Star Force: Resolution (SF89) (Star Force Origin Series) Read Free

it with some guile. I’ll
have to be transferred to another control ship while you take this one out of
the system with one of the Uriti. They will think the other is staying here
under orders, but I’ll be here to monitor it as a backup.”
    “After you teach me how to drive with you looking over
my shoulder first?”
    Nefron’s eyes flashed green
ever so briefly. “Orders. Not control.”
    “It’s more than point and click,” the Archon argued.
“I felt that moment of synergy.”
    “It’s simply another means of communication. They
choose to follow the orders. You do not actively control them.”
    “Noted. Will you help me run Bahamut through the course?”
    “Let’s start with something more
simple while I analyze the interface. Link back in and I’ll set you up.”
    “Simple how?” Riley asked, touching the panel again
and getting the equipment added to his mind like another room suddenly popping
into existence within a house.
    “Star to planet and back again.”
    “Alright, we’ll keep it simple,” he moaned
sarcastically. “Is this set up to make me look Chixzon or look like you?”
    “I used my profile to speed up the process, but it may
be more advantageous to rework the interface from various personas tailored to
be compatible with the person in question.”
    “Meaning my mind is more similar to some Chixzon than
others?”
    “Of course.”
    “Do you have others on file or would you have to
synthesize them.”
    “Synthesis,” Nefron said regretfully, knowing how much
additional time that would take.
    “Long project ahead?”
    “Very, but a lot shorter now than I expected. I don’t
know if what I did was smart or just accidentally lucky, but it worked the
first time. Let’s see if our luck holds and it works again.”
    “Teach me, Master Nefron. I is ready.”
    “I do all the hard work and you get to have the fun?”
    “Ha. Don’t even get me started on that. I know I’m
going to be bored out of my skull letting you calibrate this thing to me.”
    Nefron smiled, a slight cracking of his rock-like
lips. “True enough,” he said, linking into his console and finding Riley’s
mental signature inside the programming link. “Let’s begin with the basics, my
young apprentice.”

 
    2

 
 
    May 2, 3285
    Alamo System
    Warden Station

 
    Oro-2573 walked off the Star Force personnel ship
along with hundreds of other people as it sat docked to the Warden station
along with some four other ships. There were no tourists here, nor ambassadors
from other empires. All of them were located in other facilities in the system,
leaving the titan with high level traveling partners in the form of Archons,
Commandos, and a lot of techs that were being added to the station’s complement
of secretive staff.
    Beside him were eleven other members of his graduating
class, all 2500s, which was very odd. There’d been a recruitment call put out
and he’d volunteered, but he didn’t expect to be paired up with so many
familiar faces again, let alone three other 7s. Jeen-2572, Hera-2574, and
Peter-2576 were only a few meters behind him as they walked across a line on
the floor and into zero g, then were grabbed by an IDF field and flown across the
stubby umbilical connecting ship to station and landed them gently on the other
side. They easily fell back into stride with one another almost as if the
millennia they’d spent apart had never happened.
    The sight of 12 titans together drew a lot of curious
attention, but most people were polite enough not to inquire and the few that
did got the same answer from all of them…they didn’t know why they’d been
brought here.
    All of them were wearing their casual Archon uniforms,
bone white with a single colored stripe running down either side. Their stripe
was gold, but an equally white uniform was waiting for them just inside the station
with a pink stripe, and standing next to it was the red/gold/white of a Duke.
    “Welcome,” Pryon said