Star Force: Survivor (SF52) (10 page)

He picked up his helmet and followed the wounded out,
being the last man off the dropship. He glanced back at the small blood spots
on the floor, cringing as the toll of the wounded and dead they’d taken to get
this far fell heavily on him. Resolving himself to get back into the fight and
make the Skarrons pay, he turned away from their rescue craft and headed into
the city enroute to an information terminal to secure temporary quarters and
get in a badly needed shower and rest. There was nothing he could do for his
wounded brothers and sisters at the moment, so he needed to attend to himself.

Getting an electronic allotment within seconds, he
hauled himself on one last walk through the city and to his quarters, then came
inside them and began stripping off his trashed armor, having to twist and pop
his way free, for the melted material had reformed over some of the connection
points. When he eventually got out of it all he left it in a heap on the floor
and undressed, dragging himself into the vertical shower tube and turning the
overhead rain jets on as he leaned up against the wall and let his mind wander
off into a very tired and stressed void.

With the warm water coming down on him, he began to
feel a bit of relief and kept himself awake just enough to stay upright and
soak in the water, with a few silent tears flowing down with it as he finally
released his emotional lock and let the stress and pain of the past few days
bleed out.

10

January 24, 2549

Reesi
System

Metropolis

Rio woke up on a medical bed wearing nothing but
medical patches and a thin blanket. He sat up, painfully, and the silver fabric
flowed down over his chest and puddled at his waist revealing three separate
patches covering burn spots. He had more on his arms and legs, and could feel a
dull soothing in each of them that was fighting against the pain of
movement…but at least when he held still he wasn’t hurting.

“How long have I been out?” he asked as a medtech
walked over to him.

“Several hours.
How are you
doing?”

“I’m alive…and naked.”

“If that’s the worst of it then I’d say you’re past
the danger stage,” the medic joked, tapping on the display panel nearby. “You
vitals were…not good when they brought you in.”

“I can imagine,” Rio said, glancing under the blanket
to confirm that he had no pants on. “Where did my clothes go?”

“You mean those tattered and blood-soaked rags? We had
to get rid of them to get you cleaned up.”

“Cleaned up?”

“Yes, one of the girls volunteered,” he said with a
smile. “Don’t worry, they’re all professionals. She didn’t enjoy it too much.”

“Ambrosia?”
Rio asked.

“Already in your system, but we guessed low to keep
you from overdosing. What are you currently at?”

“4.2 doses.”

The medic nodded. “You’ve got 2.5 in you now, along
with a lot of nutrients we added through injection. We kept you under during
the process.”

“Thank you,” Rio said, grasping the blanket to keep
himself
covered as he swung his very sore legs off the bed
and sat on the edge, glancing at the few other medical staff in the room, two
of which were girls.

“I hear you came a long way over land. Had to fight
your way through the enemy?”

“Our dropship got shot down behind enemy lines. It
wasn’t pretty and we lost a lot of people.”

“But you survived?”

“And I’m very grateful for that, but in addition to
these injuries I’m still really pissed. Nothing to do with you,” he added as
his tone turned harsh.

“Can’t say I fully understand, but I can sympathize.
Other than clothes what do you need?”

“How secure are these patches?”

“You want to move around?”

“I need to clear my head with some light training.”

The medic frowned. “I don’t think you’re strong enough
yet. Try standing,” he suggested as a test.

Rio pulled the blanket around himself like a towel and
slid off…with his right leg buckling and
him
falling
to his knee, but that was as far as he went.

“Easy,” he said as the medic reached to grab him.
“I’ve got this. Let go and I’ll get my balance.”

“If you say so,” the man relented.

Rio focused his mind and willed strength into his leg,
pulling himself up inch by inch until he got on his feet and stood up, wobbily,
but under his own power.

“Well done.”

“I’ll improve with time and movement,” Rio said from
past experience. “Not the first time I’ve been shot with plasma.”

“No,” the medic half agreed, having
read his file, “but nothing this traumatic.”

“Clothes?”
Rio asked.

The medic motioned to one of the others and she
grabbed a stack of garments from a nearby shelf and brought them over, shoes
included, which Rio saw were his size.

“Thanks,” he said, thinking about how to get dressed
under the blanket then deciding just to screw it. They’d already seen him
naked.

He dropped the blanket and pulled on his pants with a
hand on the bed for support so he didn’t tip over. “Thanks for the shower. I
must have really been a mess.”

“Not a problem,” she said with a wink, then went back
to her other duties and the few patients in the room, none of which had come
from his team.

“Where are the others I came in with?”

“We treated and released them, though one, the Archon,
was transferred outside the city.”

“He made it?”

“I haven’t heard. He was worse off than you were.”

“I mean he came back with us?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“Must have been after I passed out.
That’s a relief. He saved our asses more than once out there.”

“Archons do have that tendency.”

“No, this was…beyond that. You wouldn’t understand
unless you’ve had the combat training.”

“I guess not then.”

Rio pulled on his shirt and shoes,
then
cautiously looked at the door. “Thanks for everything. I’ll take it from here.”

“Don’t make me pick you up off the floor.”

Rio smiled at him. “No promises,” he said, adding a
small two fingered salute before he took his first step. It was wobbly, but he
had control and turned it into a few more heading for the door. By the time he
got there his training kicked in and the gritty determination that had saved
his life found the simple footsteps easy by comparison…even though his head was
swirling in what he recognized was ambrosia depletion. Apparently he’d already
burned through what the medics had given him.

He turned the corner and walked into the hallway
outside, gaining rhythm with each step. A minute later he realized he was going
to be ok and increased his pace a bit up to normal levels and wandered off through
the city, intent on getting himself back into fighting shape and then heading
back out again. There was a war to be fought and he’d be damned if he was going
to sit it out while they lost more and more cities to the Skarrons.

Iden
woke suddenly, jumping
up out of reflex but finding a strong hand on his chest holding him down. As he
opened his eyes and realized where he was he forced himself to relax. He was in
a med bay with a regenerator on his chest and now that he got his head clear he
could feel the tendrils inside his body doing work…or rather the numbness that
accompanied them. He could never feel the actual workings of the mysterious
devices, but had learned to identify their sensory cloaking.

He also realized that no one was holding him down,
which didn’t make any sense until he saw another Archon standing beside him…
who
had a firm telekinetic hold on his chest and was
pressing him back down onto the table.

“Hold still,” Megan said monotone. “It isn’t finished
yet.”

Iden
blew out a breath and leaned
back, feeling the tightness on his chest disappear as Megan slid over into view
and sat on the bed next to his right hip. “Welcome back, badass.”

Iden
whisper laughed. “We’ve
got to put more armor on those dropships.”

“Then they’d be slower and you would have got shot
down even sooner,” she differed. “You were dead when they got you here.”

Iden’s
eyes widened and he
raised his head, still with several visible tendrils of the regenerator passing
up the right side of his face and sinking into his forehead.
“How
long?”

“About 20 minutes. They said you were bad when you got
back to civilization, so I had you moved here. You didn’t make the trip and I
wasn’t sure it was going to work…we don’t know how long the window of
opportunity is, but the fact that it’s been working on you for more than 45
minutes attests to how messed up you were. You held out far longer than your
body should have been able to.”

“Definition of an Archon,” the acolyte said, taking
considerable pride from the trailblazer’s words.

“True.”

“I’m glad there was one of these here to bring me
back,” he said, looking down at the metallic lump on his chest that had
sprouted out numerous tendrils like a chrome spider web that were sunk into his
skin at numerous points…though the numb areas were getting smaller and smaller,
so he guessed it was near to finishing up. Plus he was awake.

“We don’t have many, but I always travel with one.
For special cases like you.”

“And in case you need it?”

“Yes,” Megan said, not ignoring the fact that the
trailblazers were the most important assets that Star Force had.

“Where are we?”
Iden
asked.

“Seafloor city.
The Skarrons
are beginning to mount an aquatic front, but I’m told they’re not so skilled in
it. We’re safe here.”

“And elsewhere?” he asked as the tendrils retracted
from his head and slid back down his neck, but others remained sunk into his
chest.

“The western continent is nearly lost. We still hold a
few positions but we’re in the process of evacuating them. We’ve got missile
emplacements being built up on the others so we can hopefully knock down some
of their transports when they come across, but bottom line is we’re losing. I’m
managing the loss and buying us time, and I don’t think
it’s
game over so long as we can keep their fleet in orbit. We’ve got a tough
opponent to face, and though I’m not quite sure how to do it yet, I think we
have a winnable challenge.”

“Without reinforcements?”
Iden
asked.

Megan chewed her lower lip for a moment. “Never count
an Archon out, but we need more ground troops.
Mechs
especially.
We’re building what we can here, but the rate of Skarron
advancement is considerable…and they’re starting to build their own
infrastructure in the captured areas. First priority is to fortify and hold a
position on planet, then work on pushing back. The first, as difficult as it is
now, may end up being the easy fight in retrospect.”

“How are the others doing?”

“Others?”

“The other worlds…I assume we still have a relay
link?”

“Yes, we’re still on the grid. All stalemates on the
ground, but the more time the Skarrons have to reinforce the harder its getting
for them to hold…and the enemy just opened up another front on a Protovic world.”

“Has Paul worked his magic yet?”
Iden
asked as the regenerator finally retracted back into the normal short stick
that its dormant form took. Megan reached out and pulled it off his chest as he
sat up looking at her, with both of them ignoring the fact that he was naked.
For Archons that had never mattered. Fighting the war did.

“He’s got his hands full. Every fleet he manages to
destroy the Skarrons replace. He thinks we spooked them and they’re playing a
conservative game to feel us out. We know they’ve got the numbers to overwhelm
us if they choose to pull them from other areas of their empire, but it looks
like they’re not willing to do that just yet on the naval front. They’re
keeping enough to maintain a blockade and making this a ground war.”

“Thanks to the Sentinels,”
Iden
said.

“We think so. In order to take control of orbit they
have to knock them out, and it’s going to be very expensive on their part to do
so. So long as they’re in play we can use them as a safe zone to work out
fleets out of and own the bastards. If they go down it’s over, and the Skarrons
seem to be testing Paul’s fleet more than others. They’re learning what we can
and can’t do, and he’s taking them to school, buying us all time.”

“If they’re toying with us…”

“I know, but we’ve worked our way out of worse
situations.”

“Name one.”

“Ever win a training challenge against the Black
Knight?”

Iden
frowned.
“Actually, no.”

“Well we have. If there’s one thing he teaches you
it’s how to turn what looks like an impossible situation into a workable one.
Which you just got through doing.”

“Not quite the same thing, but thanks.”

“I had the techs pull your helmet recorder. Looks like
you had more than 1000 kills over your little cross country trek.”

“That few?”
Iden
asked, literally feeling like he’d been up against an
infinite number of Hobbits.

“You didn’t give up, and we’re not buckling under here
either. We’ll find a way to beat these
bastards,
we
just have to survive long enough to do it.”

“You said something about an aquatic front?”

Megan nodded. “They’ve begun landing special equipment
and are building a base along the shoreline. They’ve got submersibles in play
and are feeling out our resistance. We’ve slapped that base down twice now, but
they keep rebuilding and spamming the area with mines. I think they know we’re
down here and that in order to take the planet they have to get to us.”

“What’s the rush with more continents to overrun?”

“That thought occurred to me as well…and I think they
see us bringing in more Sentinels as a time constraint. They need to take the
planet so we have nothing more to reinforce, and to do it before the inevitable
orbital battle doesn’t scale out of proportion to what they’re willing to
devote.”

“Just because we lose the surface doesn’t mean we’ll
abandon orbit,”
Iden
pointed out.

Megan raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we wouldn’t, but would
you say the same of other races?”

“Good point,”
Iden
conceded,
flexing his left hand and wiggling out some of the lingering numbness. “Do you
have another mission for me?”

“I need you to run through calibration drills and see
how much strength you’ve lost. When the regenerator rebuilds you it does it
with new tissue that’s weaker than what you previously had.”

“After that?”

“There’s plenty to do. What would you prefer?”

“Sabotage.”

Megan smirked. “Tired of being on the run?”

“We’ve got to keep them on the defensive, otherwise
they could turn into a juggernaut with an exposed flanked that we’re not
exploiting.”