Star Force: Bloodlust (SF54) (4 page)

What he did have were casualty numbers and travel
logs, both the
Lacvamat’s
copies of the passage of
vessels through the system in question and
all
of Star Force’s logs for the surrounding systems and the now exploded ship.

Davis had already backtracked it to several locations,
all of which Donn quickly put into a file as places of interest. The owner was
an independent shipper that possessed only the single vessel, which had been
modified three times in varying shipyards, none of which were Star Force. It
was a Lemickas large-scale hauler, capable of carrying large pieces of
machinery or a vast amount of cargo, making this independent shipper in a league
with those that possessed a dozen or so smaller vessels. The Scionate in
question apparently wanted all his eggs in one big, decently armed basket…for
one of the modifications made to the vessel were light defensive weapons that
included some beefy missile racks that would keep most low level pirates at
bay.

Nothing unusual had happened, as far as the official
logs were concerned, at any of the previous port calls for the ship, leaving as
Davis suggested a ‘dead end’ that basically meant this was a free attack.
Without an enemy declared the Lacvamat would have no one to strike back
against…legitimately, though they might just pick one based on suspicions or
circumstantial evidence so they could appear to be doing something. If that
happened Star Force might actually end up fighting
them
in order to prevent the injustice.

But Donn knew he couldn’t let whoever did this get
away with it or, like Davis had so pointedly commented, it would most likely
lead to other races or factions seeing an opportunity to strike at their
enemies under the radar and turning the ADZ into a clandestine war zone.

The truth about what had happened had to come out, and
it looked like whoever had done this had covered their tracks well. Donn just
hoped his skills were up to the task to ferret this out, regardless of whether
or not their mysterious attacker had made a mistake. Hopefully he had, but if
not there were other ways, Donn knew, to find answers…especially when you had
the ability to read minds.

But he couldn’t do anything here, so he was glad that
Paul had left him in combat up until the last moment so he didn’t have to sit
and wait in orbit. Shortly after Donn got out of his armor and into the shower
the transport made a microjump in a convoy under escort out to the waiting jumpship
where the smaller transports all attached within the exterior hold and were
encased in the big ship’s IDF, making their piggyback ride into the star
effortless as they floated in place and were attached to the jumpship’s
superstructure by flimsy pylons that never would have been capable of the
stresses of the ship simply turning to starboard without the IDF holding them
all in place.

Donn stayed in his quarters reviewing the data that
Davis had sent him for several hours before transferring over to the jumpship
and indulging in the sanctum there, splitting his time between training and
data analysis as he waited out the journey back deeper into Beta Region where
he was going to pick up a few old friends and make some new ones along the way.

This mystery was a huge one, and he wasn’t about to
tackle it alone.

4

October 2, 2552

Vannsep
System (Beta
Region)

Leerbot

The
Rover
-class
jumpship braked against the Lacvamat planet’s gravity well, coming out high
enough to avoid the orbital blockade of the avian race’s warships that had the
quarantine still firmly in place. The jumpship was only three times the size of
a Star Force heavy cruiser and fell within the ‘scout’ family, with the
exception that the rovers were armed warships designed to function as both
transport and escort for personnel transfers when a full warship wasn’t an
option…and with every one needed on the front the rover had been the obvious
choice of transport for Donn and his adhoc team, given that they didn’t know
how many different worlds they would be needing to visit.

He’d picked up his ride at Iona along with a third of
his crew, two of which were medtechs, four Archons that he personally knew, two
more that he didn’t but that were insystem with skill sets he wanted, three
Kiritak crewers and a Human Captain for the rover, and an eight member special
ops squad from the Kiritas. The others he had accumulated at two other stops
enroute to
Vannsep
, including a Knight he’d come across
accidentally while in a spaceport, who was transitioning back to Earth for
extensive medical work on battlefield injuries…including a severed arm.

Donn had gotten permission to pick up a regenerator in
Iona, so having that with him he grabbed the Knight and added her to his team
while giving the 7 foot tall woman as many foodstuffs as she could eat over the
following days with the regenerator using the additional biomass to slowly
begin regrowing her arm and mending her other battle damage. Star Force now had
tech to regrow limbs that didn’t require a regenerator, but those devices were
huge and located almost exclusively on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System,
requiring transport back ‘home’ to deal with such injuries save for a handful
of very expensive medical ships that were floating around the ADZ that could
accommodate the same.

The regenerators were reserved for special
circumstances and this Knight had gotten wounded in the wrong place at the
wrong time with none available. Had she been critically wounded she would have
been moved to the closest planet with one, which would have been Horizon in
Iona that had four…or now three since Donn had borrowed one. Given that she was
stable she’d been assigned to recovery work on Earth, which would have involved
recalibration training for the new arm and an overall break from combat to
reset
herself
.

After two minutes of talking with Galia Donn knew that
wouldn’t be necessary and had pulled her into his squad, realizing that
mentally she was good to go and would rather get back into some sort of action
rather than sitting back on Earth while others were still fighting.

She stood beside him on the bridge, a full head taller
with both warriors outside their armor as they looked at the mass of Lacvamat
warships corralling the orbital infrastructure traffic into very tight lines,
but it appeared that they were letting some traffic come and go up here at
least, but there was nothing moving to and from the planet’s surface.

“Find me someone to talk to,” Donn told the Captain
who was seated nearby. “Start with those warships.”

“Any one in particular?”

“Start with the big ones.”

The Captain motioned to one of the Kiritak who got on
the comm and started chatting in the trade language…and didn’t stop for some 10
minutes before he finally turned and gestured back to the Captain who activated
his holographic communication display with the image of a fleshy winged
Lacvamat seated on a perch with its folded wings angling up like points
bracketing its double-skulled head.

Donn walked up beside the Captain so he would be in
transmission view, but put a hand on his shoulder when the man tried to get up
to give him his seat.

“
You are the
investigators?
”

“
We are
,”
Donn answered evenly. “
We require passage
down to the planet, both to the origination point and anywhere there is
currently the illness. We do not need access to uncontaminated areas.
”

“
Your movements
will be allowed, but only if preapproved. Do not wander about.
”

“
Our ship will
file all movements on planet prior to flight
,” Donn promised, but not
saying anything about personnel on the surface.

“
An escort will
be waiting at these coordinates
,” the Lacvamat said before cutting the
comm, obviously annoyed at having to let the Star Force ship through.

“Coordinates received,” the Kiritak helmsman noted.

“Take us in,” Donn said, seeing that the coordinates
were relatively high up in orbit when they popped up on the holographic map.

The rover made a lazy jump down to a midway point,
braking to a stop before adding some lateral momentum to bring them around to a
second mini-jump down lower to match up with the given coordinates where some
16 Lacvamat warships were waiting with starfighter escorts numbering over 300.
Once there the ship was wrapped up in escorts and given additional navigational
prompts that led them through a non-linear course down through orbit that took
them more than 2 hours to hit the atmosphere.

There the warships backed off and the starfighters
remained, bringing down the rover to the point on the planet where the cargo
ship had exploded and began the whole mess. Donn picked a spot nearby the
debris field where the bits and pieces had rained down and had the ship land
there…after getting permission from the Lacvamat.

Huge landing legs extended from the underside of the
rover that sank down more than a meter into the semi-soft dirt nearby a
settlement that was now evacuated. Unlike Star Force cities the Lacvamat lived
in spires on the flat and cliff dwellings where they had available terrain. The
nearby structures were situated on the cut-out side of a small mountain with
the rover being nearly half their size. A temporary camp of structures that
looked to house many more individuals was spread out in little chunks across
the nearby area, and Donn guessed those were the recovery teams for the ship
debris.

“Armor up,” he told Galia after they landed.

“Babysitting?” she guessed.

“You’ve got the medtechs. I’m going to roam.”

Without complaint the tall redhead walked off the
bridge leaving Donn with the four man crew of the tiny jumpship.

“Not sure how long this will take, so just sit, keep
your eyes open, and the door locked.”

The Captain hesitated,
then
he simply nodded.
“Will do.”

Donn followed Galia out and headed to the small
training facility on the ship. It wasn’t a full sanctum, not even close given
the ship wasn’t large enough to hold one, but it had been enough to keep them
occupied during jumps as well as serving as an impromptu armory. When he got
there Galia was already part way into her armor with the others looking on
waiting for orders.

“Archons suit up, Brad with eagle, Kiritas stay put,
medics
grab
your puffs,” he said as he started to step
into his own armor, sliding his casual shoes into the hardened plates.

There was a sigh of regret from the Kiritas, but the
Humans moved immediately without any questions. The ‘puffs’ Donn referred to
were extremely low grade, light armor that also doubled as hazard suits. The
Archon armor did likewise with a filter upgrade, which they all had in place,
but until the medics confirmed that the recently identified contaminant was
truly only hazardous to Lacvamat they weren’t going to take any chances.

They exited via airlock mode, with an energy shield
covering the exit point so as not to exchange atmosphere with the outside, with
Donn leading the group and getting a few meters past the foot of the ramp before
a pair of Lacvamat swooped in and landed nearby. Both were covered in a thin,
translucent material that was their version of a hazard suit.

“
We will take
you where you need to go
,” one of them said without preamble.

“
We need all the
information you have gathered, access to the ship fragments, and the ability to
roam around the area without interference.
”

“
You will find
nothing that we have not already discovered
,” the other said.

“
Maybe, maybe
not, but we came here to look and confirm your data. We can’t do that if we
can’t make an independent analysis of our own
,” Donn emphasized, picking up
on a few of their thoughts…which were that this was just a for show exercise to
give the Lacvamat analysis the credibility it needed with the rest of the
ADZ…ostensibly for a counterattack at whoever they fingered.

“
He will search
from the air
,” Donn continued before they could object. “
The rest of us will search on the ground.
Please make sure that none of your security forces shoot him down
.”

“
Yes please
,”
Brad-7919 said, wearing a heavy backpack that stretched from above his
shoulders almost all the way down to his feet.

The two Lacvamat looked at the awkward Human, not sure
what to make of him, but they relented and had a short conversation with a comm
device attached to their heads, coordinating with the rest of their security
forces that were several thousand strong and covering the area, most of which
were currently on the ground but many of the long winged avians were currently
in flight, soaring around with little whip-like tails trailing them through
every twist and turn they made as they glided about, rarely flapping their
ample wings as they surfed the air currents.

A group of three redirected from their patrols, which
had reformed above them after the rover had landed, and dove down to the
surface meeting up with the pair as several more flew in and circled overhead.

“
We must stay
with you at all times. Do not attempt to go off alone
.”

“
We’re here to
help
,” Donn reminded him. “
And we
won’t try to lose you, but it’s your responsibility to stay with us.
”

The Lacvamat that had spoken huffed once through its
dragon-like nostrils and stared at the Archon’s brown helmet from its widely
set eyes, one each on the double lobes of its tiny skull. It had but a short
snout, but behind it was a cranium thick enough to double as a wrecking
ball…and the Lacvamat were notorious for head butts on their almost snake-like
necks.

It didn’t say anything, merely waiting on the Human to
move.

Donn turned and pointed Brad up into the air, then
looked back at the Lacvamat as the ranger shot up into the sky on his flight
pack. “
We need samples of the bioweapon
to study. Have you recovered any from the debris?
”

“No need,” one of the medtechs said from behind him in
his aqua-colored armor as he was messing with a field kit attached to a
platform on his left arm. “It’s still in the air.”

Donn frowned and turned towards the medic.

“
There is none
remaining, except within the bodies of the sick and dead
,” the Lacvamat
said.

The Archon’s head ping-ponged back, with him searching
the alien’s mind to see if he was being genuine or lying, but having little
prior contact with the race made mind sifting a bit uncertain.

“
It’s
trace amounts,” the
medic answered in English. “Their equipment might not be able to detect it.”

“It should have dissipated by now,” Donn argued,
“unless there was a renewable source nearby.”

“Agreed.”

“
Do you have
your dead nearby?
”

“
They have been
taken away to deal with properly. You will not be examining them, for none
remain here.
”

“
What have your
people studied the bioweapon with? Where did your samples come from?
”

“
The
infected
.”

“
Are there any
infected nearby we can examine?
”

“
Not here. They
have been quarantined elsewhere
.”

“
Arrange for us
to get access to them after we finish here
.”

“
That is not my
task
,” the Lacvamat said firmly.

“
Then pass on
the request to
whomever’s
it is
,” Donn said,
matching its tone and adding a bit of Ikrid influence with it.

As soon as Brad shot up into the air he had two
Lacvamat pacing him, with several more diverting from nearby and flying in to
assert their dominance. They hadn’t expected the Humans to be able to fly, even
with technological augmentation, and they swirled around him as he got some 150
meters up and held position, visually scanning the area. The area was rolling
flat, with tuffs of scraggly vegetation dotting the otherwise barren terrain.
It was mostly dirt, very few rocks, but those that were there were jutting up
from underneath, almost as if something was punching segments of bedrock up and
into view to form small mesas.

Brad could see the various temporary structures the
Lacvamat had set up to collect/analyze debris and began tagging the closest
ones on the battlemap for the others to see. As soon as he got those marked he
moved forward using the hand controls on the short armature on his left side,
loosely attached at his elbow and giving him a
gripbar
/joystick
to navigate with. The anti-
grav
unit was fairly simple,
equipped with two differential drives that could push off of various portions
of the
planet’s
mass to provide lateral movement, as
well as to keep the rectangular pack from spinning about on a singular
levitative
point.