Star Force: Empire (SF58) Read Online Free

had
quickly realized that great honor came with great responsibility within Star
Force, and this training group did not disappoint.
    More than half of the original group that was here
when Gam’len’wex arrived had washed out, by their own choice, for they couldn’t
handle the intensity. None of them had quit, but rather went back to the
standard training programs and the ‘slow’ track. Those that remained were
supplemented with new recruits every now and then, but those weren’t put with
Gam’len’wex on his workouts. Those few Scionate with him now were half of the
most experienced ones, but even they were still several years away from the
benchmarks set down by the Archon.
    Those called for running skills far beyond what
Gam’len’wex had now, and what blew his mind was that those numbers came from
the fastest of the Archons. The Scionate had to prove they were faster, amongst
other things, and there was no way he could ever see a biped moving as fast as
he was now, let alone faster.
    Their Archon was fast enough, and had come with them
on some of their early runs when they were still slow, after which he’d teased
them about getting beat by a biped. That had aggravated Gam’len’wex more than
the others and he’d worked a little bit harder in response, but even today
there were still Humans out there faster than him, though not on this planet.
    The Archon was monitoring their progress from afar, with
a tiny ear clip on each of the Scionate that doubled as an emergency comm device. It tracked their location for they were moving
across terrain where there was still hazardous wildlife and all types of
potential dangers from rocks and trees and who knew what else. This wasn’t a
typical training session in a controlled environment, this was a cross country
run, literally, so there needed to be some type of backup in case something bad
happened.
    But that was just typical Star Force procedure,
looking out for the odd ball situation. Right now the only threat to the
Scionate was the physical fatigue they were suffering from as they came up to
their next check point.
    It was little more than a tracking archway, but when
Gam’len’wex came up to it he saw the colored energy shield that he was meant to
run through shining a pale green almost to the point of being clear. That meant
he was just ahead of schedule, for the darker the green the bigger the lead he
had. If it shifted over to yellow then he would have been slightly behind pace,
with red indicating that he was slower than the minimum requirement, which
would end in a challenge fail if he didn’t speed up.
    Pale green was a relief, for he wasn’t sure how much
he’d slowed over the past kilometer. He could judge his pace off the others,
but if the leader was slow then the rest would be and he hadn’t felt like
they’d been dragging him along as fast as they should. Tired as he was, he
realized he’d been doing better than he’d thought.
    Just on the other side of the archway he saw Hef’met’ka standing beside the trail taking a breather. It
wouldn’t last long, for his turn keeping pace was over and now Gam’len’wex was
second in line. Hef’met’ka would wait to fall into
last position and just try to stay with the group while the new leader set and
tried to maintain the desired pace, allowing others to just focus on the moment
and the sound of the footfalls ahead of them.
    It made a difference, not having to worry about how
fast you were going and just keeping with the guy ahead of you, but one more
kilometer up the trail and it would be Gam’len’wex’s turn to lead, and then he would have to worry, for there was no way to measure
speed other than by feel, and with the terrain being so erratic you had to make
constant adjustments, keeping the long, boring run anything but.
    The Scionate never had the ability to just settle in
and relax, with the trail forcing them to be agile and evasive nonstop as they
made their way across the