Free Star Force: Divergent (SF74) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

snowy tarmac to the nearest
visible bunker that contained a lift down into the facility.
    Jyra walked behind him, wrapping her arms around
herself and wishing she had her armor on instead of a casual uniform, but they
spent no more than 20 seconds outside before stepping through the door and into
a lift shaft that wasn’t much warmer. They traveled down a few levels then a
wall of warm air hit her as they stepped into the facility and San headed off
without saying a word.
    “Come on,” she whispered as they passed several
workers. “Tell me something.”
    “We’re not here for a snack,” he said, then continued
on through the unfamiliar hallways making twists and turns as if he’d come here
a lot. To her it just looked like a cramped facility maximized for volume
output and turned into a cozy labyrinth as a result. She had no idea what
they’d do in this place, but she had a sneaking suspicion it didn’t involve
food.
    Eventually they turned a corner and ran smack into a
guarded checkpoint…with six Commandos in armor standing in front of a closed
door. San put his hand on a scanner that identified him as an Archon mage,
which gave him the authority to bring guests past the doors, though he’d need
to have Jyra logged in as well, so he stepped to the side and pointed her to
the scanner.
    She raised an eyebrow when her ID popped up as a
hologram, similar to San’s, except hers was labeled ‘Arc Commando.’ The guards
exchanged glances with each other, but didn’t say anything. They let them both
pass and San opened the door with a special code that he tapped into a rubrics
cube-like color system.
    “What you see beyond this point doesn’t exist.
Understood?” San asked as he was punching squares with his fingertip.
    “Understood,” Jyra said, her curiosity and eagerness
spiking.
    The doors pulled open and revealed a personnel lift,
into which the pair walked but San didn’t turn around to face the door. Jyra
mimicked him and kept her back to the guards, then the doors shut and they
began to move, though neither could feel it given the IDF field insulating them
from inertia. Should the lift fall they’d live through a crash…so long as
something spikey didn’t come shooting up through the floor to impale them.
    “Where are we going?”
    “To the beginning,” San said cryptically. “What you’re
about to see is why Davis began Star Force in the first place, and why we’re in
constant danger.”
    “Danger? From the lizards?” she asked, expecting that
not to be right.
    “No. They’re pushovers. You, me ,
every Human in existence descends from Zen’zat, which are an altered form of
Ter’nat. Zen’zat were never meant to reproduce, so our psionic legacy has gone
dormant over time. I was brought here to wake mine up when I became an Archon,
and the same is true of the Arc Knights. More recently the Arc Commandos have
joined us and a limited number of highly placed civilians. I have dozens of
abilities, but all of us have a basic 7. Yours never developed because they
were genetically inactive. By the end of today that will no longer be the
case.”
    The wall in front of them opened into a concealed set
of doors leading them out onto a wide landing platform…save for they were
underground in a very tall chamber, on the other side of which was an angled
wall made of a green/black material that was unlike anything Star Force used
and clashed with the walls and floor halfway up to it, then the footing changed
over to the same material.
    “Welcome home,” San said, starting to walk across the
artificial platform built to nestle up against the tiered nature of the huge
structure in order to create a flat plain that stretched off into the distance
so far that Jyra couldn’t see the end of it, but she did see a couple of parked
mechs nearby, both combat models, along with a host of industrial mechs, hover
trucks, and smaller bits of equipment.
    “What is this place?” she asked, wide eyed as a