Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) by Aer-ki Jyr Read Free Book Online Page A

civilization. Some of them even began
working with the construction crews to learn hands-on and begin creating their
own branch. They weren’t given anything critical to do, just some basic work to
gain experience on with the prime crews as they expanded the single colony out
into a network of cities across the northern continent.
    As the colony’s population surged a small trickle of
new infants came with it, which were put into a maturia on site staffed by the
same people who had been working the others and were now transitioning here as
those were being shut down stage by stage as they exhausted their supply of infants.
Brad couldn’t trust younglings to run the maturias so they had to be staffed by
professionals, but as soon as the local maturia had its first class assembled
the Protovic civilization was officially born and sustainable.
    It would take another 20 years before any of those
infants cycled into the general population, but the sequence was underway and
Brad was careful to monitor all aspects of the new Protovic as they developed,
making adjustments where necessary and improvements where he was able to
fashion them. He kept his core staff around permanently, knowing that it would
be a long time before the Protovic were able to fly solo, but with each year
that passed they became more and more capable.
    Brad didn’t open the door to the older Protovic
transfers until the 24th year, and even then he limited the number to only 10
the first month. He increased that tiny amount to 15 the next, then 25 and so
on to make sure that the individuals assimilated into the masses rather than
having a social division form between the old and the new. He wanted them all
to identify simply as ‘Protovic’ and made the transition gradual for that
reason.
    Over time he upped the number, but by then there were
so many maturia younglings coming in that it didn’t truly matter and the
transitional ones were blended in with the new civilization as they all worked
to build and strengthen the newest part of Star Force. It would be a long time
into the future before they’d start fielding warships and armies of their own to
fight the lizards, but Brad worked patiently and diligently towards that end,
slowly crafting a new twist on classic Star Force protocol to make the Protovic
an effective and unique addition to the overall empire…and one that would
surpass the independent Protovic civilization in comparison, tech advantage
aside.

 
 
    5

 
 
    December 26, 2879
    Aphat System (Bsidd
Region)
    Nym

 
    Naisha set her bag down on the bed of her new three
room quarters. The design was slightly different than what she had been living
in on Onyx but basically the same third level allotment that she’d earned in
the transitional colony that was now in the process of becoming part of Axius.
More and more non-Protovic were coming to the world as a slow trickle of people
were coming out of the prisons. She didn’t know the exact number, but it had
only been a few years ago when the ‘survivor’ count had passed 500,000.
    500,000 out of what had been 3 trillion people taken
prisoner. Naisha had been insulated from the rest of the Veliquesh
civilization, but she hadn’t expected it to be as thoroughly corrupt as that
number indicated. On the other hand, given some of the stories she’d heard from
other survivors it was amazing that anyone had come out of that mess of a life
sane. But all those she’d talked to were, for like her they’d come through the
transition process and earned their freedom. Naisha still didn’t know exactly
how that worked from a psychological or scientific standpoint…but it obviously did.
    Most of the Protovic on Onyx were from the pools of
younglings that the invasion had rescued before they could be evaluated as
‘unfit’ and killed, making her and the other survivors a small minority, then
add in all the immigrants from other races and the planet had become a vibrant
mix of faces and