Star Force: Empire (SF58) Read Free Page B

Axius.
    Therein lie part of their success, he was told, for
Scionate maturia already existed within Axius and did not have to be
constructed from scratch. The same was true of military equipment designed for
the Scionate, though they’d taken it up a notch as they designed modifications
along with the Star Force Archons and techs. Right now there were 3 large
Scionate units dispatched to field work, with a fourth being formed that
Gam’len’wex hoped to join.
    Two of those units were holding defensive positions on
the border, freeing up other more veteran Star Force troops to move into actual
combat theatres, though if attacked the Scionate would have more than enough
action to sate them. They were not safe by any means, but they were holding
guard over valuable sites and facilities, something that Star Force hadn’t been
willing to trust to others. There were many races within Star Force that had
military capability, but most were not permitted placements on the front, even
those that had been in the empire for several hundred years.
    That made the defensive placements quite an honor,
especially for a race so new to Star Force, but there was one unit, their most
elite, that was operating beyond the borders of the ADZ and assisting Star
Force in taking worlds from the lizards. That fascinated Gam’len’wex more than
anything, and he desperately hoped that in time he would be able to join that
unit or another, which was why he and the others were working so hard in the
advanced training group that was blessed with an Archon as trainer.
    And his workouts did not disappoint, which heavily
focused on running…the one major advantage the Scionate had over the Humans,
for they were far faster than most of them. That was a basic fundamental of
quadruped motion, at least those with flexible joints. Even the small quadruped
races were faster than their bipedal counterparts, on average, and the Archon
wanted the ‘full sized’ Scionate to amp up their
speed as much as possible so they could be a new asset for Star Force to
utilize rather than just a redundant replication of other races’ capabilities.
    That was why Gam’len’wex and the others were running
without armor, for this training exercise was all about speed and endurance
sustained over rough, unpredictable terrain. The trail was one he’d ran before,
but it was so long that there was no way he was going to be able to memorize it
after only a few runs, leaving nearly every twist and turn as a surprise, not
to mention changes in the forest that occurred naturally.
    They were covering ground quickly, with his legs
already burning after just 20 kilometers. That was due to their pace and the
climbing they were forced to do. The trail took them up and over every little
hill there was to be found, almost as if it had been cut out in such a way to
maximize difficulty, but that hadn’t been the case. Rather it was a run from
one training base to another, with the lay of the geography running
perpendicular to the path, resulting in the up and down rollercoaster of a
trail run that Gam’len’wex found incredibly challenging.
    But then again what wasn’t here? He’d been told
specifically that this group was designed to give the worthy few a short cut to
combat assignments, and that they’d have to endure a lot of stress in order to
prove their readiness whereas the normal progression path would be more
gradual, taking decades at minimum, with many Humans taking more than 100 years
before they got posted to the front.
    There was a need for more troops, as many as they could
get, but Star Force wasn’t going to let anyone go who would be a liability,
forcing individuals and races to prove themselves time and again before they
would be trusted not to get themselves killed and give the enemy an opportunity
to poke its way into the ADZ. The fact that the Archons were even giving the
Scionate this opportunity for a fast track was a great honor, and Gam’len’wex