the go.

To put it simply, you couldn’t hide your own Easter
eggs. And with this new mandate Wilson had taken the reins of Easter Bunny away
from the trailblazers, for the most part, and returned them to being the searchers…which
was why they were all coming here, eager to fight it out with the rest of the
Clans, but just as eager to see what Wilson was going to throw at them.

The elite sanctums were restricted to the upper levels
because, literally, they were too dangerous for any of the weaker Archons.
There were tons of safety protocols in place, but everything was built for the
expectations of strength, speed, and agility far beyond what an adept could
produce. There literally weren’t any ‘easy’ settings on the basic challenges,
meaning that though the sanctum held the same stuff you’d see in a normal
version, it was all supped up to the point where lesser Archons simply couldn’t
use it.

Jason liked that idea so much that he had started to
see the normal sanctums as kiddy playgrounds. He used them when he needed, and
they did have settings for mages and beyond, but he just felt at home in the
elite sanctum and spent most of his training time there in isolation.
Occasionally a few other mages would be training at the same time, but they were
almost always off on missions, leaving the elite sanctums across Star Force
territory empty most of the time. Clan Saber had the most mages of any Clan,
currently sitting at 57, but that was going to climb greatly as the larger number
of Archons behind them started to catch up.

Originally there had been only one class per year, if
that, but now they were graduating approximately 30 Archon classes every
calendar rotation and that number was rising along with the Human population.
It was never fixed, for it was derived from the amount of candidates that
passed the tests, but the further you went down the timeline the more Archons
there were, meaning that eventually the elite sanctums would start to fill up
with mages as they earned the rank. As it was, Jason and the other trailblazers
were nearing the end of their dark blue armor status.

He was currently a level 498 mage and ranked 7th among
the Archons. Ahead of him one level was Ryan, with the other five already
having transitioned to the next 500 level rank of
Titan
that came with the golden armor. They were Greg, Kerrie,
Aaron, Paul, and of course Morgan. She currently held a level 11 titan ranking,
putting her 12 ahead of him. That was a chunk of training that would take him
anywhere between 5 and 10 years to catch up to, though you never knew for sure
how you were going to advance through each level. Some were harder than others,
and with all 5 skill divisions having to be mastered it was always your weak
area that determined your upgrade timetable.

For Jason and a lot of the Archons that was aquatics,
but for Morgan it was currently aerial that was her lowest area. Her commando
skills were 42 levels above Jason’s, so the Archon rankings were a bit
deceiving as to who could beat who in a fight and really a mark of overall
skill, but he was still surprised that he had held so close to her after all
these centuries. Right now the lowest ranking trailblazer was mage 424 and that
was Clark-066, with the next closest Archon to him being level 392. There was
definitely a gap between the trailblazers and the others that was widening a
bit with time, which was both good news and bad.

The second gen should have been closer than that, and
aside from Kara they’d been losing ground slowly. On the up side Ginsi was
continuing to tear her way up the ranks for Clan Croft. Her pace had slowed a
bit from early on, but she was now a level 45 striker and pretty much leveling
up twice as fast as everyone else. Her primary area of expertise wasn’t clear,
for every time she gained a few levels in one area she’d shunt her training
focus to the weak one, keeping all 5 marks basically the same. Jason doubted
she’d catch up to the trailblazers, but it was impressive to see her working
her way through the training so fast.

His own scores were increasing in pace now that Wilson
was feeding them new challenges, and it was clear to Jason that Ginsi wasn’t so
much a prodigy as much as she was a peer. The difference was that every level
the trailblazers advanced was crude, for they were pushing the limits and
actually writing the level requirements ahead of them. Those usually didn’t get
revised, but the more Archons that passed through them essentially left notes
for others to come so they could maximize their training effectiveness for all
the tricks needed. Ginsi was getting the benefit of all of that, so if her
badass skills were on par with Jason’s then she should be leveling up faster
than he did.

Taryn had said she was bringing her to these Trials
despite her lower rank, and Jason was curious to see if she had any magic in
her. Archons loved a challenge and she was basically getting thrown in over her
head. It would be fun to watch, but if she came up against Jason he was taking
her down quickly. Clan points mattered, and everyone was going to be fighting
for each and every one they could get, as they should be. Territorial
allotments aside, this was the type of competition that they needed to really
ratchet up their advancement.

When Jason’s dropship landed it came in through an
atmospheric shield that kept the polar air out so that the crews could operate
without wearing envirosuits. Jason stepped out into room temperature air
despite the sky overhead being clear of any machinery. The shield was just a
bubble covering the landing area, with a few other dropships coming down in
through it as his unloaded him then took off again, heading back to where it
had come. Only the crews necessary to facilitate the Trials would be staying
here, meaning all dropship pilots would be stationed in nearby cities and
called for when transport was needed.

Jason had come without gear, knowing he could get
whatever he needed here, so he walked across the landing pad and into a wall
entrance with free hands and a clear head, looking around almost like a tourist
to see what Davis and Wilson had built. He ducked into a tunnel and walked down
two levels until he came to a reception area with a check-in desk.

“Mr. Sangheili himself,” a male attendant said,
pulling out a
datachip
from a special batch and
handing it to him. “All instructions needed. I’m not allowed to say any more.”

“Who’s orders?” Jason asked curiously.

“Head Trainer Wilson. Please step into the car and
insert the chip.”

Jason smiled and walked towards one of the three pod
cars with open doors. He chose the middle one and stepped inside, pivoting
around and finding a tiny slot on a wall panel but no other controls. He slid
it in and the doors closed, taking him elsewhere in the facility.

He half expected there to be a holographic interface,
maybe a brief explanation of where he and the other Sangheili would be
billeted, but nothing happened. He couldn’t feel the movement of the pod due to
the artificial gravity and IDF so he just waited in silence, not knowing how
long it would take. After what seemed like a long time he began to wonder so he
pushed out his Pefbar to look through the walls and see how fast the pod was
moving…which was when he realized he couldn’t. He could see everything around
him inside the pod, but not past the walls.

“What the hell?” he said, spinning about and looking
with his eyes. He reached out to touch the walls but stopped short as a slight
buzz sounded over his head. He saw the energy shield materialize there both
with his eyes and Pefbar a moment before the floor dropped out from under him.

He fell fast, brushing up against his hip into the
angled tube of a dry waterslide that was completely dark. Jason could make out
the interior of the tube with his Pefbar though, but again he couldn’t see
through it. His mind went through several scenarios in a split second, with him
knowing in his gut this was Wilson’s doing even before the short ride ended and
he exited the tube into freefall.

His Pefbar opened up around him just in time to make
out the wall of water below him. He hit it butt first and smacked the back of
his head on his way in, getting a jet of water up his nose in the process that
he clamped down on. The pool was deep and he couldn’t find the bottom for a
moment, but he could still see the surface with his Pefbar so he clawed towards
it as he forced himself to tolerate the water in his airways knowing that his
Hanme would start giving his bloodstream the oxygen stored in nodules around
his body automatically.

Having no knowledge that this was coming he was caught
off guard, but pulled himself together enough to get himself to the surface.
When his head came up into the air he coughed out the water and used a
telekinetic wedge to move it out of his nose that his Pefbar allowed him to see
internally. Treading water he tried to get his bearings, unable to see the
bottom of the water or anything else around him in the pitch black. Wherever he
was it felt like a void, with only the distant ceiling just barely registering
to him.

He kept his senses keen, not knowing what was coming
next. If this was a test by Wilson then it was also a signal that there were no
holds barred, for one didn’t mess with water in training situations unless one
had knowledge of it going in. It was very easy to drown when you got dunked,
for with the loss of air also came confusion and disorientation, with the
submerged person not knowing which way was up. Jason’s mind flashed back to his
childhood and the few times he’d dunked others in the pool and got dunked
himself, never realizing how stupid they were being.