Star Force: Newbslayer (SF64) Read Free Page A

expected the pushback, which came after only a
little hesitation, but Levi didn’t wait around to fight that losing battle,
instead using his Orren to slip a deep strike in past all the mental noise. To
his surprise it hit without much resistance, giving him access to her visual
processors. Before she could detect that hack and shove him out again he sent a
burst of sparks into her eyes and retreated, hoping to make another Orren
strike before she recovered from this one.
    The padawan didn’t have similar luck when he tried to
access her muscle control, intending to give her a bit of a facial twitch. He
didn’t meet up with her conscious effort on this one, but rather her Farchor
‘minions’ which existed as a mass of programming that fought him automatically.
He could have got through it with time, but all she needed was the red flag
thrown up and a moment to respond to get her conscious power thrown into the
fight and kick Levi’s mental tendril out forcefully.
    But she went one further than that. During these
drills it was standard practice for the defender not to strike back, for if
Jenna did it would make Levi have to play a mixture of offense and defense. The
purpose was for him to work on his offensive skills so Jenna would never
respond by going into his mind, only defending her own turf, so to speak.
    She did now though, following Levi’s Orren strike and
running it right back at him. It caught him completely off guard and suddenly
he opened his eyes and looked at Jenna, thinking she was the most beautiful
thing in the galaxy.
    The programming spike continued to alter his senses
even after she withdrew from his mind, lasting a few seconds until Levi
detected it and reset…with the highly attractive Archon sitting across from him
returning to her normal aura within his mind, which was centered around strength, wisdom, and not romance.
    “Better,” she said, opening her eyes but keeping hold
of his wrist.
    “What was that?” Levi asked, referencing the
counterattack.
    “The signal for a time out.”
    “You could have just said something. Did I hit a sore
spot?”
    “No…it’s just the cumulative effect. You shouldn’t
have got that one through.”
    “So I’m not getting better, you’re just getting
tired?”
    “Getting tired because you’re wearing me down. You
didn’t use to have this much stamina.”
    Levi smirked. “Is that your version of innuendo?”
    That prompted another strike, this one with Jenna
bypassing Levi’s mental defenses on a whim and accessing his arm control. She
made him release her wrist and bring his own palm towards his forehead in a
slap…but he reasserted control just short of making contact, with the Archon
glancing up at his hand just over his eyes.
    “Missed it by that much,” Jenna commented. “You are
getting quicker at recovery.”
    “Now I know something is wrong. What’s up? You’re
getting punchy.”
    Jenna sighed, with Levi dropping his hand and grabbing
her wrist again. “You’re getting to me.”
    “The sexual strikes?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You told me to hit those hard.”
    “I know.”
    “And?”
    “I don’t have the pleasure endurance. I’ve learned to
put up with pain and keep going, but this is totally different.”
    “Maybe you just need to take a break and enjoy it for
once.”
    She frowned at him. “Kind of defeats the point of the
training.”
    “I didn’t want to say this earlier, because it makes
me sound like a junkie, but what if we’re missing something…and be ‘we’ I mean
all the Archons. We’ve got a part of ourselves that we’re ignoring, and
granted, it’s for reproduction and therefore we don’t need it, but maybe we’re
missing something mentally due to lack of experience.”
    “Which is the point of this training,” Jenna reminded
him.
    “No, you’re fighting it,” Levi insisted. “Maybe you
just need to analyze.”
    “Is this your way of trying to get me into bed?” she
asked sarcastically.
    “You