Star Force: Perquisition (6 page)

Cloning was always an option, but one that Davis had
warned against. He’d stated that Star Force was going to allow natural birthing
procedures rather than trying to automate it, and they’d held to that with the
development of each faction. For the Bsidd that didn’t mean much, for they laid
eggs and that was the end of their natural procedure. In the case of Human and
Calavari they carried their young internally until they were fully developed,
then gave birth to functioning, albeit marginal, individuals.

The Protovic had the same procedure, only it was
halved. They carried their young through the first phase of development, then
gave birth to the egg sacks that operated independently through the final
phase. Cloning, in this case, would involve bypassing that first stage and
creating artificial wombs to grow the egg sacks in and, like Davis, he didn’t
have a good feeling about that even if their biotech was to the point where
that was possible.

But the more Protovic that he brought in from outside
sources would mean more egg sacks that would then be fed into maturias, in
addition to the individuals that had to go through indoctrination to enter.
That would certainly help the
Protovic’s
population rate
increase, but there was something appealing about the idea of gathering up the
scattered remains of ‘lost’ colonies and rescuing them from their plights.
Because, let’s face it, sending out or setting up colonies across space and
letting them fend for themselves against who knows what was just plain cold.

Trey’s notes had said that these Oranges had once been
a highly advanced civilization that had been blasted back into the stone ages.
No one had come to help them, and the few that had survived had spawned the
primitive people that he’d found and come to be friends with. In his gut Brad
knew he wanted to bring in everyone like that they discovered, but what about
the others?

He still wasn’t sure, and their independent Protovic
ally wasn’t about to join Star Force. That had been established long ago and
they were basically brothers sharing the same dorm room that was the ADZ. More
than neighbors, but they weren’t going to be annexed into the empire. How many
others out there should be, or would want to be? For that matter, how many of
them were out there in the first place?

Brad had more questions than answers at this point,
but the first Oranges should be reaching
Broj
within
a month and he was curious to see how well they adapted and hoped he could
learn enough from them to build a larger program to help reunite at least some
of the scattered Protovic, regardless of whether or not they were able to
collect a full-colored deck.

6

February 27, 3007

Aphat
System (Bsidd
Region)

Nym

Brad watched from the side of the sparring ring as one
of his senior Protovic Commandos was taking on two of the Oranges in hand to
hand combat and having a tough time at it, but moderately prevailing. He was
the stronger of the three, but not by as much as he was used to. These Oranges
were only a few years out of the maturia and yet the pair were giving him
almost as much resistance as he could handle, with only his experience allowing
him to take advantage of their coordination issues to let him get the best of
them.

Undaunted, every time one of the Commandos in training
were knocked down they’d spring back to their feet like a veteran, save for the
fact they weren’t. Such reflexes and agility were typically reserved for those
who had put in a century of solid training, but as Brad had seen for himself
throughout their maturia development the Oranges were different from the rest
of the Protovic and he was glad that he’d kept them all grouped together rather
than mix the maturias, else there would have been problems.

All Protovic used the same standards, but he’d had to
constantly revise the maturia program for the Oranges to take into account
their physical superiority. Integrating them into the rest of his civilization
was less of an issue, for there were other Protovic stronger than them but at
the cost of years. A lot of the Oranges were leaping ahead in the Commando
division because of their advantage, though the other segments of the military
and society overall didn’t focus selectively on the physical skills were only
moderately affected. More of a nice bonus to the skills they had to learn and
develop, but with the Commandos there was an inequity involved that was
resulting in the development of egos.

All of Star Force was predicated on earned
advancement, which these Oranges were essentially skipping in the early stages.
That gave them a false sense of superiority that Brad needed to quash while his
Protovic civilization was still young. Give it enough time to develop some
depth and this wouldn’t be an issue, but with very few veterans that could
surpass the Oranges at present there was a lack of understanding on their part
when they weren’t being given equal assignments and being treated like the
younglings they were.

So Brad had brought the top 50 Oranges here for a
lesson, beginning with his veterans showing them that they were still ahead of
the
newbs
with orders from Brad to expose as many of
the Oranges’ weaknesses as possible, both as a cure to their ego and as a way
of making them solid enough that he could entrust them with some of the
leadership positions. Right now
Makron
was doing a
good job of proving that he could handle not one, but two of them at once,
though what he was reading in the Oranges’ minds that were watching the
sparring match and waiting their turn was not what he wanted.

They were finding excuses where they didn’t exist,
lying to salve their egos…and those had to be removed, one way or another.

When
Makron
was finished
with this pair he took a break and another veteran, this one a Red, went one on
one with an Orange.
Hadrick
was younger than
Makron
, but still one of their top Commandos with more than
4 decades of combat experience against the lizards. He was part of a small unit
that had fought in the
Gvaris
System alongside the
Clans and was thoroughly ticked at the attitudes of some of the Oranges…which
he was taking out on them now, though he couldn’t handle a 2v1 like
Makron
could.

He did take on three in a row, then one of the Oranges
that hadn’t fought yet walked up to Brad and stared him down.

“If the point of this is to show that we’re not the
best, you’re wasting your time, Archon. We already know that.”

“Do you?” Brad asked quizzically as the 50 Oranges, 12
Purples, and 6 Reds took notice and started taking a few steps closer as they
listened.

The Orange,
Benthral
,
nodded. “Yes we do. We’re close, but not there yet, though it’s only a matter
of time.”

“Your advantage is a head start,” Brad corrected him.
“Do not assume you will level up faster than the others.”

“But we already have,”
Benthral
countered.

“No, you passed through levels that you only had to
work on a few skill areas to complete. Only now are you reaching levels where
nearly everything requires an enhancement to achieve. I’ve seen nothing to
indicate that you will level up through those any faster than the others,
Protovic or other races alike.”

“We’re better than them,” the Orange insisted. “It’s
just a matter of time until we hold all the top slots.”

Brad sighed and shook his head. “You think you know
better than me?”

“I am wondering why you are missing the obvious,” he
said respectfully.

“The Commando rankings, along with all others within
the military, are designed to mark what you are capable of here and now. They
are not determined by past actions, nor by future predictions. A level 10
Commando is the same as all other level 10s regardless of how many years it
took them to get to that position. They measure the destination, not the length
of the journey.”

“Our journeys are starting off on a more rapid pace
that will continue past them,”
Benthral
said,
pointing to the Protovic that had just finished defeating the other Oranges.

“You assume,” Brad insisted. “You may be right, you
may be wrong. Do not count on anything or you will find yourselves in a world
of trouble,” he said, addressing them all. “I have seen many Commandos, Archons
even, advance rapidly through the levels to a point, then they plateau until
they can find a way past it. Upgrading yourselves is not automatic, nor can you
do the same things repetitively and get the same results. You constantly have
to adapt and adjust to the challenges before you, and because of that you never
know what tomorrow will bring.”

“But I can see words are mostly pointless right now.
Your minds are made up. You are better than them, despite the fact that they
just kicked your asses. Perhaps the level of ass kicking needs to be higher in
order for you to absorb the lesson in it,” he said, pointing to the ring. “All
of the Oranges, now. The veterans get to stand by and watch this one.”

There were several questioning glances on both sides
as they moved, some away from the ring and others into it, packing it full of
Oranges whose collective ego was stifling. Brad wanted to beat it out of them,
but that wouldn’t work here. He had to embarrass them in order to get them
self-analyzing.

The trailblazer walked to the side of the ring and
stopped just outside it.

“Your mission is simple. Knock me to the ground and
you win,” he said, then stepped inside and hesitated for a moment, raising his
left hand and beckoning them forward with only his middle finger.

Before they could even register the insult he moved in
a flash to his right and drove a palm into one of their chests, punching him
backwards and into two others before playfully hopping back to his starting
position.

“What? You don’t want to play? Or am I just too fast
for your superior reflexes?”

One of the Oranges smirked, finding the sarcasm funny,
and jogged towards Brad for a few steps…but the Archon didn’t respond to him.
Instead he sidestepped him entirely, darting over to another Orange that was
standing still and knocked his legs out from under him with a lightning quick
leg sweep that came up into a stiffened knee that knocked another Orange onto
his back with a blow to the chest.

“Come on guys, or are you just going to sit there and
wait your turn. If you really think you have superior skills, then impress me.”

Egotistical as they were, these were still Star Force
Protovic and they relished a challenge, suddenly reorganizing themselves into
attack groups and communicating with hand signals to try and get a good angle on
their opponent. It was rare when they had a chance to spar against a Human, let
alone an Archon. The chance to go up against a trailblazer was rarer than rare,
and he could sense they figured they had a chance if all 50 of them worked
together.

He didn’t bother telling them in words that they didn’t,
knowing that this was a lesson they had to learn directly through experience.

Making a conscious choice not to use his psionics,
Brad gave a taunting laugh and hurled himself ahead and to the right, taking
down three of the Oranges so fast the others barely had time to respond, then
the Archon moved off and paused just long enough to laugh again, then he zipped
to his left and knocked another down, ending with a slow, theatrical twirl that
left him standing like a statue in partial bow.

“I’m getting bored, fellas,” he said as his face was
down towards the ground, then he darted to his right and knocked down another
pair, one with each hand as he drove palms into torso so fast and so hard they
couldn’t have stayed on their feet even if they’d had time to prepare. “Any
time now.”

That last taunt and his dance-like twirl with his
hands spread wide spurred all 50 of them into a frenzy, coming at him from
multiple directions. He responded with a yawn, covering his mouth with his left
hand before whipping it around and grabbing the neck of one of the Oranges. He
used the leverage there and tossed him across his body and into two others,
knowing that his exoskeleton would keep his neck from snapping in the process.
From there Brad made several sharp movements, dodging some of the incoming
blows and landing a few of his own that spurted a body or two out above the
crowd as the veterans looked on from out of bounds with varied expressions of
humor and satisfaction.

The trailblazer would fight in a flash, then find a
brief hole in their group and take a
micropause
long
enough to throw another taunt before returning to fighting. He did it again and
again, laughing while he was dodging and doing it literally right in their
faces so much that the Oranges were starting to get mad. All 50 of them
couldn’t even land a single blow to his body, let alone take him down to the
ground or force him out of bounds. The spectacle continued for several
gratifying minutes until he knocked several of them back long enough to give
himself a bit of a podium to speak from.

“Enough,” he said, holding up a hand to keep the
others back, then pointing to the spectators. “Let’s give you younglings some
help, though I doubt it will do much good. All of you come at me, and remember
this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow,” Brad said before
lunging back into the Oranges and bowling a dozen of them over before offering
another taunting laugh as he danced over their bodies and back into a gap in
the crowded ring.

“Oh great,”
Makron
said,
heading for the ring. “We are so going to get our asses kicked.”

“Probably,”
Laantrel
agreed,
“but there’s only one of him. Try and grab an arm or leg when he hits you and
we might get lucky.”

“Worth a try,”
Makron
said
as he ran into the ring along with the other 17 veterans, making it a 68 v 1
with Brad continuing to laugh and taunt even though there was virtually no room
left in the ring for him to hide in, yet he still found a calm moment here and
there to gesture in mocking fashion.

“Come on, you fight like
Gnar
,”
he said between ducking and dodging several attacks without hitting back. “Are
you guys fast or what?”

Two of the veterans ran towards him with their arms
interlocked into a clothesline…the best attempt yet, but he ducked underneath
it by dropping down to his knees in a short slide, then kicking back at one of
them to launch himself into a handstand that he immediately flipped out of.
Acrobatics aside, the longer one spent inverted the more vulnerable they were,
especially when he wasn’t using Pefbar to augment his situation awareness.

Brad dropped back to the mat with his butt kissing his
heels as three arms swung above him, missing his head and giving him a good
counterpunch opportunity, but he passed on it. He didn’t need these guys
disoriented from body blows, he wanted them thinking and hearing his insults
clearly, so he rolled out between two of them and ran a couple steps, avoiding
their tackle so quick and smooth he barely brushed against their bodies on the
way out.

“You…guys…are so…damn…slow,” he said, weaving in and
out of them despite there being no visible room to maneuver, then he got to the
side of the ring and almost comically knocked two out of bounds. “Oops…sorry,”
he said, ducking back in and maneuvering for moments to utter a word or two
between whiffs, “did you…want…to stay in?”

The two Protovic that got knocked, one a Red and the
other an Orange, glanced at each other as they sat on the floor, both perturbed
by the mocking, and got back up and moving into the ring again this time
focused on getting the Human. Their rivalry temporarily forgotten, they worked
together with hand signals they all had learned in their identical training and
began to organize what had quickly become a rabble.

The coordination and sentiments spread quickly, with
the veterans implementing some strategies the Oranges hadn’t thought
of…including sending several bodies down to the floor before the Archon knocked
them down to act like land mines, trying to trip him up with kicks or grabs as
he hopped over and through them. One got hold of his left leg for a split
second, turning Brad around but he just spun out of it and danced over the
roadblocks.