Star Force: Trials (SF68) (9 page)

She focused on the ground and tree trunks, walking
blindly through the brush that she could no longer see, but what was still
scraping her up, even stopping her when she walked into a bush that wouldn’t
move out of her way. That set her back, having to backtrack a few steps and
find another way around, literally stumbling in the dark trying to see any
large objects out there in the aptly titled ‘storm.’

So numbed up from the mental mess and Jumat fatigue,
Morgan took her next step and fell right into the source of the stun bugs,
dropping some ten meters down a tube to land on a hard floor onto her left
shoulder…that popped from the impact that she couldn’t see coming. Her head
also banged into the ground, disorienting her into a state of punch
drunkenness, but fortunately that made her mad and she reflexively upper her
concussive energy flow, blowing back so many stun bugs that they literally ran
into each other and broke, for there was so little air for them to move about
in.

Morgan coughed, with a senzu bean stuck in her throat
as she rolled over face down. With a telekinetic tug she pulled it out and
chomped down on it, chewing it and the last one up and finally clearing her
mouth. Her shoulder hurt, but far less than it should for being dislocated,
telling her just how doped up she was right now. Turning off her Pefbar for a
moment the mental storm disappeared, letting her focus on her energy flow and
her major injury…as well as the sum total of all the cuts across her formerly
attractive body. She couldn’t see it now in the pitch black conditions, but she
was a sliced, nasty mess.

Getting a telekinetic grip on her shoulder she tugged
it back into place, but forgot to pull her tongue in. She bit it with the pain
spike, tasting blood and cursing herself for being so dumb. The Archon rotated
her shoulder around, finding it hurt but was still functional as she stood up
and turned her Pefbar back on and saw the snowdrifts of dead stun bugs on the
floor around her and a snowstorm of active ones surrounding her at no more than
a meter distance.

Morgan held position and scanned the area, finding
three tunnels heading out from the vertical tube she was now at the bottom of
that was itself the size of a small room. Walking on gratuitously flat floors
she headed down one of the hallways and came to a dead end some 50 meters
away…or so it looked until she got closer. There was a large room that spread
out sideways from the tunnel width, and on both sides of that room were
equipment banks in the wall that had numerous vents that were spewing out more
stun bugs.

In the middle of that room was a circle on the floor
that Morgan almost missed save for the fact that she stepped on a slightly
raised ring, bringing her attention down to her feet. Depressed below the
surface of that circle was a hidden switch that could only be accessed via
Lachka…or by breaking through the floor. She used the former and flipped it,
with the vents on either wall shutting and cutting off the flow of stun bugs.

With an angry sneer she threw her arms wide and
punched the entire room with a much larger Jumat blast, throwing the tiny bugs
into the walls and crushing most of them. They scattered around in the
maelstrom like bits of debris, eventually working their way to the floor and
piling up there as Morgan walked back out to the center tube and headed down
another of the three hallways. She found an identical room and switch there,
turning it and the stun bug production off before heading over to the last
chamber.

When she hit that switch the vents closed but the
swarm around her was still active. She sent out another burst and took down
most of the ones in that room, but there were so many coming down from
aboveground that the air was still thick with them, though she had a tiny
respite that she did not allow herself to linger in. Morgan kept up the Jumat
flow, knowing now would be an ironically bad time to let one slip through and
take her down, as she headed back to the entrance, not sure if she could jump
high enough to get out in her present condition.

When she got back there she noticed a new circle in
the middle of the floor. As she walked towards it a pylon rose up from the
ground with her first thinking it was a step up to get out of the hollow, but
then she saw that it was made of crystal with a glowing icon in the center…that
was blue.

There were no visible buttons to press, nor internal
ones, so Morgan just summoned up a directional blast and threw it off her good
arm, hammering the crystal and cracking it. She repeated the attack four more
times until it broke apart and the blue light likewise disappeared…with every
stun bug in the air suddenly shutting down and dropping to the floor, save for
the fact that she couldn’t see that with her battering them all over the place.
It was the lack of additional ones coming down from top that first clued her
in, not to mention the bits of sunlight coming down onto her mauled up body.
She eased back on the Jumat flow and the remaining bugs flew into the walls and
piled up on the ground, adding to the black snowdrifts.

She took it down another notch and the air finally
cleared. Morgan let go her effort but kept her Pefbar active, just in case
something else was going to happen, and felt the blood begin to seep out of her
in small rivulets. She nearly fell over with the effort release and stepped
forward off the circle in the center. She noticed the rim in her Pefbar just
before she fell, not remembering it having been there, then when her foot hit
the ground and a piece of crystal dug itself into the center of her foot the floor
fell out beneath her, crumbling into hundreds of pieces as a bright gold light
burst through the cracks.

Morgan wheeled about mid fall, grapping the edge of
the platform with her bad arm and feeling it wrench again. Her fingers held on
past the pop as her eyes squinted against the glare from below. Forcing herself
to twist on her dislocated shoulder, she got her other hand up to the rim and
one armed herself up until she got her chin on the edge, then worked her way up
over the edge mostly with her good arm, slithering onto the shattered crystal
and cutting herself up further, but avoiding the fall.

Come to me
,
she shouted telepathically, not even bothering to try and find Rex’s mind to
send a direct message.
I need help
.

9

On my way
,
Rex told her, immediately leaping up the gap between paths and sprinting over
the black snow on the ground and crunching the little stun bots with every
step. He had a fix on her mental location, and with the stun bots no longer an
issue he was able to run freely aside from making detours around the gravity
traps.

It didn’t take him long to get to the cave tunnel,
then from there he was in unfamiliar territory and asked Morgan for directions
rather than just guessing or trying to claw his way through jungle. She replied
with the first turn instructions, then after that her memory was hazy but she
said she hadn’t encountered any gravity traps.

This side of the cave was covered in stun bots like
patches of a giant puzzle laid down in various locations wherever a swarm had
been at that time. When Rex crossed over a patch of clean ground he was sucked down
into a
faceplant
, smashing his nose into the compact
dirt for a moment before he did a slow pushup and got his legs under him enough
to crawl out of the gravity trap…which told him Morgan hadn’t come this way.

Sensing her closer now he decided to abandon the
trails and head straight for her location, so summoning up a bioshield he dove
into the brush and disappeared beneath the trees. At least this way he wouldn’t
run into any more gravity traps, for they’d pull down the brush with them and
give away the location. Previously though there had been other things off the
trails to worry about, and about halfway to Morgan he found one of them in the
form of a little mound in the ground that a slew of lemmings came up out of.

They chased after him and nearly caught him in the
ankles before he telekinetically threw them off, then he broke through onto
another trail and kept to it, heading in Morgan’s approximate location with the
things nipping at his heels for a moment before he got up to speed.

Rex lost them eventually, then came around full circle
on the path before realizing that Morgan was in the center of it. He got
confirmation from her of that and dove in, eventually coming to a hole in the
ground that was brightly lit from below with the telltale light that the
hologram had spoken of. When he got to the edge he found Morgan at the bottom
on a narrow platform around which was the light coming from somewhere below,
though he couldn’t make out where with his eyes or his Pefbar, for it was being
blocked below a certain level.

He also noticed that Morgan was covered in blood.

“What the hell?” he asked, with her glancing up at
him.

“Pull me up, please.”

Rex got a telekinetic hold on her waist and lifted her
up through the opening, though there was an audible groan from the trailblazer
as he did so. Her bloody, nude body came up out of the hole and he set her to
the side…and to his surprise she let herself drop to the ground rather than
standing on her feet.

“What did this to you?” Rex asked, taking a knee next
to her.

“Running naked through sticks and thorns.”

“You ran out of bioshield…oh crap, you couldn’t use
it.”

“Nope.”

“You need to slip into a healing trance.”

“Already have. Can I ask a favor?”

“Sure,” he said, knowing it was virtually unheard of
for Morgan to ever ask a favor.

“Take your shirt off so it doesn’t get bloody and
carry me on your back under your bioshield while I heal.”

Rex raised an eyebrow. “I can do that, or we can just
bring everyone here and go through that portal when you’re ready.”

“No,” Morgan said, keeping her body locked in a
lounging position so to minimize movement for the sake of the Sesspik. “It’s
shielded from psionics. If there’s something nasty waiting for us on the other
side we have to be ready first. That means more hunting parties collecting
ambrosia and whatever else we can find. That’ll take at least a day and I’ve
already lost a fair amount of blood. Most of it blew off with the Jumat, so I
need to heal this as soon as possible.”

“I can stand guard here so you don’t have to move.”

Morgan sighed. “Just get me back to camp.”

“As you wish,” he said, pulling off his shirt and
rolling it up into a bundle that he held in his left hand as Morgan stood up
and climbed on his back. The blood made her warm skin slick on contact, but
between his arms looping through her legs and a little telekinetic
reinforcement he got her snugged up against him and made sure she could just
sit there without having to hold on much.

“Just veg, I’ll get you back,” he said, slipping a
bioshield around both of them and walking off slowly through the brush with it
passing harmlessly around her naked body.

“Thanks,” she said, trusting him enough to close her
eyes and her senses and give herself over to the healing trance.

Many hunting parties later all 100 trailblazers
gathered at the portal carrying their weapons, shields, and other knickknacks
that they’d constructed out of the debris as Kerrie jumped up over the hole and
froze there, tipping face down in midair as the others held her aloft and
slowly lowered her down into the chamber below. She had a battlemeld link with
Aaron so he could see what she saw as her head dipped into the energy field
that was further down around the central platform below and glowing a blinding
gold.

Kerrie passed into it, for it wasn’t a thin layer and
her vision was bathed in light so much that she had to shut her eyes. Her
Pefbar told her that she was in a short tube, at the bottom of which was a
hatch that snapped open as she approached, probably expecting her to fall
through rather than float above it.

With that physical barrier gone she could sense but
not see what was below. There was an arching tube curling to the right like a
dry waterslide, beyond which she could not sense…

Suddenly her body was jerked out of the Archon’s
telekinetic grip and she disappeared from sight and sense.

“Damn, I lost her,” Aaron said.

“So much for intel,” Morgan said stepping up to the
edge in her underwear and reclaimed shoes. “Any reason to wait?”

“Nope,” Bo said, diving in ahead of her. He landed
feet first on the platform below then hopped off into the golden light with the
others following at slightly staggered intervals.

Greg came down with a full length shield, tucking it
up against his back and riding it through the curved tunnel like a rough surf
board made from metallic
dinobot
hide. He could see
Dina ahead of him a few meters and could sense the others behind him as they
slid down a long straight decline in the dark until it corkscrewed through one
last hurricane-like twist before dumping them out on a short drop of 4 meters
into a large chamber.

Greg landed on top of Kerrie’s unconscious body,
seeing her just in time after squinting his eyes against the brightly lit
chamber to arch his back and land on all fours overtop of her…which fortunately
kept his shield strapped onto his back as a stun sword swung down onto him.

With his Pefbar adding to his eyesight he knew he and
the others were being ambushed as they came in, so he grabbed Kerrie in a
telekinetic hold and shot her body away from the landing area as he sprinted
away from the guy with the sword, noticing two other Archons already down
before he realized that it was an Arc Knight waiting for them.

The man was fully clad in black/gold armor and had one
of the wicked stun swords that the Black Knight had made infamous in their
training days. This guy was using it to whack the
trailblazers
unconscious as they came down, and had it not been for Greg’s shield he would
have been taken unaware as well.

Knowing that had to change now, Greg threw a Fornax
blast back behind him and into the Knight as he ran, causing the giant to
stumble as another trailblazer came down. He missed
Jace
by a hair when he swung next, which was when Greg sent a quick telepathic
message out to all within range letting them know what was happening. The
others would relay it up the slide, he knew, so hopefully they’d be ready to
fight the moment they dropped out of the ceiling.

After getting Kerrie clear he turned around behind his
shield and ran towards the Arc Knight as
Jace
held
him back with a telekinetic grip for a moment, only delaying him until he
activated his Rentar and melted the Lachka tendrils holding him in place. That
delay was enough for Greg to get to him and ram him off his feet with his six
foot tall flat shield, knocking the Arc Knight to the ground in an armless
tackle and clearing the exit for the others to come down.

Jace
stepped up next to Greg
and held position while Erin came down and pulled Bo’s body out of the way and
began to work on the others. Seeing that he was now outnumbered, the Arc Knight
rolled to his feet and telekinetically pulled his dropped stun sword towards
him as he ran off…but
Jace
was too quick and used his
own Rentar to break the grip on the Knight’s sword, causing it to drop to the
ground a meter away from him, then jerk back towards Greg as he got his own
hold on it.

The Knight tried to disrupt that but was too slow and
the sword dropped to the ground with
Jace
running
forward and scooping it up in his hand before it could hit. Seeing that there
wasn’t a lot the Arc Knight could do now with a fourth trailblazer dropping
down behind him he chose to run rather than fight, for which Greg was grateful.
Getting hit or kicked by a guy wearing full armor was painful, plus the only
way they were going to disable the Knight was through psionics, for there was
no way they could hit hard enough to get through that armor.

Greg backtracked as the Knight ran off across the room
that was the size of 6 football fields and disappeared into a door that opened
for him. It shut after he went through, leaving the trailblazers in command of
the circular chamber with four of their number unconscious already.

“That was close,”
Jace
commented, checking the power level on the stun sword and feeling much better
for having it.

“So much for a finish line,” Greg scoffed as more of
the others fell down through the opening. “Good thing we took down that
Brontosaurus, otherwise we’d be down four right now.”

“Yeah, Morgan made a good call there,”
Jace
agreed, knowing that the generous amount of
destunning
serum hidden within the monstrous beast was
worth the headaches they’d had taking it down. “And I’m loving this little
baby.”

Greg glanced at the sword. “You know their armor will
have stun resistance.”

“Just means I have to hit them a lot…and what do you
mean by them?”

“You think there’s only one?”

Jace
frowned. “Probably not.
I just hope the mother isn’t down here.”

Greg winced. “Don’t call him that. It’ll just piss him
off.”

“Come on,
Braum
. Let’s see
if there are any traps in here to set off,”
Jace
said
as he jogged off towards the door the Knight had escaped through.

Knowing that there was a trap waiting for them, Paul
and Jason had come down together and dropped out onto the floor with two short
shields blocking their backs as they were essentially hugging each other when
they landed. They got the ‘all clear’ mental signal from Oni a moment before
they came through so they didn’t spring into action, merely letting go of one
another and walking out of the drop zone as they got their bearings.

Most of the Archons were here already, with about 10
left to come through, though it looked like four were already down. Paul knew
the
destun
and ambrosia carriers were coming through
last so they didn’t risk losing those precious supplies, and he was glad it was
just four of them, for they’d already used a chunk of the serum after that big
raid and trying to wake someone with psionics alone was troublesome. They
needed to flush their system of the energy rather than circumvent it and leave
them a walking zombie for the next half hour.

“Where’d he go?” Paul asked.

“Ran off through the wall,” Morgan told him as she met
up with the dynamic duo. “No gravity traps or other little surprises that we’ve
found yet. And the door won’t open from the inside.”

“Walls shielded?” Jason wondered.

“Of course.”

“What now?” he said, looking at the ceiling and
visually scanning the entire chamber as the last of the trailblazers came
through. There was nothing here, for the walls were entirely smooth without so
much as a hint of texture and pure white, emitting a low glow that lit the
area. Jason couldn’t even see any doors, guessing that they were built with the
first level transforming tech that Star Force had begun employing based on a
Voku homage.

“At least there are no more sticks and rocks to step
on,” Morgan said as Olivia dropped out of the ceiling, bringing them back to a
full 100. Morgan gave her a telepathic heads up as to the ones that needed waking
with the
destun
serum just as the room exploded with
sound.

Everyone jerked from the transition, with the music
playing so loud it immediately shot their adrenaline up, for it was a song that
many of them were familiar with.

Define your
meaning of war, to me it’s what we do when we’re bored
, blared from the
speakers as Olivia took off sprinting towards the downed trailblazers, knowing
that she had to get them woken up as fast as possible.

Jason and Paul linked up in battlemeld and moved to
the outside of the trailblazer group as the others around the perimeter
scouting out the walls fell back in towards the center.