Star Force: Cascade (SF73) (4 page)

She’d always wondered what went through a
trailblazer’s mind, and had suspected there might be all kinds of high end
intellectual thought all the way down to primal, lustful fantasies…but honestly
that pie fight was way better and fit their reputation to a ‘T.’ The image of
Luigi slinging a trio of pies at Curly and the bald guy blocking them all with
a raised hand and a bioshield before uttering a ‘whoop, whoop, whoop’ taunt was
too much for her to handle and had
Ielia
giggling for
the next ten minutes.

She’d be back two days later to take another shift,
one that had her coming in when Rio was already asleep. After that she’d drop
in for one or two a week for the next two months before one of the ‘watchers’
hit what they thought was pay dirt.

4

January 30, 2889

Solar System

Earth

“Define block?” Paul said, crossing his arms over his
chest as he leaned against a wall in the hallway as one of the watchers
explained to him and Rio about the anomaly.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Paula-610445 said, a
bit miffed. “I was monitoring his dreams just like I have every other night
I’ve pulled a shift, then a piece of his mind disconnected from my vision. I
didn’t lose my connection. I was still in his head and could monitor his body
and most aspects of his mind, but wherever his bit of consciousness
transitioned I was not allowed. It lasted through to the next shift for about
five minutes then he came out of it and into a dreamless state. I stayed the
entire time until he reverted back to normal. There was nothing external
triggering it, or releasing him from it. I was simply blocked from seeing
whatever he was thinking or dreaming at the time.”

“Well that was a gigantic waste of time,” Rio said,
blowing out a frustrated breath.

“Yes and no,” Paul differed. “We’ve found a camouflage
tarp. That means there’s something underneath meant to be hidden. Something
important.”

“Well I can’t get at it,” Paula said apologetically.
“Maybe someone stronger would have better luck.”

“I don’t doubt your skills, and I think if even Aaron
had been the one observing he would have been blocked out as well. No, there’s
something significant about these dreams that the designers don’t want anyone
else to know about. Did you pull anything new this time?”

“No,” Rio said regretfully. “But I do know it was the
same dream and I’ve got a little bit better retention of the details. They’ll
probably fade like normal, but right now I don’t recognize anything new.”

“Show me.”

Rio took a moment then sent Paul a copy of his
recollection. It was about the same as last time, but bits were missing that
were there before, along with new pieces having been added. On the whole it was
the same, but the fine details had shifted slightly, probably with Rio’s memory
slurry having been degraded with repetitive ‘looks’ as he tried to analyze it.
Paul sent him a battlemeld prompt and when he accepted they compared mental notes,
allowing Rio to reconstruct a bit more using Paul’s perspective on what he’d
shown him previously as a baseline.

The image of the sky over the forest, the supposed
important part, added four dots that hadn’t been there before.

“I’ve seen those stars before,” Paul said, not being
able to remember when, but knowing in his gut that they were familiar.

“Why do you call them stars?”

“I don’t…no, not stars. Suns. One is white…I don’t
remember the others.”

“A centralized quad system,” Rio added, with the images
seeming to pop back into memory…though for some reason he couldn’t make out the
colors either.

“Not too many of those.”

“Map,” Rio said, glancing at Paula belatedly.

“I’m thinking I’m out of the loop now, aren’t I?” she
asked.

“You’re welcome to tag along,” Paul offered.

The striker held up a hand. “No
no
.
You guys run along to whatever it is you’re doing. Are we done with the night
sessions or do you want us to keep
looking.
”

“Other than counting how many I have there’s no point.
So no, we’re done. Thank you.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“You gave us something useful,” Paul added. “But it
looks like something we’re going to have to work from the inside out.”

Paula threw both trailblazers a two fingered salute as
she spun on her heels, then silently walked off.

Rio looked at Paul.

“Before training,” he said, with both of them heading
to find a secure terminal.

Kara sat in the command chair on the Clan Ghostblade
Ma’kri
-class warship as the ship’s
captain and crew handled the rundown of the lizard jumpship, confident that
they could do the task without her input after all these years of experience.
It had already been snared by a slew of namis, now they were in the process of
picking apart key systems with precision weapons strikes before it had a chance
to flee like the rest of the convoy. The two jumpships that had been carrying
cruisers never even bothered to deploy them in self-defense, jumping out along
with the other 14 large vessels and abandoning the snared one to the Star Force
ship, knowing that they didn’t have a chance of fighting it out and winning.

Back in the day they would have always gone after two
lizard ships simultaneously, so that they could capture both then shunt the
lizard crews over to one and send them on their way while keeping the other
ship as their prize. But today, and in previous years, Kara had gotten in the
habit of being a bit more bold on some smaller raids, and her catching the convoy
in this system had been luck rather than planning, so she was going to raid this
ship in traditional pirate fashion, with the first task being to disarm the
limited defensive weapons it had, including shield generators.

After that came
comm
systems
and anything else shallow to the hull that could be smashed, but she left the
ship’s gravity drives untouched. They were currently dampened by the namis,
which had gone through considerable upgrades over the years, and were now
sticking to the shields like ticks and emitting their IDF fields to neutralize
the drives. When the shields went down they dropped to the hull and likewise
held the giant ship in place while the Ma’kri went about redecorating the hull
as it liked.

When all preparations were underway and the system
scans were reading clear, for the rest of the convoy had already jumped out of
the system onto the next leg of its journey, she called in her own ships that
were out on the system’s periphery and waited for the small flotilla to arrive
before she stepped out of the hangar bay and flew over to the lizard ship ahead
of the boarding craft to follow.

Once inside it was standard neutralization, stunning
everything in sight either through weapons or psionics. The Ghostblade
commandos that followed helped to do the same as techs came with them and began
looting the ship of cargo that Kara wanted. While the Clan leader and the
warriors played tag with the ship’s crew, the army of ant-like workers scurried
around the massive cargo holds scouting out what was available and carrying
back what they wanted to their dropships, making many round trips through the
process.

Eventually Kara got half the ship napping before her
ships’ holds were filled, for she hadn’t brought the necessary vessels to clear
out everything, let alone to take the ship as a prize, so once the pirates were
done they retreated to their dropships and left, with Kara being the last man
out and flying over to the Ma’kri superman style as the dropships returned to
their industry ships.

Kara had 97 of the vessels in this neutral system as a
staging point to bring resources to from other raids. Jumpships full of cargo
would find the fleet, slowly feed over the resources and receive back the
finished products, whether it be machine parts, clothing, or ammunition, with
none of the industry ships having the spare space to hold finished goods. They
were all compact units designed for the task of creation, not storage, thus all
the booty that Kara collected had to be stored on other ships waiting nearby.

Since she didn’t have any of those here now and had
only hopped over to the star to jump the lizard convoy as it had the misfortune
of coming through her secret rendezvous spot, what little cargo space they did
have was filled to the brim now and would be replaced with the goods as the raw
materials that they’d stolen were transformed into them.

Fortunately the industry ships had their own fleet of
dropships and staff of personnel ranging from techs to accountants to warriors.
Each ship was a mini-city of its own, small in size but when connected to the
rest of the varied fleet became the Ghostblade civilization in a
Battlestar
Galactica
sort of way.
Some of the industry ships were ore processors, others were shipyards and
bioharvest, while the ones that were eating the finished materials they’d
stolen from the lizards were fabrication models. Each was staffed with
specialized crew as well as some redundant facilities so people wouldn’t have
to be hopping from one ship to another on a daily commute.

That said, ship to ship transfer via dropship was
common, even in a fleet as small as this one. Kara currently had thousands of
the industry ships under her command, scattered around lizard territory in a
few select spots that kept changing as per her orders. If the lizards ever saw
a pattern and went looking for them they’d be too late, for systems like this
were only a temporary holding point. The Ghostblade ‘territory’ was actually
these ships, rather than any geographic location.

They’d also been doing a bit of mining of their own in
the system, for now that they had a decent sized fleet they weren’t relying on only
piracy to fuel it. Kara still wanted to grab as many lizard resources and ships
as she could, and even had a few special industry ships designed for the
exclusive purpose of stripping down captured vessels for recycling. None of
those ‘chop shop’ ships were here though, for this was just an outreach group.
The much larger fleets were roaming on the edge of Star Force borders where
they could stay somewhat linked into current events.

Updates would flow out to the other fleets as
available via courier ships, so it wasn’t until 4 months after Paul sent his
initial message to her did Kara finally receive it two days after the raid when
a Ghostblade jumpship arrived bringing with it a load of raw ore and database
updates to pass along.

When Kara checked her messages she found not one, but
two from Paul, with the first being his inquiry into Rio’s dreams. He said he
also thought he had them but couldn’t remember even the slightest detail
without prodding. The second message explained further how the dreams
themselves were protected from external viewing and wanted to know if she knew
anything about this.

Kara waited a long moment, hoping some insight would
pop up in response to these revelations, but none did. She mentally sorted through
everything she had learned over the years from the knowledge implants the
Zak’de’ron had given her, but there was nothing relating to dreams that she had
ever discovered and nothing new was popping up now. She waited until the next
outgoing ship was available before she composed a reply, hoping something would
change but it didn’t. Kara had no knowledge of this, nor could she ever
remember having the dream, even though she had been given
Sav
and Rio suspected that was when this had all begun.

“I’m sorry, Paul, but I’ve got nothing. I’ve racked my
brain trying to find even the slightest reference, but nada. I can’t help you
with this, and I doubt something is buried inside my head if it didn’t come out
now. Always a possibility, but would be a break from form. I’m guessing the
dragons didn’t feel like giving me a cheat sheet on this one. I’ll try to be on
the lookout in my own dreams, but as far as I know I rarely have any, so I’m
not too hopeful there.”

“Wish I could be more help. Keep me in the loop as
often as you can. Maybe something more you learn will trigger a memory down the
road. As for the system you described, I checked through the map myself and
didn’t come up with anything either. 239 matching candidates and nothing about
them stood out to me. I don’t know what else to do on this one other than to
wait and cross my fingers, as useless as that sounds. Hope you and Rio have
better luck.”

Paul watched the hologram shrug, then Kara’s image
disappeared. He kicked the wall under his terminal in frustration. She’d been
their best hope of getting some answers, but whatever this was it seemed they
were on their own. He’d had no luck with his own dreams, unable to remember
ever having them other than weird corroborations when Rio showed him something.
Morgan and Jason likewise couldn’t recall anything, though they hadn’t met up
with them in person to get the telepathic images that Rio had given Paul. Maybe
when that eventually happened down the road they’d recognize something, but for
right now it was all on Rio and Paul…and all he could do was act as a
calibrating rod and try to help Rio sort out what he learned and maintain the
memory of it better.

“Well that’s a great way to start the day,” he said as
he spun up out of his chair and headed for the door, workout gear already on as
he headed for the sanctum and his morning run of 10 miles. He completed it in
the standard 42 minutes then headed over to another chamber to meet up with Rio
and give him the good news.

When he opened the door he walked through a short
airlock, letting the first door close before the second would open, then he was
in the ‘danger room’ with a lot of small, orb-like objects flying around. Paul
stayed on the edge and out of the engagement zone, but he could see Rio
knocking several of them into the walls with telekinetic blows and knew to keep
his eyes open in case one came his way.

“Need something?” Rio yelled without stopping his
engagement with the hundreds of little stun bots that were desperately trying
to make physical contact with him.

Got a message
from Kara
, Paul telepathically replied.
She
has absolutely no idea what we’re talking about. Not even a twitch of
recollection.

Rio rolled to the side to avoid a dive of two of the
little bots before telekinetically throwing them behind him, then he evaded a
few more while he built up additional power in his Ubven nodules. When he
peaked it out he batted a few more aside to give him space enough to detonate,
then with a flinch of physical effort that Paul could see he released the pent
up Lachka energy.