Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (9 page)

After thinning the
crowd and leaving a trail of dead or heavily wounded bodies behind him as he
roamed the plaza with the beehive of Protovic following his every movement,
Mike knocked them back with another Fornax field and took the pause in the bone
breaking to jump up onto one of the outer pedestals that was still on fire. He
flicked his shields back on and went into the flames, seeing that only a few small
bone fragments were left of the lizards. Everything else had been incinerated
and vaporized by now, with the flames being a testament to this horrific
ceremony that he was now going to smother.

He telekinetically
reached inside and cut off the fuel supply with another crunch of the pipes.
When the green flames dropped around him he jumped down into the crowd, landing
in a pile of twitching bodies thanks to a preemptive Fornax blast, then hopped
off that spot and up into the flames on the next pedestal. One by one he
snuffed them out, then he dove back down into the angry mob and met them with
an anger that
outscaled
theirs.

Mike was literally
glowing with righteous fury and continued to beat down everyone that threw a
blow at him until he got a battlemap ping from his Bsidd units indicating that
they were all aboard and ready to depart. They were wondering if he was coming
with them but not going to interrupt him, with the ping letting him know there
was a way out if he wanted it.

“Go,” he told them, just
noticing the approach of a second dropship to the other
evac
site within the city. “I’ll call…when I’m…done here.”

He didn’t receive a
reply, perhaps due to the sound of his voice, recognizing that he was still in
heavy combat. The Bsidd knew better than to second guess his orders, for he was
an Archon and far wiser and more powerful than them, so if he said to go they
would go and not think much of it. Archons knew when to fall back and survive,
and right now this sick rabble wasn’t a threat warranting that.

Mike stayed there and
continued to fight until there was no one left to hit. When the last of them
were gone from his immediate presence he pushed out his senses and looked
around, seeing a field of bodies across the plaza, some of which were moving or
limping off, but just as many that were unconscious or dead.

Those who survived
would have a chance to realize they were
Sith
scum and change their ways, but that wasn’t why he had left some alive. He
wasn’t going to go around and kill those who were still alive, but anything
that attacked him was going down and he honestly didn’t care if they died or
not. The idea that this ceremony was legit and he was just protesting it with
his beatdown had to be squashed immediately. They were in the wrong and this was
the rectification. He wasn’t delaying the ceremony, he was destroying it.

To that end, with no
more infantry or crazed civilians to hit, he went back over to the nearest
pedestal and leapt back up on top and proceeded to start demolishing it bit by bit,
first with telekinesis, then with his muscle and powered armor. It took time,
but he was able to shred the pedestal in visible defiance to anyone watching.
They would not and could not stop him, which was what he was trying to intone
with his actions above and beyond just being Hulk-
esk
mad.

The
darkside
could not be tolerated or ignored, and as such he took the time to shred all
five pedestals before calling for a dropship to meet him outside the city to
take him back up to orbit.

9

When Mike got to his
dropship he boarded it in a field outside the city and found only the pilot
inside, but as soon as it lifted off he got a
comm
from the Admiral.

“Archon?”

“Go ahead,” he said as
he sat down on an empty bench in the compartment behind the cockpit.

“
Evac
is proceeding in all areas save for one. Our troops on the southern continent
are engaged in heavy action at the moment and cannot withdraw immediately.”

Mike frowned and pulled
up his planetary battlemap, zooming in on the area that he was well familiar
with. He’d fought there a week ago, securing a trio of cities against a lizard
advance that had then turned into an assault against one of the enemy’s landing
zones. That’s where the troops were now, and by the number of enemy contacts on
the map he could tell that something was very wrong.

“What happened?”

“Subsurface bunkers, we
think. We’ve only had a few minutes to analyze it, but the lizards got a lot of
reinforcements all of a sudden. Our troops have taken up defensive positions
within the enemy base and are unable to withdraw at present. The enemy has also
deployed considerable air assets to keep our aircraft away.”

“I can see that,” Mike
said, blowing out a slow breath and starting to realize just how tired he was
now that his anger was coming down from raging levels.

“With your permission,
I’d like to divert a portion of the evacuating troops to help pull them out.”

“Do it. I’ll head there
on the ground and we’ll be the last ones out.”

“What do you want me to
do with our guests?”

“How many are still
onboard?”

“Six in
medbay
and your liaison.”

“They’re coming with
us.”

“As prisoners?”

“No, they’re just
coming. Don’t let them leave the ship, but otherwise don’t confine them. I’ll
deal with them personally once I’m onboard, but don’t let them have
comm
access until then. And move the wounded onto your
ship. I want them all in one place.”

“What happened down
there?”

“I’m not entirely sure.
Some sort of sacrificial ritual where they burned a group of
lizards
prisoners and one of their own alive in the city square with a crowd watching,”
he said as he got up and moved into the cockpit.

“I honestly don’t know
what to say to that.”

“Coordinates,” Mike
said, talking to the pilot as he relayed them to his console via his helmet
battlemap. “Just get me close and I’ll take it from there.”

The Bsidd wordlessly
agreed with a head twitch that was the equivalent of a nod and adjusted their
course away from an orbital trajectory and into a globe spanning jaunt through
the thin upper atmosphere.

“It’s an abomination
that cannot be tolerated,” he finally answered the Admiral. “I’ve seen plenty
in my life, but this is among the worst. I imagine it’s not something you learn
about in the maturia.”

“No, but I thought I’d
seen enough lizard combat for things like this not to surprise me.”

“The
darkside
comes in many forms, unfortunately.”

“But why? The lizards
are dishonorable, but there’s always a tactical element involved.”

“That’s what our guests
are going to tell us eventually. We’ll take them back to the ADZ for a proper
language analysis and interrogation.”

“Are we taking the
entire fleet back?”

Mike hesitated for a
moment as he thought that through. “I’d like to get back to our original
mission, but it’ll have to wait. I need to go back and I’m not sending you
there without at least one mage.”

“We can resume orbital
bombardment and hold on any ground action until you return.”

“I trust in your
ability to get it done, but the lizards are devious enough I don’t want you
going in without a mage in case they pull something. If there’s any rethinking
to do on that point let’s save it until after we get everyone back up to
orbit.”

“Agreed. Are you
alright?”

“I’m not injured.”

“But are you alright?”

“No, I’m not,” Mike
admitted. “There’s a system full of bad guys that we have been fighting to
protect. I screwed this one up.”

“We fight the lizards
wherever they are. The more of them dead, the better the galaxy is.”

“Except we pushed
harder than normal in some cases to safeguard the Protovic and
we
lost people. That’s a sick feeling I don’t think I’m ever
going to shake, nor should I. To answer your question, I’m
more
angry
than unable. I’m tired, but I can handle another short fight to
get our people out. I could use a few more senzu beans though. I’ve only got 1
left.”

“I’ll send a courier to
track you down once you get there. How are you planning to get through their
aerial blockade?”

“I’ll go ground. I
don’t want to wait until our fighters clear the air.”

“Should I task a
warship?”

“Not with their big
guns still in play. How many do they have left?”

“We got 3 batteries,
two more are left.”

“Have one standing by
in low orbit just in case, but I’d rather not waste one if we don’t have to. Or
are our troops there in desperate need?”

“They’re cut off, but
holding ground.”

“We play it safe then.
Actually, I’ll get those guns myself.”

“Do you want one of the
other Archons with you as backup?”

“No, keep them with
their present units. I’ll just take a quick nap enroute to recharge. Get that
extra ambrosia there ASAP. I’m going to need it.”

“I’ll launch a dropship
with it inside of ten minutes.”

“Good. Let’s get this
done before anyone else dies,” he said, cutting the
comm
and walking back to one of the benches where he laid down and configured his
battlemap to ping him when they got in proximity to a waypoint he added. With
that last bit done he closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down and half
fall asleep, keeping the remainder of his mental functions active so he could
slip into a healing trance and make the most out of the travel minutes ahead.

9 hours later he and
the last of the Star Force troops flew back onboard the jumpships, having
successfully pulled out the besieged unit and destroyed most of the lizard base
in the process. As the dropships came onboard and deposited him and a handful
of others on the
Archer 7
’s deck the
warships began recalling their drones with the massive discs sliding into the
racks one by one as they made final preparations to leave with neither the lizard
nor Protovic fleets getting in their way.

On Mike’s way out of
the hangar deck Candy Cane found him and held up a hand for him to stop. The
Archon clamped down on his renewed anger at seeing the red/green face and
accessed his mind again, which allowed them to exchange some ‘words’ in a
shorthand they’d learned over the past weeks.

Candy Cane wanted to
know what was going on, for he’d been unable to communicate with his people and
the few wounded Protovic had been gathered here from the other ships they had
been still receiving treatment on before being sent back down to the planet or
to a Protovic ship like the others who’d already been sufficiently healed to
leave.

Mike considered what to
tell him, but ultimately settled a hand on his shoulder and imbued the
knowledge that he was going to be used as an emissary to the other Protovic in
order to establish communication with them, as well as to teach them and Star
Force about his people’s language and civilization.

He felt a brief surge
of anxiety, for he was being told rather than asked, but that thought
disappeared when he realized what an honor it would be. Candy Cane sent
thoughts of agreement back to Mike and he decided to leave it at that, walking
on and heading towards his quarters where he was going to crash while letting
the Admiral handle getting them out of the system. Unless something monumental
happened on their way out he was going off the grid for a long while, not only
to rest and train, but to think this through and prepare a report for the
trailblazers that would hit the grid in the first Star Force system they passed
through.

Hopefully by the time
he dropped off the fleet in the Bsidd Region and got his flagship back to the
ADZ with their guests there’d be a response and course of action waiting for
him.

Kip-022 was coming back
into his quarters onboard his flagship after a very hard day of training while
his combat fleet was in transit when he found the message from Jason at the top
of his notifications list when he logged into his account. They’d been
scheduled to pass through a system with a relay a number of hours ago, but this
was the first chance he’d had to check for updates and he expected a lot of
them given the amount of time his attack group had spent clearing out two planets
in a lizard held system along the Calavari Region border.

Kip opened Jason’s
message first, as he always did with messages from his fellow trailblazers.

I expect you’ll be getting this message on your way back from mission,
and if my guestimates are correct there will still be time for you to arrive if
you wish. There’s been a discovery of a splinter race of Protovic out beyond
the Bsidd Region. Mike-448 was on a standard cleaning mission when a scout ship
relayed the information of an indigenous race within lizard territory that was
holding out against them.

Without knowing who or what they were he diverted his fleet to their
aid seeing as how they were actively battling an invasion fleet. When he
arrived he discovered that they were Protovic, red faced instead of purple for
some reason, and commanding a very dense system of planetoids, most of which
were still in their possession. He eliminated a good chunk of the lizards’
warships and put down ground troops to assist in the defense of several surface
cities that were in danger of falling.

That was when something bad happened, and he filed a detailed report I
suggest you read through carefully. It’ll turn your stomach. After successfully
defending one city by a very narrow margin, the Protovic held a ceremony in a
city plaza where they burned alive a group of lizard prisoners and one of their
own people in some sick ritual. Mike tried to stop them but didn’t get there in
time, then went Hulk on them and beat the crap out of the entire crowd who took
offense at him interrupting their celebration and tried to stop him from
stopping them.

He included his helmet cam data, and the natives literally went insane
trying to stop him in a swarming, unarmed rush worthy of the lizards. I’m proud
to say he beat the crap out of them rather than running away, then destroyed
the sacrificial pillars and left the plaza full of dead and wounded barbarians.
After that he immediately recalled his troops to orbit and left the
Sith
civilization to fight the
lizards on their own, but he did bring back a handful of Protovic whom he’d had
on his ship recovering from injuries. He’d pulled them out of wreckage from a
naval battle and didn’t bother to return them when he left. We have them now
and are learning their language and a lot of stuff about their sick culture.

And by sick I mean right up there with the Aztecs and Darth
Sidious
. We’ve got them on Mars and will be working through
their interrogation for at least a few months, and by ‘us’ I mean myself, Greg,
and
Rafa
. Given your history with the non-barbaric
Protovic I thought you might want in on this. We’ve already agreed that there’s
no way we can let this stand, and we’re not going to remove the lizards around
these guys and let their sick civilization remain. Right now we don’t even know
if this is their only system or not, nor do we know of their connection to our Protovic.
There’s a lot of questions to be answered and not having a common language is a
pain in the ass. The more psionic help we can get the better, so if you feel
like stopping by Sol please do.

At the bottom of the
message was a link to a copy of Mike’s mission report, which Kip read through
next followed by reviewing the helmet cam images from him and some early shots
from what looked like a group of Bsidd at further range as the Protovic tied up
the lizards to elevated platforms. When he saw them tie up one of their own and
then light the fires through Mike’s helmet his stomach sank into a pit of fury
that was echoed in the images turning into a bloody beatdown of everyone in
attendance.

Kip made himself watch
despite the nauseating camera whips side to side as Mike had been fighting. It
didn’t make for good watching, but he wanted every bit of information he could
get and followed it through to conclusion, seeing the field of dead and wounded
Protovic that the mage had left behind along with the wrecked incinerators.

When the recording
ended he just sat at his terminal staring at the blank screen as his mind
wheeled in thought. What they had done was…something that you didn’t do by
accident. No one chose when and where they were born, but no matter the culture
around you there was always your conscience, and Kip had learned that a
conscience wasn’t just a Human thing, but something all races had. It was an innate
understanding of right and wrong that didn’t result from learning, but rather a
fundamental sense just like sight or hearing.

That sense could be
clouded, distorted, even suppressed to the point where you became a living,
apathetic zombie…all of which could be a byproduct of the civilization’s
culture weighing on you, but your conscience would always
 
be there fighting back, perhaps losing, but
there would always be internal conflict so long as you were a good person. Even
if you were tricked into doing bad things, that internal resistance would
always be there.