Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (6 page)

Mike took a deep breath
and centered himself before extending his Ikrid out in spherical mode well
beyond 400 meters. Technically there wasn’t a fixed ranged, for the ability
kind of acted like a rubber band in that you could stretch it out via cone mode
and the tighter you restricted the cone the further it would reach. He wanted
the dropship close enough that he wouldn’t have trouble searching the ship
segments, as well as being able to pick up faint
lifesigns
that could be missed at the outer edge of his range, for unconscious minds
didn’t register as well as conscious ones.

The first chunk of ship
they passed Mike scanned thoroughly but there was nothing living aboard. He had
the pilot tag that piece on the battlemap as having been searched and then they
moved on to the next ‘needs to be searched’ tag. They passed by five of them
before he picked up a group of closely packed minds in the right ‘wing’ of one
vessel that had been chopped in half by weapons damage or an internal
explosion.

“Stop here,” Mike said,
focusing his Ikrid tighter so he could squeeze out a bit more detail. “There’s
at least 20 holed up here. I think…I think they’re stable but it’s hard to
tell.”

The Bsidd in the pilots
chair glanced up at him in question.

“Never mind, just find
us a way onboard,” Mike said as he turned around and went into the back of the
ship with the six others. The pilot would be staying here, but the rest were
coming with him.

“Pack up, we’re going
over,” he said, keeping his own hands free as he took position by the rear
hatch. The Bsidd picked up a lot of equipment and waited behind him, each of
them towering at least a foot taller than the Human and wearing purple/black
armor. Their
battlecasts
were more flexible than the
Archon’s, in that their hard plates only covered select portions but the ‘soft’
pieces were still more resilient to weaponsfire than the original Archon armor
had been. Add on considerable shield strength and the Bsidd were anything but
weak, and the envirosuits themselves were lightly armored so as not to get
pierced by debris or low level weaponsfire.

Mike wouldn’t have been
bringing men wearing those over if there were any suspected lizard activity,
but only the soldiers had combat armor sculpted to their forms and he needed
the jumpship techs to handle the bulk of the recovery operations. He stood at
the ramp until he got a confirmation from the pilot that they were in position,
then hit the door controls and an energy shield snapped into place a moment
before the ramp cracked open and lowered to reveal an internal deck of the
derelict chunk of ship that was now open to space.

“
Me
first,” Mike said, jumping through the shimmering blue field and into zero g
for the two meter coast that ended with him getting his adhesive fingertips on
a severed structural beam, then he turned around in the void of space as his
armor switched over to internal oxygen. “Safety line.”

One of the techs threw
an object through the field and Mike pulled the toss to him telekinetically,
attaching it a few meters in so they’d have a firm line to hold onto and
wouldn’t risk careening off into space if something went wrong…and in the
Bsidd’s
case ‘holding on’ involved wrapping two appendages
around the line like a hoop, insuring that they didn’t float off, for the
artificial gravity was out in at least this piece of the ship.

“It’s fixed. Let’s go,”
he said, moving on into the exposed corridor and pulling the line with him.

6

Mike attached another
nub some thirty meters down where the corridor made a sweeping turn up and to
the right. That provided a solid point for the line to feather to, letting it
stay slightly loose in between as the mage continued to lay cord down as he
bounced his way from one wall to the other and up the corkscrew tunnel. The
minds that he was sensing were nearby and all clustered in one area, but since
he didn’t have a schematic of the ship he was just guessing which way to go
aside from a little Pefbar help.

There was no grid-like
pattern to the corridors so he just strung line where he went and left it in
place when he had to backtrack, starting a new line inches from the old and
heading off in another direction until the chamber the minds were in came into
Pefbar view. From there he was able to see the route necessary to get
there…along with the emergency blast doors that had cut off the survivable
section of the ship from the decompressed areas.

There was no power here
so he and the Bsidd were having to work their way through using
nightvision
and some tiny lights being emitted from their
envirosuits and armor. Mike didn’t need his, for he had his Pefbar, and when he
came up to the blast door he saw that it was more than a foot and a half thick
using his psionic sense.

He waited for his team
to catch up, then grabbed a piece of equipment from one of the Bsidd and helped
him stretch it across the width of the corridor. It was a flexible hoop that
both of them went about extending and melding to the floor, walls, and ceiling
with some reliable adhesive, both to keep the atmosphere contained and to keep
the mount from moving with the pressure. They put it two feet back from the
blast doors then activated the portable shield generator and a blue film
covered the corridor.

“What the hell…” Mike
mumbled.

“What’s wrong?” one of
the Alphas asked, with a pair of mandibles dropping over its stun gun.

“These minds are
familiar. I think this is a race we’ve encountered before.”

“Which one?”

“Give me a moment,” he
said as he floated in place and lightly disconnected his mind from his
surroundings as he reached out to one of natives ahead. He could pick up
thoughts and voices, both of which were not in any language he recognized, but
he was able to hack into one of their bodies and see through their eyes.

The room was dark, for
apparently the entire ship had lost power save for some few emergency systems.
Mike saw a few status lights in the dark, but what drew his attention
immediately were the faces and hands of the crew…for they were glowing a
mixture of red and green. That was the wrong color, but there was no mistaking
the body structures, including the hard carapace covering their heads and
running down the back of their necks and beneath their uniforms. It was the
telltale partial exoskeleton that, combined with the glowing skin, told Mike
who this race was.

The Archon activated
his
comm
, but also opened a channel to let his team
hear his conversation so he wouldn’t have to repeat himself. “Admiral?”

“Here.”

“We haven’t met face to
face yet, but the survivors on the other side of the blast door are some
variant of Protovic. Dig up all known variations of their language and see if
one is compatible with the natives.”

“Protovic? How?”

“I don’t know, but
these have red/green skin instead of purple/green. I think we’ve stumbled onto
a mystery that a lot of people are going to want to know the answer to.”

“If you haven’t seen
them how do you know what color they are?”

“I managed to pull a
feed from within the room they’re currently in. They’re just about the only
thing glowing, so I think it’s safe to assume most of this ship is dead. Send
over a shipment of envirosuits compatible with Protovic physiology.”

“Human sizes?”

“Basically. If they
don’t have any of their own we’re going to need to get them out through vacuum.
Have the other rescue teams similarly equipped. If you get even a hint of a
comm
line to the natives I want to know immediately.”

“Understood. Anything
else you need?”

“A
lightsaber
would be useful, but other than that, no.”

“Team 4 has arrived on
site and is attempting to recover three survivors.”

“Get as many as you
can. Have the Protovic ships moved to recovery positions?”

“They’re sniffing
around, but haven’t made any real attempts yet.”

“Give them a wide
berth, but if they get near one of our teams have an escort drone standing by
in case we need to peel.”

“Already on it. We’ve
got your back.”

“Copy that. Keep me
updated,” Mike said, cutting the
comm
and returning
to his team’s frequency. “You get all that?”

“What eyes did you have
on the other side of the door?” an Alpha asked.

“Telepathy.”

“Can you use it to
contact them?”

“I can do better than
that. In the meantime get some atmosphere on the other side of the shield,” he
said as he went meditative again. One of the Gammas pulled himself past him
using the ceiling line and deposited a canister on the other side of the energy
shield, hitting a button and holding it steady so it didn’t blow itself out of
the contained space as it released its solidified gases. Per its design it
consumed the fuel reserve it had up until the atmospheric pressure reached
desired levels, then it stopped releasing nitrogen and oxygen and began
swirling around what was there through an intake vent and heating it towards
room temperature rather than the frigid cold that it now existed at.

Mike let the Bsidd
watch his back as he connected with the crew again, finding one of the
healthiest ones and taking over control of his body. The Protovic slipped into
a state of sleep that made it very suggestive and allowed Mike to order him
about without having to worry about controlling every single muscle contraction
in its body. He heard questions from the others as the Protovic moved out of
the room, then he thought better of it and took a moment to knock all of them
unconscious before taking his puppet out through the corridors and over to the
far side of the blast door.

The emergency system
still had power, and through the knowledge that this one contained he was able
to identify the override sequence necessary to open it. The Protovic did the
button pressing while Mike did the coaching, then when the thick doors split
and retracted into the walls there was a bit of atmospheric bump as the two
sides mixed, but the energy shield held without incident.

Mike pushed his way
past the Bsidd who was putting away the partially depleted canister and gently
shot himself through the door and over to the glowing face and hands inside a
white uniform that clashed with the dark green of the corridors…or it would
have if they had been able to see them, but the Archon knew what the interior of
the now dark ship was supposed to look like, for he was still in this one’s
head.

He gently withdrew his
presence, letting the Protovic wake up slowly while he pounded him with
reassurance and impulse of ‘ally,’ ‘friend,’ and ‘rescue.’ That said, the Protovic
jerked fully awake when he finally saw the similar silhouette of the Human and
the totally bizarre silhouettes of the Bsidd.

Mike spoke to him
telepathically, not knowing the right verbal words, and eventually was able to
settle the male Protovic down. Instructing him as to what to do next was a long
15 minute process, but eventually he was able to establish a rudimentary
language between the two of them and decided right then and there to keep this
one with him to act as emissary to the others they were hopefully going to
rescue after this group.

With a wordless
understanding reached, Mike and his new best friend floated through the dark
hallways with the Protovic functioning as a mobile flood lamp and spraying red
and green light wherever he went. When they got to the single room with the
others inside the Archon let the Protovic go in first as he gently woke the
others, then let him explain what was going on.

That took less than 30
seconds before what was left of the crew came floating out eager for rescue and
knowing that these people were the ones who had come to their aid in the space
battle. Apparently that was enough to establish trust…along with the fact that
the air was getting stale and without at least moderate repairs to the ship
they’d all suffocate or freeze to death, though Mike did see what looked like
portable equipment, possibly heaters, set up in the room they were exiting.

One of them was missing
an arm and a good portion of the skin over the right side of his face. The
tissue underneath did not glow, nor did the blood that looked dark where it had
dripped over his illuminated skin. The others had burns and gashes from what
looked like fragmented debris strikes, with only about a third of them that
appeared undamaged, though their mental states were considerably distressed.

With the help of his
emissary they got them all into Human-sized envirosuits and onto the hand lines
with the Bsidd escorting them out to the exposed hull and across the short gap
to the waiting dropship. Mike had already called for another, for there were 34
Protovic survivors and they weren’t going to all fit in the sparrow. Once it
was loaded up and the tether line disconnected it flew off, with another
dropship, an
Eagle
-class this time,
coming in and taking up position to rescue the rest of the survivors.

A third dropship came
to pick up Mike and his team and take them over to the next location where
survivors had been spotted, for one of the other Archons had assigned himself
to spotter duty and had been flying around mentally scanning all the debris to
save the search teams time. He’d kept the one Protovic with him and used him as
an intermediary with the few other survivors they found and got them off their
ships, or what was left of them, without complaint. That said, there were a few
groups that had been identified that lost people before the Archons and Bsidd
could get to them.

One Protovic shuttle
was seen moving about looking for survivors, but other than that there was no
help coming from them. That bugged Mike a lot, but he knew that a lot of races
didn’t care about rescuing survivors from debris. It was a difficult process if
you didn’t have the right equipment and some people didn’t bother to try…while
others did but at a leisurely pace that often saw people lost due to a lack of
alacrity.

Regardless, by the end
of it he and his teams spread across all the orbital battlefields recovered 389
Protovic, 32 of which were near death. Four of those didn’t survive the trip
over to the jumpships, and even the crude regenerators that Star Force now
fielded weren’t enough to revive them. Had they a V’kit’no’sat model onboard
that probably would have been another story, but there were so few of them in
existence that even a mage of Mike’s standing didn’t rate one being sent with
this invasion force.

The Star Force version
didn’t melt, but was shaped like a mechanical mushroom that unfolded into bands
and plates that cradled the injured part of a person’s body and set to stoking
the natural regenerative processes. It was appropriately colored green and
referred to by many Archons as the ‘extra life,’ and thanks to the Protovic
sharing a physiology that was already logged in the Star Force database the
units this fleet carried were already capable of fully treating the wounded,
including the regeneration of severed limbs. That would take days, if not weeks
to fully accomplish, but those Protovic that they got back to the jumpships
still alive would all make full recoveries going forward. Those that had missed
their window of opportunity had been mere minutes shy of making an eventual
full recovery.

That was why rescue
operations couldn’t be delayed and why Mike had ordered them immediately.
Fortunately the lizards didn’t try any shenanigans in planetary orbit while the
operations were going on, but he learned they were doing quite a bit of
relocating throughout the rest of the system now that they knew there was a
Star Force fleet in play. They needed far more ship concentration than they’d
had here to deal with his drones, and by pulling ships in from multiple other
locations they were assembling a big enough armada that Mike’s troops might not
be sufficient to deal with them.

That meant there was a
lot of strategy needed going forward and the lizards weren’t going to make it
easy on them and keep themselves spread out enough to get picked off in smaller
engagements such as the one they’d just fought and won. Mike didn’t have the
ships he needed to quickly cleanse this system of the invaders, but he could
still do it if he took the patient approach. In lieu of reinforcements that he
didn’t have coming that was how he was going to have to play it, but for the
moment establishing communication with these Protovic was his top priority
after ensuring they got all the survivors recovered.

By the time Mike got
back to the
Archer 7
there was still
no reply from the Protovic in response to any of the languages they attempted,
which was understandable given that these Protovic were obviously not the same
as those they were allied with…unless the red coloration was some secret that Star
Force had never been told about. If these Protovic had split off from the
others a very long time ago then they might not share a similar language now,
but it had been their best bet other than lizard, to which they had not
responded either.

So Mike took his
Protovic emissary with him to a room on the jumpship that had database access
and pulled up the visual information about the other Protovic and tried to
translate as much nonverbal information as he could to him. He could clearly
sense his shock at seeing the photos, as well as the satisfied conclusion that
if Star Force was allied with the other Protovic then that made them allies of
theirs as well, which was why they’d come to their aid.