Star Force: Phase 2 #6-10
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force: Return to Earth Star Force: Rift Star Force: Excalibur Star Force: Scorpion Star Force: Baron
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Return to Earth

1

September 18, 4833

Solar System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Earth

“Contact…northeast,” Arc Commando Viles said over the teamcomm.

Ben Dagran hefted his Dre’mo’don rifle a little higher as he waited behind a very thick tree trunk with his Commando team scattered nearby. None of them had the psionics needed to pick up the stealthed Zen’zat, but the addition of Viles had changed that. They were going to have to rely on him to engage the Zen’zat enough to make them visible…then it would be ass kicking time.

A ping on his battlemap from the Arc Commando highlighted the approximate location, but Ben couldn’t see anything out there. The trees were so big you could have parked a speeder inside one, yet they were spread out enough that you could move around freely, but seeing very far was a nightmare. He had maybe 80 meters of sightlines before the trunks blocked everything out, though the sensors from the warships overhead were adding their own vision down into the forest that now covered Greenland.

The few V’kit’no’sat cities on the island chain were gone now, having been blasted into oblivion after giving the denizens a chance to flee. Ben’s Commando team wasn’t near any of them, and this was the first Zen’zat contact that any of the teams out here in the wilderness had made. No one knew if the V’kit’no’sat were going to challenge their little construction project, but it had been assumed that they would use stealth infiltrators if they did…and now that theory was being proven true.

“Zen’zat team…three contacts. They know they’ve been hit and are fleeing,” the Arc Commando said as his dot on the battlemap took off running so he could stay in contact range. “Converge!”

Ben left his tree trunk behind and took off running on a route that would hopefully catch the Zen’zat at an angle a few minutes later. They were just as fast as the Commandos, and perhaps even faster, but the layout of the trees meant that nobody had a straight route to run and a lot of weaving back and forth was required…which gave the smaller Commandos a slight advantage.

Ben wasn’t 10 seconds into his run before he heard and saw a squadron of skeets zip past him…on his battlemap anyway. The canopy over his head was thick and blocking out most of the sun, allowing only a little glint of polished hulls to be seen as the aerial craft homed in on the location the Arc Commando had identified.

Thankfully the ground was basically clear of vegetation, so the Commandos weren’t getting tripped up on much more than the occasional fallen branch and wildlife here was virtually non-existent. Back before the V’kit’no’sat had taken Earth from Star Force this entire area had been underneath a glacier. Now it and both polar caps were long gone, having melted thanks to the terraforming the invaders had done to make the planet it more to their liking.

Even Antarctica was now green with forests and jungles and a massive amount of plants that were growing like wildfire now that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere had gone up from 0.03% to 1.28%. Not high enough to bother anyone breathing, but a total game changer for plant growth…both for the bits left here after the destruction of Earth and for the varieties brought in by the V’kit’no’sat afterwards…including these giant Farbo trees.

But it wasn’t the carbon dioxide that was fueling the higher heat levels. It was the extra water in the air over the formerly ‘dry’ regions of the planet. Water vapor held in twice as much heat per molecule as CO2, and when the V’kit’no’sat had melted the ice caps they’d deliberately relocated a lot of that water to the land to fill giant lakes and conduits that the aquatics required beyond the oceans that they now primarily inhabited.

But those lakes and conduits also fed the forests and jungles, eliminating all the deserts and other ‘dead’ regions of the planet. Also gone was every last trace of Star Force infrastructure. It’d been wiped clean in the planetary remake, now replaced with the abundant greenery that many of the V’kit’no’sat races preferred.

It had been joked that where Humans had used to prefer grass lawns, the V’kit’no’sat version was full blown forests…and that’s what Earth was now. Green spread across every bit of land with numerous bits of civilization seemingly carved out of it. The difference was one walked on top of grass, but here you walked underneath the greenery that was well over 100 meters high.

The Greenland forest was so dense that Ben knew they’d lose the Zen’zat if they couldn’t stay on them, and the skeets opened fire down into the forest thanks to the lack of native wildlife…allowing them to free fire without hesitation hoping to hit…

Suddenly all hell broke loose as one of the skeets went down hard, with the battlemap updating as several large contacts were made out just beyond the Zen’zat, popping into view as their stealth fields dropped and they began firing on the aerial fighters.

“Kar’ka!” one of the other Commandos shouted, with Ben immediately turning left in response to battlemap waypoints hastily thrown up as golden Chi’parat shots started to blast apart the tree trunks ahead of them. Following the machine-gun like blasts came the Kar’ka, now fully visible, running awkwardly through the trees on their two legs that were each taller than Ben. Their bodies were covered in brown armor head to tail tip and the Chi’parat weapons they carried on their flanks were far more powerful than the rifles the Commandos had.

The firing rate combined with the firepower meant the Commandos were outmatched, but they had aerial support and naval support much higher up, but no warships in atmosphere at the moment…and when the Kar’ka were rushing them like this there was no way a warship could target them without the possibility of friendly fire.

His Commando unit regrouped as they retreated, firing little and mostly running while trying to stay out of line of sight and scattering when needed only to come back together again when the Kar’ka got too close and they had to fight.

Ben went far right, circling around and firing on one of the Kar’ka from the side as it tracked after their lone Arc Commando. Whether he was drawing its attention psionically or they were going after him because he had psionics Ben didn’t know, but for the moment he had a free shot so he took it.

He fired three blue Dre’mo’don orbs into the Kar’ka’s shields, then had to duck out of the way as another Kar’ka came up and shot in his direction. The blasts hit the tree two meters above his head as he circled around it, blasting out a large enough chunk that the whole upper part began to tip over. Ben was long gone from there by the time it came crashing down as Viles had them retreating again.

This time they got closer to the defense lines and he saw the first bits of metal ahead of them as some of the smaller mechs came out to them. The Commandos stayed away from their footsteps and disappeared behind the trees as the big boys began to lob weaponsfire at each other...after which Ben finally had time to look at the battlemap in a larger sense and saw that there were hundreds of Kar’ka showing up in the forest along with a handful of Era’tran.

How the Era’tran were moving through the trees without getting pinned down he didn’t know, but they were heading this way and Star Force was scrambling to get enough mechs and aerial craft here to stop them. Luckily the Commando team had detected the approach when they did, for that bought them some time to…

Ben’s ability to think strategically ended as his unit was almost overrun by Zen’zat coming directly at them. They were stealthed up until the last few meters, then the oversized Humans were firing at them and diving into hand to hand combat with Viles throwing them a warning barely two seconds before Ben took his first shield hit.

He fired back as he spun behind the closest tree trunk, then he met up with another Commando and double teamed the next Zen’zat to come at them, pouring shots into his chest as he barreled into the pair and knocked both down.

Ben grabbed at his legs, but a large foot knocked him away while an invisible hand tried to yank his rifle out of his hand by the barrel tip. Fortunately Ben held tight as he fell, but he couldn’t line up a shot as the Zen’zat kicked into his fellow Commando and landed several pointblank shots to his chest shields. The enemy broke through them as Ben got back to his feet, but his rifle didn’t want to point in the right direction. Fortunately the Commando on the ground wasn’t being held in place other than by a foot on his chest, and he twisted it out of the way and nearly took the Zen’zat down before it jumped away and fired on Ben.

He caught the diversion just before another Zen’zat punched him in the head from behind, realizing that the Zen’zat knew they didn’t have Pefbar so rear attacks would be the most effective. His battlemap tracking gave him a heads up though, just in time for him to peel himself in the direction of the hit and thus diminish its impact. Rather than knocking him to the ground it spun him around and he got a lazy punch into the Zen’zat’s side, but it barely nudged him.

Shots from another pair of Commandos intervened, and the 4v2 ended up with one Zen’zat down and two Commandos with armor damage…until the downed Zen’zat suddenly got back up and ran off, with Ben putting a few shots in his butt that failed to get through the armor.

“How many of these bastards are there?” he asked as they pulled back to another waypoint and he began readjusting his anti-psionics shield that for some reason hadn’t fully covered his weapon barrel.

“Too many,” the Commando said, referencing small dots all over the battlemap that were not Commandos or Knights. “And they can go invisible. Hardly fair.”

“We have a Uriti, so don’t complain about fair.”

“Not very helpful right now, is it?” another Commando commented, then they were back in the firefight again.

Ben didn’t last long, going down some 7 minutes later but the Zen’zat were too busy to stick around and kill him. He lay on the forest floor looking up at the stupidly tall tree branches overhead as the gel layer in his armor seeped into the hole in his chest, applying chemicals that would stop blood loss and assist in healing, but it wasn’t even close to the regenerators that the V’kit’no’sat armor carried. Even the Zen’zat had them now, but their armor wasn’t as strong as his Commando armor, and it had saved him for a few more seconds before the takedown hit got through.

His armor recognized the damage to him, citing that he had a damaged lung but the impact point had missed his heart. That didn’t really matter to Ben as the pain was so intense he wanted to jump up and run and do something…but he forced himself to play dead and wait, letting the gel do what it could to stabilize him, but he already was having trouble getting a breath in. His entire torso was clenched up and, had he looked, he would have seen his chest missing half a baseball-sized chunk of tissue. He had several other internal organs damaged and was of no use to anyone right now, so he just stayed put and tried to hang on as long as he could.

A very long time later another Commando appeared over him and he nearly vomited when the pain spiked to blinding levels when he was suddenly picked up and carried, his viewpoint shifting from the high up branches to the twig-covered dirt as he was bounced with each and every step. Tears seeped out as he tried to ride it out, then when he was close to passing out the movement stopped and he felt a blissful numbing effect hit his wound.

His vision cleared enough to see the superimposed icon of a medtech over him and the wall of the defense ring behind the armored Human, realizing he’d been carried all the way back to the construction site the V’kit’no’sat had been trying to get at from the ground.

“Easy fella, you’re safe now,” the medtech said, with her voice being calm and soothing. “You’ve dropped about 7 pounds of flesh, and I can’t replace that here, but you’re healing over. You’re going to make it. Whoa, lie still, the regenerator isn’t finished yet,” she said, placing a firm hand on an intact portion of his chest armor as Ben tried to sit up.

“Did we win?”

“They got through the outer wall, but they didn’t scratch the portal before we took them down. Seems like a huge waste on their part. They must be really ticked that we’re here.”

“Good. They’ve got it coming. How long before I can walk?”

“You’re walking to a medbay and nowhere else, but you should be up and moving in a couple minutes. What hit you?”

“Zen’zat.”

“Really? I thought you’d got hit by one of the big ones.”

“That huge of a hole?”

“You can pull up my helmet telemetry later and see. I’ve got a hover cart coming, so you won’t have to walk more than a couple steps.”

“Whatever,” Ben said, wanting to get back on duty but still leery from the pain. Most of it was numbed out, but there was no ignoring the damage that had been done and the rest of him was still feeling the effects of nearly dying. When the medtech finally gave him the all clear she helped him stand up and he almost tipped over the other way, catching his feet and taking a few laborious steps to the hover cart where he gladly laid back down. He was too weak to walk, and the new skin-covered cavity in his chest felt like it was about ready to rip apart at any moment.

He rode on the hover cart to the small outpost built near the portal on the edge of the defense wall the V’kit’no’sat had managed to break through. Further in were the construction crews putting the finishing touches on a gate into the planet, bored down into the crust with a shield cap over it. Underneath was nothing but a huge hole several miles deep, but after Ben got to a medical station that had enough biomaterial to allow the built-in regenerator to repair and replace all his missing tissue, he was waiting outside on the roof for a dropship to arrive and take him back up to a troopship in orbit. He needed a few days of training and testing to see how much strength he’d lost before he’d be put back into combat duty, but for now he was going to have to wait because all dropship traffic was temporarily canceled in and out of the outpost.

At first he thought that meant they were going to come under attack again, but that wasn't the case as he studied the battlemap inside a new set of armor. The airspace was being cleared because the portal was now operational and Morgan-063 wasn’t going to waste any time in bringing the Uriti down to the planet.

Ben had a very good view of the ‘small’ Uriti 1.7 miles long and shaped into a tip on the front end, making it look like a plump arrowhead. Its virtually imperious skin was a deep blue with a single red streak along the ‘upper’ side, and it was heading down to the planet tip-first.

The Commando watched as that small Uriti became huge before his eyes, only a few miles away with his helmet triggering a psionic alarm, indicating that it was blocking out a telepathic attack. Had he been inside the outpost the walls would have done that for him, but he was now very glad he had a suit of armor on that could protect him from it above and beyond his Ikrid block, for he’d heard that the sheer weight of a Uriti’s telepathic aura would give him, at the least, a headache as it pressed against the block.

Critters had no such defense, which was why everything inside the border wall had been removed. There wasn’t so much as an ant left, not that there had been many to begin with, and just in case a rare bird happened to fly into the area they were being kept away by light shields around the perimeter stretching up miles into the sky. They weren’t always in effect, but had swept the area a few minutes ago without Ben even seeing them. Now the Uriti was coming down and affecting everything around it without even trying, which was why Star Force had made sure to ‘clean’ the area beforehand.

Ben’s teeth ground together lightly, tensing against some disaster that was not going to happen. Papa Smurf was under the direction of the Archons in orbit, and the Uriti slid down into the cap shield without incident, passing into the 1.4 mile wide hole in the ground and disappearing from view as it dug its way down into the planet on its own after that.

The airspace didn’t clear before he saw the magma impact on the cap shield, which kept it from turning into a volcano in the wake of the Uriti’s entry all the way down into the liquid rock layers of the planet. Had it been a crack in the crust it would have sealed over on its own as the magma hardened, but a hole the width of even this small Uriti was another matter. Without Star Force’s construction of the cap shield it would have turned into a huge plume of material that would have reached half the way up through the atmosphere, for the pressures below the surface were extreme.

That pressure was now capped underneath the shield as the top of the red/orange magma began to solidify and turn black, but it would take weeks before enough of it hardened to repair the damage to the planetary crust, with the sidewalls of the tunnel accelerating that effect with cooling equipment.

This entire facility was a one-off, and now that the Uriti had entered the planet it would not be coming out through here again. It was going to snack a bit on the planetary material as it made its way down near to the core, then travel around it to the southern pole…where it was going to come up underneath the pyramid and do its damage there, where the massive Tar’vem’jic defense battery couldn’t fire on it.

2

Sess’met stood on the command deck of the planetary defense station, seeing both a small hologram on his cushioned pedestal and a huge one that filled the airspace above them of the Star Force commander who had contacted them. She was smug, as usual, but offering a warning to the V’kit’no’sat for them to evacuate.

“You have an estimated 3 days at the minimum,” Morgan said sternly. “After that the Uriti will emerge beneath the pyramid and destroy it from below. The magma discharge associated with it will probably destroy nearby buildings, so get your people out of the entire area. We’re taking the planet back via your deaths or your evacuation. Your choice. When the Uriti gets to your location we’re not calling it off if you change your mind at the last moment. Leave now or die,” she said in the V’kit’no’sat language, then cut transmission and her obnoxious form disappeared from the mile wide command deck.

They will do it, he said, speaking via telepathy to get across the distance between pedestals. We have no means of defending against a subsurface attack.

You want us to surrender? Dorchav asked neutrally.

I see no way to fight. And if you think they’ll stay their hand to preserve us you are mistaken. They have given warning and adequate time to evacuate. That will satisfy their scruples. If we remain here we will die.

I’m forced to concur, an Era’tran named Ollva said. He was one of the regional commanders, like Sess’met, who’d been kicked out of their invasion zones, and was learning a hard lesson that the Rit’ko’sor could see was starting to take root. We gain nothing by staying and dying. Destroy the Tar’vem’jic and cleanse the station of all data. There is nothing else we can do.

If we run here, where will it stop? a Voro’nam regional commander argued in lieu of Zyrnox, whose absence left no one in full command now that they were all pushed back to this last foothold in Star Force territory. If they come to another planet and do the same thing, will we run again or find a way to fight?

Do you have a suggestion, Sess’met challenged, or are you just wasting time with denial?

V’kit’no’sat do not run.

Then stay and die. I’ll take those with enough sense to avoid a hopeless fight and live to find a way to fight back later.

Typical Rit’ko’sor, the Voro’nam huffed. I have no idea why Zyrnox brought you here. You have accomplished nothing in this invasion and now you argue to give up a planetary defense station without a fight. We should have exterminated you when we had the chance.

You tried and failed, Sess’met reminded him, but Star Force will not be so sloppy with us here. They will send their Uriti at us from below, and we have nothing…NOTHING to stop it. Arrogance is not a weapon that will save you, so how do you intend to fight it?

Enough, Dorchav said before the Voro’nam or anyone else could respond. I’m making the decision and taking the responsibility in Zyrnox’s absence. Unless any of you can concoct a strategy to hold this location, I’m ordering an immediate evacuation, the Brat’mar said, telepathically touching each of the 6 regional commanders and forcing them to respond to him personally.

None had an answer, and he gave them a moment more to think, but no epiphanies followed.

Then we have no choice. Sess’met, you are to handle sabotage operations. Expect them to be able to recover anything we leave behind, no matter how badly damaged.

I’ll be thorough, the Rit’ko’sor said, accessing the interface on his pedestal and issuing orders to the army of V’kit’no’sat throughout the facility to begin the unsavory task of destroying their own equipment.

I expect this Archon to allow us to leave if we leave promptly, but I want the fleet covering the surface evacuation regardless. Pull back all troops engaged in combat and get them off the planet as soon as possible.

We’re abandoning all fronts? another Voro’nam asked, and Dorchav knew they were reflexively defending Zyrnox’s mission here, which was ending in utter failure.

We must adapt to the threat before us. We cannot accomplish our mission now, so our new mission is to preserve what resources we have. Staying and dying avails us of nothing, and taking down some Star Force ships is worthless. It is the Uriti that we have to discover how to counter, and other than observing its destruction of this facility we can do nothing beneficial here.

We need additional sensors in place when it surfaces, the Era’tran added.

See to it, Dorchav approved. Then join the fleet. We are leaving. There is nothing more to discuss.

Sess’met watched as the command deck cleared, not quickly, as many were visibly reluctant to go, but in the end he was the last one remaining as he organized the destruction of the Tar’vem’jic…which was not easy to do. Eventually he left the huge chamber as well, traveling deep down through the facility to where the power generator was and double checked the sensor modifications.

They needed whatever information they could get on the Uriti, and this was the first time they’d had a chance to see one below ground. Even now they were able to track its progress through the planet, but with little more than a location blip as it disrupted the inner planetary material while shoving its way through very thick, but liquid material as if it was nothing but water.

The tremors were visible even if the Uriti was not. Sess’met wondered how well Star Force’s communication with it functioned within the planet, but he doubted they would tell him if he asked. Regardless, they would get some data when it came close just before the sensors and the planetary defense station were destroyed. He’d make sure they had ships in orbit to get a close sensor scan of the impact, for he was curious to see how the Uriti fared against the Yeg’gor. He didn’t think it would break easily, and frankly didn’t know what would occur, but it was something they needed to know regardless…in addition to providing stark evidence of the threat Star Force now posed. Evidence that Itaru could no longer ignore.

Morgan stood in the command nexus onboard her flagship Gold Ranger, a brand new model only three months out of the shipyards and configured with a Uriti transmitter onboard. She was using it to listen in to Papa Smurf as a Wrangler on another ship was guiding it as it came up through the mantle beneath the pyramid, the very bottom tip of which dipped into the mantle and syphoned heat as a backup method of power generation.

That meant when Papa Smurf finally made impact he was able to touch V’kit’no’sat technology before he touched solid rock, pushing up through it like a wedge and destroying everything above him through sheer physical pressure. The Uriti did not need to use any weaponry, merely pushing up from beneath and crushing the components on the lower levels.

Eventually he got high enough that the width of the understructure of the pyramid was wider than the Uriti, letting him move much more easily through the air pockets, snapping deck after deck until he rose all the way up to the widest portion just below surface level. Morgan saw him through the telepathic link, breaking up through the command deck like a mole coming up into his den with surprising ease.

Papa Smurf spun around, tearing out additional walls until he was free of all obstructions and leveled out beneath the Yeg’gor ‘tent’ above him as magma billowed up from below, turning the command deck into a superheated sauna that eventually filled up to the cap where the air inside was caught and compressed down to the point that it was turned into plasma that helped to burn through the structures above.

From the surface Morgan didn’t see anything but a few trails of magma pouring out of doorways that the V’kit’no’sat had left open behind them as they boarded their ships on the pyramid surface. The peak where the Tar’vem’jic was located was not open, and the Yeg’gor there was holding solid without even a leak of magma seeping through.

Papa Smurf did not come any higher, for Morgan didn’t want to breach the surface and create a supervolcano. That was why the portal had been created to allow him entry to the planet and an exit gate was nearly complete in Central America. Papa Smurf would be exiting there and not through the pyramid, for the original gate was now full of solidifying magma that, if pushed through, would break the gate and create the supervolcano they wished to avoid. Thus the portals were one-time use only, and while they were attacking the V’kit’no’sat structures in Antarctica, they didn’t want to wreck the landscape in the way they’d seen happen on some of the planets in the Preserve that had Uriti holes poked into their crust.

This was the first mission for Papa Smurf, and Morgan was pleased to see him hold position perfectly within the Pyramid to wreck the interior without breaking the Yeg’gor cap…then he eventually twisted over point first and headed back down through the hole he’d just bored through the crust and into the mantle. He got the approximate coordinates for the exit gate and headed off towards it, with Morgan losing track of him as even his telepathic power dimmed so much through the thickness of the planet that they couldn’t contact him at the deepest levels. A single tracking signal was all that was visible of the massive telepathic presence until he rose up closer to the surface again a couple days later.

But the Wranglers could handle that. Now that Papa Smurf was out of the area it was up to her and the other Archons to take possession of the planet again. They wouldn’t be staying and rebuilding, unfortunately, but they needed to take stock of what was left down there and many V’kit’no’sat cities to explore…and clear of potential booby-traps.

That’s why Morgan was going down herself as soon as she made sure the V’kit’no’sat fleet was gone. Some of their ships were still hanging around and she’d been tolerating them long enough so they could see the destruction of the pyramid, though it clearly wasn’t as awe-inspiring as they’d probably expected. Still, with their telemetry they’d have seen what was happening internally and how easy it was to take down their strongest footholds from within.

They couldn’t redesign their other planetary defense stations, which had taken ages to construct, fast enough to protect them against Star Force doing exactly this again. And even if they did there was no guarantee that the Yeg’gor could protect them. Morgan liked that doing it this way didn’t give the V’kit’no’sat a chance to see how well it held up to a Uriti, leaving them either in doubt or with false confirmation that it couldn’t break through.

She was pretty sure it could, but even if not it could have risen up and carried the entire umbrella-like shield up into space with it if it wanted, so she wasn’t worried about that…plus Papa Smurf was the smallest Uriti they had, though arguably the strongest ton for ton. The later Uriti designs had gotten more and more potent, and when this one ‘grew up’ it was going to be a terror beyond terrors…for the enemy.

A little over a day later Morgan was in atmosphere, flying around on her own power and looking at what the V’kit’no’sat had done to her planet. Antarctica was no longer covered in ice, but green beyond green, and it hadn’t suffered from Kara’s previous planetary bombardment. It hadn’t been touched at all save for the few small rivers of magma still seeping out of the pyramid, on top of which she landed on, finding the surface only mildly hot.

That was because the Yeg’gor ate energy with a ravenous appetite, including heat, and from what naval sensors were telling her the interior was still full of liquid magma. That meant she wasn’t going in, and even when it did solidify…if it solidified…it was going to be full of rock with nowhere to enter, making it a giant paperweight and useless to both sides.

But there were thousands of buildings around it that hadn’t been touched, and initial scouting parties were reporting nothing more than empty databases and some wrecked equipment. No booby-traps were being found, and hopefully that trend would continue, but Morgan was standing in the midst of a highly technological ghost town that made her feel eerily like the past hundred millennia had never happened and this planet had never been attacked by the Rit’ko’sor during the rebellion.

Everything looked like the V’kit’no’sat had been here forever and the Human inhabitation nothing more than a daydream. Even the pyramid, which looked the same from the outside, no longer had the familiar interior that she could remember. Now it was just molten junk, washing away everything she remembered save for the exterior that she now stood on.

Morgan could see with her Pefbar down through the Yeg’gor where the Tar’vem’jic emitters were…or used to be. Now they were fragments floating in a sea of plasma and magma, and she doubted that was due to Papa Smurf. The V’kit’no’sat had probably destroyed the weapon rather than let Star Force recover it if the Uriti somehow didn’t trash it. What she couldn’t see were the vital interior components, guessing that the V’kit’no’sat had taken them to be reused later. The exotic components were something that were hard to build, which was why Star Force hadn’t bothered to try.

The V’kit’no’sat used the combination of Tar’vem’jic and Yeg’gor to create fortifications that were almost impossible to overwhelm, which was something that Star Force couldn’t do. Even if they made an exact copy of the pyramid on another world the V’kit’no’sat could amass enough ships to overpower it, meaning the Star Force war strategy had to be mobile and expendable…and Tar’vem’jics were definitely not expendable.

Star Force needed powerful weapons that they could make a lot of and lose, and Morgan saw the irony and fear the V’kit’no’sat must be feeling now, for all their unbreakable battleforts were useless against the Uriti attacking from beneath. All the effort, time, and expense they’d gone to in building them was now a horrific waste of resources. That had to be driving them crazy, for they’d built the heavy defenses away from the core where the Hadarak couldn’t touch them. They were meant to defend the empire against other threats while the Mach’nel were the mobile teeth on the coreward front.

But now the Uriti were here on the rimward frontier and the V’kit’no’sat’s entire strategic setup was now thrown on its head. If there were any doubters they now had proof, and she was glad they’d decided to leave rather than stay and die. It made things a lot simpler, especially making the likelihood of there still being hidden V’kit’no’sat on the planet extremely unlikely.

Morgan looked around, seeing the unfamiliar landscape beyond the pyramid, and on impulse triggered her armor to retract down into a lump on the ground that she stepped out of, wearing the loose flowing Archon uniform beneath. They had many different versions now, but this one was her favorite and reminded her a little bit of a Jedi robe, though not nearly that sloppy. It was smooth as silk and almost body hugging, making it relaxed and combat ready at the same time.

It was the same uniform that she’d worn when first coming here back before they’d even met the lizards. Morgan slipped the shoes off, telekinetically pulling her socks away from her feet and stuffing them inside as she stepped on the warm, but not too hot, black/green Yeg’gor surface as she’d done so long ago, feeling the synthetic rock with her bare feet and remembering back.

Too many years of losses had weighed on her, pushing the older memories deep, deep within the recesses of her mind. Morgan closed her eyes, seeing only with her Pefbar that did not reach beyond the pyramid. She stretched it out sideways and above, so she didn’t see the magma beneath, and tried to reach back to the early years.

It took some time, but when she made the connection everything seemed to come alive again. Her toes didn’t lie, the stone had the same pseudo-soft feel to it that reeked with ancient importance. So much had changed since her first time here, so many revelations and truths discovered that it took a moment to unlearn everything she’d learned and see through her old eyes.

She’d come a long way. A very long way. So far that she hadn’t even considered it until now. She’d been living in the moment, as any good Archon would, but now she felt like…

“Victory,” she said aloud, finally opening her eyes. The landscape was drastically different, but it was the same pyramid and the same planet. Many things had changed, but this was in fact Earth and where it had all began. The unbeatable V’kit’no’sat had just been kicked out and were now running. They’d be back eventually, she had no doubt, but Morgan had just reclaimed Earth. It’d been stolen from them in a very blood fight so, so long ago…but she’d just taken it back, and now she stood on the top of the pyramid, with her bare feet confirming the fact that this was real and she was actually here again.

“The war’s not over by a long shot, but we finally won guys,” she said, speaking to the 98 trailblazers that were not here. Mark-099 was, out helping the scouting teams elsewhere on the planet, but the others weren’t. They were out dealing with the massive empire Star Force had created, and she was glad she’d been one of the two that got to come here and kick the damn Dinosaurs out. She hadn’t thought of them as Dinosaurs in a long time, but standing here was bringing back a lot of old memories.

“We thought you were extinct before. We won’t make the same mistake twice,” she said to the sky. “But Earth is ours, and don’t you ever forget it. Ours…you hear me? No Dinos allowed!” Morgan added, taking in a long, slow breath of air she hadn’t felt in ages. It was warmer now, and more humid, but it was Earth air just the same.

Morgan sat down, feeling her butt warm but tolerating it, then leaned back and lay looking up at the sky. Earth’s sky, as she’d remembered it from long ago.

“We’re home, fellas. We’re home…”

3

October 17, 4833

Tettio System (Unclaimed Territory)

Stellar Orbit (Trade Route to Terraxis)

Mak’to’ran’s Kafcha came out of its jump along with three others of similar class, the only ships he’d elected to bring with him as he traveled all the way out to Terraxis. They were having to move through the backwater systems now, having run out of black hole routes to save time on, and they were still several jumps away from their destination when they ran into a large V’kit’no’sat fleet sitting around the innermost planet.

Mak’to’ran hadn’t expected it here, but a quick query confirmed his suspicions…it was Zyrnox’s task force that was supposed to be attacking Star Force or at least holding on to the territory they’d previously gained. Now they were waiting for their commander’s return, reporting that even Terraxis had now fallen to the combination of Star Force and the Uriti.

The V’kit’no’sat leader brought his four ships out from the star and rendezvoused with them, then had all six regional commanders plus Dorchav join him and Zyrnox onboard his flagship for a debrief that he was sure he was not going to like.

“We should have fought,” Turo said, glancing at his fellow Voro’nam commander. “We could have at least destroyed some of their ships.”

“It would have been a waste,” Dorchav said, angered enough with this continued stupidity to speak despite his lingering shame for having lost a Mach’nel. “Only the Uriti matters, and we could not have damaged it sufficiently enough despite its small size.”

“We gained nothing from running!” the other Voro’nam regional commander, Haf’vo, said angrily.

“Do not let the strength of the enemy elicit sloppiness,” Mak’to’ran warned. “Better to save our ships for a useful strike than flailing like angry hatchlings.”

Both Voro’nam visibly recoiled, not wishing to argue with the leader of the empire, but he wasn’t going to allow them to retreat into silence.

“Do the Humans have the capability to replace lost warships?” he asked, telepathically directing the impetus to answer to the pair of Voro’nam.

“Their industry is formidable,” Turo said, “but it is declining with each world we take.”

“They are also adding more on the rimward side of their territory,” Sess’met bluntly added. “Our rate of conquest wasn’t fast enough to seriously hinder them.”

“If they can replace their warships, then eliminating a few more is pointless,” Mak’to’ran said evenly. “If we cannot eliminate the Uriti, we will not fight them and waste valuable resources.”

“They have a limited number of Uriti,” Bax, the Qua’cho regional commander offered. “If we strike their worlds by the hundreds simultaneously they cannot have one in each engagement. We draw the Uriti out with feints, disengage, and allow the other invasions to continue. We can pare down their industrial reserves without engaging the Uriti.”

“A prudent plan…assuming they do not strike our own worlds in retribution,” Ollva, the Era’tran commander said warily.

“It is galling to say, but we can suffer those losses. Star Force cannot. Once we eliminate their escort fleets we will be able to engage the Uriti directly. If we cannot peel those off I do not think any number of vessels will be able to counter them. They have the durability of the Hadarak plus weaponry of unforeseen magnitude. We have to isolate them if we have any chance of destroying one.”

“Dorchav,” Mak’to’ran said, drawing a shameful aura from the Brat’mar. “Is the capture method you suggested for the Hadarak not feasible here in some form?”

“I have considered that, and even if we could get past their escorts the weaponry the Uriti possess cannot be silenced. We can possibly negate their gravity weapons, but not their energy discharges.”

“So I had assumed,” Mak’to’ran said regretfully. “We have not been able to test the capture method on a Hadarak yet, but we will soon. However, these Uriti are clearly not Hadarak, and we have to find alternative methods in dealing with them. Even without their escorts, they will be immensely difficult to destroy, correct?”

“Depends on which one we are talking about,” Ivern said, with the Pas’cha’s long neck reaching up higher than both Era’trans’ head height. “Some have ranged weapons that only a Tar’vem’jic can outreach, and I do not believe even a Mach’nel can deliver enough firepower to seriously wound one before they have a chance to flee. I see few options in dealing with them.”

“What of the sedative?”

“We have the formula,” Zyrnox answered, “but if the Ancients’ data is accurate, any combat counteracts it. They had to sacrifice fleets in close range to continually deliver doses while not firing a shot in return. If there is even one Star Force ship in the area, they could shoot the Uriti themselves in order to wake it up.”

“If sedated, the capture technology would then become feasible?” Mak’to’ran asked Dorchav.

“For transport, yes, but the sedative has to be continually applied.”

“Does Star Force use it when they transport the Uriti?”

“No. The Uriti allow them to move them.”

“Interesting,” Mak’to’ran mewed.

“How so?” Sess’met asked.

“They are not claustrophobic.”

“Perhaps they like being away from gravity wells for prolonged periods of time even less.”

“What of their minions? They have not been used as of yet?”

“Not in the offensive combat,” Ollva confirmed. “They were used in the Preserve in a limited fashion. They appear to be less capable than Hadarak minions.”

“They are biological machines,” Sess’met corrected. “They require a Uriti to direct them, otherwise they behave stupidly. I believe the Chixzon wanted strict control and the ability to order the minions directly, without having to deal with the unpredictability of lifeforms. Their control over the Uriti appeared to be very limited in and of itself, and I would guess they saw traditional minions as a potential threat of disobedience.”

“That is Star Force’s opinion?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“It is my opinion, based on the information we have been able to gather from the various races with access to the Preserve.”

“Do you believe Star Force will not utilize them, or are holding them in reserve while developing them further?”

“The Uriti cannot carry them inside their bodies like the Hadarak can, so for space combat I doubt Star Force will use them for offensive operations. Their ship’s carrying capacity is equivalent to their own drones, except their drones don’t need to eat. They may employ them as a form of planetary defense, but I suspect that Star Force finds them too crude to deploy on anything other than uninhabited worlds.”

“They fear casualties?”

“Of indigenous lifeforms, yes. They took great care on Terrax to remove all lifeforms in the area around the Uriti’s entry and exit points, no matter how small. They do not like sloppy operations.”

“They care for the irrelevant,” Zyrnox countered, already irritated by the Rit’ko’sor speaking so freely to Mak’to’ran. “And it has hindered them on many occasions.”

“Agreed on the latter part, but not the former.”

“Explain,” Mak’to’ran urged, growing more curious with this Rit’ko’sor by the moment.

“I have found Star Force to be neither stupid nor inefficient. If they are taking action, I presume there to be a practical purpose. It has taken me some time to define what their parameters are, and I believe I now have a basic understanding of them.”

“I would like to hear it, in detail.”

“Despite what others say,” Sess’met said, throwing a glance at the other regional commanders, “I believe Star Force has decided to trade short term gains for long term plays, but not in a scoring sense. I believe they have a blind philosophy towards other lifeforms. They will aid another even if they cannot see a benefit from it. That makes no sense to us, for why waste resources if there is to be no gain? I believe they assume they are not knowledgeable enough to see all angles, so they play them all. Thus they do not bother with calculations, and that gives clarity and efficiency to their entire empire.”

“What do you mean by ‘blind?’” Dorchav asked.

“I believe they assume the galaxy will handle the calculations, so they can simply deal with all lifeforms in the same matter and receive the benefits from those situations that are advantageous to them without deliberately trying to elicit the benefit. In this way they collect benefits that, through analysis, would have been missed. Thus they maximize the potential benefits by not trying to quantify them.”

“How do you know it’s beneficial if you can’t do a cost analysis?” Haf’vo challenged.

“That is the practical reason, but I also believe they would do it regardless on moral grounds. They have combined the two seeming contradictions into a unified philosophy that is easy to employ, for they take the same actions everywhere. It can simply be summed up as ‘they sacrifice no one.’”

“The Uriti?” Mak’to’ran deduced.

Sess’met twitched his head in agreement. “They may not have ever intended to use them in combat, caring for them altruistically in the beginning, but also to keep them from going on uncontrolled rampages. Many races across the galaxy have brought theirs here to prevent that from occurring in their regions. I do not believe Star Force ever intended to use them as a weapon. But the weapon had other plans.”

“And in return for the care they received they have gained an unexpected benefit?”

“That seems to be what our spies suggest. I would also point out that the Uriti would not even talk to Star Force initially, but now converse with them regularly. Like the Hadarak, we are of no interest to them. We are irrelevant to them, as other lifeforms are to us. Because no one is irrelevant to Star Force, there is no dominance struggle. Also, we know the performance statistics for the Uriti have increased with Star Force training them, so they have given the Uriti a tangible benefit.”

“You’re saying their ability to make friends is an asset?” Ollva asked.

“That is a very simplified statement of a complex philosophy, but essentially you are correct. They hold a passive dominance that is displayed in their defense of others. Even those they conquer they subsequently uplift. They never destroy to destroy. This engenders them excessive good will to those with a brain to analyze it, while making them many enemies amongst the stupid,” Sess’met said, briefly glancing at his fellow regional commanders.

“How do you suggest we defeat them?” Mak’to’ran asked bluntly.

“They will not break, Uriti or not. We must either befriend them or destroy every last one. They will not relent, and given that they are using our own technology against us, we must bring the full power of the V’kit’no’sat to bear against them and accept the horrific losses. If we do not, and do so now, they will only grow stronger. Other civilizations weaken as they enlarge, and often crumble from within. Their rimward ally known as The Nexus is a perfect example of this. Star Force is, in fact, absorbing pieces of The Nexus that are crumbling, and the skill in which they are doing so suggests that there is no limit to the size their empire can expand to. If we wait, they grow stronger. We must act now.”

“Befriend them?” Zyrnox asked, aghast.

“I do not recommend it. I believe they must be eliminated. But I point out the option none the less.”

“You still retain some sanity then,” Turo sniped.

“Yet not enough to see clearly,” Mak’to’ran interjected. “Patience is something you also need to learn. I admit you are correct prior to the inclusion of the Uriti. If we had known how resilient Star Force truly was we should have eliminated them much sooner. Their ability to regenerate after catastrophic losses is impressive and unexpected. We erred, and we are now paying the price for it, but we will not pay it in haste. Sending our fleets to exterminate them en mass would be folly. We must find a better way to eliminate the Uriti. Until then we cannot act.”

“They will only grow stronger in the interim,” Sess’met argued.

“That is where we must have patience, Rit’ko’sor. Do not sacrifice in the short term to obtain something much cheaper in the long term.”

“What do you see that I do not?”

“An opportunity. As dangerous as the Uriti are, they cannot reproduce. Correct?”

“All our information says that was deliberately eliminated from their genome by the Chixzon,” Zyrnox confirmed.

“Then they are limited in number, and when compared to the whole of the Hadarak they are the lesser threat.”

“Star Force itself is a threat.”

“It is, but I am more interested in using them as a means to defeat the Hadarak. We have never been able to communicate with one, and even though the Uriti have been altered they are still based on the Hadarak. I want as much information about them as we can get, and I do not think your spies will be able to provide what I am seeking, though they have provided much already. The true secrets of the Uriti I believe Star Force is concealing from their allies. I want that knowledge.”

“You wish to negotiate with them?”

“It is they who wish to negotiate with us, and I intend to give them the opportunity.”

“Have you received a message from them?” Zyrnox wondered.

“They have been sending messages for some time. Dorchav’s existence is one of them. They spared him to send a message to me, as they have many others. They were sending the messages as equals, which we assumed they were not. Now with the Uriti backing them they are equals, and I am here to negotiate with them as such.”

“I believe they are still in Terraxis,” Sess’met offered immediately, with the others stunned into silence.

“I need to speak to their trailblazers. Do you assume one of them will remain there?”

“There has not been a Uriti strike without one. And considering that they consider Terraxis to be their capitol, it is likely that they will have one defending there against a counterstrike from us. If not, I am sure there will be one roaming their destroyed territory nearby once contact is made.”

“Zyrnox will return with the majority of this fleet, leaving behind only those vessels needed for surveillance. We cannot allow them to believe that they can now reclaim all of their destroyed worlds, so we need a visible presence roaming our conquered territory…but we will not engage. Sess’met will be in charge of our presence here, and he will collect data…nothing more. The rest of you will be returning with Zyrnox, but first all of you are coming with me,” Mak’to’ran said, mentally contacting the bridge and ordering his four ships to depart the system. “We are going to face our nemesis and take the measure of them personally. That much, at least, they have earned. Die they must, but we can at least give them the credit they are due for such accomplishments.”

“To what end?” Ollva asked neutrally.

“They would not exist if not for a failure on our part. We left their ancestors behind in Terraxis. These Humans did not ask to be born. We cannot allow them to exist in defiance of us, but we can honor the warriors that they have become and learn from them. And I would rather learn from the living than trying to draw information from their corpses. Also, I want to squash this lingering arrogance within my commanders. We are dominant because of our skills and power, not because of our name. Right now Star Force possesses a power superior to ours, yet I feel a denial of that fact here. We will adapt and overcome, as we have done before, but right now, in this moment, we are the inferior…and when we do overcome that weakness we will be stronger for it. But we cannot grow stronger if we do not admit the weakness. I will tolerate no more mistakes made from underestimating our foe.”

“From now on, they are our equal and they have my full attention. Make sure that they have yours as well, and find me a way to fight these Uriti. That is our number one priority going forward, and we will stall as long as necessary in order to achieve it. Once we do,” he said, looking at Sess’met, “then we unleash our full power on them and wipe them from existence.”

4

October 26, 4833

Terraxis System (Star Force territory)

High Stellar Orbit

Mak’to’ran’s four Kafcha came out of their jump shallow into enemy-held territory, having traveled the last leg at reduced speed so they could brake to a stop in a position that was unlikely to have a blockading fleet waiting for them.

What the Era’tran saw when he arrived was worse. The reports of the size of the fleet that had been here to take the system from the V’kit’no’sat were either inaccurate, which he doubted, or they’d received far more ships since then. There were more than 120,000 of their jumpships here, but it was an even smaller vessel that immediately caught his attention.

Tiny in comparison, the Uriti known as ‘Vardonak’ to the Chixzon and ‘Papa Smurf’ to Star Force was sitting in its own orbit around the system’s central star, so close that other vessels would have to be running high shields to ward off the continual radiation, but the Uriti didn’t have that problem, for like the Hadarak, they simply absorbed the radiation and grew stronger from it.

Strange how such a tiny thing could be a superior adversary. A Hadarak of that size would be more dangerous than a starship, but something that the V’kit’no’sat could kill with ease compared to the others. None this small had ever been seen before, but Mak’to’ran knew this was no Hadarak. The weaponry it had displayed in the Preserve during their firing drills dwarfed the V’kit’no’sat’s largest Tar’vem’jic and had a similar range. Unlike most of the other Uriti designs, this one was meant to forego close in assaults on planets and simply destroy them outside the range of their defensive weapons. A change in tactics, to be sure, on the part of the Chixzon, but if they truly had lost two Uriti in ill-planned campaigns he could see the advantage of such a radical design change. Even with one as small as this.

He knew their size would continue to grow, as the Hadarak also did, but this Uriti in particular posed a serious threat to the V’kit’no’sat as is…and it was a shame he could do nothing about it today. The four ships he had brought couldn’t do more than scratch it, not that the defending Star Force fleet would allow them to do even that much.

Before their arrival was picked up on Star Force sensors Mak’to’ran sent out a message indicating they were here to talk, not to fight. He identified himself as the leader of the V’kit’no’sat and requested direct and private comm lines to the trailblazers here…whom his staff quickly informed him, based off of ship IDs that started to be cataloged, that there were now at least 7 present.

That number climbed to 11 by the time he received a return message along with a set of coordinates and a promise of safe passage so long as he didn’t try anything.

“As expected,” he said to Zyrnox, who was beside him in his private chambers. “They do not seek combat out of vengeance. They are meticulous in their scruples, and right now they sit on a site of victory.”

“Others would shoot us on sight if they held their current powerbase.”

“These Humans are not others. They are confident in their righteousness even in defeat, which is one reason why we cannot break them. If they are to be eliminated as a threat, it is we that must do it. They will not self-destruct.”

“So I have learned. Will they not try and eliminate you?”

“If I am lost the V’kit’no’sat will not be gravely harmed,” he said humbly. “I am important, but not vital. My loss would not be a death blow.”

“Others would disagree.”

“The wounds of the past are healing. We are not on the verge of another civil war, Zyrnox. Most who spurred the first one are now dead anyway.”

“You expect them to honor their word?”

“To the letter, which is why you will make sure our ships do nothing to provoke them while I am in conference. This could take some time, and I do not want our position here compromised by those overeager to defend our dominance.”

Zyrnox huffed once, sensing a mild rebuke to himself along with that warning. “You need not fear, Mak’to’ran.”

“There are things I must discuss with them that you are not permitted to know, so I leave command of my ships to you for the duration.”

“How you deal with their heresy is your prerogative. Do you expect them to keep the comm private?”

“Probably, though they have made no promise to that and I will not demand it. We are in the lesser position here, Zyrnox, and it is one that I do not believe you or the others are acclimated to.”

Zyrnox suddenly realized that Mak’to’ran had been in this position before, when he had been branded a rebel by Itaru and forced to continually flee their pursuit.

“I understand now, and you are correct. I do not believe I could tolerate their smugness long enough to do whatever it is you intend to do. I will be on the command deck if you require me further,” the Voro’nam said, sending a telepathic ping of respect as he turned and exited the private chambers.

It wasn’t long after that the ships came into orbit over a planet further out than Terraxis. The V’kit’no’sat only had a catalog number for it, but the Humans had named it ‘Mars’ and it still held the scars of ancient battle, for the V’kit’no’sat had no reason to erase them on a world they were not going to inhabit.

A large Star Force fleet was waiting nearby, but not at the rendezvous coordinates. Instead there were 13 of their command ships, and from the updated information his staff was collecting it appeared each of them held one of their rare and formidable warlords that the V’kit’no’sat had never been able to capture or kill.

Mak’to’ran activated his holographic transmitter and waited, eventually seeing 13 smaller images appear before him. He enlarged them as much as he could so it appeared they were standing before him in life size, though he had to make some appear in the air at head height to make them all fit properly. He wanted to see as much of their body language as possible, and as he looked at them he saw one in particular that he remembered.

“Ethan-014, this is the second time we speak here.”

“Still not dead yet, am I?” the Human mocked.

“Obviously not.”

“Well, we’re still born of Zen’zat and you’ve still got to kill us because of your stupid rule, so what exactly are you here to talk about? Last time you were searching for information before you launched your assault, but unless those four ships are really advanced I’m thinking that’s not why you’re here this time.”

“I did not come here to fight, and I was not eager to destroy you the first time, if you remember.”

“Seemed pretty eager to me…unless we were actually Zen’zat pretending otherwise, which we weren’t. You believe that now?”

“You are no Zen’zat. That I am assured of.”

“But we still have to die?”

“I was assigned to come here as Fleet Commander last time, and sparing you wasn’t a decision I could make. Now I come to you as the sole leader of the V’kit’no’sat, and I hold much leniency.”

“You’re going to revoke our death sentence?”

“The reason for the death mark remains. You have our power but are not under our control. You have stolen it from us…despite your claims as to having recovered it. I still do not know how you originated, but it is of little importance now. You are not Zen’zat, and you are not working for one of our races, that much I know, but there is still something about your origins that you are not revealing.”

“I’ll throw you a bone and confirm that much,” Ethan offered. “So why are you here, exactly?”

“You invited me.”

“Not that I can recall, no.”

“You have done so indirectly, and now you are in a position of minimal leverage. Thus I am listening.”

“It’s pretty simple,” Ethan said, speaking on behalf of the other trailblazers as they were all mind linked together and discussing things in private across the battlemap network. “Go away and don’t come back.”

“I cannot do that. The reason for the rule is more important than the rule itself. You did not create the power you wield, you took it from us. I admit you have done more with it than expected, and for that you deserve credit, but you cannot keep it. We tolerate no rogue races, even of Zen’zat. Once part of the empire, you do not leave it.”

“So you want us to join it?” Ethan asked oddly.

“I have a proposition for you.”

“We do hate your guts, just so you know, but we’re listening.”

“I do not take orders from Itaru, I give them, and they will abide by whatever agreement we reach here even if they do not like it…so long as the reason is satisfied. You cannot remain independent, but if you agree to join the empire we can end this war immediately and I can give you considerable lenience in your daily affairs.”

“Specify.”

“You are not Zen’zat, and therefore cannot serve as Zen’zat unless you forfeit the powers you did not earn in the proper manner. You will not do this and I am not asking it, but it means you cannot be part of the empire as it is. However, the V’kit’no’sat dominate the inner half of the galaxy and many have suggested we expand outward as well. We have been suppressed with stagnation for some time, so much so that we do not even know the major powers on the Rim unless they interfere with us. I can commission your civilization to work on our behalf in the rim, never crossing into our existing territory and intermixing with the rest, but you would be part of the empire and no longer rogue. That would allow me to remove the death mark against you.”

“I’m curious why didn’t you offer this before?”

“I was not leader of the V’kit’no’sat before.”

“I mean more recently.”

“I had thought we would destroy you and end the problem. Now that destruction has become extremely complicated.”

“No kidding,” Ethan said with a cruel smirk. “Why do you think we would agree to this now that we’ve finally kicked you out of our former territory?”

“Because you do not crave war. You seek to preserve life at every turn. If I am forced to bring our full might against you and your Uriti you will be destroyed, but it will be a bloody war on both sides, and if that can be avoided with negotiation then negotiation is preferable.”

“So you want us to work for you or Itaru?”

“For me personally. Itaru would not have authority over you. Only I would.”

“And if you were killed?”

“Safeguards could be made regarding that eventuality.”

“And what changes would you demand of us?”

“Few. You have unlocked potential in the Zen’zat genome that we have not, thus it follows that we allow you to continue on your path so that we may learn more to further enhance our own Zen’zat, but you could not run freely in all cases. I would give limited direction to keep you within bounds, but how you deal with the other races you’ve accumulated I care not.”

“And our Mavericks?”

“Those currently enhanced would be permitted, but the enhancing of others must end. If you need more Archons, breed more, but keep the powers to your own race.”

“Now that is a shock,” Ethan said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re telling Zen’zat to breed?”

“As I said before, you are not Zen’zat. It would take time to define what you are within the empire, but I am not unreasonable. You have shown prowess in battle and strategy, and I would be a fool to ignore and bury it. I wish to turn your power into an advantage for the V’kit’no’sat, as well as to reward you for the accomplishments in battle that you have demonstrated thus far. You should not have survived a century, yet here you are persisting onward and growing stronger with the passage of time. I need the V’kit’no’sat to be as strong as possible, and letting you work on the Rim outside our current borders keeps the balance within us intact along with your own powerbase.”

“Are you aware of the events concerning the Rajch System?”

“I am.”

Ethan smiled. “Is that what prompted this meeting? Or were you close by when we took this system?”

“Rajch and the other assaults with Uriti made it clear that I could no longer trust in my subordinates to deal with you, so I came myself.”

“Did we get your shipyards? Roger hasn’t made it back yet, so we haven’t been informed.”

“You destroyed them all and exited the system with your fleet intact. Why has it not returned yet?”

“He had to take the long way to get there. You guys are camping on the fast jumplanes.”

“It was a well-executed strike, and the fact that you didn’t kill my people needlessly tells me there is a chance for us to collaborate. You are not out for blood, and I can cancel the death mark by reuniting you with us. The elaborateness of that reunion will not be well accepted, but I will make it fixed over time. I should have dealt personally with you prior to now, but my main concern has been the Hadarak. My main concern is still the Hadarak, and your knowledge of the Uriti is worth enough to compensate in the minds of others for the leniency I am showing you.”

“You try to murder us for more than a millennia and now you say you’re showing leniency? Your arrogance is astounding.”

“You may have datafiles on the empire, but you truly do not understand it. What may appear as arrogance to you is not. I know the arrogant, and have fought and killed many of them within the V’kit’no’sat. I do not come to you now with arrogance. I am here trusting in your word, offering an end to the war while putting myself in a vulnerable situation. You are honorable, and because of that I know we can come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial.”

“You know, I’ll admit your offer is tempting,” Ethan said honestly. “Not because of the reasons you think, but because The Nexus is collapsing and we’re trying to save as many people out there as we can…only we can’t because we’re having to fight you just to survive. The idea of turning our full resources to the Rim is tempting, and we do like negotiating…we like it a lot, actually, but there’s one factor you’re not considering.”

“And that is?”

“All of our friends you’ve killed. We won’t forget them, and their deaths mean that we will never join you, under any circumstances. If you want an end to this war, then simply leave. We won’t make a promise that we will not attack you, but as I’ve said we have a lot of people in the Rim that need saving and that’s going to occupy most of our time.”

“We also have an agreement with the Uriti,” Morgan interrupted. “They hate you, almost as much as we do…maybe even more, it’s hard to tell.”

“And what is that agreement, exactly?”

“We stop holding them back and let them help us fight you, up until this war is over one way or another. After which, if we survive, we take them to see their cousins in the Core. So your proposal won’t fly with them, and be honest, they’re the real reason you are here.”

“What I have said has not been dishonest. I truly do wish to utilize you on the Rim and learn from what others will call heresy. We have become too regimented over time, and you have broken free from it and gained unexpected power. I am interested in that, but you are correct in saying that my main concern is with the Uriti…but not just for the obvious threat they pose to us. They are born from Hadarak, changed as they may be, and you have the ability to converse with them. We have never, in our entire 6 million year history, been able to get even a moment of communication with the Hadarak.”

“We are…” he continued “the hunters of the Hadarak. Their destruction is the reason the V’kit’no’sat exist. Compared to them, you are nothing. If I can gain knowledge of the Hadarak from you, it will override any heresy you have committed, intentional or accidental. You underestimate how important this is to us.”

5

“We’re not going to join your empire,” Ethan said flatly. “And as long as you continue to put your own dominance above all else and refuse to learn, you will always be our enemy. Change your ways and that might be different, but if you did that you would no longer be V’kit’no’sat. Your datafiles are quite clear. You must be in control of everything, and that which is not under your control obsesses you. That is why you are consumed with the Hadarak, and that is why you are here now. You won’t hesitate to kill anyone that opposes you, even if they are in the right, and because of that we will always be enemies.”

“Then so be it. Even with the Uriti you cannot stand against our full might. I am offering you a chance to end the war and you are refusing it. Which of us is truly arrogant?”

“Can you bring our dead back to life?” Sara-012 asked.

“You have Kich’a’kat the same as we do.”

“The long dead,” the trailblazer clarified.

“We cannot. I cannot. But I can offer you a future.”

“We have a saying, Mak’to’ran. It’s ‘Death before Dishonor.’ It means there are more important things than simply staying alive. We will not betray our dead friends by allying with their killers. You are a threat that has to be stopped, and you can do that yourself by changing your ways, but so long as that threat exists, not only to us but others, we will not stop pursuing it any sooner than you will stop pursuing the destruction of the Hadarak. It is why we exist.”

“Our goals are not wholly incompatible, and with adjustment we could come to a resolution.”

“To do that you’d have to stop being the bad guys,” Ethan said bluntly. “I don’t even think you understand how to do that.”

“Life is important, but not nearly as much as you suggest. Sometimes death is needed to accomplish important goals.”

“And there you have it,” Sara added. “Death is only necessary for a threat that cannot be eliminated in another manner. If someone is not a threat, then death is not acceptable. Killing Zen’zat offspring is unacceptable, because you have the ability to remove their psionics. You never even bothered, did you? You just kill them because it’s simpler and creates a greater deterrent to disobedience.”

“Yes,” Mak’to’ran admitted.

“Killing for the sake of a deterrent is wrong.”

“There we disagree. If so warned and ignored, the death is warranted.”

“How were we warned about being born?” Ethan asked, with the trailblazers still relying on him as the point man in this conversation.

“Your progenitors were, and they made a choice. Blame them, not us.”

“That’s a dodge. You are penalizing us for their actions, with death. We were not warned. We did not disobey. You are killing us because it is convenient.”

“Your deaths are anything but convenient,” Mak’to’ran quipped.

“Because we have the power to oppose you. Those that don’t you just squash under your largess and think nothing of it. That is why you are the bad guys and why we will fight you until you are either dead or change. See, we give you an out. We give you an option that you don’t give others. And we only fight you because you are a threat to us and others. If you mind your own business we don’t bother you. You bother everything and everyone because you think it is your right as the dominant. And the dominant dictate everything, don’t they?”

“The dominant have responsibilities as well, and we cannot spend unlimited time hunting down code breakers and dealing kindly with them. The death marks are efficient and effective because they are a deterrent and an elimination of any who break the code, so they are not around to break other aspects of it later. This allows us to apply our strength where needed…which is against the Hadarak.”

“Unacceptable,” Paul-024 said. “Everyone has a right to live, and you’re ignoring it because they’re inconvenient. Well, a lesson about the Uriti…they considered us to be too small to talk to until we proved ourselves worthy. And if we don’t display care for those lesser than us, why should we expect them to?”

“I was told you were able to communicate through a Chixzon alteration?”

“We can,” Ethan answered, “but that’s more like ordering. We’ve learned to talk to them as well when they don’t have to obey. We, and even your big ass, are considered ‘little beings’ by them. They do not care about little beings, but we’ve proven to be helpful to them and even close to being friends. However, if we come between them and the Hadarak, we’re pretty sure they will choose the Hadarak. And you’re killing the Hadarak. Starting to get the picture?”

“You’re saying the Hadarak won’t talk to us because we are not helpful to them?”

“Possibly.”

“Despite the number of them we have killed?” Mak’to’ran asked in disbelief. “Surely that would gain their attention if they hold a bond to each other as your Uriti seem to suggest.”

“There’s your problem,” Paul added. “You’re trying to be the dominant one. You’re not, they are, so when you try to speak to them from a dominant position…well, how did you respond to us? You said you’re here to talk to us now because the Uriti got your attention. You didn’t bother to come before because you were busy with more important matters. Maybe the Hadarak are busy and see you as nothing more than annoying ants that need to be stepped on.”

“A curious metaphor when your civilization goes to great length to remove even ants from your path,” Mak’to’ran pointed out with some scorn, but he was listening. He’d learned more about the Hadarak mentality from this conversation than all V’kit’no’sat throughout history, so his mind wasn’t as closed as the Humans probably thought. “What would it take from us to end this war?”

He saw varied reactions from all 13 Humans, but it was Ethan that spoke again.

“Number 1, you leave our territory and never return. Not even with scout ships. Number 2, you rework the V’kit’no’sat into something that isn’t an abomination so we don’t have to come to your territory to solve that problem for you. We’re not the type of warriors who stand behind a line on the map when bad things are happening on the other side. We go where the trouble is.”

“And if I could arrange for both, could you restrain the Uriti from attacking us?”

“We could order it, but we will not. We have an agreement with them.”

“But if you did order it. They would obey?”

“Probably. There are no guarantees.”

“So in order for there to be peace between us, your philosophy must conquer the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Our philosophy is based on reality. It’s not a frivolous thing.”

“The structure of the V’kit’no’sat is also based on reality. A portion of it that you seem to eschew…but I will confess you seem to have found another corner of reality that we are unaccustomed to, and it may have enabled you to communicate with the Hadarak where we have not. We learn and we adapt, but we will not turn our back on lessons learned. That is what you ask of us, to become like you and forgo our wisdom. Teach us something new, if you like, but we will not release the gains we have made…including the use of death marks. If one is in error I can remove it, but the practice itself is valuable. Reality has taught us as much.”

“And we will always oppose you because of that,” Morgan said with a note of finality.

“Even if you operate in the Rim and we the Core?”

“We will not hold to a line and allow people on the other side to suffer injustice,” Ethan said flatly.

“You underestimate us if you think you can ultimately win that fight…but that is your fate, and your prerogative. If that is how you decide to die, then we will honor that choice and pay the necessary price for our error in allowing you to exist in the first place. However, I am willing to give you an advantage in that fight if you will agree to a lesser, temporary arrangement.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“I care about defeating the Hadarak more than I care about your destruction. My offer of your inclusion in the empire still stands, for now and into the future if you reconsider, but I do not want you to die and take the secrets of the Hadarak with you. I cannot afford to waste such an opportunity, so I will agree to a temporary ceasefire as well as safe passage for you and any number of your Uriti that you wish to travel to the Core and meet directly with the Hadarak.”

That caused all the Humans to stir, with sufficient body language that Mak’to’ran did not need telepathy to register their surprise.

“You’re hoping the Uriti will stay there and leave us vulnerable?”

“A possibility that I have considered, but my purpose in allowing the meeting is to gather data. You share everything you learn about the Hadarak, keeping what Uriti secrets you wish to yourselves, but share all you learn from the Hadarak and I will grant you a Sarma of reprieve from our attacks. I will not promise you will not be surveilled, but we will not attack you in any form for the duration. You will have time to reconsider my original proposal, but even if you do not accept you will have time to rebuild your worlds and increase your fleets. This will make it much harder for us to defeat you, but it is merely an inconvenience when compared to the otherwise unobtainable information on the Hadarak that you will be able to provide us.”

A Sarma was a V’kit’no’sat time measurement, equivalent to 243 years, give or take a few months, and all the trailblazers knew instantly how much of an advantage that would provide them in the war.

“The Hadarak are that important to you?” Ethan asked.

“They are.”

“And if we don’t get the answers you want?”

“I only ask that you give me everything you discover. Whatever it is, it will be more than we currently have. Is it true you can telepathically connect to the Uriti?”

“Yes.”

“And can you listen in to their conversations between one another?”

“No, but we can monitor their stats and determine various reactions. If we want to know what they’re thinking we have to ask.”

“And they share this knowledge with you of their own accord?”

“They do. We cannot force it, for the Chixzon did not wish to communicate, they only wished to point them at a system and say ‘destroy’ while sitting back, feet kicked up with a good view.”

“Do you believe they would share information they obtain from the Hadarak.”

“Probably, but I can’t guarantee it.”

“Can you guarantee that they would never tell us?”

Ethan smiled, seeing where Mak’to’ran was going with this. “Pretty much.”

“Then it is a gamble I will take. You have a habit of honoring your word, and if you promise to reveal everything the Hadarak give the Uriti, or anything you learn through the Uriti about the Hadarak, then you will have your Sarma of Armistice so long as you do not attack our territory for the duration. As much as you might like to, as you said, you have other priorities on the Rim to deal with in the interim as well as preparing for our future attacks if you do not accept my annexation proposal.”

“And if the Uriti don’t want to hold to this agreement?”

“Then I only ask that you do not accompany them when they attack us. We will not hold their actions against you unless you are complicit. And it shouldn’t be hard to make them understand that the war will be coming soon anyway, and that it is in your best interests to wait while you build more ships. Or am I misunderstanding your relationship with them?”

“Their minds are odd compared to others, and not always predictable to those unfamiliar with them. They have never met a Hadarak before, so I’m not going to guess as to how they will behave afterward.”

“Honor your part and I will honor ours. That is all I ask.”

“You’ll give us access to the black hole routes of our choosing?”

“Yes, though I would suggest you let us suggest the meeting spot. We know more about their movements than you could with outdated files.”

“How long will it take you to get word to all of yours ships to stand down?”

“Those connected to the Urrtren will be so instructed prior to your potential arrival even if you left tomorrow. I will escort you there myself if you wish.”

“No. I don’t want your ships anywhere near the Uriti. Right now the one we have in this system is asking for permission to attack you. He doesn’t understand negotiation. You are the enemy, so he wants to smash you every time he sees you. The Uriti trusts our judgement to a point, so they allow us to deal with other little beings as we wish, but if not for our suggestion he would be attacking you now. Having V’kit’no’sat ships traveling with us is a bad idea.”

“Then I will proceed you and clear the path of your choosing. Do we have an accord?”

“The Sarma will begin when we leave the Core, but you will stand down your attacks as of now.”

“So agreed, contingent on your revelation of the data. I assume when you meet the Hadarak our presence would also be a hindrance?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will clear your path and leave the matter to you. I will give you a temporary access code to the Urrtren so you can deliver the data in any system that you wish. Once I personally receive it the Sarna will begin.”

“Agreed. You will also make sure our path is clear of other hostiles.”

“Of course,” Mak’to’ran added, knowing full well the intricacies of such deals, but he would have dealt with other races harshly on his own anyway, for he did not want anything spoiling this opportunity. “I have more of an interest in this meeting than you do. Yours is curiosity. Mine is a multi-million year war.”

“When ready we will meet you in the Bmakaen System. Our leading ships will arrive first, the Uriti last, so you can wait for us there then depart before they arrive. Our transit will be slower, because we have to make occasional stops for them to star dive. They are patient in their carriers, but that patience has limits.”

“We will wait in each system until the first of your vessels arrives, so not to leave you behind. Is this accord firm, or do you have to confirm it with Director Davis?”

“It is firm. He will be in agreement, and even if not we share power. We have the authority to make this decision. It is official as of now, so long as you are able to speak for your empire.”

“I do, and we are now in accord. The fleets you have been fighting in this region have already been withdrawn. I will instruct them as to the particulars of this deal personally, then await you at Bmakaen.”

“Expect some delay in us getting there.”

“So long as it does not become stalling, I am not in a hurry. But I understand the diplomatic issues between you and the other races in your Preserve. However, there can be no veto or renegotiation of this accord.”

“They are obnoxious observers. They do not give us orders.”

Mak’to’ran huffed his approval. “Bmakaen then,” he said, ending the comm.

Ethan watched from the command nexus onboard his flagship as the four V’kit’no’sat Kafcha promptly left Mars orbit and headed back to the star…while Star Force reminded Papa Smurf to let them go, not that he could have caught them anyway.

“Guys?” Morgan asked as the 13 of them were still in holo-conference with each other.

“Did not see that coming,” Jason-025 admitted.

“Does anyone else think he forced our hand with the Uriti?” Bo-065 asked.

“He did,” Paul agreed. “We made an agreement with the Uriti and he knows we’ll honor it. We just don’t know if the Uriti will come back with us afterward.”

“So we’re not taking all of them?” Morgan asked.

“Not a good idea, transport wise,” Paul agreed. “Plus we need to leave some here just in case Mak’to’ran breaks his word.”

“And if they all want to leave for the Core after meeting the Hadarak?” Sara asked.

Ethan cringed. “I think Mak’to’ran would think that an even better trade for a 243 year pause in the war.”

“Do you think he was serious about the other offer?” Trent-092 asked.

“I think he was,” Morgan answered, “but I think there was a lot left unsaid about the ‘restrictions’ placed on us. He’d probably be generous from his point of view, but not from ours.”

“Anyone actually considering it?” Jason asked, receiving unanimous ‘no’ shakes of their heads. “Good. Just checking. So…who’s going to Dino Land?”

6

March 3, 4834

Narkeem System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Black Hole Orbit

When the Star Force armada began to come through their very easy deceleration into the black hole system they found the huge gravity well at the center nearly devoid of ships. That was very odd, because this black hole linked to 6 others on long jumplanes that the V’kit’no’sat used heavily, but per Mak’to’ran’s promise he’d cleared the way for the armada even at this massive of a traffic nexus.

The ships were nearby, or at least as ‘nearby’ as one could get in a system of this size. There were four other stars that orbited the black hole and a total of 284 planetoids mixed in amongst them, all in stable orbits. That made the system very odd, and from the naked eye looked more like 4 star systems very close to one another, but take a gravity sensor and you’d quickly find that the dominant force amongst all of them was quietly invisible in the center.

The black hole was the focus for the traffic, due to the immense acceleration and deceleration potential it provided. Had Star Force not come here, the next leg of their journey would have required 18 different jumps and a total of a month and a half going passing through ‘normal’ systems, but that same distance to another black hole, straight shot, was going to take them only 4 days and Paul could see more ships entering the system on this side of the gravitational mass that bent sensor signals enough to be a problem, but it was large enough to physically block out what was on the other side as well, just as a star would have.

The incoming V’kit’no’sat ships were mostly civilian, and soon after each arrived they flew off out to the stars and planets where millions of others were waiting. A lot of them were native to this system, but at least a good portion of those visible were temporarily stuck there to clear way for the Star Force fleet…which was odd, given how huge even the innermost orbit around the black hole was…but the idea was to keep the enemy as far away from the Uriti as possible.

As Paul’s sensors worked themselves around the disruption he saw a mobile mining platform leaving the black hole, guessing that Mak’to’ran had probably ordered it away as soon as he arrived due to the fact that the 5 Uriti Star Force was bringing with them were going to use this system as one of their rest stops. Star Force had no black holes in the Preserve, and one of this size was too tempting a playground for the Uriti to pass up.

By the time the first of the Uriti transports came out of their jump there was already over 82,000 Clan Ghostblade jumpships here with their bays fully loaded with drones, and Kara had already arrived in the Yi. Only those two trailblazers had been sent, sending their best naval Archons in the form of The Admiral and the Queen of Diamonds who, above all others, had the most experience moving and hiding ships. If the V’kit’no’sat didn’t honor their word and tried to ambush Star Force, the other 99 trailblazers would be unaffected and, with the rest of the Uriti, would start lighting up the enemy empire in response.

That was why this wasn’t seen as a vacation with a third or more of the trailblazers going, though they all wished they had. Paul didn’t think Mak’to’ran would betray his word, but they were bringing enough warships to make sure they had plenty of disengagement options if necessary…and if they had to run, they’d have to take the long way back and Paul would have to keep the fleet alive pulling every trick in the book, which was why he wanted Kara and her fleet with him.

So far there had been no trouble though, starting with their rendezvous in the Bmakaen System and the 12 jumps since then. This was going to be the first big black hole jump the fleet was going to make, though they’d already caught one smaller one prior to arriving in V’kit’no’sat territory to save time now that they weren’t trying to be sneaky and could afford to draw attention.

As for the Preserve Council, they’d been heated when Star Force told them they couldn’t come along. Paul had no doubt that the Knights of Quenar were pacing them, under cloak that even Star Force’s fleet couldn’t see. He really wished Tennisonne had a Ghostbane sensor package operational, but the MasterTech said his functional prototypes were not up to snuff yet and he had to make a plethora of refinements. He knew Tennisonne was probably right, but he hated flying blind to their sometime ally’s presence.

He did know that the Bocadeem were trailing them, and suspected others were as well, but the Bocadeem were so close that Star Force was able to pick up occasional sensor blips despite their own cloaking devices. Their stealth was not as good as the KoQ’s, and he’d warned them not to follow because the V’kit’no’sat had sensors that could defeat their cloaks. He hadn’t elaborated on the particulars of that but had delivered the warning nonetheless, and knew for a fact that the Ghostbane could pick up the KoQ vessels, for he’d had Tennisonne send one of his ‘crappy’ prototypes to the Preserve to check on that and it had indeed been able to pick up some of their vessels at extreme close range.

So if their little toy could do it, the much better V’kit’no’sat sensors probably could at decent range. How many of those things they had Paul didn’t know, but if he were them he’d have one built in each system in addition to their scout ships as a matter of prudence. He’d also warned Mak’to’ran that there might be hitchhikers under stealth pacing them, because he didn’t want the V’kit’no’sat to think Star Force was trying to pull something. He needed this mission to be as obvious and simple as possible, and he didn’t want these idiots screwing it up by passing through V’kit’no’sat systems without their permission.

So Paul had warned both sides and essentially washed his hands of it. Mak’to’ran, if he decided to attack the cloaked ships, wouldn’t be blaming Star Force and if the Council races did come under attack Paul wasn’t going to defend them because he had told them specifically not to follow him. It wasn’t a good situation to be in, but he’d organized his neutrality the best way possible and if his ‘allies’ got killed it’d be their fault.

And the thing was, he probably wouldn’t even know it if they did because they were trailing behind his fleet and if they were going to be jumped by the V’kit’no’sat they’d do it after the Star Force ships had all jumped out, but Paul had a feeling the KoQ weren’t trailing, but intermixing with his fleet. Doing so was tricky with the packed nature of the jumps the convoy was making, but he didn’t feel that they’d be comfortable in the back without being able to see what was happening and they’d never had a collision before…meaning they were damn good navigators.

As for Paul’s own stealth ships, none of the Ma’kri were running with their cloaks up. They were all visible for the fact that they were permitted to be here. There was no need to hide them, especially given that the V’kit’no’sat could see them with the Ghostbane sensor anyway, and he really didn’t like the idea of the KoQ being here and being visible to the V’kit’no’sat making it look like Paul had something to hide.

But so far there had been no visible fallout, and when Bahamut’s transport arrived and released him to space there was no sign of any V’kit’no’sat within millions of miles…as had been agreed. So far Mak’to’ran was honoring his part of the deal, and Paul had a feeling that his war against the Hadarak was his primary concern above all else and that he needed the intel from this mission badly. If there was going to be any conflict it’d be after he got the intel, not on the trip into the Core.

One by one the other transports arrived staggered within the warship convoy, depositing Nami, Devastator, Godzilla, and Apollo lower into black hole orbit as the fleet casually gathered above them, forming a more or less symbolic barrier between them and the V’kit’no’sat as all 5 Uriti disappeared down into the black hole. It wasn’t known, even to Nefron, if these five had ever been at a black hole before, but he’d assured Paul the gravity as actually beneficial to them rather than dangerous. The super black holes at the center of the galaxy and a few rare other locations might be dangerous, might not be, for the Chixzon had never bothered to experiment on such things when all they wanted the Uriti for was to rip apart the planets of their enemies.

The Hadarak typically spawned in the super black holes where the V’kit’no’sat could not attack them, and even this smaller black hole could be used as a spawning ground if the Hadarak ever came out this far, but for the Uriti it was something much different and Paul was getting a constant update from the 8 Wranglers he had in the fleet.

The Uriti were absolutely giddy, or whatever their equivalent emotion was, and the initial data the Wranglers got before they disappeared beneath the third event horizon and sank down into the ultra thick material of the black hole itself, was showing a surge in various tissues that had not been previously recorded. Whatever effect the black hole was having on them was something new to Star Force and Paul quickly calculated that they needed a relay system in order to fully study it with them submerged, but that wasn’t going to happen here. They’d have to scrape what little insights they could off the entry and exit data, but it was clear that there was something going on here that the Chixzon had not known of…or at least hadn’t included in Nefron’s genetic memories.

As for the selection of the Uriti, that had happened automatically. Bahamut had been selected by the Uriti themselves, with Star Force picking the others. Given the fact that the Hadarak were much larger than the Uriti, Paul had elected to bring the biggest two they had…Devastator and Godzilla. Devastator was the widest with Godzilla being the most massive. Both were star shaped, with Devastator having 4 arms and Godzilla having 3, so they’d be, size wise at least, the most similar to the Hadarak.

Apollo was the roundest and most similar shaped to the Hadarak, while Nami was very small. Paul wanted to see how they’d react to such a small one, plus she had a disruption weapon that would at least mess with V’kit’no’sat systems even if didn’t completely take them down as it did to most races’ starships prior to the main concussion blast she also released. That weapon was better suited to use within an atmosphere, but it could do considerable damage at point blank rage to starships as well.

And bringing the two largest Uriti Star Force had also would make Mak’to’ran cringe if he intended to attack them at some point. Paul knew their weakest position was during transit, which was why he was keeping the Uriti in the rear portion of the convoy so they didn’t have to enter a system into potential trouble.

Paul also had two extra Uriti transports with him, just in case the others were damaged, as well as 4 MCVs so they could make repairs or even build new ones in the field if needed. What he did not want to get into was a situation where the Uriti would have to travel under their own power with Pauls’ fleet essentially being stranded in escort of them as they creeped their way back to Star Force territory at painfully slow speed.

He also didn’t want to draw out these rest stops too much, and the Uriti were eager enough to get to the Core themselves, so after 14 hours of black hole bathing all 5 came back up and boarded their transports and the convoy began to jump out of the system ship by ship in a long snake-like line with Mak’to’ran’s much smaller convoy heading out just before they arrived at the exiting jumppoint.

Paul had Kara go first, with him coming in about halfway through the convoy and still with a decent gap between him and the first Uriti transport. The jump itself wasn’t a long one, save for the distance traveled, and when they arrived at the exiting black hole they didn’t stop to take a dip in it. They directed to another jumppoint that led to a smaller black hole that required them to hold back on their engine power, else they’d over accelerate and not be able to stop at the far end.

They alternated between black hole routes and regular jumps between those preferred endpoints as they cut across the Centaurus and Norma galactic arms and came to the ball-like construct of densely packed systems known as the Galactic Core. Unlike the arms that were more or less flat when view from afar, the Galactic Core was basically a sphere with systems orbiting the gravitational center of the galaxy on a wide variety of paths. The galaxy itself had outliers all the way out to the rim, but the bulk of the systems orbited around a band that made the pancake-like shape. The few systems that did not were highly isolated, some unable to jump to because of the distances, but here in the Core there were so many so close together that jumplanes were not only accessible, they were shortened to only 2-3 lightyears in some places.

That meant in the Core you couldn’t get long jumps, making travel even slower. The few routes that did allow for longer ones were heavily coveted, and the V’kit’no’sat controlled virtually all of them up to the Hadarak border. According to Mak’to’ran they had tried to hold onto the other ones deeper inside, but the Hadarak intentionally attacked them to drive them off rather than just randomly patrolling the area that still held many indigenous races and civilizations that the Hadarak stomped on more or less accidentally. It was the V’kit’no’sat that they targeted intentionally, and to this day Mak’to’ran still did not know why.

Or rather he did not know why they would go for them in certain areas then basically ignore them further out until they got around to another probing attack. Between the two of them, Mak’to’ran and Paul agreed on a system in which to try and make contact with the Hadarak that was on one of their more frequent patrol routes.

Paul watched with interest the level of infrastructure in each system they passed through on their way there, comparing it to the data they’d originally gotten from the pyramid back when Star Force began and the bits of updates they’d been able to steal from damaged V’kit’no’sat ships over the course of the war. Some were more developed, others less, but the closer they got to the Hadarak border they began to thin down considerably in terms of civilian presence while the military equipment remained steady up until the last few stops, where it increased exponentially.

The final V’kit’no’sat system they passed through was Horanja, and it was essentially a fortress. There were so many weapon platforms around the central star that it made Paul’s fleet feel extremely small. He couldn’t have even scratched this system if he’d wanted to without the Uriti’s help, and even then he wasn’t sure what the outcome would be, for beyond all the fixed or semi-mobile weaponry there was a defense fleet that dwarfed his own. He’d known the V’kit’no’sat were created to fight the Hadarak, but this was even more buildup than he’d imagined…and far more than had been present at the time the Rit’ko’sor rebellion had begun.

Maybe this was just a hot spot that needed extra reinforcing, but according to Mak’to’ran it was standard…and the reality of just how powerful the V’kit’no’sat were began to sink in. He’d known it previously, in an academic sense, but despite everything they’d thrown at Star Force they really were just playing with them this whole time. They had the power to destroy the rogue Human civilization if they wanted to, but what Paul was seeing here made it clear that the Hadarak were far more dangerous a threat to the V’kit’no’sat, and the galaxy as a whole, than Star Force would ever be.

Mak’to’ran’s focus was here, as it should be, and Star Force, for the moment, was the key to gaining intel on the V’kit’no’sat’s nemesis, making this temporary alliance logical despite appearances to the contrary…along with Mak’to’ran’s other offer for inclusion in their empire as a rim-only force. Mak’to’ran just wanted to get the Human problem dealt with so he could focus on the real threat, and from the level of buildup here it was clear that he hadn’t been spending too much effort and resources on Star Force.

And Paul’s fleet wasn’t staying here, they were going beyond this system further into the Core where what this fortress system was built to defend against roamed freely. They went where they wanted, attacked who and what they wanted, and left all those systems in the Core at their mercy. Paul had seen the data from the time before the V’kit’no’sat had pushed the Hadarak back this far, and it wasn’t pretty, but the Hadarak didn’t seem to focus on any race. Much like the Uriti, they found the ‘little beings’ irrelevant and fought them whenever they pestered them, but operated how they wanted regardless of what was done or not done to fight them.

Until the V’kit’no’sat arrived. Now the Hadarak were strategically fighting them, but in an odd way. Part of the time they seemed to work against them as an enemy, other times they seemed to ignore them as the ‘little beings’ that they were. Mak’to’ran had gone as far as to give Paul a lot of recent data on them, hoping he could find a pattern, but so far Paul could not. The Hadarak were a continually perplexing mystery, and the more Paul studied them the more he realized that Mak’to’ran needed Star Force to be successful on this mission, in any way, shape, or form, so the V’kit’no’sat would have something to analyze.

Part of Paul didn’t want to bother with the Hadarak now, for Star Force had plenty to deal with already, but another part of him salivated at the new challenge before him and the level of defense the V’kit’no’sat had arrayed against them only stoked that drive within him further. Archons craved challenges, and this may have been the largest challenge the galaxy had ever faced…and one the V’kit’no’sat had been working on for 6 million years without solution.

And that made it all the more tempting for Paul to dig his teeth into, but that wasn’t why they were here. They were here to make good on a promise to the Uriti and to deal with the fallout of their heritage. He didn’t know how this was going to go down, but it was something that needed to happen.

Still, he had a bad feeling about this…

7

June 17, 4834

Itium System (Hadarak Zone)

2nd planet

Paul was in the Archon sanctum onboard his ship climbing up a wall in high gravity when Admiral Baeren interrupted him via comm, noting the arrival of a Hadarak in the system. The trailblazer let go of his precarious handholds and floated down through the air at an angle to drop him off at the exit doorway where he then headed straight to the bridge at a modest run, his body relaxing now that he was back in normal gravity.

When he entered the bridge he walked past the numerous work stations that had the command chairs for the Admiral and Paul at the center, though he rarely used his. He preferred to use the more robust battlemap interface that the nearby command nexus offered even for small things, so he walked through his elite bridge crew and into the nook on the far side that put a single wall between him and the others as he walked up onto the shallow pedestal, linking in and getting an active sensor feed directly into his mind.

Holograms popped up as well, though he didn’t need them. He was so good at using the interface that he could pull the holographic feeds and translate them into mental images, though letting the ship’s computer handle that during high stress situations was best and he’d just got in the habit of flicking them on regardless.

And on them was a 215 mile wide Hadarak. Paul had seen images of them before, but now that he was here he got an odd feeling immediately…only to realize it wasn’t him, but the telepathic auras of the nearby Uriti washing over him.

He immediately checked the anti-psionic shields on his ship, finding they were in fact intact, but somehow the Uriti were getting something through.

He got a complex forwarding of the Wranglers’ interface with the Uriti, indicating that they were sending out unbelievably strong emissions that were part telepathic and part something else they’d never seen before, but it was obvious to them all that they were responding to the Hadarak…the question was how?

“What do you make of it?” Kara asked, popping up in front of Paul in hologram.

“They didn’t do this with each other, so it may be something buried deep within their genetic code. I don’t think the Chixzon ever planned on having them meet, so we’re in uncertain waters here.”

“Are we waiting for it to notice us?”

“It already has, if it bothers to passive scan,” Paul said, still interfacing with the Wranglers rather than plugging into the Uriti himself. He needed his mind clear to maintain the naval situation. The V’kit’no’sat were not here at all, unless they had stealth ships present, and he presumed they did, but Mak’to’ran had not come on the final leg to this location. This first contact was Star Force’s responsibility, and the V’kit’no’sat were wisely staying out of it…or so it looked. Paul had to guard against something happening from them, and he couldn’t do that if he was trying to translate Uriti thought himself.

“I’m going in, just in the Excalibur,” he told Kara. “You have the fleet here, I’m taking Bahamut alone. Keep your eyes open.”

“Will do, Cap. Go make us some new friends if you can.”

“I wish,” Paul whispered as he cut the comm with Kara and told Hera-2574, who was on another deck inside the Excalibur, that he wanted only Bahamut to approach first so the Hadarak didn’t get spooked with all 5 Uriti coming towards it. In response he got a lot of gibberish that she was feeding him, mind to mind, with the Uriti behaving oddly. It seemed even they did not know what was happening, other than that they were receiving some type of signal from the Hadarak on an almost subconscious level starting from the moment it arrived…too soon for it to have noticed them.

There was also confusion and a bit of argument between the Uriti that they were letting the Wranglers’ in on, but as soon as Paul’s suggestion/order was transmitted via Hera they seemed to settle, with Bahamut approving and moving ahead to pace the much smaller Excalibur as they both headed in towards the star at a creeping pace as far as the starship was concerned. Bahamut was moving at moderate speed, making a microjump at less than full speed, and Paul guessed that he was taking this in stride rather than running towards the Hadarak like an ignorant youngling.

“Paul,” Hera said with some trepidation in her voice, “something is wrong. Bahamut feels it. The Hadarak are not what they expected.”

“How so?”

“There’s a vibe coming from it, a passive signal I’d guess. Maybe a telepathic medium like an open comm channel that the Chixzon eliminated when they created the Uriti. I’m guessing right now, but whatever it is, it’s bugging the Uriti like fingernails on a chalkboard.”

“They still had chalkboards when you were born?”

“You’re not that much older than me, bub. Plus the metaphor lasted a few centuries longer anyway.”

“Can you feel it?”

“Through them, yes. I don’t think it’s the same thing the Uriti were sending out, unless they’re so sensitive to it that we’re missing it.”

“Starting to regret not bringing Nefron,” Paul noted.

“Yeah, me too. If the Hadarak deploys minions, what do we do?”

“Stay back and let Bahamut handle it. We just need to stay in active telepathic range.”

“Got it. I’ll let him know. He’s agreed to let me listen in.”

“Good. Key in the recorder.”

“I’ve had it running since the Hadarak arrived. So long as he keeps sharing, we’ll have fresh data to study indefinitely.”

What she meant by that, Paul knew, was that they wouldn’t have to rely on Hera’s own memories, which she could transmit to others telepathically, but she wasn’t going to remember everything and even with all the Archons’ mental skills, memories had a way of fuzzing into inaccuracy. The V’kit’no’sat had developed technology to record memories so they could be viewed later, even millennia later, with no degradation. Star Force didn’t use that technology much, but had a few applications tucked away for a rainy day, and studying new behavior by the Uriti was one of them.

It took a few hours to reach low stellar orbit, with Bahamut still registering the odd passive transmission from the Hadarak. When they arrived the Hadarak was not where it had been previously. It was waiting for them at the incoming jumppoint with a swarm of minions around it. They remained stationary until Bahamut slowed enough to engage in telepathic contact without the ‘words’ getting all blurred by the speed compression.

As soon as they started to talk to each other the minions moved forward, heading towards Bahamut slowly…not nearly at combat speeds, but they were definitely moving to engagement range.

“Hera?”

“Standby,” she said, sounding pained.

Paul kept the Excalibur several thousand miles behind Bahamut but off to the side enough that they could get firm sensor readings on the Hadarak without the Uriti’s mass blocking them.

“No, no, no…” Hera said over the open comm, but it was clear she was talking to herself and not Paul. He didn’t interrupt her, studying the sensors as much as possible as the minions got closer to Bahamut and accelerated to attack speeds.

The Uriti took it in stride, not firing until they got to its ‘flesh’ and began ramming it in some cases and attacking with energy weapons in others. Bahamut didn’t tolerate that and cascades of red lightning followed, scraping the kamikaze IDF-laden minions off itself by vaporizing them and all the other minions within a few miles radius in chain-like effects that in some cases reached even further than its proximity defense range by jumping from one minion to another as they were vaporized.

The Hadarak also began to move towards the Uriti, perhaps not understanding that its minions were not pinning it in place or perhaps not caring. Bahamut held his ground even as the Hadarak came within grapple range, extending Lachka-like energy fields to hold the Uriti in place and even draw it towards its gravity generators that had a much shorter range, reflecting inside a pass-through shield matrix to enhance the effect and not pull on everything else in the universe.

As the Hadarak got closer, orifices on its surface began to open up and the tips of its giant tentacles crept out and into space. Paul counted 4 on the near side, then saw tips of at least two more coming out beyond the horizon on the huge Hadarak. It dwarfed Bahamut in size, and maybe it thought it could actually kill the Uriti, but right now Hera wasn’t giving him any information as to what was happening between the two of them.

But what Paul could see was the reaction of the other Uriti. They were too far away to see the attack yet, but they were already moving…all four of them…and heading towards Bahamut. They wouldn’t get here soon, with Nami being the fastest of the four and her ETA at no less than an hour and a half, but judging by their speeds they weren’t just coming in for a look, they were racing to help Bahamut as fast as they could.

They probably saw the minions move, and a message from Kara confirmed that they were under the impression that the Hadarak was going to attack Bahamut and they weren’t going to hold position any longer.

He sent a message back indicating that she should trail them at a distance with the fleet, but he wanted it close just in case they needed to take action as the Hadarak finally got an energy field grip on Bahamut. Hera was still sending telemetry to him, and he could feel Bahamut’s capture and resistance as he tried to pull away…which he did, easily, since the minions were not generating IDF fields to immobilize him.

The Hadarak didn’t relent, pouring fourth more minions and following Bahamut, who began striking down the minions as soon as they got within a few miles range.

“I know you’re busy, but I could really use an update…”

“It’s happening so fast, Paul. I’m just trying to keep up. The Hadarak are not accepting the Uriti and Bahamut is arguing the point. I don’t think this is going to end well.”

“Keep me updated when you can,” Paul said, letting her continue to monitor without pestering. “So much for making new friends.”

As he continued to watch the Hadarak closely, Paul saw additional orifices on the surface of the moon-sized lifeform open and pour out more minions…far more, making him think it was emptying every hangar it had to release a swarm that blotted out the sunlight behind it as they swirled around the circular mass of the Hadarak and moved in towards Bahamut. The Uriti swatted down many of them, but couldn’t get them all fast enough before he felt through the telemetry that its grip on the gravity well of the star had just diminished.

The Hadarak accelerated towards it quickly, almost making a microjump of its own, and Bahamut couldn’t match the acceleration at first, getting back within energy grappling range of the Hadarak before it began to break free again…then the Hadarak did make a microjump and nearly slammed into the Uriti as Paul moved the Excalibur out of the way and paced them as the first of the tentacles began to wrap around Bahamut’s left wing. The Uriti was pulled in even more by the localized gravity fields that could grasp the Uriti but the Uriti could not push off of due to the IDF goo of the corpses of minions that had rammed it and had not yet been burnt off.

Many were, as there was a constant cascade of red lightning arcs, but the swarm kept depositing more and more on them.

“Get back,” Hera warned. “Withdraw now,” she said, and Paul knew that wasn’t her warning but Bahamut’s.

Moving the Excalibur was easy, for compared to the two massive lifeforms it might as well have been a bolt of lightning. He tripled the distance to Bahamut, but continued to pace it as the two grappled on a random course further out into the system but off from the incoming jumpline the other Uriti were incoming on.

An update from Hera told Paul that Bahamut’s wing was damaged, being crushed by now two tentacles that were wrapped around it…but even as she sent that telemetry over to him he saw the pre-emptive flash of light indicating that Bahamut was about to discharge his main weapon, the Torronna that his wings generated.

When the big bang came it was larger than anything Paul had seen recorded by Bahamut, guessing that he’d been able to dig down a lot deeper now that his own life was threatened in a major way…and probably with a lot of anger too. Regardless, the yellow/white discharge was so large that it nearly obscured the entire Uriti from view and overloaded the Excalibur’s sensors so Paul couldn’t see what had happened until several seconds afterward.

Out of the aftermath Bahamut flew free, no longer entangled in the Hadarak’s tentacles and freeing himself from what remained of the minion good on his body with additional red lightning arcs as the Hadarak chased after him, now faster than before, but he couldn’t catch the slight faster Uriti even as the two accelerated so fast Paul worried about them being able to stop before careening out of the system.

When it became clear that the Uriti was uncatchable the Hadarak began to slow, pulling on the star even as the gravity well began to weaken and decrease its maneuvering power. Bahamut did likewise, but arced further away to get clear entirely.

Paul watched both maneuvers as he headed closer to the Hadarak, wanting to get a good damage reading as he noticed one of the tips of the tentacles was missing. Sensors found it shortly thereafter back in a lower stellar orbit before the chase got underway, and the closer the command ship got to the Hadarak the more he could see the massive damage that it had suffered…but nothing more than a good punch to the stomach, with its outer hull still partially intact in places and only a few small punctures around the orifices that were naturally less resistant to firepower even when closed.

Another two tentacles were partly broken, but not severed. They were just as tough as the main ‘hull’ of the Hadarak, but since they’d been touching the Uriti they’d taken the brunt of the attack and were slowly reeling back in, but doing so at a rate that he knew from V’kit’no’sat data meant they were too fragile to move any faster.

Bahamut had nearly blown apart three tentacles in one attack, but most of the Hadarak was still battle capable and the fact that it had chased Bahamut as far as it had was not a good sign. It could have been panic, but Paul guessed that the damage done, while significant, was nothing even close to a kill shot and the Hadarak’s sheer bulk meant it wasn’t something the Uriti could easily kill. He imagined that Bahamut would have to poke at it for days, if not weeks, to finally kill it, and he was sure Bahamut could due to the Hadarak’s inability to create addition minions as fast as the Uriti could destroy them.

Still, to have an enemy that could stand up to Bahamut’s Torronna and not only live, but keep on fighting as if it never occurred, was sobering. He didn’t know if Bahamut thought that way, but it underscored just how much damage the V’kit’no’sat fleets had to do over time to kill these things.

“Hera?” Paul finally asked as he pulled the Excalibur away from the Hadarak and headed back to where Bahamut was still decelerating from his escape jump.

“He’s hurting, badly, but only part of it is physical. His Torronna discharge bled into the crack in his own wing, burning it, but he’ll heal. The emotional damage…I don’t know. It’s rocked him to his core and he’s talking nonstop, to both me and the other Uriti even though they’re too far away. He keeps wanting to know if he did something wrong, what they could have done different, did they deserve this? He’s very disillusioned right now and he’s looking for answers.”

“What actually happened?”

“A lot. Too much to sum up, but it comes down to this…the Hadarak are going to pursue the Uriti until they’re dead. They’ve just become enemy #1 with the V’kit’no’sat a distant second.”

8

“Explain,” Paul demanded as Bahamut slowly changed course to rendezvous with the other Uriti, and vice versa, as the Excalibur flew in the gap in between them and the Hadarak.

Hera sighed, having mostly disconnected with Bahamut during his fleeing, and was now able to focus on bringing Paul up to speed.

“I think I know how the Chixzon solved their spawning problem. I’m surprised Nefron didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“The Uriti are not Hadarak, they’re minions…really big minions. I think they used a Hadarak body and put a minion core in it.”

“How do you know that now?”

“The Hadarak told Bahamut. Told him he was an abomination that had to be destroyed. The Hadarak have a hive mind…that’s the odd signal that was irritating the Uriti. Bahamut doesn’t have it because he’s not a Hadarak, but he can sense it because his body is partially Hadarak…but his body is also partially minion, so there’s a massive confliction, like a feedback loop, that is giving them a headache. Part of them says they’re Hadarak but they don’t fit into the hive mind, another part says they’re minions and they’re supposed to be subservient to the hive mind. It’s all mixed up, but the Uriti are totally rejecting the hive mind.”

“The Hadarak think he’s a minion and not following orders?”

“No. No, no, no,” Hera said, her holographic head shaking. “The Hadarak are following orders. Some sort of purity code. Bahamut registers as a minion telepathically, but doesn’t respond to the hive mind. He’s like a virus, and one that’s pirated a lot from the Hadarak. It’s like the Hadarak view him as one of them, but whose voice is that of a minion who doesn’t speak like a minion. Sorry, this is hard enough for me to understand, but the bottom line is that the Hadarak sees Bahamut as the greatest threat to the Hadarak in existence and pushed him to the top of their kill list.”

“An actual list?”

“Yeah. The Hadarak aren’t just roaming and stepping on everyone in their way. They’re operating on orders, from what source I don’t know, but the hive mind is like an identification mechanism between Hadarak. If there is any anomaly detected it is purged, and Bahamut is showing up as the mother of all anomalies.”

“The Hadarak kill each other?”

“If they’re not pure enough, yeah, I got that impression…at least that they would. Based on the reaction, though, it might not have happened in a very long time, or perhaps ever. There is a rigid unity within the Hadarak and Bahamut is deemed an outsider. But not a stranger. He’s an altered form of them, and for that he has to be purged with extreme prejudice.”

“Well that’s just peachy,” Paul said, irritated to no end. “How’s Bahamut responding?”

“Shock. Utter shock at both the rejection and the attack. He also doesn’t understand the minion thing, because his minions aren’t people. They’re biological drones. So the Hadarak just called him a ‘non-person’ and he’s taking that as a huge insult on top of the rejection. I think he was expecting the Hadarak to be another type of Uriti, but it turns out they’re something very, very different, and not in a good way. He’s not going on a rampage, but he’s rudderless right now.”

“Provide as much of one as you can.”

“We are, and the other Uriti will be soon once they can get within closer range and talk it out. I can already tell they’re pissed that Bahamut is hurt, not to mention shocked that something out there can damage them that easily. All the ‘big people’ they know are friends, so this betrayal is messing with them too, despite them not knowing the details yet.”

“Are they going to want to strike back?”

“I have no clue, Paul. We’re way beyond any precedent here.”

“Is the Hadarak coming after us?”

“Yeah, but he’s empty right now. Thankfully we got some more speed into Bahamut, because if the Hadarak can’t catch them they have to use minions and he’s got none left to speak of. I’d guess he’s gonna eat and grow some more, and it looks like he’s angling towards the first planet.”

“And once he’s full?”

“They’re coming, Paul. Bahamut told them enough in their conversation that the Hadarak know where we live now. They’re coming for us, as an afterthought along with the V’kit’no’sat. Star Force is now higher on their kill list because of our involvement with the Uriti.”

“Is this kill list a metaphor of yours?”

“No, it’s not. These Hadarak are exterminators. That’s their purpose.”

Paul frowned as he saw the sensor data. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Couriers I’d bet,” Hera said angrily. “Going to tell their buddies about us.”

“Is there any chance of negotiation with the Hadarak?”

“Zero,” Hera said firmly, with the Excalibur suddenly accelerating at insane speed towards the four globs of material the Hadarak had just released and were moving in towards the star at starship-level speeds. “Are we going to kill the big one too?”

“Buying us some time,” Paul said, bringing the command ship to battle stations. “I assume the Uriti aren’t going to mind me blasting those couriers to bits?”

“Just do it, Paul. I’m not sure about anything they’re going to do from this point on. Are you sure we can get them all?”

“If they stick together, yes. There’s not much armor on them.”

“They’re moving stupidly fast.”

“We’ll catch them,” he promised, goosing the jump drives further and further. He had almost unlimited speed if he wanted to run the drives up to interstellar jump levels, but that was moving directly away or towards the star, with lateral movement options being much more limited. He was having to use both movement components to close on the courier minions, each of which were nearly a mile long…save for one that was about half that.

Paul knew from the V’kit’no’sat data that the size determined their range, and he guessed the Hadarak had sent all it possessed, with the fourth one being only partially grown. If it knew that it would have less range, then that probably meant…

“Damn,” he said as he saw them start to split up and head to different jumplines.

“How many can we get?” Hera asked.

“At least two. I don’t think I can get them all,” he said angrily.

“We need to send other ships to track them down,” Hera insisted. “We cannot let that message get through.”

“Done,” he said, sending a message to Kara to deploy several jumpships to follow them through whatever jumpline they exited on while he focused on reeling in the closest one. It took some time to get to it, but eventually he got within firing range of his Ardent beams and began to light it up…only to see the giant minion make an abrupt course change and head directly for the star, accelerating so fast that it left the Excalibur behind.

Paul adjusted and went after it within a second, but it was already out of firing range. There was no way the Hadarak could have given it orders that fast from this distance, and for the first time he was seeing firsthand the advantage of having minions that were living beings who could think and react on their own. This one knew it couldn’t get to the jumppoint, so it was drawing Paul away from the others.

If Paul let it go it’d just swing around and head back on its original course or head to another jumppoint, so he had no choice but to pursue it. When he got back within firing range again the courier ducked a second time, altering course violently, but Paul was on top of it this time, managing to get a few shots in as both ships zigged and zagged, draining the Excalibur’s capacitors precipitously but with plenty of power left for insystem maneuvering. If he needed to make an interstellar jump he’d have to wait for them to fill up again, otherwise he’d have to limp through the jump, and he knew that the maneuvers were at least as taxing on the minion for the same reason.

That would limit the number of jumps it made before dying, for they were ill suited to eating. They could survive on their own in a system, but they couldn’t refill their power reserves without a Hadarak, so they’d go as far as they could then stop and go into survival mode until a Hadarak eventually found them. This chase would limit how many systems this courier could travel through, but that wasn’t going to matter. The Ardent stings that were hitting at range, while not many, were doing enough damage that the minion’s movements got sloppier and sloppier until the command ship was able to get some better accuracy on it and rip it to pieces.

Literally, because there were no explosion of metal or atmosphere, only a splattering of biomatter until the hole-riddled minion ceased all propulsion. Paul moved in closer and ended any hope of it still surviving, then shot his ship off towards the next closest one, seeing that the other two were going to get to their jumppoints before he could intercept.

The ships that Kara were sending didn’t have a chance of catching them here, but they’d record where they went and follow them, maybe intercepting them during the coast phase of the jump and blowing them up enroute, but at the minimum they’d travel faster and arrive at the destination ahead of the couriers…then blown them to bits when they came out of their jumps.

Paul didn’t like sending a few ships off on their own away from the fleet, but Hera had been insistent that this was necessary and he didn’t doubt her judgement. Whatever had just happened with the Uriti and Hadarak was something they did not want to let word get out about, so these couriers had to go down.

Paul’s command ship caught up to the second a few minutes before it arrived at its jumppoint and dispatched it with ease. It didn’t try to evade, rather goosed its speed a bit further trying to get to the jumppoint, but it didn’t make it. Paul began to go after the third, knowing it was probably going to get away, but didn’t want to give it a jumppoint of its choice if there were preferred ones to locations where it knew other Hadarak were.

Whether it was the one it wanted or not, the minion arrived at its jumppoint and began to decelerate to align with the precise jumpline out, with Paul wondering how accurate their interstellar navigation was when a much larger ship appeared out of nowhere nearby it.

It was decloaking, but it wasn’t the KoQ vessel that Paul hoped it would be. Rather it was a V’kit’no’sat ship, and from the size and shape the ship’s computer tagged it as an I’rar’et Dak’bri-class battlecruiser larger than his own command ship, and as he watched there were tiny objects being launched from it at high speed, moving out to intercept the minion.

The courier immediately altered course, abandoning the jumppoint and heading in towards the star, but the little objects were not to be denied…with Paul seeing once they got closer that they were not ships, but rather I’rar’et in their K’lak’tal combat suits. They were free flying through space in order to outmaneuver the slippery little minion that outmassed them greatly, stinging it continuously until it also began to slow. After that point it was just a matter of time before they finally killed it.

When Paul got closer he received a comm prompt from the ship, with a hologram of what used to be called a Pterodactyl appearing before him sitting on a perch with its wings spread wide in an agitated stance.

“Remain here,” it ordered. “We will track down and destroy the other. You must not travel without your fleet.”

“That courier must be destroyed,” Paul insisted. “If it gets through you can expect a wellspring of Hadarak coming out from the Core.”

“What has transpired?”

“The Hadarak have put a death mark on the Uriti,” Paul said, using a term the V’kit’no’sat were well accustomed to. “And they’re now more interested in destroying them than they are you. I think they’re taking the Uriti’s existence as a personal insult.”

“Mak’to’ran will want all data.”

“He will get it.”

“Deal with the Hadarak. We will kill the courier,” the I’rar’et said with finality, then both he and the ship disappeared as it recloaked and hopefully came through on its promise to pursue the minion…but Paul wasn’t worried. The V’kit’no’sat didn’t take the Hadarak lightly, so he didn’t expect…

It was a great distance away by this point, but the part of Paul’s mind that was tracking the other minion saw a second ship decloak a short distance behind it, closing fast with a speed not even the Excalibur could have matched. It’s hull was even more sensor resistant than the I’rar’et ship, but the limited image he was getting back showed a cascade of sparks out of the blackness of space, then a ship almost equally as black was there, with tiny strips of light accentuating its shape.

Paul recognized it as one of the KoQ ship varieties, and by the speed it was traveling it was going to get to the minion before it could escape…meaning the V’kit’no’sat pursuit wasn’t going to be necessary.

Paul watched until the courier destruction was complete and the unannounced ship disappeared, wondering if the V’kit’no’sat knew they were here or not. Either way they did not contact Paul again, with both cloaked vessels having disappeared from system view, making it look like it was just Star Force, the Uriti, and the Hadarak in an otherwise empty system.

“Problem solved,” he told Hera, who was still on another deck as he remained in the command nexus. “It’s nice to have somewhat psychotic friends.”

“Are you talking about the Knights of Quenar or the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Yes,” he said simply as they altered course and headed to the location where all 5 Uriti were now camped. “Looks like you were right. The Hadarak is going for a snack.”

“It’ll take a while,” she said as it began a slow descent down towards the surface of the innermost planet in the system…one that had a nice thick atmosphere but was nothing other than rock beneath. “We’ve got some time to think about this.”

“Seems we have two choices. Let the Hadarak go and suffer the wrath of them all, or kill this one and hope the others don’t wise up to it.”

“You’re worried about their death scream?”

“It’s data transmission. It can’t be much, but they can send limited messages that way.”

“Only if someone is in the nearby systems a few years from now to receive the message. We could arrange that they be clear.”

“If we have to,” Paul said noncommittally. “We didn’t come here to kill Hadarak.”

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Fill me in some more then. What is this purging?”

“It’s their purpose for existing. They’re looking for threats, which the V’kit’no’sat are, so they pay attention to them. It jives with what we’ve learned about the Uriti. They don’t take notice of anything unless it affects them, and we had assumed they were kind of apathetic because of their size, but I think they’re lacking something that the Hadarak have and it just left them kind of blah. If it wasn’t for the Chixzon communication protocols engineered into them I don’t think we’d ever have gotten their attention.”

“Specify this purpose.”

“I can’t. It’s just a feeling and a lot of Uriti context I can’t put into words and you wouldn’t get even if I shared it with you. Some of this may be intuition on my part, but I get the feeling that they have a unified purpose that drives their very being. They’re looking for something, not just waiting for it to come to them. And it’s a fight, not a friendly or a possession. They’re looking for stuff to destroy. They are literally destroyers. That is their purpose.”

“Did Bahamut bring up the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Yes he did. He asked them what the V’kit’no’sat had done to them, and the Hadarak referred to them as ‘resistance’. Not as if they were a person, but a nuisance they weren’t allowed to take seriously.”

“Allowed?”

“It’s their hive mind. It sets a lot of rules for their behavior. This Hadarak actually apologized to Bahamut before he attacked him, saying that it wasn’t Bahamut’s fault for being born as he was, but that he had to be destroyed. Minions even in his form could not exist outside the…for lack of a better word, the ‘collective.’ That’s not totally accurate, but there’s a lot of new stuff I just got blasted through that doesn’t have vocabulary to match.”

“Apologize why?”

“In some way it recognized him as family, maybe only in a minion sense, but it was a ‘you’re defective’ reason for destruction rather than ‘you’re an outsider’ justification. They consider every star and planet their property, with the little beings vermin too small to worry about eradicating. They just step on us when we get in the way. The V’kit’no’sat do more than get in the way, but rather than seeing them as a worthy enemy it’s more like a failure on behalf of the Hadarak who died to them. They’re killing V’kit’no’sat because of the threat, but they’re basically using the combat as training as well. They could squash them if they wanted to, for most of their population is still in the Deep Core and the V’kit’no’sat are not sufficient reason to bring them out.”

“Are the Uriti?”

“That’s what I’m worried about. I think this Hadarak has to die or we could be seeing a plague unleashed on the galaxy. I know you don’t like that, and neither do I, but he’s already declared us as needing to be squashed along with the Uriti, so…”

“We have time,” Paul said firmly. “We came here to talk, and so long as he doesn’t send out any more couriers, we’re going to talk some more. Explain to the Uriti that I need to talk to the Hadarak through them in order to figure this out. We’ll stay at range so no combat occurs, but…”

“It won’t talk to you, I’m sure of that.”

“Then I can feed questions through the Uriti, unless the Hadarak clams up. I need this link, Hera, and you said Bahamut was looking for answers. Convince him that I can help.”

“No promises, but I’ll try...”

9

June 26, 4834

Itium System (Hadarak Zone)

1st planet

More than a week had passed since the Uriti vs. Hadarak fight, and fortunately the Hadarak was not ignoring them while it was planted on the surface of the planet and its minion workers were digging into the crust at an alarming rate, returning vital materials to it that were probably going towards the repair of its tentacles and the development of more naval minions.

Bahamut, after two days of talking to the Hadarak, had gone to bathe in the star to help regenerate its injuries while the other four stayed with the Star Force fleet over the planet and continued to converse with the Hadarak. Even though it had declared them as needing to be destroyed, it oddly had no problem talking. It couldn’t kill them right now without minions, so as it waited to grow more it coldly kept talking in an almost casual manner.

The Uriti were not so cold. They were angry, and even after 9 days that anger had not abated. They were conflicted about what to do with the Hadarak, wanting to attack it but not wanting to at the same time. Despite its rejection of them they still felt a loyalty to their ‘kin’ despite the frustrating hive mind signals that the Uriti were naturally rejecting.

The Uriti had allowed Paul and the Wranglers the ability to talk through them, though the Hadarak didn’t know it. The Uriti operated as translators, so they were asking the questions, and the vivid apathy of the Hadarak was galling. It was rooted, Paul had discovered, in their utter refusal to acknowledge anything other than themselves as a ‘person,’ though that term didn’t truly translate. It was as if no other lifeforms counted for anything except the Hadarak, and the fact that this one could talk to the Uriti freely and even acknowledge that they were alive, yet completely disregard their right to exist was sickening.

It wasn’t unique in the galaxy, unfortunately, but Paul had never seen anything worse. The only shred of consideration for the Uriti came in the way of a heartless apology that they had to be destroyed, as if they were Hadarak that had strayed across a line and thus stopped being Hadarak…yet it talked to them as if they were. The dichotomy was appalling, and the Hadarak made it clear that as soon as it was capable again it was going to attack and destroy the Uriti and their Star Force ‘minions.’

And what was the most blatant thing about the Hadarak stance was the lack of anger. It wasn’t mad at the Uriti, or Star Force. They simply had to die. It was as if the Hadarak were just out mowing the grass…except grass wasn’t ‘alive.’ It was a biological machine, not a person. The Hadarak didn’t seem to consider anything to be a person, and Paul wasn’t even sure how they regarded each other, but had a suspicion that they didn’t identify other Hadarak as separate lifeforms, rather an extension of themselves. He couldn’t confirm that without another one present, but the feel of the hive mind was so strong he would have felt comfortable placing a bet on his guess.

So to the Hadarak the galaxy was theirs and there was no one else in it. All other living beings were a different class and theirs to kill if they deemed it necessary…and the code they lived by decreed that the Uriti had to die, so this one was going to kill them without blinking an eye. Just like that, without any remorse, anger, hatred, or frustration. Even its failure to kill Bahamut and the damage it took didn’t seem to anger it. It was simply going to heal, refuel, and go at it again, confident that the superiority of the Hadarak was unbeatable. It didn’t seem to identify itself as a…

Paul’s thoughts cut off as he felt a presence nearby in the sanctum onboard his ship. He couldn’t converse with the Hadarak non-stop and the Wranglers were better at it, so right now he was holding a handstand pose while lost in thought with a few other Archons present in the massive training facility packed within his command ship…but now another mind had been added to them, and a powerful one at that.

“You know we have to kill it, right?” Kara asked, walking up to Paul and sitting about a meter in front of his face, crossing her legs, and slightly leaning forward to look into his upside down eyes.

“That’s not what we came here to do,” he said, casually holding his handstand.

“Why did you kill the courier minions then?”

Paul sighed, then did half a cartwheel over onto his feet, collapsing down into a cross-legged sitting position in front of Kara.

“They were going to go whistle up reinforcements.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t like having to kill them?”

“They’re not drones like the Uriti minions, they’re people.”

“And?”

“And all those four were doing was relaying a message. They didn’t attack us.”

“So why’d you do it then?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“It’s the first time we’ve met the Hadarak or their minions, but I’ve been studying the V’kit’no’sat data, both old and new, so I have an understanding of how they operate. We’ve also seen this before with the lizards. They throw away lives so casually it’s sickening and they don’t surrender. I don’t even know if the Uriti can communicate with their minions. We definitely can’t at the moment, and if we could they’d probably just ignore us. We need answers to those questions, but those couriers weren’t going to wait until we got them.”

“Why not disable them?”

“They’re not in ships. The only way to disable them is to kill or so seriously wound them they can’t move. I have no idea how much damage it would take, and even if we did stop them they’d be lingering in agony. That’s not disabling in my book, and this fleet doesn’t have any weapons to disable biological ‘ships’ a mile long. Interdictors would be the best bet, but none were in range and if I had used the Excalibur at best I could catch one, not all four, and even if I did catch it I’d have to hold onto it indefinitely…”

Kara held up a hand for him to stop. “I get it. You didn’t like being forced to kill them, but you had to or let them run off and tell the Hadarak we exist, the Uriti exist, and they need to come kill us both. They can’t do that here, we’ll be gone before they could arrive, so you’re worried about them coming out from the Core en mass after us. That threat hasn’t changed. If this Hadarak lives and goes to tell the others himself, the same thing happens. We have to kill it.”

“Not sure the Uriti will be too happy about that. They still feel the Hadarak are family, and that’s not going to wear off with a single attack. They still can’t understand why it’s doing what it’s doing.”

“I don’t like it too much either, but we can’t let this Hadarak go back and tell its friends. You already killed the minions to prevent that, so why are you hesitating with the Hadarak?”

“I was caught offguard.”

“How so?”

“We have maneuvering superiority. We don’t have to fight the Hadarak if we don’t want to, and the minions that attacked Bahamut could always turn around and leave. They choose to engage and die. But when I learned about what the Hadarak were going to do and this one sent the couriers off, I was stuck. The couriers weren’t attacking and I only had a limited window to act. Without the help of the V’kit’no’sat and KoQ two of the couriers would have gotten away and we would have had to go after them.”

“You think fast,” she countered.

“Yeah I do, and I came to the same conclusion you did. They weren’t directly attacking us, but they were going to bring others to do it for them. If they were just carrying a report back I would have let them go, but this Hadarak made it clear that there was no room for negotiation. They’re going to try and kill us all, and those couriers were carrying the information of our existence back as if it were a weapon. Like the lizards, they aren’t making choices for themselves, I assumed, and I didn’t have time to figure out if that was true or not.”

“But there’s no rush now,” Kara said, beginning to understand.

“I don’t like fighting sloppy…and I really don’t like it when I’m forced to by circumstances.”

“So what do we do?”

“We came all this way to talk, and since the Hadarak isn’t holding back in that regard, we pump it for information. Unless another Hadarak or courier enters the system, knowledge of our existence remains here. We have time.”

“But you know what will eventually happen, right?”

“Consider the possibility that the Hadarak have never been able to communicate with anyone in the galaxy before. Mak’to’ran said they’d never had so much as an inkling of communication, and if that is true it might be that they can’t communicate with others. If all they’ve ever known is their own minds, then their solid wall of unity might only be that firm because they’ve been unchallenged.”

“Might explain why this one is so talkative, but he’s not coming our way any.”

“He hasn’t flinched…and I want to find out if we can get him to. Even a little.”

“So we camp out here, do the talk thing, and then the Hadarak decides to leave and go tell his buddies we’re here. What then?”

Paul cringed. “I don’t think that will happen, but if it does we’re screwed.”

“You won’t kill it?”

“If it disengages, no. If we give it a choice and it decides not to attack, then we let it go.”

“Even though it’ll do the same thing the couriers were?”

“Not true. The Hadarak are going to attack us everywhere we are, almost mindlessly. If this one decides to leave it’ll break that mold…which is why I don’t think it will.”

“You think it’ll fight us until either we’re dead or it is?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it sees a mismatch?”

“It hasn’t left the system yet, it’s just restocking.”

“And they don’t care if they live or die?”

“The individual dies, the community continues. Again, much like the lizards.”

“So you think they’re tactically stupid?”

“I think they don’t care for tactics because they don’t see us as a worthy threat.”

“Even after what Bahamut did?”

“I would expect this one to learn, but I’ve sensed no change in it. Its mind is like a solid wall that I need to find a crack in.”

“And if it attacks us again, do we just pull back and play cat and mouse?”

“Luckily we got the Uriti speeds up enough that they have that option. I don’t know, Kara. I’m still trying to find my way through this. Right now it’s sitting, chewing up an uninhabited planet, and talking. There’s no call to attack it now.”

“The Uriti seem to agree with you. Me, I’m thinking of the lizards too and how we need to nip this in the bud. Take this one out, keep our existence secret, run home and deal with the V’kit’no’sat now. Keep this fight for a million years later.”

“If they chase us they have to go through V’kit’no’sat territory,” Paul pointed out.

“You wouldn’t do that even if you knew they’d only go through Vik systems, which they wouldn’t. And you don’t want to poke that bee hive either.”

“I kind of do,” Paul admitted with a devious smirk.

“I’d like to know how many are actually in the Core too, but we’re playing with doomsday here. I don’t want to provoke the Hadarak out to keep the V’kit’no’sat busy and away from us, even if it were effective. Enemy that they are, the Viks are doing something beneficial by curtailing the Hadarak patrols.”

“We’re not going to kill it if it retreats,” Paul said firmly. “If it attacks again…we’ll have to play it by ear.”

5 weeks went by before the Hadarak finally left the planet. 5 weeks of talking and talking and talking while it grew minions at an alarming rate. V’kit’no’sat notes had said Hadarak always kept an army of tiny, partially developed minions in stasis within them so that when they received material influx they could gorge and grow to full size within days for the smaller variants, weeks for the larger ones.

The Uriti and the Star Force fleet were holding position high above the planet, and the Hadarak came straight up at them claiming they had to be destroyed and lightly apologizing to the four Uriti there for the death it was about to bring to them. Paul put the fleet in reverse, staying ahead of the Hadarak as it traveled with clouds of naval minions coming not from its own internal hangars but the ship building growth yards on the surface. Those were still creating more on their own with an army of workers digging more resources out of the planet, but they’d helped scale the production of the living beings as if they were little more than machines.

Paul knew they weren’t, and he also knew they would probably be in total agreement with the Hadarak. He needed to capture some and get them out of the telepathic aura to be sure, but right now he was just trying to buy some time until Bahamut could get to them. He was still in the star healing up his injuries, not to mention thoroughly pissed at the Hadarak now that the shock value of the betrayal had worn off.

He’d come out of the star multiple times to talk to the other Uriti or the Hadarak, but it was going to take a while before he was fully healed. Paul knew he was combat ready now, but there were still structural weaknesses on his left wing that would require a lot of specialized material that Star Force would usually provide them, but the fleet hadn’t brought any Uriti ‘snacks’ along, expecting them to just graze on the stars as they went.

As the fleet moved Paul saw Bahamut emerge from the star and begin to head in their direction, with the trailblazer arranging a rendezvous point in stellar orbit, ordering Bahamut to wait for them there as the Hadarak trailed them at a slow, but methodical pace.

“What about now?” Kara prodded from her own command ship.

“It gets the chance to run. If it attacks again, we teach it a lesson.”

“It won’t stop even if we seriously wound it.”

“We don’t know that yet, though you’re probably right. Hera, are the Uriti ready to kick its ass?”

“They’re willing to follow your lead. Not sure about Bahamut yet, but I doubt he’ll be any different.”

“Get them to warn it again. We’re holding the rendezvous point with Bahamut. If it wants a fight it can fight us there, but we’re not moving. If it changes its mind it can run and we’ll let it go, but if it’s going to be intractable make sure it knows we can kill it and our patience is running thin. We’ve got the upper hand here and we’ve been very nice. If it attacks us again that niceness is going to evaporate.”

“About time,” Kara commented, tapped into the same command channel that all the Wranglers were included in.

“Easy dragon breath,” Paul cautioned.

“Hey, I can take a punch to the face with a smile the same as any of you, but I draw the line when someone kicks my dog.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Hera agreed.

“It’s as simple as that, huh?” Paul asked neutrally.

“It is to me.”

The Wranglers all agreed too, but not in words. Linked into the battlemap system they sent mental agreements backing Kara up, leaving Paul with a sarcastic sigh.

“Anger and aggression, Yoda once said…”

“You told me you thought Yoda lied about that.”

“He was talking to the Jedi as if they were kids who wouldn’t understand an accurate analysis, thus he just said anything dangerous was bad. I don’t want you guys, especially the Wranglers, in a fury that will seep over to the Uriti. If the Hadarak picks a nasty fight then decides to run at the very end, I want to make sure the Uriti will let it go as promised.”

“Noted,” Hera said. “We’re not going feral, we just want some payback, and the Uriti are more reluctant to fight than us.”

“But they will fight?”

“They will. They just don’t like having to do it against their own.”

“Well, we’re giving the Hadarak an out. That’s as fair as we can get without turning tail and running. Just make sure that out doesn’t disappear. I trust you guys, but this is new for the Uriti, so keep your minds as calm and focused as possible.”

“What about me?” Kara asked playfully. “I’m not talking to them.”

“No training wheels for you. Just no sloppy fighting when we control the battlefield.”

“I’m not going Sith on you, but this bastard has to die.”

“Not if it opts to retreat.”

“He won’t.”

“We still give it the chance, even if that will be really inconvenient. Clear?”

“Clear. I’m just saying that he isn’t going to back down.”

“We’re about to find out. I have a feeling the Hadarak is a bit delusional, and when we kick its ass it may have an epiphany. If not we end this.”

“Fair enough,” Kara said, her hologram winking out but with Paul still feeling an open connection to her. It was going to be at least a couple hours before the Hadarak caught up to them at its present speed, but this confrontation was going to happen. He felt like Kara did, but he had to play the long shots just in case there was an opportunity to avoid killing the Hadarak.

As for the minions, there wasn’t much hope for them unless they turned around prior to the first shot being fired…

Paul stood in the command nexus, his mind interconnected with the large Star Force fleet and the Wranglers, the latter part of which was the unusual component. He didn’t have direct control over the Uriti, or even a direct line of communication to them. If he had it would have diminished his ability to control the fleet, so he was having to relay battle commands through the Wranglers and the delay there was annoying to say the least, but the Uriti were so huge that he didn’t need to give them split second commands to be effective. Still, the lag gnawed on him.

There wasn’t anything he could do about it as the minion swarms reached out to attack anything near them. There wasn’t any coordinated assault, more of a ‘move over we’re here’ mentality that had them meeting up with the Star Force drones first, and Paul’s ships were getting hammered along the thin front line, for the Hadarak had grown so many in the previous weeks it could literally cloud out the stars from view.

But space was huge, as were the Uriti, so while the swarms continued to surround the Hadarak he ordered Bahamut to make a fly-through against the minions…staying away from the Hadarak’s grapple range as he did so. The Uriti plowed into the swarm, knocking many aside and getting gooed in the process as his maneuvering capability failed. He lit up his red lighting arcs and began vaporizing those closest, along with the goo, but he was more or less pinned down on a ballistic track that the Hadarak was now accelerating towards.

But as the swarms focused on Bahamut they mostly ignored the drones, allowing Paul to begin getting free shots off at the smaller biological weapons, each of which was a person rather than device, but they were clearly acting off of control signals from the Hadarak, for many didn’t even bother to return fire on the drones that were killing them.

Paul thought it must be some sort of override, taking control away from the minion itself or giving it such a high priority that it chose to act stupidly. The Hadarak obviously valued attacking Bahamut more than the tiny ships…which is what Paul had expected.

Before the Hadarak could get to it Bahamut lit up his primary weapon, vaporizing minions above and below while Paul’s drones were safely in the lateral arcs. The attack didn’t kill all the minions, but with them congregating on the Uriti a lot more got hit than otherwise would, taking out more than a sixth of their total number in a matter of seconds.

Once that Torronna blew, Devastator moved in on the far right flank, firing all four of its pinpoint beam cannons as the arm/tentacles bent over to all point in the same direction. The blue beams struck the thick hide of the Hadarak, vaporizing the outer layer but not penetrating any further. Devastator held position, cycling his firing one arm at a time like a very slow machine gun adding damage with each hit…and vaporizing any minions that happened to get in the way as the massive beams burned right through them.

The Hadarak didn’t veer off, still heading directly for Bahamut as Godzilla fired its arm beams, which were much more potent power wise, against one of the Hadarak’s tentacles that were emerging. The wider green beams struck it at its base, putting smoking divots in it as it further extended. When it eventually got all the way out the Uriti focused on its base, putting shot after shot into it from the left flank, probing its strength and finding it to be extremely durable. Godzilla stopped firing and rotated over until its flat belly showed between the three thick starfish-like arms that were no longer pointed at the Hadarak.

An equally green glow appeared in the center of the ‘triblade’ Uriti, growing in intensity until finally a huge beam leapt forth, tracking on a similar trajectory and smashing into the Hadarak slightly off target but still hitting the base of the tentacle. Vaporized material blew out everywhere in a cloud as the tentacle reached out towards Bahamut…and continued to reach beyond all expectations as it floated forward, now totally severed from the Hadarak.

When that happened Paul signaled for Apollo to head in, but the Wranglers were already a step ahead of him. The rough spherical shape of the Uriti flew past Bahamut at close range, smashing through more minions and entered the grapple range of the Hadarak. The energy fields encompassed it and pulled it closer, but that’s where it wanted to be anyway. It fought the redirection to the left and focused in on the point of the severed tentacle, landing on that portion of the moon-sized Hadarak with its 30 mile wide mass.

The two collided with such force that both their bodies rippled with the impact…too much for the Hadarak to take, as those ripples bent its ‘skin’ beyond stress limits and caused cracks wherever they couldn’t hold. Apollo was also hurt, but less so as he was situated between the other tentacles in a location that made it difficult for them to reach it. He wasn’t out of range entirely, but there was no way they could coil around him as they had done with Bahamut before.

But beyond that, he had no wings or other body pieces that could be leveraged against or tore off, making him essentially a giant water balloon that was starting to ooze material on its surface as if it were leaking…but it wasn’t damage. Apollo was another Uriti designed for contact combat, with the glowing energy goo being a very advanced version of the Hadarak’s own point defenses. Its own corrosive material leaked out from its skin, but was neutralized by Apollo’s as it ate through and began dissolving the Hadarak’s outer hull as if it were acid…all the while seeping through the cracks and down into more vulnerable layers below.

Devastator continued firing from its perch, but Godzilla did not. Instead he redirected towards Bahamut, plowing through minions that barely slowed his mass, then wrapped Bahamut in a gentle grasp and pushed him out of the way of the Hadarak that was nearly on top of him. Its tentacles nearly got to both Uriti, except that Apollo wasn’t just an ugly tick on its surface. He pushed back with his own biological engines, shoving the larger Hadarak the opposite direction and stalling its approach to Bahamut entirely until the Hadarak eventually responded and surged forward.

Godzilla had Bahamut out of the way in time, with the Hadarak not being able to turn fast enough to catch them both. Paul’s drones scattered out of the way like a school of fish evading a shark, as did the minions who now turned on what seemed to be their own initiative and began fighting the drones again.

Meanwhile the Hadarak began using its grapple fields to push Apollo away. It even reversed its localized gravity generators to do the same, but that didn’t help since Apollo could use them in the reverse to get closer. The Hadarak kept switching between gravity and anti-grav, trying to shake him loose and gaining a small gap between the two, but Apollo kept pushing back until the tentacles finally reached it and slipped their ends underneath…then threw him away like a baseball.

Their strength surprised Paul, along with their speed, which appeared to exceed any reports from the V’kit’no’sat. Then again, no ship that had ever got grabbed had made it out intact, let alone been thrown out, so this was a new application that he doubted the Hadarak had ever bothered to use…unless they fought against each other, for he figured they were too large to crush with each other’s tentacles.

The thought passed through Paul quickly, for he didn’t have much brain power available for speculation as he continued to diminish the number of minions in play. On their own they were pesky, but not too hard to fight. Their strength was their swarm numbers, which Paul was very acquainted to fighting after the lizard war, but their primary usefulness was disabling ships and allowing the Hadarak to pull them in, though right now the Hadarak was busy with the Uriti.

The crater that Apollo left in it was badly damaged, which huge cracks in the dense outer layer exposing the innards. Those were tough by any other standards, but far less resistant to weaponsfire than the hard defense shell that the V’kit’no’sat had partially copied to make the Yeg’gor armor their Mach’nel and planetary defense stations sported. And with that heavy defense compromised, the arm shots from Godzilla were getting through in about a 2/3 ratio and doing significant damage to the guts of the Hadarak.

Paul kept checking with the Wranglers, making sure that Nami kept bugging the Hadarak with surrender requests, but so far it hadn’t said a word other than ‘you must die’ and varieties on that theme. And while the damage to its outer ‘hull’ was serious, the Hadarak was 215 miles wide and per volume they’d only scratched it. Paul knew this was going to take forever if they wanted to actually kill it, and maybe the Hadarak knew that too, which was why it wasn’t interested in surrendering or running away.

When Godzilla got Bahamut far enough away, the other Uriti took a while to cleanse itself of minion good, then it spun around and headed back into the fight, passing Apollo who was done for the moment and sporting injuries of his own. Once Bahamut got by him the tip of his neck/head began to glow, then he shot his own long range beam into the crater and hit a seam. That blew a chunk of the Hadarak’s armor off from it into space…but it didn’t go far, being pulled back down to the surface to land like a slow moving asteroid thanks to the Hadarak’s localized gravity field.

That surprised Paul, but then he saw the chunk move laterally. It had to be using its grapple energy to move it, and when it slid into one of the larger cracks and roughly blocked out the incoming weaponsfire on it from some of the drones, he realized the armor didn’t have to be fixed in place to be effective. It just had to get in the way of the weaponsfire, and as he paid closer attention to the sensors he saw much smaller pieces rolling across the surface to land in other gaps, as if the Hadarak were using damaged pieces of itself like bandaids.

Those pieces could probably be reincorporated later, or at least digested and the material used to grow new armor, giving this monster more longevity than Paul had expected.

Fortunately the trailblazer had a gut punch up his sleeve, for all this time Devastator had still been attacking the same spot on the Hadarak and tearing a hole in its armor there. When it broke through the armor it didn’t fire on the weaker tissue beneath, but rather continued to expand the hole. Soon it had reached a width of more than a mile, at which point Paul signaled for Nami to ask for surrender or withdrawal one more time.

The Hadarak calmly declined, saying it was still going to kill them all, then Paul gave the go ahead for the fifth Uriti to enter the fight. Nami didn’t have any significant long range weapons, just enough to flick the flea-like starships off. No, she was another melee-combat Uriti but ill-suited to fighting a Hadarak so much larger than her at only 2.1 miles long. She’d doubled in mass since arriving in the Preserve, but was still one of the smallest Uriti and pathetically small compared to the Hadarak.

But this fight wasn’t a 1v1, it was a 1v5 and Devastator had just blasted a hole in the Hadarak large enough for Nami to enter through.

The Uriti raced towards the Hadarak, maneuvering to align with the hole even as the Hadarak fought to pull her to the side. Two tentacles began reaching out to cover the hole, but they didn’t get there in time and Nami slowly slammed into the ‘soft’ tissue underneath and half disappeared from view like a golf ball being stepped into the wet grass.

The inner material was hard enough that it wasn’t like diving into water, more like diving into sand, but Nami pushed further, using her biological gravity drives to drill herself into the Hadarak as much as she could without breaking her own armor in the process. Once she got herself fully inside she dug in another half mile or so, leaving only a tiny bit of her dark blue body visible from space, then Paul got the telepathic warning from her.

He immediately moved the drones further away, enacting the shield alteration that would protect them from the disabling field she was about to emit. If he didn’t do that the drones wouldn’t go dead like other machines would, but they’d be hindered and right now he didn’t need to give the minions any free shots. So as the weaker shield modifications were enacted he flew the drones away and played a game of cat and mouse to buy some time as a tiny bit of the disabling field flew out from the gap in a cone-like trajectory that barely hit any of the drones.

It didn’t affect the minions at all, but it was merely the precursor for the detonation wave that followed. When in atmosphere it was able to create tsunamis that would wreck hundreds of miles of a planet’s surface without digging down into the crust. But here, fully encompassed by living rock, most of the wave had nowhere to go and was reflected back on itself multiple times over, enhancing its destructive power exponentially.

Paul saw the surface of the Hadarak swell up like a pimple for a few long seconds before it broke, with a 20 mile section blowing out like a shower of asteroids followed by globs of the ‘soft’ tissue. There wasn’t much of a bleeding effect, for the Hadarak didn’t have blood, but there were magma-like liquids oozing out of it along with a lesser amount of true ‘soft’ tissue and fluids as the new crater held its shape with Nami no longer in it. The blast had propelled her outward, moving slower than the ‘asteroid’ chunks of armor, but still careening away from the Hadarak at a decent rate as Bahamut and Devastator now targeted the huge wound with their ranged weaponsfire.

Almost immediately after that huge kick in the ass the minions went crazy. They no longer moved in organized groups or attacked specific targets. All of a sudden they lost cohesion and attacked anything within range, whether it be drones or Uriti, as the Hadarak suddenly began to pull back on a trajectory headed towards the star.

Paul focused on the minions while telling the Wranglers to order the Uriti to do the same, and it wasn’t until sometime later that he got an update from the Wranglers as to the Hadarak’s reaction. The blink he’d been looking for had happened, for while it was essentially cursing the Uriti for existing, gone was the arrogant superiority that it had shown before. It knew it was in trouble and if it stayed it was going to die, so it was running to the safest place it knew possible…the gravity well of the star.

To a damaged starship a star was the last place it would want to go. The wound on the Hadarak, had it been a machine, would allow the star eat it from the inside out like the way Olivia-051 had destroyed a Mach’nel. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. The greater the gravity the more the wound would squeeze closed, compressing down to where the true soft tissue and fluids would not be able to reach the surface. In fact the entire body of the Hadarak would shrink in the heavier gravity well, and in that compression they healed the best. It seemed counter-productive to most forms of biology, but the Hadarak were something entirely different.

It needed food from the rocky planets, but as far as healing went, if one was damaged, they needed gravity…and the more of it the better.

Paul ordered everyone to let it go, and thankfully the Uriti didn’t argue the point. The minions didn’t leave, however, and had to be destroyed. The Uriti helped with that, drawing their attention away from the drones and taunting them to go kamikaze or get within their point defense range, but Paul made sure to capture the last few. That wasn’t easy, and he hadn’t brought the necessary equipment along with them to take permanent possession, but with the Hadarak withdrawing he wanted to get some of them alone and see if the Uriti or even the Archons could make telepathic contact.

So he consumed himself with that task as they watched the Hadarak limp off to the star and sink down within it…but not so far they couldn’t track it. Until basic repairs were made it could only go so far in, otherwise the burning effect of the star would kill it, but after it ‘scabbed’ over a bit it’d go all the way in to the stellar core where it would be safe from the ‘little beings’’ fleet as well as most of the Uriti’s weapons.

“Ok,” Kara said in the aftermath as Paul and others dealt with the last bits of minion combat and weren’t too distracted. “Guess I called it wrong. He did wuss out.”

“That’s good. It means they’re not totally unreasonable.”

“Yeah, but what do we do now? If we let him live he goes back and tells the others…”

“We may have to face that, but if he can learn that we’re not defeatable, it might be able to learn other things.”

“You think we have a window for negotiation?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but it did blink. That’s a crack in their kamikaze mojo that may be able to be widened. This is the first time they’ve encountered the Uriti, so I’m not too surprised that they didn’t understand what they were dealing with.”

“Yeah. So does this mean I have to turn in my trailblazer credentials?” Kara asked with a cringe.

“No, because you weren’t wrong. We are in a bad situation if it goes and reports back to its buddies. We just can’t go to the darkside to solve our problem.”

“If he attacks again, do we have to let him retreat?”

“No. If it attacks again we kill it. We’re not playing games here and our Uriti took damage. If it attacks again it won’t live to repeat its mistake a third time, but I get the feeling it’s not going to without backup.”

“So it’s Armageddon then?”

Paul shrugged. “Let it heal up a bit, then we’ll ask it.”

10

August 15, 4834

Itium System (Hadarak Zone)

Stellar Orbit

Another three weeks passed before the Hadarak came up out of the star. It hung in the very outer edge, sort of peeking out, with the missing chunk of it smaller but still obviously present. The smaller injuries were much better healed, but it seemed that the Hadarak was going to take a lot more time to fully heal, and probably would require some raw materials that were difficult to find within some stars.

The Hadarak was eerily silent for nearly a day, just sitting there in the upper edge of the star, and the Uriti were not talkative either. It was almost as if they were staring each other down, but eventually the Hadarak broke the silence by inquiring where they had obtained their weapons.

The Uriti had already shared their origin and the story of the Chixzon, but the Hadarak didn’t seem to understand. Its very rigid targeting system was now in conflict, for the Uriti were not Hadarak, they were not minions, and the idea of them being malfunctioning versions of either now seemed to have been ruled out. The weaponry the Uriti possessed had got its attention in a ‘that’s not fair’ way, as if the Hadarak were meant to automatically win and suddenly this one was faced with a no-win scenario.

That was making it reassess, and Paul could feel through the Uriti that the Hadarak had never done that before. Everything was rigidly defined for it and having to think outside the box wasn’t what it was designed for. The Hadarak was a hunter, but now its prey analyzer wasn’t giving it an acceptable answer.

But it wasn’t the danger of the Uriti that was rattling it, surprisingly. Paul got the feeling that it didn’t have trouble with dying. It didn’t fear death, or rather it valued something more than life…and that was staying true to the Hadarak mandate. What that was, exactly, Paul couldn’t ascertain, but it was some sort of mission in which they knocked down threats while looking for something else more dangerous. As if the V’kit’no’sat were so insignificant that they weren’t any more dangerous than a colony of ants that the Hadarak stomped under their boot whenever they got in the way.

After all the damage the V’kit’no’sat had done to them Paul couldn’t accept that…unless there were way more of them in the Core than anyone thought. That did worry him, but it was this odd recognition of the Uriti’s weaponry that attracted his curiosity. The Hadarak wasn’t regarding it as a threat, more of a ‘why are you here’ perplexion.

At first Paul wondered if they had had contact with the Chixzon back during their time, but he quickly ruled that out because the Hadarak didn’t recognize the Uriti. It was a similarity that was now stalling its attack drive, leaving it in a limbo it was not able to break out of.

It also realized it couldn’t beat them, and it wasn’t going to go kamikaze for no reason…superiority complex or no…and that jived with what Paul had learned from the V’kit’no’sat. They did fall back when losing, but only to come back at them again later. Right now though, the Hadarak wasn’t interesting in fighting them. It was conflicted and searching for some way to categorize what the Uriti were. The Star Force ships it didn’t care about and easily dismissed as irrelevant akin to the V’kit’no’sat, but it needed to figure out what the Uriti were in a galaxy they were supposed to have all to themselves.

The Uriti wasn’t what they were looking for. Paul could be sure of that. But there was something that didn’t add up, because Hadarak and their minions were not supposed to have those weapons…but someone else was? It felt to the Hadarak like someone had mixed pieces of several different things that were incompatible with each other, thus an impossibility that it did not have a preprogrammed answer for.

Paul got the feeling that everything about the Hadarak was preprogrammed, as if they had a manual to cover every possible situation and their fight with the V’kit’no’sat was outlined in a small chapter of it. The Uriti, however, were not listed on any page and the Hadarak didn’t know what to do…and simply erasing them from existence wouldn’t cut it. It needed to find an answer but couldn’t, and after another two days of talking it finally made a decision.

It pulled out of the star and headed away from it and the Uriti, traveling around the glowing sphere and heading towards one of several jumppoints that led deeper into the Core.

“Paul,” Kara said, contacting him as the Hadarak fled at a turtle’s pace. “It’s now or never unless you want to trail it a while.”

“I know,” he said, faced with a dilemma. If the Hadarak was going for help and was assured to launch a massive attack from the Core then Paul should kill it now before it could whistle up support, for it wasn’t running away to live, but rather to regroup and attack. That meant leaving was in essence an offensive action and by killing it now he would blunt their planned future attack. He didn’t like doing that, but the logic was sound. The Hadarak was an enemy and going to effectively strike at the Uriti, Star Force, and whatever slice of the galaxy got in between them if this one delivered the message. That wasn’t the same as one fleeing a battle just to survive. This one was carrying the knowledge that would ignite the others and it knew it. It knew, and had told them what would happen, so it wasn’t a helpless victim caught up in the actions of others. It was complicit.

Except now it wasn’t. It wasn’t bent on their total destruction. It was perplexed, and that left Paul with a problem. Something about the Uriti’s weapons had changed that, and he got the feeling it wasn’t Bahamut’s. Maybe a specific one the others had, but the Hadarak hadn’t responded to questions concerning that. This might just be a coincidental familiarity of someone else the Hadarak was aware of, perhaps an ally? Because of that the apocalypse that had been promised before might not occur…but then again it might. If Paul let the Hadarak go he could be allowing it to start now, when hiding the existence of the Uriti from the Hadarak was the safer play.

But if this Hadarak wasn’t sure about what to do about the Uriti, they might not turn out to be enemies…or maybe no more than the V’kit’no’sat were. The certainty of utter destruction the Hadarak had been blaring before was now gone with a big question mark in its place, and it was up to Paul to make a decision.

He knew the Uriti were angry, but they didn’t have a desire to destroy the Hadarak. If Star Force asked them to fight they wouldn’t want to, but they were so disillusioned right now they didn’t know what to do either and were relying on Star Force to help guide them…which left this squarely in Paul’s lap.

There were no guarantees either way, which is what made this hard. And not hard because of the choice being made, but hard because of the consequences that could occur if he chose wrong. The safe bet was to kill the Hadarak regardless, but was that the right thing to do? And even if it wasn’t, was one wrong better than the potential slaughter of people across the galaxy if the Hadarak got ticked and came looking for a fight? After all, they weren’t just innocent bystanders. They stomped on anything that got in their way, this one included, so why not kill it for the damage it had done and slip out of the Core before any more of them found the Uriti.

But Paul wasn’t a rookie and he saw the logic trap in that. If one went with the punishment route, and tracked back all offenses, you’d end up having to delete virtually everyone in the galaxy because actions and misdeeds built on each other, and when you pushed on one domino all the rest began to fall as well. The Hadarak had done so much damage, but then so had the V’kit’no’sat who were formed to fight the Hadarak. If the Hadarak didn’t exist the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t, so do you punish the V’kit’no’sat for responding to the atrocities of the Hadarak with their own? They were, in essence, protecting the galaxy in their own way, and even their death marks had a cold logic to them with regards to maintaining the dominance of their empire in order to avoid any other threats growing large enough to distract them from the pressure they needed to keep on the Hadarak just to hold the line against them.

But regardless of why the V’kit’no’sat did what they were doing, it was wrong. The ends didn’t justify the means, and survival, while extremely important, was not the top priority in life. Even the V’kit’no’sat and the Hadarak somewhat understood that, for they were willing to die fighting for their ‘team’ even when it conflicted with their individual survival.

Star Force’s team was the good guys, and if it meant being bad in order to survive then the choice before Paul was clear…it was what might, and probably would happen later, that was making him cringe.

“Let it go,” Paul told Kara. “It might come back to bite us later, but we’re not going Sith and killing it for the convenience. If it was still hell bent on our destruction and running to get its buddies to help kill us, I’d agree with you. But right now it doesn’t know what to do. It might only be a temporary reprieve, but in this moment it’s not an enemy.”

“What about the minions on the planet?”

“The Hadarak is probably leaving them to die. If they don’t have enough resources down there they’re toast without the Hadarak to support them.”

“Do we put them out of their misery?”

“No. They might survive, they might not. We release most of the minions we captured over the planet and keep the few we have the supplies to sustain on the trip back. We’re done here, so let’s slip out quietly.”

“You’re not happy.”

“No, I’m not. The Hadarak throw away lives as easily as the lizards do, but they’re worse. The lizards at least see their population as an asset. I think the Hadarak consider their minions as almost irrelevant. Like the rockets in the rocket launcher. They make what they need, and leave behind what they don’t want. It’s not just dishonorable, it’s sloppy and very…” Paul said, finding himself at a lack for words.

“Disrespectful,” Kara finished for him.

“It’s worse than that. It’s the assertion that life doesn’t matter. That those minions are nothing more than machines, and we know they’re not. Even the Chixzon were not that cold.”

“I think they were more concerned with people ignoring their orders when they crafted the Uriti minions.”

“I’m not talking about their motivations, but the end result. If that planet doesn’t have everything they need they’ll starve to death. They can’t leave. They can’t build what they need. Lizards, at least, were outfitted with cruisers that could do just about anything with enough time and raw materials. These minions rely on the Hadarak, and I don’t think the Hadarak built enough industry down there to sustain them. It just up and left them.”

“Which is why it might be better if we killed them now.”

“It’s a maybe, Kara. If they’ve got even a tiny chance of making it until another Hadarak arrives, we’re not going to deny them that.”

“And you don’t want to kill the Hadarak for stranding them here?”

“Not today,” Paul said, knowing she had a good point. “Let’s consolidate the allies we have here. With that hive mind I don’t think we’re ever going to change the Hadarak, but the Uriti are learning. If we order an attack on the Hadarak now, in their current state, without it being self-defense…”

“Deal,” Kara said, seeing his point. “We let this bastard go and head back, making it clear we’re the only family the Uriti have. If we survive long enough for them to get big, they’re the key to defeating the Hadarak. In the extreme long term, that may be the best play of all.”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“What else is?” she asked.

“Plenty,” he said, sending the order to the fleet and the Uriti to let the Hadarak go.

“What’s bothering you the most?”

“Why does it seem everyone else in this galaxy aside from us is endlessly bloodthirsty?”

“Oh, that. Honestly, I’d just kind of gotten used to it.”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s easier for me. I’ve got you to key off of. As long as you stay lightside the galaxy doesn’t seem so dark.”

“True,” Paul agreed, but didn’t share the fact that Kara was showing she wasn’t totally a trailblazer. In some ways she was, in others she wasn’t, and in this case she wasn’t. She had someone who outranked her that she could key off of, but the trailblazers didn’t. They had to look out into the galaxy with everyone behind them and no one in front. He had the other trailblazers side by side with him, but they were peers. They weren’t someone higher up to learn from, to pattern off of, to take the lead when the pressure got too much for him.

No, they were the trailblazers and they had to face the constant burden of being the lightbearers in a galaxy of darkness. And today, at least, the Uriti were not echoing that darkness and wanting blood. They didn’t want to fight the Hadarak here or anywhere, still feeling they were in some way their kin, and Paul was thankful for that. The Uriti weren’t lightside, but they weren’t bloodthirsty either.

And in a galaxy of constant bloodshed, he wasn’t going to squander the learning moment for them. Letting this Hadarak go might start Armageddon, and if it did, so be it. He was leaving here with friends and allies, the latter of which was showing far more wisdom and restraint than he’d hoped for. That was a significant victory he intended to run with and leave the Hadarak menace to the V’kit’no’sat…for now.

Mak’to’ran was waiting when the Star Force fleet emerged from Hadarak territory in the same system they’d left, with Paul-024 transmitting a basic report of what had happened along with the promise of delivering all of their data on the Hadarak when they got to the other side of V’kit’no’sat territory. The Era’tran preceded them back, clearing the way and keeping V’kit’no’sat assets away from the Uriti transports…especially in lieu of the battle data that the Archon had included in the first report.

Never had Mak’to’ran seen that kind of damage done to the Hadarak so quickly or so effectively. They had to pound on them over and over and over to just scratch a little damage into a true wound, and when they did the Hadarak usually ran for a star where the V’kit’no’sat could not follow. What the Uriti had done…with Star Force backup keeping the minions busy…was eye opening.

Here was a way to effectively fight the Hadarak, yet it was in the hands of the enemy that he was forced to destroy, and along with it the very living weapons that were superior to the Hadarak, though far smaller at the moment. What they could grow to in a million years was so tantalizing that just before they left V’kit’no’sat territory Mak’to’ran asked for another meeting with the trailblazer, imploring him to accept his offer of inclusion in the empire or make a counter offer on different terms. Mak’to’ran desperately wanted the power that Star Force had gained for the fight against the Hadarak, but the trailblazer was adamant that the rift between them could not be reconciled.

The death mark and all the destruction inflicted upon Star Force meant that they would never rejoin the empire that had unwittingly spawned, then spurred them. It was irony, perhaps, that the V’kit’no’sat’s actions to stomp out this heresy was denying them the weapon they needed to destroy the Hadarak, but at least Mak’to’ran wasn’t coming out of this empty handed. The data Paul delivered to him as they parted ways was more intel than the V’kit’no’sat had ever had, by far, and put to rest long held speculation about why the Hadarak did what they did.

Key to it all was the fact that they were looking for something…and the fact that the Uriti weaponry was not unfamiliar. It was clear in the notes that these two things were not linked, for one resulted in combat and the other a withdraw from combat. That meant there were two massive forces out there someone, one an ally or neutral, the other an enemy far stronger than the V’kit’no’sat.

That did not sit well with Mak’to’ran, and made their reluctance to explore the Rim all the more damning. What was out there that the Hadarak were looking for? Or no, not looking for…waiting for. They didn’t know where it was, they were just patrolling and making no big push towards the Rim. The V’kit’no’sat had pushed them back considerably, but according to the Rit’ko’sor there were much larger Hadarak further in that had never bothered coming out to fight them.

All of this suggested a lot more that Mak’to’ran could only guess at, but he finally had real data gleamed from the mind of Hadarak and Star Force had done a good job of keeping the Hadarak talking for days. What had not been a good job was their letting the Hadarak go. Star Force, along with some help, had stopped the couriers from leaving with the knowledge of the Uriti’s existence. According to the notes that would have resulted in a massive war with the Hadarak coming straight for the Preserve because the Uriti had told them where it was.

That was bad, but the change in the Hadarak’s behavior prompting Star Force to let it go was far worse. Mak’to’ran feared they may have just struck a blow against the V’kit’no’sat by inciting the Hadarak to come out and fight them in far greater numbers. He didn’t know if there was enough time to stop the Hadarak, but as soon as he learned the full context of the encounter he sent word through the Urrtren for the closest V’kit’no’sat fleets to move at all speed to try to intercept and destroy the wounded Hadarak before it could spread word of what it had discovered.

If it had formed and released another courier it would be too late, but if it had launched all it had, as he believed, then it wouldn’t have spent resources to make another with such massive injuries to heal, so they might just have a chance. If not, he wouldn’t know soon, for the Hadarak moved slowly, but he imagined that if word got through to the other Hadarak, he’d see the start of a massive push by them prior to the ending of the Sarma that had just begun.

If that was true, and it was intentional on Star Force’s part, then it was a masterful stroke of tactical genius. The V’kit’no’sat were going to have to pay a very heavy price to hold that line if it happened, perhaps so much that they would have to ignore Star Force for an additional millennia or two, perhaps longer, but the V’kit’no’sat would not relent. They would hold the line no matter what, and in the end, it would still be a victory for them.

And it would be a victory because Mak’to’ran now had information on who their enemy truly was, and that was something that not even the Zak’de’ron had possessed during their long, dominant reign. And in that, the V’kit’no’sat and the Era’tran had just surpassed their founders.

The war against the Hadarak was theirs now, not the Zak’de’ron’s, and Mak’to’ran had just attained more progress in this deal than had been made throughout their 6 million years of existence.

That was worth any losses they’d have to suffer in a potential Hadarak surge, even if it was one of never before seen scale, for they were now one step closer to finding a way to accomplish the impossible and one day completely rid the galaxy of the Hadarak plague.

www.aerkijyr.com

Rift

1

December 13, 4834

Seyjan System (Bozse Region)

Ninatro

Lina Rando walked back from the service counter in the Liquids Emporium carrying a tall, skinny tube filled with a starburster over to one of the many small tables in the privately owned drinks café located along the main promenade in the fourth largest city on the planet filled with a mix of Humans, Calavari, and Dojsin. Another 18% of the population was a mix of basically everything originating from several Axius planets in the system, but Ninatro was technically a Dojsin planet.

They were one of the first races annexed from The Nexus after the initial Rim Region, with the Bozse Region sitting on the border of the Devastation Zone on the spinward side. There was a good chunk of lawless systems between them and the official Devastation Zone where Star Force hadn’t chosen to expand into, but Bozse was the only other region close to the destroyed systems and was seen as next on the conquest list for the V’kit’no’sat along with the Rim Region.

Lina sat down, her exposed breasts bobbing a bit within the two rings of her corset, drawing a few fleeting glances from the other Humans in the Emporium, but they didn’t linger. Her outfit was gaudy, but nothing too uncommon, making her stand out enough to draw momentary attention, but just as quickly be lost to thought…which was her intention. Drawing looks then being dismissed was a good way to hide in public, and her tight red corset that transitioned into loose, flowing white material that covered her arms had everything on her upper body from neck to waist concealed save for her breasts, accenting her living accoutrements in a nice holiday theme that a fair number of others in public were reciprocating in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

That top, coupled with her miniskirt and tight, candy cane-stripped boots that came up above her knees, certainly made her eye candy for the Human men, but the other races didn’t seem to care too much, though her color coordination drew some approving looks from them. Her hair was even dolled up to match, having been grow out all the way down to her butt in a medical station two days ago and weaved together in a brain that reached to lower back with a strand of white, green, and red hair twirled together then bobbed off with a red orb on the end.

Even her exposed nipples had been genetically altered, one so that it was colored green, the other red, though it wasn’t a look the Arc Commando usually went for. Occasionally she’d walk around completely topless with a pair of loose shorts on, but oddly that didn’t draw as much attention as being half clothed with her breasts exposed. The framing was somehow more eye-catching than just her natural skin, and really she didn’t mind. It was a nice style to have, though she preferred a full uniform top or nothing at all.

Lina was only 836 years old, but other Arc Commandos had told her that back in Star Force’s earliest days girls showing their nipples in public had been taboo…but not for the guys. That made no sense to her, for both guys and girls had nipples. It was the same body part, so why should one have to be hidden and one ok to reveal? She’d been even more flabbergasted when the elders told her that women would expose their breasts but cover their nipples, which made even less sense. Guys didn’t have breasts, but they did have nipples. Why not hide what they didn’t have and show what they did?

But taboos were like that. They existed for no reason and were reinforced by public pressure. A ‘do as your told and don’t think about it’ approach that Star Force had gotten rid of long ago. They had rules, of course, but ever rule had a reason…like wearing underwear in public areas such as this.

Bras didn’t count, because the reason for the underwear minimum was to catch loose body fluids. Her breasts weren’t producing any milk so no worries there, but nudity hadn’t been banned in Star Force for as long as she could remember, with several Human males within view on the crowded promenade wearing full body suits that were entirely see-through.

Lina glanced at them as they passed, seeing their hairless crotches compressed within the suits and enjoying the view, for guys that were not physically fit usually didn’t go for the clear clothing. Most of the Dojsin didn’t either, but on occasion you’d see one of the lanky bipeds with their apple-sized reproductive orbs revealed. It wasn’t a turn on for Lina, but it was rare enough to draw attention anyway. There were so many non-Human races within Star Force that she didn’t think most people knew what all parts they had.

But Lina wasn’t here to gawk, rather she was here on business as she sucked out of a straw the starburster that contained the maximum legal concentration of caffeine allowed in vendor drinks. Star Force versions usually contained no caffeine at all, which was why a lot of people favored the starburster and others that they could only acquire with credits from work, making places like this a hangout for the more motivated citizens while the lazies concentrated in areas where some Star Force outlets offered free food and drinks.

Lina drank her starburster slowly, needing to hold this position for a while. She was hoping to catch a Rylenian passing through here, but the Arc Commando didn’t want to be obvious about it…hence her festive garb that attracted a couple of male passersby to sit down and chat with her, which she welcomed. It helped enhance her cover, and her telepathic skills were good enough that she could talk with a person in front of her while mentally scanning others in the area.

And the conversation made her drink last longer, extending her stay long enough for three Rylenians to come and go, but the fourth one that arrived and sat down at a table without a drink was the one she wanted.

She shifted her mood to one of elitist offishness, discouraging males from more than a quick flirt and keeping them at enough of a chilly distance that they didn’t try to sit down and chat her up. She couldn’t handle the distraction now, for she was heavily digging into the Rylenian’s mind. It wasn’t one that she was too familiar with, and Lina was having some trouble making sense of it, but it was obvious that this one was waiting for a contact, so she had some time.

Eventually the four legged, feathered ‘totem pole’ was joined at his table by a Bavu. The two made some casual conversation that Lina knew was just for cover, for it was more pointless than usual chit chat, then the Bavu got up and went to the counter, coming back with a pair of drinks that were not palpable for Humans. When he gave the Rylenian his drink, the Rylenian slipped him a data chip. It was subtle and easily missed, but with Lina in both their minds they practically advertised the transaction before it happened.

The two sat and talked a bit more, then the Rylenian excused himself and shuffled off, leaving the large, bald-headed Bavu alone at the table.

Lina waited until the contact was well away, then she got up and headed back to the counter with her now empty drink. She passed behind the Bavu and gently touched the back of his neck with her fingertips and the small wire protruding out from her baggy right sleeve cuff.

“Hey baby,” she said, feeling her fingertips go numb as the stun charge bled back through the Bavu’s skin and into hers, but she still had the rest of her hand functioning as she got an affectionate grip on the back of his neck and swung around beside him, leaning down to give his big head a kiss as she tipped his head back and kept his body from falling out of his chair.

She rubbed her face against his as she got his body positioned appropriately, then after some decent acting said her flirty farewell, leaving him sitting upright in his chair with a muscle hold command jammed into his mind. His three eyes were fixed and unblinking, but otherwise he looked normal as Lina got herself another starburster and headed back to her original seat, patting the Bavu on the head as she went by and rejoined the sea-like crowds, losing herself again while keeping an eye on the Bavu’s table.

She sent a telepathic ping to the security team nearby, and a few minutes later two uniformed officers arrived and nonchalantly picked up the Bavu, one under each arm, and carried him out of the Emporium…but Lina had the datachip in her hand, not needing to scan it to know its contents.

It would be valuable data from mid-level Star Force officials, acquired through a variety of means, some of which included bribery, and was being passed through a number of intermediaries that Lina had been tracking for over two years. The Bavu was new to her, which was why she’d had him picked up rather than the Rylenian.

Leaving him free might draw in some additional contacts, for this spy network operated in cells knowing that Star Force could read their minds if captured. The few true traitors within Star Force had been dealt with already, and those that had been unwilling dupes were now clued in to the threat and the security breaches sealed, but there was no way of knowing how many more there were.

Nothing too vital had been known to be stolen yet, but they were still getting information that was not available to the public and funneling it to outside parties. Lina had guessed where it was going, but the arrival of the Bavu was her first link back to the V’kit’no’sat, for they were a race from coreward of the Devastation Zone that was a known associate of their enemy.

Bavu traveled everywhere, so their appearance here wasn’t too unusual, and it made for good cover for V’kit’no’sat spies. The fact that the Rylenian was handing over data to one told her that it was going through probably its last intermediary, and with luck the interrogation of the Bavu would tell security where the V’kit’no’sat handoff would be taking place.

It was progress, but rooting out this spy network was extremely hard given how many trillions of people were roaming around Star Force territory that weren’t part of the empire. Planets like this one were free access to outsiders, despite the looming threat of V’kit’no’sat invasion. Star Force was simply too much of a communal nexus for travelers to ignore, and while Star Force handled it all well, there were too many people and too few Archons and Mavericks to effectively sift through them all.

That was one reason why the Arc Commandos had been created. Their combat skills were a prerequisite, but their specialty was going where others would not. Seeing the cracks in the empire and knowing how to move through them and hunt others who were doing the same. As valuable as Lina was on the battlefield, her work identifying and eliminating these information breaches was more important, and if she could spare an Archon the duty and let them go to the battlefield, so much the better for Star Force.

Her job done for the moment, Lina lingered in the Emporium liberally sucking on the drink now that she didn’t have to stretch her stay here. Her mood altered to ‘I want to be alone’ to discourage more than momentary flirting as she waited out any potential surveillance of the location. The odds of that were rare, but she liked to be thorough and leaving immediately would give away her involvement in the arrest.

Lina was also scanning minds, looking for odd reactions but finding nothing out of the ordinary. Security taking someone away was rare but not unheard of, so the reactions of mild shock were expected. Others didn’t care so long as it didn’t involve them, and Lina couldn’t pick up any other contacts in the area. A pity, for if she had that would be another thread to follow in what was such a complex web that there were an estimated 200,000 or more known spies throughout the Bozse and Rim Regions.

This was no small operation, and she and the others hunting them needed to find them all…or at least eliminate their sources of information. If they wanted to just roam around listening to the public news feeds they were welcome to, but they were finding ways to worm into stuff that was restricted to Star Force workers only, giving the enemy or other interested parties a more complete look at how Star Force operated than they cared to let their opposition know about.

Lina was halfway through the second starburster when the privately owned news channel with an anchor wearing a similar ‘bare breast’ tunic to Lina’s was pre-empted by the main Star Force news network with a priority override. There was breaking news concerning a mission to the Core that Lina hadn’t known about that had the V’kit’no’sat allowing Star Force to pass through with several Uriti so they could make contact with the Hadarak.

Lina’s red and green eyebrows raised in shock. She’d never heard of any joint efforts between the two empires before. Rather, the V’kit’no’sat were continually trying to eradicate Star Force in any way they could, but as she continued to listen along with virtually everyone else on the planet as the activity across the entire promenade suddenly ground to a halt with everyone finding the nearest display screen, the fully clothed Star Force news anchor revealed that due to the Core mission and the information sharing on the Hadarak that resulted from it, a temporary truce between Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat was now in effect and would last 243 years.

Lina knew why that number was what it was, even though no one else did. It was a V’kit’no’sat ‘Sarma’ and not some random amount of years. That small fact aside, the idea of a truce immediately drew skepticism from her, though apparently not from everyone else, for a huge roar of approval swept the promenade that was tepid compared to the emotional surge was she picking up telepathically.

It was so deafening that she had to shut down her general Ikrid scan, but the sound of cheering in the multiple racial forms continued for minutes on end even as the news anchor cautioned that the agreement was contingent on the V’kit’no’sat honoring the deal and there was no way to know whether they would or not.

But to the citizenry it didn’t matter. For this moment, at least, the war was over and they didn’t have to worry about the next attack landing on their head.

To Lina it meant a great deal more, and if true would give Star Force some badly needed breathing room to rebuild their fleets and strengthen their border defenses. What she couldn’t understand was why the V’kit’no’sat would allow them this.

The news anchor went on to explain that, saying the information on the Hadarak was valuable enough to them to be worth the pause in the war…which the anchor insisted would resume after the 243 year period. The war was not over, only paused, but the people didn’t seem to care one bit. Most of them had been born after the war started and they had never known anything other than defeat after defeat after defeat…but now there was going to be no more fighting, for a while, but to them it probably seemed like forever.

A Calavari beside her bent over and kissed Lina on the forehead, then clapped her on both shoulders with his big hands and picked her up out of her chair like a rag doll.

“Did you hear that!” his low, booming voice asked in clear enthusiasm. “The fighting is over!”

“I heard,” she said with a cheery smile, letting him manhandle her in his glee, though her smaller frame was quite capable of kicking his ass even without her psionics if needed. “But they’ll be coming back later.”

“Not for 243 years! That’s a lifetime!”

“For some,” she said, with him finally letting her down to her feet with her head level with his chest.

“You don’t seem happy, Human. Why not?”

“We won’t be safe until the V’kit’no’sat are all dead. If they agreed to this, it has to help them in some way.”

“If it didn’t help us, the trailblazers wouldn’t have agree to it…would they?” he argued, knowing he had a good point and smiling broadly with it.

“True,” she admitted.

“So be happy. This is good for us.”

“You’re right,” she said, stepping up on a chair and giving him a friendly kiss on his big lips. “It is good.”

“Then dance!” he said, starting to clobber the floor with his heavy feet in rhythm with the other people around them that were slowly all syncing up. She didn’t know where it had started, but soon the entire promenade was dancing in place and singing a number of different songs.

Lina laughed, deciding to go along with it and stepping up on top of the table so she was finally standing taller than the Calavari along with several other Humans and smaller races that were up on the other tables. She started dancing with them, throwing in a lot of old school moves the other Arc Commandos had taught her, and quickly became the center of attention within the Emporium as everyone else starting to match their movements to hers.

Lina knew this wasn’t the end of the war, but it was huge news…and the Calavari was right. If the trailblazers had agreed to it, then it was a good thing. How good was unclear, but it meant the border colonies wouldn’t be getting attacked in the near future. How long that would last, who knew, but for now they were technically at peace.

Lina knew the distinction in that, but the crowd didn’t and their enthusiasm was infectious. Given that she didn’t have anywhere else to be at the moment and security would be handling the Bavu interrogation, she decided to stay and dance on the table top, throwing gestures to the others and getting many back as they all celebrated.

For now, at least, the war was over. How long that would last…no one knew, nor cared about at this point. The perpetual dread hanging over Star Force was now lifted, with uncertain hope replacing it.

But at this point, even uncertain hope was a victory beyond all victories, and that wasn’t lost on the Arc Commando who began enjoying herself thoroughly through the multiple-hours long spontaneous celebration that soon spread across all of Star Force territory. Making it, arguably, the largest dance party in galactic history.

2

February 19, 4840

Alamo System (Uriti Preserve)

Warden 8 Station

Riley-038 stood in an observation deck onboard the Star Force-only station as fleets of visiting ships watched at a closer, but still safe distance as the carrier vessel from the Knights of Quenar arrived. The trailblazer wasn’t needed for any immediate operations, for the Wranglers were handling them as usual, but now that the V’kit’no’sat war had been paused and most of his peers had moved away from the Devastation Zone to the far Rim where Star Force’s other wars were still ongoing, he was one of the few that had remained to patrol the region, as well as to keep an eye on the all-important Uriti.

Riley had been the natural choice, for he’d been involved with the Uriti from the beginning and had the closest relationship with them after the Wranglers. When the 5 that had visited and fought the Hadarak returned, the others did not take the news well. Most of them were in denial, for they hadn’t been directly attacked themselves and only had the memories of the others to share. They couldn’t comprehend that their kin could turn on them, and now that Riley knew that they were in fact a Hadarak/minion hybrid he could understand that.

While living beings, minions existed as pieces within a hive mind. They were individuals, but they didn’t see themselves as such and the idea of one turning on another was, from their point of view, impossible. It would be like Riley’s right hand attacking his left, and was such a foreign concept that the Uriti here almost accused the others of lying…except they couldn’t do that either, for the Uriti never lied.

The past 5 years had been rough for them, coming to grips with the fact that they were not only alone but hated by those that should have been their allies. How the Hadarak would react to them now was unknown, for the one they’d encountered had left confused as well, but the Uriti knew they wouldn’t be coming out to them anytime soon and with the truce between Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat they also knew they wouldn’t be fighting them for a while.

That meant all they had was their training and the promise of a few field trips to the nearest black holes in Star Force territory. It wasn’t much, but they clung to it even in their despair as the years passed, but the dynamic between the Uriti was not the same as it had been before. They were hurt, and even while Bahamut’s injuries had healed, he especially was broken emotionally. The very foundation of what it meant to be a Uriti was gone, and that had rocked all of them to the core.

Fortunately the KoQ were continuing to hunt for the remaining Uriti hidden across the galaxy and had found another 4 years ago. Acquiring it and transporting it around the Core to avoid the V’kit’no’sat had taken all 4 of those years, with it finally arriving today, and the Wranglers feeding Riley information from all 73 of them that had been gathered together for the occasion. The sheer destructive power of that ‘herd’ was mind boggling, but Riley wasn’t worried. Star Force and the Uriti were on good terms, and frankly, they were the only family the Uriti had in addition to each other.

Powerful as they were, they were not a threat even without the emergency overrides each of the Uriti were subservient to. Riley was glad they had those as backup, but hadn’t needed to use them even once since the Hadarak contact mission. The observing races here, however, were not so confident…which left them trying to get ‘close’ while staying far away at the same time.

Star Force had drawn a line to make it easy for them, but you could see the various ships moving around that line constantly repositioning, and when one of the Uriti drifted closer to it half of the ships would pull back while the other half held position. Fear was a constant here, and as a certain Sith Lord had said long ago, Fear attracts the fearful.

Riley hadn’t understood that tenet for a long time, but now it was obvious. Those who were afraid often ran away, but others wanted to get close to the fear without getting too close. They either wanted the rush of adrenaline, or perhaps the feeling of being so close to such great power. Then again, maybe they were just stupid, but whatever their motivation they were here, by the thousands of ships, to witness the combined Uriti herd as it welcomed its newest member.

And it wasn’t just for today. Ever since news of the V’kit’no’sat truce had begun to seep out across the galaxy new ships had been arriving in the Preserve to take a look at the beasts that had scared the V’kit’no’sat into withdrawal. Riley knew that wasn’t entirely true, but it didn’t matter. No one stood up against the V’kit’no’sat and lived, yet the massive empire had agreed to a 243 year truce with Star Force…who possessed these living monsters that were more powerful than anything the V’kit’no’sat wielded, their Mach’nel included.

Riley knew this was just the beginning, for even after 5 years word of the truce was still reaching new systems and would continue to do so across the galaxy for decades to come. And anyone who had ever heard of the V’kit’no’sat would be curious about those who had successfully stood up to them, with the key to their defiance being the Uriti in the Preserve…so this was the focal point of curiosity and diplomacy, as it had been for a long time, but now it was literally exploding with activity as ships moved about the Devastation Zone freely without having to worry about being attacked by the V’kit’no’sat.

New trade routes were already opening up, redrawing the map with regards to Star Force’s neighbors as if roads were being added where none had been before. The closest black hole routes had seen traffic increase over 100 fold, and the best routes between those endpoints and here were now being packed with ship traffic and even some entrepreneurs setting up shop on worlds that technically Star Force still owned, even if they were abandoned.

Riley had dealt with several of them personally, driving off a few but striking deals with others to sanction their presence as they took advantage of all the traffic passing through. Davis had made the decision not to recolonize the Devastation Zone other than Sol, and instead use the available resources to harden the current border, increase the industry on already inhabited worlds, and to make a much larger push into former Nexus territory.

Riley hated that, but the Director’s logic was sound. 243 years was a long time, but not even close to what they needed to rebuild the Devastation Zone. It was enough time to recolonize a lot of it, but making it war ready in less than three centuries was not doable. What had been destroyed there had taken millennia to build, and Star Force wasn’t going to make the mistake of overreaching only to see system after system destroyed for the second time.

No. Star Force intended to hold the line firmly when the truce ended, and that meant building more shield generators on top of those that already existed. Not starting from scratch on dead worlds.

Sol was the only exception, and the trailblazers expected it would be the first system hit when the war restarted, so they weren’t going to allow a civilian population. It was going to end up being a war zone, so they were planning for such, making Earth, Mars, and Titan essentially battle fields in the making while they repaired and refurbished the other planetoids for industrial output but skimped on the defenses that they knew wouldn’t last more than minutes against the size of a fleet they expected the V’kit’no’sat to bring back with them.

Morgan was there now, taking up permanent residence and overseeing the building while several High Admirals were out patrolling the Devastation Zone. The rank had just been commissioned for 18 of the most experienced Admirals that had truly outdone themselves during the war. Liam had suggested the upgrade, tasking them with select duties that Archons would normally deal with.

High Admirals were also given priority naval command over all Archons save for the trailblazers. They’d been doing such things during the war as needed, but now official command was given to them even with Archons in their fleets. Those Archons could override the High Admirals if needed, but they were no longer looked to first for decision making. The High Admirals had higher naval rankings than them anyways, but the fleets the High Admirals now commanded would always have Archons in them just to cover the unforeseen problems that might pop up. Other than that, they were second string to the High Admirals.

So right now there were 4 High Admirals with fleets out patrolling the Devastation Zone while smaller Archon units were dealing with the races and organizations that intended to colonize the empty systems. Sweeping them up and kicking them out was a waste of a trailblazer’s time, so Riley and Morgan left that to others unless something huge happened. The other 98 trailblazers were assigned elsewhere within Star Force territory while Kara’s Clan Ghostblade had disappeared beyond the known borders, out exploring new territory and doing some priority tasks for Davis that even Riley didn’t know about.

He had information on what all the trailblazers were doing to some degree, but most of what was going on he would only know after the fact if he dug into the records. Star Force was so large at this point that no one knew what all was going on and Riley and his peers relied on each other to take care of their piece of the puzzle, along with Davis and the Monarchs. Trust was the only thing that kept their empire together, otherwise it would have fractured by now without another means of unification.

The V’kit’no’sat, whose empire was far larger than Star Force’s, did not operate on trust as much as the Human-led empire did. Theirs was a much more complicated puzzle that kept their races partially separate but beholden to the others. Killing those who didn’t obey also offered an intimidation factor to force results or remove those that were not conducive to the goals of the empire, but Star Force couldn’t and wouldn’t use such measures.

The Monarchs and the Archons were the key to maintaining the unity of the empire, but the larger the empire grew, both in territory and people, the harder it was to maintain control over. More Monarchs were being added, as were Archons, but there was only so much any one of them could do, making Davis’s job continually harder…for he had to oversee everything.

Riley had a personal relationship with him, as did all the trailblazers, and he’d insisted that was key going forward…which was why Riley and the other trailblazers were now returning to taking on apprentices so they could build personal relationships with the newer additions. Being an Archon meant a lot of common ground with every other Archon, but a personal connection was needed amongst the ultra high leadership.

All of the High Admirals had served directly under the trailblazers, so personal connections already existed there, just as almost every Monarch had served as a Clan Marquis and had a personal relationship to at least one trailblazer. Now Riley had taken on an apprentice, a Piccolo-level Archon named Bisa-10006, who was slightly more innovative than other Archons and was being groomed for semi-trailblazer duties above and beyond combat.

She was with him now, and traveled everywhere he went in the Devastation Zone, but this was the first time she’d been present when a new Uriti arrived. Seeing the arrival was one thing, which anyone could review later, but feeling the Uriti’s emotions as both Archons were now was something entirely different and Bisa was clearly getting overwhelmed with all 73 of them in her head simultaneously, even if in a muted state.

“Focus on one now,” he suggested as the carrier vessel opened and the sedate Uriti drifted out while the ship slowly reversed course. “Try Bahamut.”

“That’s better,” she said, now with only one Uriti in her head, though that was still too much to take without the dampeners. “How do the Wranglers deal with this?”

“The more familiar the minds are, the easier they are to process. Even with minds of this magnitude.”

“I can’t make out much, even from just Bahamut.”

“It takes time. Their mental language isn’t based off vocal communications, so it can get a bit wonky.”

“I’ll say,” she said with a huff, having to constantly keep resetting her mental stance as Bahamut’s emotions kept blowing her virtual ‘fuse’ and overwhelming her with information.

“There he is,” Riley said as the 74th mind began to poke into existence as three of the Uriti rushed up to the 28 mile long, 4-hulled banana and began raking it with telepathic electricity to undo the sedative as fast as possible.

The Uriti was a single piece at the front and back, but those pieces split into four segments that arched out and around an empty central space before recombining into the back piece. A ship could fly inside the Uriti and out again if it wanted, making this another odd design the Chixzon had come up with, and based off the Ancients’ combat data that empty space served multiple purposes…one of which was a charging chamber for a death star-like weapon.

The Wranglers would work out what it could or couldn’t do over time and training, but right now it was the Uriti that were making first contact while Star Force simply observed, and for the first time since the Hadarak mission the Uriti were hopeful and happy. They’d gone to the Hadarak expecting to find new brothers and sisters, instead finding enemies, but now they had found a new sibling and the palpable depression that had been consuming them was lifting, and Riley could tell that all they needed was some good news to latch onto in order to start really healing.

The new Uriti, which Riley had named ‘Green Lantern,’ woke up to a situation he had never encountered before…that being other Uriti around him. Up until today he had been the only one in existence, as far as he knew, with the only contact he had was the intermittent orders from the Chixzon.

The reaction was not underestimated, and the other Uriti were also seeing it again through Green Lantern’s eyes, reminding them of where they had been before Star Force brought them together, and that memory seemed to be the breaking point to cleanse them of their depression. They’d come so far since then, rescued from a life of solitude just as Green Lantern was now…as well as realizing just how much he had to learn.

They knew it was their responsibility to teach him more than it was Star Force’s, and Riley was thankful for that. Teaching the first few Uriti had been a very slow process, but once they had some veterans to Star Force training to talk Uriti to Uriti with the newcomers the learning curve had become far less steep. Even now Riley could feel the Uriti reaching out to the newest member of their family, thanks to the fact that they were allowing the Wranglers to eavesdrop, and ‘hearing’ his exciting, yet groggy reaction to the realization that he wasn’t alone in the galaxy.

Riley glanced to his left, seeing a few tears welling up in Bisa’s eyes.

“Yet one more reason to hate the Chixzon,” the trailblazer commented. “Uriti are built to act as a group, both as a Hadarak and as a minion. Keeping them isolated is a light, persistent torment that this one is now being released from for the first time.”

“He is so big,” she said, still crying a few silent tears.

“They are less advanced than us, yet they are more advanced. Remember that over the years as you become familiar with their minds, or you’ll constantly be misjudging them.”

“I’ve never felt any mind even remotely like this.”

“Neither have I. And it’s why they refer to us as the ‘little people.’”

“That I can understand.”

“I still can’t fully understand them, and neither can the Wranglers. Who knows what they think of us, which is why we have to focus on actions rather than words. Show them what we want, not tell them.”

“Lucky for us we know how to talk training.”

“Damn right, girl. That’s a language that all races speak…or will learn to speak. We all like to get more powerful.”

“And the Hadarak?”

“Training takes time, so if they shoot us on sight that’s not really an option.”

“You really think they’re coming for us all the way out here?”

“I don’t know, but we have to have a plan in place if they do. We’ll see them coming well ahead of their arrival, but if and when they get here, they’re going to be very hard to kill even with the Uriti’s help.”

“You’re talking the planet-sized ones the Rit’ko’sor reported?”

“Think of how much weaponsfire something a thousand miles wide can soak up. We can run and stay ahead of them, our planets can’t. We have to be ready long before we see the first one coming.”

“And if they don’t come?”

“Anything that can kill a Hadarak will probably be useful against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“The spaceball program?”

“We have to fight through the minions to even get in position to use it, and their tentacles mean a really big ship to get out of their range.”

“What else have we got in the works?”

“Not much yet. Have any ideas?”

“Working on it,” she said honestly, and Riley knew that challenge would bug her as it did other Archons. One of them would come up with something eventually, he hoped. Fighting planet-sized people was something new for Star Force, and if the V’kit’no’sat weren’t very good at it after all these years, he expected it would be a very hard challenge to conquer…but that wasn’t going to deter the Archons from working the problem. “How long before the Uriti get that big?”

“Hard to say. Maybe a million years. They don’t grow as fast as the Hadarak, though we’re speeding up the process.”

“How?”

“Making sure they eat their Wheaties.”

“Wheaties?”

“Food. We give them specific food, faster than they could harvest it themselves, but the speed training we’re doing with them is fighting the bloated growth the Hadarak have.”

“I thought the Hadarak were faster than untrained Uriti.”

“That has to do with the tinkering the Chixzon did. More kill power for less speed,” he said as a green spark lit on the front prong of the new Uriti for a second, then dispersed just as soon in an energy cloud…which Riley took to be it just stretching after such a long nap.

“Did any of them get pissed when woken up?”

“No. They were all overly thrilled to realize they had brothers. Looks like this one is no exception.”

“I can feel him now. His mind is…more chaotic than the others.”

“Lack of a herd to align with. That will change rapidly.”

“Any leads on the next one?”

“Leads yes, confirmation no. The Knights of Quenar aren’t going to stop looking until they find them all.”

“I’m still surprised they’re giving them to us.”

“Mutual advantage. I don’t trust them, but we can work with them.”

“What’s their long term plan?”

“Hard to say. I’m not worried about them in the near future.”

“Think they’re gonna try and steal our control structure?”

“They would if they could, as would many others. They’re not getting it though.”

“Are we sure of that?”

“We’ve got backups just in case, but I’m pretty sure they can’t figure it out on their own.”

“Backups?”

Riley pointed out the fake windows at the herd of Uriti. “We don’t control them anymore, though we can if needed. We’ve made friends. And that’s the best backup available.”

“So…I hear you’re the only Archon to have ever petted one?”

“True,” he said with a smile. “First and probably the last. If we ever have to sedate one again, then we’ll have royally screwed up.”

3

February 19, 4840

Yavarris System (Totana Region Capitol)

Nexchi

Davis leapt from one pedestal-like box to another, firing a shot from his stun pistol against a floating target sphere that clipped the upper right corner, but it was still enough to count as a hit. He landed awkwardly on the edge of the next pedestal but stuck it, redirecting to his right as he ran across a short bridge to a bit of wall that he then slid behind face up as he shot another target high above his head.

As soon as he did a flurry of stun shots flew over the wall that was now covering him, forcing him to spin around and crawl another 15 meters before he got out of the trap and into a tube-like slide that sent him down through several twirls before ending in a drop-off into freefall.

Davis sprayed shots as he fell at the nearby target sphere, managing to get a hit that triggered a force field to form beneath him. He hit feet first then collapsed onto his butt, sliding to the side rather than falling into the disqualification pit, and allowing him to continue on the challenge course. He made it another two minutes before getting tagged on a two inch wide bridge he had to cross, cursing himself for stupidly trying to walk across it rather than crawling as his legs gave way and he fell into another disqualification pit.

The chamber’s lighting changed to red and a bad tone sounded, then it all reverted to normal as he limped his way to the exit with his right leg still too numb to move. The level 34 Striker hopped on his other leg over to a wall that held shelves with destunning serum and grabbed one of the tiny vials. A quick jab into his leg sent a wash of pins and needles through it, then they too disappeared and he regained full use of his limb.

Standing normally again, Davis swiped the sweat off his forehead and flicked it to the ground in frustration. He’d gotten farther than he ever had before, but he was an Archon and disliked failing as much as the others. The key to passing these challenges was grinding out the attempts and learning from the failures, as he had been doing on this course for nearly 3 months. But unlike the other Archons, he wasn’t full time. He was also a Monarch, and in addition to that he was the creator and head of the entire Star Force civilization. Archon training was a secondary priority for him, and right now he really wished he had all day to work on this challenge course, but that was time he didn’t have.

He’d spent two hours training this morning, and even with his Inas psionic that allowed him to work longer and sleep less, he couldn’t devote even half a day to his personal training. Too many things had to be done, and now more than ever since the pause in the V’kit’no’sat war.

Others would have said this was the perfect opportunity for Davis to squeeze another hour in per day, now that the pressure was off, but he knew otherwise. Two hours was, in fact, pushing it, for he had more to do now than during the war. With limited resources flowing directly into drone replacement, that left what he had to work with small and focused…but now that there wasn’t a territory and resource depletion on the coreward front he literally had so many building opportunities and projects and people to rescue that he hated spending any hours on training.

As Davis left the Archon sanctum on Nexchi his mind flipped from Archon mode to Monarch, the frustration of the challenge now behind him and a focus on the work he needed to get done. His mind began working the problems as soon as he hit the shower, and by the time he got back to his tower-top office with a view of the tropical ocean beyond he was running logistical numbers on the fly before he even had a chance to telepathically activate his clear desk and bring it alive with holographic data screens of the ongoing expansion into what had previously been The Nexus.

The map looked like a shotgun had been taken to it, with the weak areas now abandoned or lost as the main Nexus races held onto the systems they valued the most. Gone was their widespread territory that they had once held dominion over, now replaced with a spiderweb of trade routes and the systems along them that were worth protecting.

The core of The Nexus was still intact, but it was no longer the monolithic power beyond Star Force’s rimward border and many opportunistic races and organizations were going crazy in the power gaps. The Nexus didn’t care any longer what happened in those areas they had all but officially forfeited, focusing on their own survival and not losing more of what they still held, and most of those responsible races left unprotected were screaming for Star Force’s help.

They had been for centuries, and a lot of the closer ones had been loosely annexed, which Davis was now getting firmed up, but there were many, many others, some all the way out in the Cygnus galactic arm, that were requesting membership, assistance, or even just one of the Archons to help them try and survive.

And therein was a big problem with the former Nexus civilization. Too many of the smaller races relied on the Grid Point system commerce, and when they were cut off from it their collapse was imminent. Some had already been destroyed, both from invasion and others just from infrastructure collapse. Those in the latter category Davis was now sending out advisory staff to try and help stabilize through wisdom in better using what resources they had. For those races under attack it was another matter entirely, and there was less he could do.

Now that the war was on pause, part of the defense fleets that had been on the coreward border were now beyond the rim kicking the crap out of little bad guys that had the run of the place, but The Nexus’s former territory was so huge it was literally too much for Star Force to handle…but every planet saved mattered, and Davis knew this was the time to do the most good, not a time to kick back and relax…even if that relaxation came in the form of more Archon training.

All his Monarchs ran pieces of Star Force for him, tasked with making each piece self-sufficient and while he kept an eye on what they were doing he didn’t micromanage them. He had too much to do, and if they weren’t capable then he wouldn’t have made them Monarchs in the first place. What he was focusing on now was the exports each of those pieces were giving him access to.

Some of those were going to the border systems on the edge of the Devastation Zone, to strength them for when the war did resume. The bulk of the exports, however, were being fed into growth programs. The Bsidd, Kiritak, Kiritas, and Paladin were getting most of them, which in turn they would reciprocate with after they expanded their own production efforts. It was an investment that had to be made for the future, but it also meant less that could be sent to those in need beyond Star Force’s borders.

There was no way to save everyone, and the stream of refugees making their way to Star Force territory had increased tenfold since world of the truce with the V’kit’no’sat had spread rimward. Star Force was now the safest place to go, and both Axius and Beacon were using Kiritak labor to help them colonize new worlds fast enough to accommodate the influx of new population…all of which had to go through indoctrination. If they didn’t, and Davis just allowed them directly into the empire, they would destabilize it, bringing with them all their bad habits, war wounds, corrupt cultures…the refugees had to be contained and isolated until they assimilated, and right now those indoctrination colonizes were being overtaxed.

Current work orders would correct that shortly now that he had ample resources to divert to them. The Kiritak population was also exploding, or rather being allowed to explode, in order to meet the demand, but they had to be trained and that took time to get the level of expertise Star Force relied upon. Kiritak learned fast, but the more low level Kiritak there were the more they diluted the skill level of the overall workforce.

The Paladin, however, were born ready to work or fight, but often lacked the high level skills that the Kiritak developed over time. But right now Star Force was in a rush, with a time limit on their respite even if the V’kit’no’sat did not violate the truce…which they might. Davis expected they wouldn’t, but he couldn’t trust in that, which was why Morgan was building up Sol in order to draw the V’kit’no’sat’s attention away from the rest of Star Force like a lure. He fully expected to lose Earth again, but if forcing a fight there could buy a few more years for the rest of the empire then the expenditure would be worth it.

As for the Paladin, he was about to send out new orders for a massive expansion. Typically they had to build everything themselves, and were damn good at startup operations. They’d been holding together a lot of far flung regions with few resources and personnel that gradually grew over time, allowing Davis to send missions nearly anywhere he wanted to turn the tide in small situations, but that’s not what he needed now. He needed mass, and he needed it now.

How much to send them was the question, and he’d been running the numbers for the past 5 days. Resources would be flowing out to their prime territory where they did most of their building, but Davis needed something bold from them that would require their unique expertise and a massive population upgrade that could only be obtained in the necessary time by an influx of supplies. If they had to gather their own and slowly expand it wouldn’t work. He needed a line drawn in the sand yesterday…

Thrawn was on Csilla, the Paladin capitol, when Davis’s lengthy message arrived. Typically he received orders from one of the trailblazers known as the 2s, who had orchestrated the transition from Li’vorkrachnika to Paladin for his race, and he’d never had any direct link to Davis, but apparently the Director of the entire Star Force empire had something to say to him.

His red eyes glowed with deeper intensity as he summoned up the hologram of the Director in his unique uniform that only he and the Dukes wore along with a map of The Nexus.

“I have need of your service, Thrawn,” he said simply, much in the way Paul spoke but with a dryer tone. It wasn’t entirely formal, but it carried with it the gravitas of someone who was in command and knew it, allowing him to communicate in whatever manner he liked because his authority was completely unchallenged.

“We have limited time before the V’kit’no’sat return, and the key to our survival lies in how much of The Nexus we can successfully assimilate. I do not know how the V’kit’no’sat will counter the Uriti, but I do not expect them to come at us in a similar manner once the Sarma expires. They will have a strategy, let alone a weakness of ours to exploit. They will not surrender nor flee, so I expect we will lose more worlds. We must continue to outgrow their destruction, and the key to that lies in sweeping up those races in dire need now and allowing them time to grow and add to our combined strength.”

“But we cannot get to all of them in time and our foes know this. I want you to send a message to them by traveling far beyond our current borders and establishing a Paladin region where they think they are safe to misbehave. I need a line,” Davis said, drawing on the map via the Ikrid psionic Thrawn knew the Director possessed, “established on the old Nexus border reaching all the way up into Cygnus. I can send you resources at Csilla for you to use here, but you’ll have to make the journey out there on your own. I do not want this to be a startup operation. I need you in force out there now, which is why I am giving you enough supplies to triple your entire population within 10 years.”

Thrawn didn’t so much as blink when Davis said that, holding perfectly still and drinking in every detail from the map and the Director’s words, but internally his anxiousness exploded. This was far greater a task than he had ever been assigned, either personally or for the Paladin on the whole, and it even exceeded what he and the other Masterminds had been tasked with when part of the Li’vorkrachnika. In fact, the amount of territory Davis was asking him to take and hold, along such a long border, exceeded what the Li’vorkrachnika possessed prior to making contact with Star Force.

But these worlds would be fresh, not built up over millennia as the Li’vorkrachnika ones had been. Still, this was a monumental task that the Director was directly assigning him…though with some help.

“Megan will be going with you, but she will be the only non-Paladin. Between the two of you I expect you will find a way to do the improbable, for there are many threats along this corridor that could defeat you in your infancy. You must survive and spread fast. This is not to be a safe operation and I am taking into account your ability to birth functional individuals. This operation is all about speed. We must claim The Nexus’s original ‘western’ border,” Davis said, using the loose term for the spinward side of center, “and hold it. If we can, all those between you and us will think twice about their actions as we close in from two sides.”

“We have to functionally begin to fill the power vacuum The Nexus is leaving, but we also need to make a statement to the effect that we are taking over and scare opposition into not acting. We can save many lives through intimidation alone, as you well know, and I need you to build that intimidation force. Only the Paladin can expand this fast, and while you are not our strongest faction, in this regard you are superior and I am calling upon your capability now. Megan is heading towards you at present, but I wanted to explain this personally.”

Davis continued on for nearly three hours, going over a wealth of information that Thrawn absorbed diligently. By the end there was a fire inside of him burning so bright it would have eclipsed his glowing eyes. This was a task worthy of the Bsidd or Calavari, or even the Humans, but Davis was correct. Only the Paladin could expand faster than them and handle the conquest that the Director was ordering.

And Thrawn had so much experience in conquest, both from his work with Star Force and his personal experiences with the Li’vorkrachnika, combined with the genetic memory they had granted him from millennia of conquest before his birth, that he knew he was uniquely suited to this task and that Davis had correctly pegged him for it.

Until now Thrawn had been in Star Force’s debt, for saving him and a good amount of his people that had been left to die by the Templar. Not only had they been saved, but they’d been transformed and given a number of vital tasks, but they’d always been junior members of Star Force. That had been enough for Thrawn, who would do anything of merit that they asked, but this was different. This was peerdom that, honestly, he didn’t think he or the Paladin deserved.

But it was what he had always craved, and if Davis thought they were capable of it he was going to make sure he proved him correct. Davis needed this operation to exist in order to expand Star Force enough in order to survive the second round of the V’kit’no’sat war…and in that Thrawn held the key. Without the Paladin Star Force would not be able to do this, at least not fast enough, meaning the once former enemy of Star Force now held its fate in his claws.

He could sink Star Force here and now by failing this mission, either accidentally or intentionally, even with a trailblazer accompanying him…but that would not happen and he only thought of it now to fully accept the situation. He was no longer a servant doing what others could do. He held leverage over the Director and even the trailblazers. He held leverage over all of Star Force, for this mission was key to their long term survival, and in that it was a weakness.

A weakness that, if he had been an enemy, he could have exploited. Always had the trailblazers held the upper hand. Always had they been one step ahead of him. Now their limits were laid bare, and he could see the edge of Star Force’s dominance. He could see where they were weak, and how to destroy them. Davis had laid it out clearly, but even he didn’t see every crack and contingency. He was a genius, but as a master builder…not a destroyer.

Thrawn was both, and the unstoppable Star Force, finally, was beatable. Had he still been their enemy he would have finally had a way to beat them. Sabotage them here and the V’kit’no’sat would finish what they started. The Li’vorkrachnika would be avenged, having won out in the long run.

Thrawn absorbed that with a cruel smile on his scaly face. He controlled Star Force’s fate, and the irony was gratuitous.

Which was why he now had the chance to pay Star Force back for what they’d done for him and the Paladin. He’d take their weakness and armor over it so much that no one would be able to exploit it. He would turn his full power and skills to shoring up this flank so the Monarchs and Archons could work their magic elsewhere.

Davis was right in contacting him and explaining the situation in detail, for in making him a peer the Director had just made him more powerful…and his loyalty to Star Force was even stronger than his blind devotion to the Li’vorkrachnika had been. He was no threat to Star Force, he was a threat to Star Force’s enemies, and they were about to learn what that truly meant.

Bottom line, Thrawn and the Paladin had Star Force’s back, literally, and in their soon to be self-imposed exile would enable the empire to expand enough to survive any level of V’kit’no’sat attack…which the Director expected to be far greater after the Sarma ended than before.

In fact, he expected them to throw everything they had at Star Force.

4

February 26, 4840

Bugali System (Hov Region)

Torrent

Arch Duke Dante didn’t travel much. His headquarters on Torrent served as the center of the Monarch’s web that had fingers throughout 12 of the 15 Regions in Star Force territory, not counting the Devastation Zone, which now included Earth once again, though Dante had nothing there. Unlike most Monarchs who oversaw either a single planet or a region, he oversaw a race...and a powerful race at that. The Calavari were one of the founding pillars in the Star Force empire, and they’d been hit hard during the destruction of the ADZ, for their primary territory was just adjacent to it and had all been wiped out.

Every single system, conquered and destroyed, but this wasn’t the first time that had happened to the Calavari. They’d suffered nearly the same fate at the hands of the lizards and the Nestafar, with Star Force having saved enough of them to rebuild within the ADZ and eventually return to reclaim their former territory.

That wasn’t going to happen now, for the Devastation Zone was off limits to Dante per Davis’s orders. The war against the V’kit’no’sat was not over, merely paused, and they didn’t have enough time to rebuild and harden their former systems in time even if the V’kit’no’sat kept their word…and there was no guarantee they would.

Dante hadn’t been with the Calavari in the very beginning, but he’d been at the helm of their greater expansion within their previous region, their staggering losses and retreat during the evacuation of the greater ADZ region, and then oversaw their continuous contributions to the war front as the border kept creeping further and further rimward.

The Calavari made up a significant portion of the Clans that were the tip of the arrow regarding the forces that actively fought the V’kit’no’sat, but were primarily pilots and commandos. Calavari, especially, were seen as the anti-Zen’zat due to the fact that they were of similar size and had two extra arms that gave them an advantage in hand to hand combat despite their lack of psionics. The few Calavari that had become Mavericks were said to be the stuff of Zen’zat nightmares, but most of this war was not in the hands of the army…it was mostly about the navy.

There the Calavari were decent, but not dominant. They were second line in the naval war and had seen a lot of fighting, bolstered by numerous Archons that increased their fleets’ power greatly, but their combat scores in the naval division were not amongst the top 10 factions within Star Force, though they had a great number of ships to compensate for that.

As a faction, the Calavari had to field significant forces in all 5 divisions of the Star Force military and have enough of an internal supply network to sustain itself and aid others. In essence they had to be their own empire within an empire, and since the evacuation of the ADZ the Arch Duke had focused on rebuilding the Calavari in the Hov Region that was on the far ‘east’ side of Star Force territory, sharing a border with The Nexus and a bit of unclaimed territory that neither Star Force, The Nexus, nor the V’kit’no’sat had touched, though there were many indigenous races there.

Due to its status as a pillar of Star Force, there were Calavari systems spread through 11 other regions and run by lesser Monarchs that reported to Dante, but the bulk of his powerbase was here and the Calavari were responsible for the protection of this flank of Star Force territory, ensuring that the V’kit’no’sat did not pass through them, or around them, to hit the more vulnerable regions further rimward. They’d tried on a few occasions, but after getting hammered hard they hadn’t bothered to try anymore.

Dante knew that was more due to the fact that they liked hammering the front lines and the ships they’d sent to flank were more of an exploratory probing force looking for a weakness to exploit. The Calavari had nixed that idea quickly, but the Arch Duke always knew the main fighting would eventually reach the Hov region and he knew the Calavari would make them pay a high price to take their worlds again…but he never doubted that it would happen.

Now that had changed. They had a respite to recover and build, with his focus being on hardening the Hov Region as much as possible, but he had many other duties as well, including being the primary contact on this border for races making diplomatic entreaties with Star Force because of his reputation for not moving around. Even Davis no longer held a single position as he once had on Earth, but moved from system to system as needed, as did the other 7 Arch Dukes.

But not Dante. He preferred to operate out of a position of strength, and Torrent was now the most heavily defended system in known Star Force territory. Technically Shangri-La was tops, but its existence was still myth within Star Force and those individuals having been born there that were allowed to leave were bound by secrecy as to their origin point. In fact, there was another system in the Pavana Region named ‘Shangri-La’ so that any references to the real one would be attributed to it and no one would look for another.

That had seemed to hold, though most individuals coming out from the real Shangri-La were Archons or high level techs and were not thought to be a security threat. Civilians were not allowed to leave, so to date it seemed their trump card was still safely in the hole and yet to be played, but beyond it Dante’s Bugali System was the strongest in the empire and the Hov Region was the second behind only the Rim Region where most of the fighting and border strengthening had been occurring.

He’d been sending supplies there for centuries to help slow the V’kit’no’sat’s approach, but now those exports were reduced by 40% and Dante could use 15 of those percents for his own purposes while the other 25 were being sent elsewhere in the empire at Davis’s direction. The Director was so busy that Dante still didn’t know how he handled the workload, knowing that he could never replace the Director but was now confident in his deserving of the Arch Duke rank.

Hov was important, and while he had other Calavari worlds to oversee afar, he was using his faction to solidify his piece of the ‘eastern’ border as a fixed point. Star Force was not expanding beyond it as they were further to the Rim, and as a result a lot of Nexus traffic was flowing to them seeking refuge.

That meant that Hov also sported a lot of Axius and Beacon colonies, which were not under his command, but Bugali was shared with them. Dante was defacto commander of the system, and even though Axius wasn’t part of the Calavari, in this system he operated the four colonies here much the same way that some of the Dukes oversaw Calavari planets in other regions where they shared systems.

So the Axius colonies here had two masters, and in addition to those four planets there were 8 more that were fully Calavari worlds plus another 22 smaller ones and 83 moons that held partial colonies for specific purposes. Those were not heavily defended, but the 12 fully inhabited planets were each a fortress in and of themselves. If and when the V’kit’no’sat ever got here they’d have to essentially fight 12 different wars to conquer the system, and Dante had such a large defense fleet made up of a mix of starships and system ships that any one assault would be hard pressed to succeed.

If Dante could hold this system it would have an effect on the entire region, and even though Torrent had never seen a single V’kit’no’sat ship in orbit, the strength of its defenses and the fact that it was the Calavari’s new capitol and Dante’s seat of power attracted the bulk of outside attention. To deal with that he’d created a super-sized Babylon-class station in null stellar orbit on its own track between the 5th and 6th planets. That kept most of the non-Star Force traffic out of his orbit, and he had a Baron permanently assigned to the station along with a contingent of rotating Archons to keep him from having to deal with it and get distracted with everyone coming to meet with him.

Every now and then Baron Fimma would send one of the more important visitors to Torrent to meet with the Arch Duke, and today was one of these days.

A race that Dante had only faintly heard about in rumors had traveled here in a small convoy of 10 ships and were specifically asking to negotiate with the Arch Duke. They identified themselves as the ‘Zeeross’, which Dante briefly considered humorous until he saw the weapons readout supplied to him by the Archons in the system.

This was not a low level race, but rather one that appeared to have technological parity with Star Force…and they were here to talk about the V’kit’no’sat.

Dante cleared his schedule for today, other than for his personal workouts that didn’t take more than half an hour, and invited them down to the surface of Torrent after making the appropriate arrangements with the Archons. He had a special audience chamber the size of a convention center built in its own structure and away from his command center for just this reason. Dante met the Zeeross there, quickly seeing that they were bipeds nearly 16 feet tall and wearing breathing gear.

The part of their bodies that were visible were colored deep gray and they four long fingers that looked more like the ‘claw’ from old school toy vending machines than a Human hand. Each of their fingers was over a foot long, but their feet were just the opposite. They looked heavy and wide, almost like pedestals, and he could hear each heavy footfall as six of them walked across the open plaza beneath the open air ceiling protected from the current rain by an energy shield.

“Arch Duke,” one of the Zeeross said through a mechanical translator in English. “Thank you for granting us an audience to make our request.”

“What request is that?” he said, having to tip his head back to look the Zeeross in its goggle-covered eyes as an invisible shield separated the two of them. He had a few Knights and Archons flanking him just in case it failed, but so long as the Zeeross didn’t pass over the two inch rise in the floor marking its position, the shield might as well have not existed as far as any of them could tell.

Dante could, if he flipped on his Pefbar, but right now he didn’t have it running and he wondered if the Zeeross had any psionics of their own. So far the Archons weren’t picking anything up, and the moment they did they’d been instructed to inform him.

“Long have we hidden beyond V’kit’no’sat territory, knowing that if we revealed ourselves that war would come. The V’kit’no’sat do not abide peers, and while we have the ability to fight them, we do not possess their numbers. Our territory is small in comparison, and when allies of ours have been attacked we have been unable to aid them for fear of drawing the V’kit’no’sat’s wrath. We despise the V’kit’no’sat, but we are wise enough to know that we cannot challenge them. You are the first we know of to survive their wrath this long, and no one has ever negotiated a truce with them. How did you manage this?”

“They valued information on the Hadarak more than our destruction and bartered for what they could not obtain themselves. We fully expect they will be back in far greater numbers to destroy us after the truce expires.”

“This information. What significance was it?”

“They wished to know their primary enemy, and they had never been able to communicate with them. We were, through the Uriti, and they wanted any and all information we gathered on the Hadarak. Apparently they were satisfied with the exchange, for they have upheld their end of the truce so far.”

“We know they fight these Hadarak, but are they making no progress against them? How close are they to victory?”

“Far from it. The Hadarak are superior to them, and they must continually fight them or they will expand outward. They are fighting a never-ending war and seek to find a way to end the stalemate.”

“Never-ending? Why have the Hadarak not destroyed the V’kit’no’sat if they are superior?”

“They appear to not regard the V’kit’no’sat as a worthy threat, merely a border skirmish for their younger members to deal with. The true power of the Hadarak lies dormant in the core of the galaxy, and if the V’kit’no’sat ever fight their way that far in they will most likely be overwhelmed. They wish all knowledge they can obtain on the Hadarak, for compared to them we are nothing.”

“Very interesting,” the Veeross said, the pause in his words citing either confusion or contemplation. Dante didn’t want to try reading his mind before the Archons let him know if he was telepathic or not, so he was handling this conversation the old fashioned way. “Do you expect to survive when the truce has ended?”

“That greatly depends on how much of their fleet they send. They cannot abandon the fight with the Hadarak without accepting losses, so it remains uncertain how much they are willing to devote to our destruction. We anticipate they will make a major attempt to end us, but we will have the benefit of two centuries of preparation. We figure we have a chance for survival.”

“Because of your Uriti?”

“They are a major factor, but not sufficient in and of themselves. The Uriti are alterations of Hadarak, and the V’kit’no’sat have a vast amount of experience killing Hadarak.”

“Yet the Uriti are superior?”

“They are, but they are also younger and therefore smaller than most Hadarak. Given time they will grow, but the V’kit’no’sat would be foolish to allow us that time. They must kill us immediately after the truce ends, otherwise both the Uriti and Star Force will continue to grow stronger.”

“We are here to explore the possibility of aiding you in that fight,” the Zeeross said bluntly. “We know we cannot beat them alone, and you are the only civilization we know of that has defied them and survived. If there is a way they can be beaten, we would like to help make that happen.”

“That would be a massive gamble on your part,” Dante cautioned.

“It would be, which is why we are not here to pledge our loyalty, but to explore our options. If victory is not possible we will not intervene. If it is, we want to make sure of their downfall. We owe it to our former allies that are no longer living.”

“If we are to have that discussion, I need to know who I am negotiating with first.”

The Zeeross raised a long, gangly arm and a huge holographic map appeared just short of touching the invisible shield. Dante immediately recognized the Orion galactic arm and saw Star Force territory crudely marked on it. Far to the anti-spinward side there was a travel route that backtracked a little more rimward but almost an 8th of the way around the galactic oval, meaning they had come far from here and were neighbors with an entirely different section of the V’kit’no’sat empire.

That holographic map rose higher and a new one appeared below detailing the Zeeross territory and the hundreds of systems that they possessed…far less than Star Force, but they were just points on a map with no way of telling how dense those systems were.

“Our territory,” the Zeeross said simply. “We understand an equilibrium of knowledge must be established before negotiations can begin. We will answer whatever questions you ask, and hope that you will do the same…”

5

January 3, 4841

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

“You ready?” Master Medtech Vortison asked.

Aaron-010 sighed. “Yeah.”

“We don’t have to do this.”

“I do, actually,” the trailblazer said, walking inside the medical station and putting his hands on the connection sphere. “I just don’t like going backwards on anything.”

“Those who blaze trails don’t always pick the right one initially,” Vortison offered, bringing up a slew of holographic controls in front of him and selecting the procedure he’d been tinkering with for years. “Others benefit from your troubleshooting.”

“You’re not the one getting a chunk of your brain removed,” Aaron calmly bit back.

“A small chunk,” Vortison said, referencing his Ensek tissue. The basic tier 1 psionic was something that every Archon and Zen’zat possessed, allowing them to bounce telepathic messages along even if they couldn’t understand them. It was separate from their Ikrid tissue, which gave them their telepathy, and had its own transmitter that Aaron had worked for years to increase the range and volume traffic rate of.

As of now he could receive messages from over 100 other Archons and bounce them further across the landscape, even farther than his Ikrid range, but the applications for such a psionic were limited. Comm technology was superior in most cases, and Aaron could essentially accomplish the same technique using his Ikrid now that it was sufficiently advanced. The V’kit’no’sat had given the Zen’zat the ability so that even the newest of them could function as a relay to stay within telepathic connection of all their troops even if they were outside their own Ikrid range.

Star Force didn’t fight like that, relying instead on their battlemap technology and suffering the isolation when it didn’t function. V’kit’no’sat expected to fight enemies that did not have telepathy, and using it in such a manner was a significant asset. Star Force, however, had its primary enemy with most of the same psionics they did, so their priorities had to differ. Ensek could be used on the rim where the enemies were less advanced, but so long as the battlemap system was functioning it was little more than redundant.

Still, Aaron had spent so much time developing it and finding unique uses that the V’kit’no’sat probably hadn’t even envisioned that he hated to lose it, but if he kept it his Ikrid tissue couldn’t develop further and he needed that power upgrade far more than he needed Ensek.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Aaron said, feeling his hands go numb a moment before his mind blanked and he was rendered unconscious.

He woke in the same standing position as before, not knowing how much time had elapsed but feeling his brain numb and his access to his psionics beyond his reach. Vortison’s voice sounded funny too, but he could still hear him.

“I’m finished,” the medtech said, “but I’m keeping your psionics suppressed and going to release you slowly. Not sure how this is going to feel, so be warned.”

“Warned,” Aaron confirmed, his lips a little numb making the words come out odd…then they seemed to return to normal as his head began to get less foggy. His Ikrid was now touchable again, as was his Jumat and other psionics. He didn’t use any of them, but felt the reassuring presence of their ‘triggers’ save for one. His Ensek wasn’t only untouchable, but it was no longer there at all, making him feel like he’d had a hand chopped off.

It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t pleasant either. His body had just been reduced in capability, and that left a very bad feeling inside the Archon.

“What’s wrong?” Vortison asked, seeing several status indicators spike along with the Archon’s anger.

“Adjusting,” Aaron said, releasing the sphere and taking a few steps outside the medical station before dropping to a knee and placing a hand on the ground for balance. “I can’t understand how I ever functioned without psionics.”

“You’ve integrated them into yourself, now they are you just as if you’d transferred into another body. You may have memories from a time without psionics, but all your customizations are now acclimated for them. You’re having withdrawal problems, aren’t you?”

“Minor. I keep reaching for the trigger that isn’t there and my subconscious mind keeps saying it is.”

“Active versus memory. It’ll take some time to recalibrate.”

Aaron stood up, his physical balance perfect but his telepathic aura was off enough that even Vortison could sense it with his limited Ikrid.

“I’m starting to wonder if I messed something up,” the medtech added.

“What’s my cranial pressure now?”

“Less than before, but there are also level 1 Ikrid cells where the Ensek tissue was. I left a little wiggle room so your brain could adjust, so you might pop up a few more…”

“Why not level 18 cells?”

“I’m sorry, but I need the data, you being the first this is happening to.”

“But you could have replicated my existing cells if you wanted?”

“Yes and no. I couldn’t enlarge your current Ikrid tissue due to the placement within your brain. I had to create a secondary tissue set in a different location.”

“So I have two Ikrids rather than just a bigger one?”

“I would have had to rework a lot of other tissues in order to make room to enlarge your current one. Didn’t want to mess with all of that and potentially damage you. Small steps and all.”

“You used my base psionic genetics?”

“Yes. I figured that would be the safest way. With the data I gather from you, I hope to be able to copy and paste existing Ikrid tissue to save others the training curve, but that is far more complicated than it sounds. I’ll probably only be able to get the others part way.”

“The regenerator creates weaker tissue,” Aaron said, taking a nearby chair and staring at the ceiling as he reworked his mind around the loss…and now second Ikrid cluster.”

“Not brand new ‘weaker,’ for it operates off of your current state to a degree. I wasn’t able to do even that here. Your new tissue is the same as a brand new Zen’zat, but it should add to your current capabilities once you learn to integrate the two.”

“I can feel it now. Two separate transmitters. That’s not what I expected.”

“Best I could do without fiddling beyond my understanding. Can I bother you to wear a monitor for the next year or so?”

“Sure,” he said, with Vortison pulling out a small circular ‘sticker’ that he placed on the left side of Aaron’s forehead. It was smaller than the older versions were, but functioned just the same…providing information straight to the nearest computer system recording his mental stats on a constant basis so the medtechs would have ample data to study so they could refine the procedure when the other trailblazers and Archons got to the same plateau Aaron had.

“Tell me,” Vortison said, picking up on something else even before the monitors connected.

“Feels like I got the wind knocked out of me, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Could be a Core issue. We don’t know how it’s connected to body tissue, but it’s been theorized that the loss of body parts reduces the Core as well…until it regenerates. We have no way to measure or view that, and I’m not seeing anything physiologically amiss, so you may be in uncharted waters.”

“I’m not the first person to have a chunk of their brain removed.”

“You might be the first that had it kindly removed. The trauma of medieval procedures would have overridden any subtle anomalies.”

“Are there records of those in the pyramid database?”

“Unfortunately yes.”

“I’ll work it out,” Aaron said confidently. “It’s affecting my mojo more than anything.”

“Well, at least now I have a psionic you don’t,” the medtech said with a smirk. “Do you think we should even be giving people Ensek now?”

“A fair question. I don’t want to make any decisions on that until I get a handle on this.”

“Wise. Have you tried to use it yet?”

“Still trying to figure out how to simulcast. I don’t feel a link between the two.”

“There isn’t. I can add one later, but that’ll take some carving that I didn’t want to submit you to if not absolutely necessary.”

“By carving you mean cell deletion?”

“Yeah. Didn’t want to tick you off by reducing your Ikrid even a tick.”

“Wise,” Aaron echoed. “I think I’ll be sticking around a while.”

“Stay as long as you like. My research facility isn’t going anywhere.”

“I’m gonna try and walk this off,” he said, standing up and heading for the door. “Thanks.”

Vortison let him go, not sure of his own handiwork here. Messing with the mind was tricky enough. Messing with a trailblazer’s was even more perilous given the high level psionics they possessed and how crammed those tissues were inside their skulls. He hoped he hadn’t screwed something up, but even if he didn’t it was going to take Aaron a while to get a handle on this…then Vortison would have to make adjustment after adjustment until they got a more reliable procedure ironed out.

The V’kit’no’sat had never tried anything like this, but then again they didn’t need to. Most of the Zen’zat didn’t have their brains full of psionics, plus their skulls were bigger. He imagined some of them had to have peaked out at some point, but there were no records of ever having removed psionic tissue to make room for more.

Then again, the V’kit’no’sat probably didn’t care if a Zen’zat peaked out or not. Regardless, Star Force was charting its own course here, which was both gratifying and terrifying at the same time. They’d been operating out of the V’kit’no’sat playbook on psionics for so long that Vortison was legitimately concerned he might have messed something up with Aaron, and only time was going to tell if that concern was warranted or not.

Davis couldn’t meet the Meintre representatives in his office, for the elephant-like race was too large to fit up his narrow access staircase. Instead he was meeting a pair of them, named Vaduo and Heerma, in their own embassy building on Nexchi. Though the planet wasn’t the official capitol of Star Force, which had always been considered Earth even when they didn’t possess it, it was the operational one at the moment because it was where Davis had currently set up shop. Because of that many major races had asked for permission to establish embassies there to keep a line of direct communication open with him.

He was selective about who he extended that privilege to, but the Meintre had been nothing but helpful ever since The Nexus had yanked their Grid Point away and given it to Star Force. They hadn’t blamed Davis for that, rather The Nexus itself, and they’d been quite grateful for Star Force giving them a safe harbor to relocate a large chunk of their population and industry while they were fighting wars back in their old territory that was now almost completely lost.

More recently they had helped repel a major V’kit’no’sat assault along with a few other Nexus allies, so Davis figured he owed them the courtesy of going to them in person rather than demanding a holographic transmission, for they’d requested the former. He had a suspicion what this might be about, but was mildly surprised about how fast they’d come to the decision that he knew they’d ultimately make.

“Thank you for coming, Director,” Vaduo said, flexing his 4 tentacle-like trunks in a gesture of gratitude. “We respectfully submit our request for membership within your empire.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “Are you withdrawing from The Nexus?”

“Less withdrawing than admitting that they have all but abandoned us,” Heerma clarified. “Our only true links are our warships that they were using to defend other worlds than our own. We have felt an obligation to assist them because of what occurred in the distant past, but now we count our obligations fulfilled. The Nexus is withering, and we already have greater ties to Star Force. It is a logic transition to make.”

“Full membership will require a restructuring of your civilization. Wouldn’t you prefer a partial inclusion?”

“That has been the point of excessive debate within the Meintre, and we have decided that the turmoil it would cause in the near term would be worth the potential benefits in the long term. If you are willing to accept us, we are willing to remake our race in whatever manner you deem appropriate. You have a long record of deeds that is impeccable. You have our trust, and we respectfully request that we be allowed to add our strength to your empire, and in return enhance our race using your methods.”

“If you join with us, the V’kit’no’sat will destroy you if they are able,” Davis warned.

“They would do so anyway because we are your allies.”

“Possibly, but joining us assures your destruction if we lose the war.”

“You have demonstrated a strength that even the V’kit’no’sat must respect. You have demonstrated a wisdom that The Nexus lacks. And you have a truce that will allow time for the Meintre to integrate within Star Force and then prepare for a resumption of the war, which is why we are coming to you now with this request.”

“Your request is hereby accepted, with our thanks. The Meintre are most welcome to join Star Force.”

“We are greatly relieved,” Vaduo admitted.

“And honored,” Heerma added.

“Normally I would assign a trailblazer or a Monarch to oversee the Meintre’s annexation, but given the uniqueness of the situation and the current cessation of the V’kit’no’sat war, I will personally oversee your restructuring and allow the trailblazers to focus on fighting the plethora of smaller wars we are currently engaged in.”

Both Meintre exchanged glances, then knelt on the front pair of six legs in humility.

“You do us great honor, Director Davis, and we gladly accept your personal attention to your race,” Vaduo said in awe. “The wars you speak of. They are the result of The Nexus’s collapse?”

“Many are, yes. We are trying to push our influence into the unstable regions as much as possible, and there is a great deal of low level fighting required across a wide swath of systems. With the V’kit’no’sat we were fighting a few high level battles at a time. It’s a significant shift in the type of warfare, but the trailblazers are the best there are, which is why I often have them lead a new race into Star Force. Their adaptational abilities are part of why they were chosen to be the first Archons, and they have exceeded my initial expectations greatly.”

“Since we are no longer going to be assisting The Nexus with other combat, may we offer our immediate fleets in assistance of these wars?” Heerma asked.

“Securing your current territory is the highest priority,” Davis differed.

“You wish us to maintain our rimward systems? I assumed you would want us moving the rest of our people into Star Force territory.”

“No. This is not a retreat from The Nexus region. We are expanding out into The Nexus region as they collapse. We will reinforce what’s left of your territory and hold it, but I do want to establish a new Meintre system here. Your systems further rimward are too far away for me to work out of, and the same goes for those near Grid Point Stargate. We will build the first of the new Meintre in an empty system within Star Force territory while we stabilize the rest of your holdings. Do you find that acceptable?”

“We do,” Vaduo said eagerly, “and we are pleased. We do not like retreat, but have been forced to accept the logistical necessities of it in recent times.”

“No more. We will help you hold the line, my new brothers. And together we will grow our combined power and show The Nexus how they have squandered your strength. You have much untapped potential, and I will help you unlock it. The transition may be difficult, but this is not the first time we have helped a race through it.”

“We await your orders, Director.”

“Inform your people of my decision. I will select a system by the end of the day and assign a Kiritak unit to begin construction of Star Force infrastructure that will accommodate your size. Once it is minimally established we will begin bringing your people in and teaching them our techniques and technology. I’ll be there and oversee the transition once I can get the proper infrastructure in place to allow me to connect to the rest of the empire. Events will move swiftly, and I need your people to be willing to give maximum effort even if they do not fully understand what is happening.”

“You will have it.”

“Good,” the Star Force Director said with a smile. “Let’s get to work then.”

6

May 13, 4845

Pooovalla System (H’kar territory, Rim Region)

Ratchniva

Arch Duke Tevvaline was not happy. She was pleased with the truce and the time it allowed her to build without having to suffer losses, but the fact that Director Davis had banned any recolonization of the Devastation Zone was intolerable. Strategically wise, but intolerable, for she and Flynn-046 were responsible for the H’kar faction and almost the entire reconquest of H’kar territory that had been seized by the lizards had fallen to the V’kit’no’sat.

The outer H’kar region had been untouched, but was now just on the good side of the border and she’d been planning for its invasion for some time. Now that fight was being put on hold for, hopefully, another pair of centuries, but the actual capitol for the H’kar wasn’t Ratchniva. It was Karrach, their original homeworld. Ratchniva was the capitol the H’kar had created in Nexus territory when they’d lost the war to the lizards, and was now her base of operations since the H’kar had lost Karrach for a second time.

Davis not letting them reclaim it was intolerable. There were many H’kar still alive to this day that had previously lived there, and they’d learned the long history of the planet and how it was essential to the H’kar. More than anything it was a symbol of their legitimacy, and while Star Force didn’t put too much stock into symbols, for the H’kar this one mattered. So too did it matter for Tevvaline and Flynn, for there was nothing standing in their way now from reclaiming it aside from Davis’s order.

Earth was being recolonized, so why not Karrach? Many H’kar had been asking this question, and Flynn had given them his approval, but also his discontent with Davis’s order. He didn’t have to like it, nor did she or the H’kar, but the order was necessary. The V’kit’no’sat were going to be back and any colonies in the Devastation Zone would probably get hit first, so what was the point of rebuilding Karrach only to lose it a third time?

To Tevvaline it was a matter of pride, and even though they couldn’t recolonize Karrach that didn’t mean they couldn’t visit it. She’d cleared that with Davis and had gotten permission for an outpost there, but it was little more than a sightseeing hotel for H’kar wanting to go back to the homeworld. Resources couldn’t be wasted when there was so much more to do, but there were more than enough H’kar businessmen willing to fund the expedition that she and Davis had agreed to let it happen…and those businessmen were turning a tidy profit from all the tourism going there, so it was a win/win situation.

But those that went there only held resentment, though not at Star Force or Davis. They held resentment against the V’kit’no’sat, and the barren planet with plenty of ruins left over from the purging was a stark testament to what was coming back for them later. The H’kar were more aware of this than the other Star Force races and wanted to fortify their original homeworld and make their stand there…but those with a more strategic sense knew that resources would be better spent strengthening worlds that could already defend themselves rather than rebuilding Karrach from scratch.

It was on her to-do list though, and not being able to get at it because of an imaginary line on the map was intolerable.

But Tevvaline had other priorities to consume most of her time, namely border security. When the V’kit’no’sat came back there were only a few other Star Force systems between them and the Devastation Zone, so Davis’s orders had her beefing up the H’kar rather than focusing on exports to help with the rimward wars, though a significant portion of the H’kar battlefleets were out there fighting now under Flynn’s command while the Arch Duke was left here to build as fast as she and her exoskeleton-clad H’kar could.

The Pooovalla System was the key to the H’kar Outer Region’s industrial base, even more so than Grid Point Annsa. When the H’kar had fully joined Star Force the Royals that had ruled them were kicked out, nicely, and made citizens like all the rest as Flynn began to restructure their civilization. Tevvaline hadn’t joined him there until much later, being promoted from Javier-068’s Clan Super Soaker Marquis to Duke and assigned by Davis to help Flynn with the H’kar. She’d been in that same assignment ever since, rising to the rank of Arch Duke as the H’kar continued to grow into one of the foundational pillars of Star Force.

They certainly weren’t the flashiest faction. Walking about on four pointy legs with bifurcated arms that resembled claws and an exoskeleton that furthered the comparison to a crab. They were also rather gruff to speak to, not entertaining the practice of communication without a reason, which she rather liked. They were hard workers, though not as prodigious as the Kiritas. In combat they were average at best, but their exoskeletons added an extra layer of armor that meant they wouldn’t go down as easy in combat as a Human.

Their mobility was lacking in comparison, and Tevvaline thought of them as all around stable and reliable, without being exceptional. She’d helped Flynn armor over their weaknesses and had gotten their once lethargic race up to a 23% self-sufficiency rate overall with newer generations in the low 40s. That was far less than many other factions, but it gave her a core group of H’kar that would be around forever so long as they weren’t killed and over time their experience levels were rising to the point where they were becoming formidable.

None had become Mavericks, for that wasn’t well suited for their physiology, but there were currently more H’kar Monarchs than any other race aside from Humans, who still dominated those ranks. There were currently 11 H’kar Barons, all of which Davis had assigned outside of H’kar territory in a variety of projects, promising that they’d be returned to Tevvaline when and if they were upped to Count rank. Davis needed to see how well they handled planets that were not H’kar, and the fact that he had chosen 11 of them so far indicated that he was seeing good results.

How and why a person became a Monarch was still a mystery, for Davis selected all of them, but there were enough common threads to pick up on and the H’kar’s reliability seemed to make them more inclined to the task than other races. In fact, Tevvaline probably had some of the best Administrators in the empire, if taken as a whole, out of which she had no doubt that Davis would be selecting more Monarchs in coming years.

But because Davis never announced such things ahead of time, no one could actually audition to become a Monarch. That left her H’kar focused on building their faction without ulterior motives, and what they’d accomplished was truly impressive despite half their territory now lying demolished in the Devastation Zone.

Other races had had it worse. The Calavari, the Bsidd, Mainline, the Kiritas, the Kiritak, etc…all of whom had originated in the ADZ had all of their original territory taken away from them and had to rebuild in the Rim…but the H’kar had originated here, at least from their Nexus origins, so they had a lot of industrial output to fall back on and had made up a lot of ground on the other factions in comparison when they’d lost so much in the ADZ.

That was not how Tevvaline would have wanted it, but it had happened none the less, and now the H’kar stood as the 4thk largest faction population wise after the Bsidd, Kiritas/Kiritak, and the Paladin. Unlike those three, overpopulation with the H’kar wasn’t a huge problem, and the Arch Duke had been pressing their slower reproduction rate so she’d have the necessary hands available when they got additional resources. In fact, as of present, they were overpopulated with regards to the number of work assignments, so a great many of the younger ones were assigned training duties until something opened up.

That’s also why there was such a robust business class amongst the H’kar, for many did not want to wait through endless training to get to actual productivity. Now though, her population surge was paying off as she was able to redirect resources into many new projects that had workers waiting on them to be started…and workers with far more training than most of her veterans had ever received. That didn’t make the young ones better, but it did reduce the learning curve dramatically, and everywhere across H’kar territory they were building rapidly.

Here though, it was more about bringing in resources and using the already existing factories to create components that would be shipped out to other systems for assembly or direct use there. Expansion here, with only 4 planets and 18 moons, had largely been completed, and Flynn didn’t want to pack in too much population only to have to evacuate everyone again if this system fell to the V’kit’no’sat. Too much population would mean a lot of people wouldn’t make it out, so H’kar territory was full of colonized planets that weren’t too dense for just that reason.

What they had invested in were mobile factories located in orbit that could be moved once the warfront got too close. They couldn’t be moved fast, but unlike infrastructure on a planet these facilities could be repurposed rather than abandoned. It was a hard lesson learned after the destruction of half of H’kar territory, but the more they could diminish the industrial damage of losing systems, the longer the H’kar could survive as a fully functioning faction rather than being diminished into refugees supported by others.

The H’kar were far from being that, but they were the next ones on the target list for the V’kit’no’sat and the Arch Duke had to consider these things. That was why, even as a large chunk of their warfleets were off fighting in the Rim, there were a massive number of drones kept here, both for their warships and system defense models, all of which were shaped as elongated squares, as if a perfect cube had been stretched out into a rod. It was a variation on Mainline drone shape, and only a few races in Star Force got to field their own designs, with the H’kar being one of them.

It was a point of pride, and high above the planet Tevvaline was on she could see the clouds of those drones patiently waiting and defending the system. They were too far away to see the shape of up there, but every now and then another one would rise up from the surface shipyards and fly by her tower command center enroute to orbit…in fact they buzzed her tower on purpose as a mark of pride, giving her a chance for a quick visual confirmation even when she wasn’t actually in the building.

The H’kar were Star Force, but they were also their own slightly different version of it, highlighting the fact that this was indeed an empire rather than a monolithic civilization. Harmful differences between the races were eliminated, while beneficial ones were cultivated and enhanced. The Arch Duke thought of them as puzzle pieces, none two identical, but all fitting together to form the smooth picture of a proper civilization…and one that had no size limitations, unlike The Nexus that had grown too large without the necessary apparatus to sustain it.

She was proud of the H’kar faction, and aside from a few aides and Archons, she never really interacted with anyone that wasn’t H’kar. Some people would have found that lonely, but she didn’t. Tevvaline wasn’t H’kar herself, but she worked seamlessly with them to the point that sometimes she forgot she wasn’t.

And the H’kar didn’t resent her for being Human either. She was an Arch Duke, race not withstanding, and their Arch Duke, just as they saw Flynn as their trailblazer, and both were pushing the H’kar hard to make the most of this truce with the V’kit’no’sat before the war came back at them again…and probably with greater force than ever before. She doubted that Mak’to’ran would just shrug off the improvements Star Force was making in their defenses and send similar sized attack fleets after them unless he was stupid, and there wasn’t any real hope of that.

No, he had to send more or none at all, meaning this the war, when it resumed, was going to ratchet up to insane levels and the H’kar were going to take the brunt of it straight off.

But Tevvaline was not prepared for the V’kit’no’sat returning today, with the tell-tale alarm that had first informed her of their arrival in Star Force territory oh so long ago sounding throughout her command center where she was tinkering with production quotas at a table-top workstation along with half a dozen H’kar.

The sound drove a spike of fear through her the likes of which she’d never forget, but the holographic map quickly identified the source of the alarm…a single ship had decloaked in high orbit over the planet and was in the process of sending a transmission on repeat as it held position with the clouds of drones moving to intercept it.

“What they hell are they doing here?” she said aloud while mentally kicking Tennisonne for not having the damn Ghostbane sensor system working yet, for this stupid Rit’ko’sor ship had made it all the way here without being detected, and that bothered her to no end.

“The ship is stating it is here on a diplomatic mission, requesting to speak personally to either a trailblazer or a Monarch at a moment of their convenience.”

“Convenience?” she said with a sarcastic laugh. “Why the hell didn’t they just go to Earth?”

“The message does not say.”

Tevvaline bit her lip. “Ok fine. They want to talk, then I’ll talk to them. Tell Randal I need to be on a command ship up there. I don’t want them getting anywhere close to the planet,” she said, referencing the highest ranking Archon in the system as she stared at the image of the Domjo-class warship shaped like a flat ‘S’ along a vertical plane. The forward section had the hump on the top and it splayed out a bit, kind of like a cobra-hood, and the reverse side ‘tail’ was flatter and didn’t hold such a steep curve, ending in a bulge that contained half the ship’s weaponry.

“Terminator,” a H’kar said, referencing the name of one of the command ships in orbit.

The Arch Duke headed for the nearest door, walking at an annoyed pace in her signature uniform variant that had her right leg fully exposed but with a shoulder cape that came down to cover it, giving flashes of skin with each step only to be swallowed up by the cape again and again.

Tevvaline did not like this. Not at all. And something told her that their two century truce was about to be cut short in some way, shape, or form.

7

Tevvaline arrived in orbit via dropship, flying into the hangar onboard the waiting command ship Terminator that then took her further up the planetary orbit to the position where the single Rit’ko’sor ship was surrounded by a sea of Star Force drones and three other command ships, all of which were keeping a respectful distance back.

The Domjo sat there silently until the Arch Duke sent a comm prompt after she reached a private chamber just down the hallway from the bridge. Now that the Terminator had crept in closer than the rest of the defense fleet, they were only 200 miles apart and the bit of lag that would have resulted had she tried to communicate from the planet was gone…but that wasn’t enough for the Rit’ko’sor. They requested a secure channel directly to the Arch Duke, which she granted, sending them a tight beam transmission along with using a cypher code the Rit’ko’sor sent directly to her ship.

That meant no other Star Force ships, or anyone else trying to listen in, would be able to eavesdrop, and once those conditions were met a single Rit’ko’sor appeared in hologram before her and Randal-6994, who had come aboard just before she did.

“Arch Duke,” the Rit’ko’sor said in their race’s melodic cadence, but to the shock of both the Monarch and the Archon, it was speaking in English…which the V’kit’no’sat had never done before. “Archon. I will begin with informing you that this vessel does not belong to the V’kit’no’sat, nor do we speak for them. We only speak for ourselves, and we are not hostile to you.”

Tevvaline and Randal exchanged glances, with the Archon being the one to speak first.

“Are you defecting?”

“No. You misunderstand. When I said ‘we’ I was referring to more than just the crew of this Domjo. Are you aware of the Rit’ko’sor rejoined the V’kit’no’sat?”

“We are.”

“Those that did are traitors, and mostly our hatchlings. Many of the elders refused the reunification, so our race has split. The majority rejoined the V’kit’no’sat. Those of us that still hold our honor were forced to flee. We left our kin in peace, but when we next meet it shall be in battle, for the V’kit’no’sat do not tolerate splinter civilizations of any race in their empire. We are now hunted, and have been living beyond their borders in exile from both their territory and our refuge in the Hadarak zone. We hate the V’kit’no’sat. We are not V’kit’no’sat. And if they ever find us, they will try to kill us.”

Tevvaline whistled, quickly realizing how big this was. “So you coming here is outing your presence?”

“Inconsequential,” the Rit’ko’sor said evenly. “This ship can move, our worlds cannot, and it is those that we must conceal.”

“Why are you here?” Randal asked. “And why are you speaking our language?”

“We do not hold you with contempt. In truth, we have great respect for you and what you have accomplished. Learning your language was necessary so we could communicate with you as equals.”

“Thanks for that. What did you want to communicate?”

“How much do you know of our history? Our rebellion?”

“Much. We recovered files from the planetary defense station left behind on Terraxis after you destroyed it.”

“Then you know how the rebellion began, but not how it ended?”

“We have recovered some addition data from damaged V’kit’no’sat ships and interrogations. It was thought you were all destroyed.”

“We knew that we could not win,” the Rit’ko’sor said gravely, “but we would have our freedom either in life or in death. Breaking free of the V’kit’no’sat was necessary to regain our honor, but it cost us much. We knew we could not win, so we damaged them as much as possible while allowing a few of us to run and hide. They expected that we would flee to the Rim, and some of us did…unsuccessfully. They tracked down and destroyed all those Rit’ko’sor who sacrificed themselves as diversions while we evacuated key personnel into the Hadarak Zone. We do not regret our actions, and I tell you this so you understand that there is no longer any association between us and the Rit’ko’sor who rejoined the V’kit’no’sat. Those traitors are no longer our kin.”

“What do you mean by ‘regain your honor?’” the Arch Duke asked.

“We joined the V’kit’no’sat at the request of the Zak’de’ron. Do you know who they were?”

“Yes.”

“We betrayed them, to our shame, and then the Oso’lon and J’gar changed the nature of the V’kit’no’sat. The Rit’ko’sor were suppressed so we could never achieve parity, and we were often given assignments where they knew many of us would die, sparring their own. We all had sworn to fight the Hadarak, but they did so less and allowed the ‘unimportant’ races to fight more, thus strengthening their own power base while diminishing ours and forbidding us to increase reproduction to compensate. The Zak’de’ron had never treated us in such a manner, and we regret turning against them. It was a huge miscalculation that we have suffered greatly for.”

“And you felt you were regaining your honor by rebelling?”

“In manner, yes, but more so it was simple vengeance. We wanted to hurt them, and badly, but we knew we could not win. You, however, have something that we did not have. That no V’kit’no’sat race has ever had. You command the power of the Hadarak. You have withstood their purging attacks. You have forced them into a temporary truce. You have a fighting chance, but when they return they will be adamant about destroying all that you have built up during these years of peace. It is said that Mak’to’ran values knowledge of the Hadarak more than the lives of the V’kit’no’sat, but he is no fool. He will take from you everything you are gaining, and he will do so with a vengeance, for he can give you no more time than already allotted. You will grow too strong, so the death blow will come when the truce ends. You can count on that as assuredly as the stars burn.”

“We expected as much,” Randal agreed.

“Many races have been establishing diplomatic contact or requesting membership since the revelation of the truce, correct?”

“Yes. Our standing in the galaxy has increased greatly,” Tevvaline answered.

“I assume you are using this to strengthen you civilization in preparation?”

“We’re working on many projects to increase our strength,” she said neutrally.

“It will not be enough for what is coming. I was one of the few that survived our rebellion against the V’kit’no’sat. I speak from experience. The more you anger them, the more powerful they become. They have treated you as inferiors previously, and that is the only reason you have survived. You will be given their full hatred now, and they will fall upon you with a vengeance you have not yet imagined.”

“Mak’to’ran offered us a place in the V’kit’no’sat,” Randal said, throwing that bit of information out on a gut feeling. “We refused.”

The Rit’ko’sor sneered. “He seeks control of the Uriti, nothing more. Had you not possessed them, he would not have bothered to speak with you at all. Killing you will not grant him that control, or do I misunderstand your control mechanism?”

“It cannot be replicated by the V’kit’no’sat,” the Archon said without giving away the secret of Nefron.

“Then he has more to gain from annexation than destruction. Why did you refuse?”

“The V’kit’no’sat have killed so many of our people that there is no possibility of us ever joining them. We’d rather die fighting than spit on the graves of our fallen brothers and sisters.”

“You do yourself honor spiting them, but you are still not aware of what is coming for you.”

“Are you here to educate us, then?” Tevvaline asked.

“I was sent here to do more than that. Our leaders have studied you closely, even before the truce, and they have determined that you annex without suppressing the races you acquire. Instead you enhance them, as the Zak’de’ron once did with us, except that you fully integrate. You take worthless races and find a purpose for them, so that your empire and that race benefits. You do so with such casual ease that we ask if you would entertain negotiations with us.”

“Are we not negotiating now?”

“I am simply establishing contact. We are wary to trust others, especially considering the betrayal of our former kin, but our leaders wish to entertain negotiations with you if you are willing.”

“Negotiations for what, exactly?”

“Some form of merger into your empire.”

Randal frowned. “You’re saying we’re going to be wiped out by the V’kit’no’sat, but you want to come out of hiding to join us in time so you can get your asses kicked too?”

“We never had a chance to win. You have a small one. If we can come to agreeable terms, those of us who saw nearly our entire race destroyed in our rebellion wish to continue what we started…even if it means our deaths. We have no wish to live as exiles. We would rather die fighting if there is something worth dying for, and some of us have never accepted our survival as sufficient. Our war with the V’kit’no’sat has never ended, and will not end until either we are dead or they are. You offer us a potential hope, so I ask if you will entertain negotiations with our leaders?”

“I can guarantee that much,” the Arch Duke said confidently. “But the ultimate decision on any merger will lie with Director Davis and the trailblazers. I honestly can’t say how they’re going to react.”

“I can,” Randal said, pointing a finger at the Rit’ko’sor’s hologram. “Your traitors never fought against us. The V’kit’no’sat kept them fighting the Hadarak or doing other things. They were never assigned with our destruction, so our blood has not been spilt by the Rit’ko’sor. The trailblazers will not hold a grudge against a race we have not fought.”

“Assuming this isn’t a massive ruse,” the Arch Duke added. “You are Rit’ko’sor, and Mak’to’ran has shown his interest in both our destruction and the Uriti. Planting spies and saboteurs amongst us would be an effective tactic, so while we will entertain negotiations, we will also be highly skeptical.”

“You would be foolish to do otherwise,” the Rit’ko’sor agreed. “All we ask now is that you allow negotiations to occur, and preferably in neutral territory so there is no possibility of our subterfuge. We will allow you to select a location, if you are willing.”

“An empty system within our borders?” the Arch Duke floated.

“Acceptable.”

“How soon can your leaders be here?”

“9 months.”

Tevvaline brought up a map and randomly chose an uninhabited system within the Menfo Region on the backside of Star Force territory, far away from the Devastation Zone and the V’kit’no’sat.

“Vinniak,” she said, sending the coordinates across the secure comm. “9 months from now.”

“Agreed. Please keep this rendezvous as secret as possible. The V’kit’no’sat most likely have many spies amongst your empire, and I do not wish to endanger our leaders or our worlds by allowing them to backtrack us. They do not know I am here now, so they cannot follow, but if they know of an upcoming rendezvous they could get in position to track us.”

“We will convey the information in person,” the Arch Duke promised. “It will not enter our databases.”

“Then my mission here is accomplished. With your permission we will depart the system.”

“Granted,” Randal said, mentally sending a stand down order to the bridge crew to relay out to the defense fleet.

And with that the impromptu conversation ended and the Rit’ko’sor ship began to slowly ease away from the planet as the drone swarms parted ahead of it.

“I did not see that coming,” Tevvaline admitted.

“I don’t think anyone did, but it explains a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Why the V’kit’no’sat didn’t trust the Rit’ko’sor enough to send them after us. They didn’t fully rejoin their empire, so they’re tainted with continual distrust on top of their previous ‘suppression.’ I think there’s a lot more to that story than we know, and a lot more than the V’kit’no’sat wanted to put into their general records. I’d like to be at that meeting, if it’s alright with you?”

“I’m staying here, so you can go inform Davis and the trailblazers personally, but keep this knowledge in mind only.”

“Does everyone know we have V’kit’no’sat spies?” he said, perturbed.

“Worried that might mean we have more than even we thought?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m also wondering if these Rit’ko’sor are on the level, or what the V’kit’no’sat will do if they are.”

“Cancel the truce?”

“They can do that whenever they want. We already delivered the Hadarak information.”

“No one knows what they said to us, right?” Tevvaline said with a devious smile.

“Just the two of us. Why?”

“If there are spies, and they saw a Rit’ko’sor ship appear there, what will they say?”

“We didn’t see any special markings on the hull,” Randal said, activating a nearby console to bring up the recorded sensor feeds to confirm that fact. “There’s no way to know that was a rebel ship…I’ve got an idea.”

“Go with it.”

Randal reactivated the comm, with the Rit’ko’sor ship still in range so there was only a twitch of lag as the hologram reappeared.

“What else do you require?” the Rit’ko’sor asked.

“I need you to stealth your ship and flee the system quickly. We will fire in your wake to give the impression that you weren’t supposed to be here. Is there a way to identify your ship as not belonging to the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Only the identification beacons, which we’ve disabled. You want observers to think we were a scout ship that you caught and drove off?”

“Better to give curious eyes a reason than to let them wonder.”

“Very well. We will hold a straight line trajectory so you can approximate our position. You may also fire a single shot into our shields, after which we will flee and stealth.”

“Negative. We don’t shoot ships in such a manner. That would draw more suspicion to our motives. We have discovered you here, now you are forced to leave while visible. You stealth against our orders so we fire on you. That fits with our protocols.”

“Noted. Are you ready?”

“Flee in 90 seconds. We will handle the rest.”

“We will comply,” the Rit’ko’sor said, disappearing again as Randal immediately headed for the bridge with the Arch Duke having to jog to keep up with him.

“Nice touch.”

“Quiet,” he warned, now that they were in the hallway leading to the bridge. They got there about 20 seconds later, with all eyes focused on the pair.

“The Rit’ko’sor are slowly leaving the system. If they so much as deviate from their current course, kick ‘em in the rear on the way out.”

“No kill shots?” the Terminator’s captain asked.

“We don’t want to end the truce, but they’re out of bounds and we’re not going to put up with shenanigans. Go back through sensor logs and see if anything of that ship appeared before we noticed them. We’ve got to find a way to pick these bastards up, or they’ll be snooping right under our noses the entire time.”

“Did you chew them out?”

“They won’t be coming back here again,” Randal said as he sat down in the vacant Admiral’s chair and mentally linked into the system. “Arrange the Arch Duke’s transport back to the surface. She’s done here.”

The Captain did as ordered, then right on schedule the Rit’ko’sor ship suddenly accelerated and disappeared from view.

Randal caught the firing commands before they could be executed, overriding them and giving the gunners firing points that were just behind the acceleration track that he knew would be unaltered. The gunners didn’t know what it would be, so they were just guessing, but with his revisions he made sure the red Ardent beams that leapt out would miss just behind the now invisible ship.

After a few seconds the weaponry fell silent, for the probability of hitting something invisible diminished greatly as it had more maneuvering possibilities. Randal sent a flurry of drones out after several of them, plus more in towards the star as he knew the Rit’ko’sor vessel’s track would be heading there.

“Keep them moving,” the Archon said, getting up from his chair. “I know we can’t catch them, but keep enough patrols moving so they know we’re not content to let them poke around where they want…and keep sensor scans at maximum. If we can even get a partial hit, I want it.”

“Unlikely, but we’ll keep trying,” the Captain promised. “Did they mouth off or apologize for being here?”

“Something else that you’ll hopefully find out later. Right now, mum’s the word.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask any more questions. “As you wish.”

“And two days from now I’m taking this ship on a vacation.”

“May I ask where?”

“Wherever Director Davis currently is. There’s something I have to talk to him about in person.”

“You don’t want to leave now?” the Captain asked, starting to catch on.

“Too obvious. We wait two days, then we go. And we’re going at max speed, so top off the fuel tanks before we leave.”

8

February 15, 4846

Vinniak System (Menfo Region)

Stellar Orbit

Randal was onboard the Nedrador, Director Davis’s personal command ship, when the Rit’ko’sor fleet began to arrive. They hadn’t known if they’d bring a single vessel under cloak or more, but the Rit’ko’sor were not making any attempt to hide their presence within Star Force territory and through the relay network they’d been tracking their fleet’s progress all the way here.

What the Rit’ko’sor did do was avoid uninhabited systems, but thankfully Star Force had gotten a decent amount of monitoring stations set up with relay links over the years to be able to spot their arrival. They’d dipped in and out of coverage, but their arrival today had been anticipated and the first of their S-shaped ships were arriving in deep stellar orbit, drawing an odd look from the Archon.

Based on their assumed speed, they shouldn’t have had to come out that close to the star. They could always choose to brake slower if they wanted to arrive that deep, but it wasn’t standard…and as sensor readings began to catch up he saw that these ships were not typical V’kit’no’sat design.

They were close, very close, but some had been modified slightly and Randal guessed that their engines had been reduced in power to make room for what were high powered transmitters. He assumed these ships were control ships for the Rit’ko’sor drone fleets they’d used to fight the Hadarak, but he’d never actually seen one before.

The rest of the 219 ship fleet were standard varieties, exiting the jumppoint in formation with the others along with a super-sized ship of similar shape that he knew to be a Mach’nel. It was a ‘new’ one as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned, ostensibly built from stolen information over the course of the Rit’ko’sor’s exile in the Hadarak zone, but until a handful of days ago Star Force didn’t even know they possessed one.

That made Star Force’s fleet of 26 Warship-class jumpships and two command ships heavily outgunned, but Randal doubted that they were here to fight. More likely they wanted to keep their leaders safe, along with enhancing their negotiating position by bringing with them a ship far superior to anything Star Force possessed.

The Rit’ko’sor hadn’t brought any of their drone ships, but Star Force’s were already deployed and spread out in a defensive arrangement and did not move as the Rit’ko’sor fleet emerged one by one from their jump and began to reposition. They came out to the nearby fleet within easy comm range then held position a few hundred miles off.

Randal was standing beside Davis in the command Nexus, but he wasn’t in view of the holo transmitter as Sara-012 and Davis linked up, with her image appearing as a tiny glowing statue on the Director’s right side as a much larger Rit’ko’sor appeared directly in front of him and rising up well above his head. Not quite life size, but it soon shrank as other Rit’ko’sor entered range and the viewing angle altered to accommodate them all.

There were 6 of them, most wearing partial robes that obscured their legs but let their tails swing free, but there was no mistaking their pale white skin that Star Force had never personally encountered. Most of the V’kit’no’sat races had taken part in the war against Star Force at some point, but not the Rit’ko’sor, and he’d always wondered how much of their rebellion had tainted their reunification…or maybe the fact that these separatists had taken their Mach’nel with them had something to do with that.

“Nice ship,” Sara commented. “Did you steal or build that one?”

“We stole the knowledge and built it after the war,” the Rit’ko’sor answered, also in English. “We did not let the traitors retain possession of it, though they tried.”

“Was there fighting?”

“No deaths occurred, but stun weapons had to be used. We did not part amicably, and now they are our enemy the same as the rest of the V’kit’no’sat. They have betrayed us.”

“How did the reunification occur?” Davis asked.

“The Era’tran were exploring the outer Core and discovered us. They did not report their findings, choosing to open a secret dialog. We knew our situation was untenable so we talked to them while prepping for evacuation. Our former hatchlings succumbed to the Era’tran’s entreaties, not knowing them as we do. They chose them over us.”

“How easy is it to explore the Core?” Davis pressed. “I was under the impression that Hadarak patrols were difficult to get by.”

“It is tricky where their minions are in massive numbers. Our stealth technology does not hide us from the Hadarak. Their gravitational sensors can pick up all but the smallest of ships at range, and even those closer. The minions also have weaker gravitational sensors that reinforce each other, so the larger the swarm the more accurate their detection capability. Getting past them requires fast movements, and fast movements increase detection for reasons that we cannot fully articulate. We cannot go where they are, but we can explore where there are few. Roaming Hadarak make navigation uncertain, and many ships have been lost when they are where they were not expected to be.”

“How far have you surveyed?”

“Farther than the V’kit’no’sat, though they now have most of our data. There are regions were every system contains their minions, and not by accident. They hold to the inner regions tightly, and only a few skimming missions have penetrated those lines.”

“Skimming?”

“Making slow jumps to exit far from the star, then skirting around the outer edges of the system to another distant jumppoint. The minions can move quickly, but if you arrive in a position they are not it is possible to evade them from afar, though you will not be allowed to remain long enough to gather extensive data.”

“They can detect mass that far away?”

“If a Hadarak is present, yes. Their navigational capability allows them to sense very distant stars, and closer objects who have a similar gravitational profile show up the same. We speculate that any movement of gravity silhouettes is an obvious giveaway, and by not moving we have been able to avoid ranged detection on occasion.”

“And why were the Era’tran looking?”

“They were operating on their own, without Itaru’s permission, trying to expand their knowledge of the Hadarak. Their discovery of us was accidental.”

“Is that common? Exploration without permission.”

“Before our rebellion, no. Afterwards I cannot speak to.”

“How many Rit’ko’sor do you speak for?”

“53 billion.”

“And how certain are you of their loyalty?”

“We have lived separate from them for more than a millennia. If there were traitors, they would have revealed us by now. We did not expect to contact you, for we did not expect you to be able to survive this long. There are no V’kit’no’sat plants among us with the intent of undermining you.”

“We will have to confirm that,” Sara pointed out.

“As expected. You possess formidable Ikrid, correct?”

“I do.”

“We will submit to mental verification, as many of us as you wish. We come before you with nothing to hide. We seek vengeance against the V’kit’no’sat. Nothing more.”

“Your name?” Davis asked.

“I am Jovca. With me are Nemti, Soval, Piv, Ranklo, and Tarck.”

“Tarck?” Sara asked, recognizing that name.

“I am Tarck,” another Rit’ko’sor on the far right side of the hologram said.

“I recognize your name from the V’kit’no’sat records. You were assumed killed during the first century of the rebellion.”

“Subterfuge for my relocation.”

“How did that occur?” Davis asked. “Who was chosen, and for what purpose?”

“None of us wanted to run, but we were chosen to do so,” Jovca explained. “We are warriors, and hiding while our brethren were killed in battle was the most distasteful thing we have ever been required to do. Now that we have a chance to fight back successfully, we do not wish to continue to lurk in the shadows. Our fight is with the V’kit’no’sat, to the death, and we are willing to assist you in our full capacity if you will allow us that role.”

“You obviously have a Mach’nel. What else can you offer?”

“We are more advanced than Zen’zat, and would be the premier race within Star Force if you accepted us, despite our low numbers. We can reproduce rapidly if allowed to, so that numerical disadvantage can diminish quickly.”

“Then you are requesting full membership?”

“We are asking more than that. You have been very successful while utilizing inferior races to build your empire. Even your own people do not possess psionics. Our inclusion would allow a significant advancement for your empire, as well as bringing with us our battle experience against the V’kit’no’sat. We know how to kill them in ways you do not. We know where they are vulnerable, for we have exploited those cracks in the past.”

“Will you submit to our leadership?”

“There will be no need for submission. You do not suppress the races in your empire. You enhance them. We offer you potential that you will make the most of. For that reason we will follow your orders and give you our eggs to do with as you wish.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “Your eggs?”

“We know you use a maturia system for all races, and if we are to become part of Star Force our hatchlings must incorporate into that system. Those of us who are already living, we ask for special consideration. We want to fight, not assimilate. We do not expect to survive, but will fight for a future for our race that you will establish.”

“We also carry with us the taint of the V’kit’no’sat,” Nemti added. “If we are to remove it, our hatchlings must be Star Force trained. We will give you access to all we know of the V’kit’no’sat, but you must chart the path forward for our future kin. We are flawed, and that flaw must not be passed on.”

“What kind of flaw?” Sara asked.

“All of us were hatched as V’kit’no’sat. We know nothing of the Rit’ko’sor before their inclusion and elevation. We are rebels, consumed with vengeance. We have adapted to survive, but in a sense we are still of the V’kit’no’sat, and carry great power as a result, though in so being we are unable to differentiate from our origins.”

“Our fight with the V’kit’no’sat is a personal one,” Tarck explained. “We were unable to finish it in our own war, now we ask to help finish it in yours.”

“We are not set up to defeat the V’kit’no’sat in the manner you suggest,” the trailblazer pointed out. “Holding a defensive line is our best hope.”

“Insufficient. They will come at you with intent to destroy and not rest until that is achieved. The only way you will be free of them is to fully destroy them, but it is wise to fight on your own planets initially. A preemptive invasion of their territory would be disastrous until their fleets are diminished to the point where they cannot reinforce systems.”

“You are assuming a strength that we do not currently possess,” Davis said bluntly.

“Not as of yet, but time is your ally,” Jovca explained. “Your Uriti grow stronger by the day, and the current truce will allow you to fortify your holdings prior to a resumption of the war. We have come to you now so that you can make the most of this period with our inclusion, if you allow it.”

“And what if your inclusion negates the truce?” Sara asked.

“It is a calculation you have to make. As I understand it, you have no leverage to force the continuation of the truce, correct?”

“True,” Davis admitted. “We only have Mak’to’ran’s word.”

“Then you must calculate whether or not he will hold to it.”

“What is your estimation?”

“I believe they do not yet know how to counter your Uriti and are using this truce as a means of protection against you from invading their systems. Otherwise they would have no reason to honor it.”

“Would Mak’to’ran offer his word with intent not to honor it?”

“On the face of it, no, but give sufficient need for alteration of the deal and the V’kit’no’sat will not honor their word. I know little of Mak’to’ran himself, but the utmost priority of the V’kit’no’sat is dominance. If they feel that revoking the truce would hurt their dominance they will hold to it. If they feel honoring the truce would hurt their dominance, then they will violate it. I cannot say for certain that they will not invade you today, even without our inclusion. There are no guarantees.”

“You said you wished to negotiate. If you are giving us your eggs, what is there that you wish to negotiate?”

“For those that currently exist. We do not wish to be diminished. And if possible, we wish to be upgraded.”

“Additional psionics?”

“That and more.”

“What’s stopped you from doing so on your own?”

“You possess most psionics in your genome, we do not, and the information we stole from the V’kit’no’sat was not sufficient enough for us to engineer the psionics. We also know that you operate ‘mechs’ that allow you to fight the larger V’kit’no’sat directly, even with races as small as one of your hands. This has never been attempted within the V’kit’no’sat, though we have done research into drone usage against the Hadarak. The Hadarak cannot jam communications, the V’kit’no’sat can, so utilizing your technological methods will be superior to us attempting to craft our own without experience.”

“You also have many different races,” Tarck added, “that add combat options that we alone do not possess. We wish to help you craft our race into the primary weapon you possess, with the rest of your empire filling in the balance.”

“Why do you think you’re that valuable?” Sara asked.

All the Rit’ko’sor looked at her as if she was stupid, but Jovca eventually answered her.

“We have been greatly enhanced from what we used to be, as all V’kit’no’sat were. Zen’zat were also advanced, but they were never our equal, and none of the races in Star Force are your equal. Thus we are defaultly the superior with regards to biology.”

“Then why have we been able to survive?”

“You make better use out of your potential than the V’kit’no’sat do, which is why we want you to enhance us with your methodology and training.”

“That will be problematic,” Davis admitted. “You are fully telepathic, with the ability to take control of other races’ minds at will. Our experience with the Protovic taught us where the line has to be drawn, and no civilians can possess Ikrid. If they do our civilization becomes unbalanced.”

“Hence negotiation is required. We do not wish to integrate, we wish to fight. As for our hatchlings, there is much to discuss. Our telepathic balance is not something to throw away to make us match the lesser races. It is an asset that we are confident that you will find a way to integrate along with our other abilities.”

“Hatchlings aside then. You wish your current population to be kept separate?”

“As you deem necessary.”

“Do you wish to retain your current systems?”

“No. Once we are revealed we will become targets. We must fully relocate to your territory. We will be weak before we are allowed to expand within Star Force.”

“How large a fleet do you possess?”

“We took almost all of our non-drone fleet so the traitors couldn’t use them, but we didn’t leave the systems in Hadarak territory defenseless. We have 2,849 original warships, and have created another 12,000 since. We have had to move our population 8 times since leaving the core, and have not been able to put down necessary infrastructure to grow rapidly due to matters of secrecy.”

“Are all of your people in agreement?”

“We are.”

“Including your newer hatchlings?”

“They do not fully understand the V’kit’no’sat, but we all wish to fight.”

“Apparently you are not alone. We’ve been contacted by several other races that wish to align with us against the V’kit’no’sat…not all requesting membership, but the feeling that we actually have a chance to win, or at least legitimately fight the V’kit’no’sat is spreading rapidly. Probably the latter is reasonable, for I still count us at a significant disadvantage.”

“We wish to lessen that disadvantage and be amongst the first to fight when they return.”

“Are you personally combat capable?” Sara asked.

“We all are,” Tarck answered. “We have not let ourselves become invalids.”

“Then I need you to come onboard and prove it. Let me see how superior you actually are. I’m guessing that’s more ego that fact.”

“That can be arranged,” Jovca agreed.

“Pick your best 5 in your fleet,” Davis said casually. “I wish to continue talking with you, but you may send them to her ship.”

“I will go,” Tarck volunteered.

“Do not hurt them badly,” Jovca warned.

“I will take care.”

“I’m no Zen’zat,” Sara reminded them with a twitch of distaste.

“If we are to fight side by side against the V’kit’no’sat, then you must understand the power of the Rit’ko’sor. Only then can you use us appropriately.”

“I’m waiting.”

Tarck disappeared and the other 5 holograms increased slightly in size, then Sara’s image winked at Davis and disappeared as well.

Director, Randal said telepathically from beside him.

Go, Davis answered. You guys get all the fun assignments.

Randal smiled and retreated from the command nexus, breaking into a run when he hit the bridge as he headed for the hangar bay so he could grab a dropship and head over to Sara’s command ship before the Rit’ko’sor arrived.

9

Randal watched, from the Archon sanctum no less, as Sara kicked another Rit’ko’sor out of the sparring circle in the 6th round as she was going 1v6. They’re started out 1v1, then added another and another each time she won, and this time was no different with all the unarmored Rit’ko’sor being manhandled by the faster Archon who also had Jumat at her disposal, which she used to punch the last remaining Rit’ko’sor across the curved line, leaving her the last man standing.

“Again,” Tarck said, with all 6 Rit’ko’sor walking back into the large ring.

“As many times as you like,” Sara taunted, but Randal saw something different happen. The Rit’ko’sor began to move differently this time, and suddenly they all surged towards the center where Sara was in unison as she threw a Jumat blast off her left hand and hit one square in the face as it ducked down, being dragged back a meter but not out of bounds.

Randal saw multiple tendrils of Lachka reach out for Sara, and her respond with a wash of Rentar, but they didn’t stop and he saw her make many micro-stumbles…too many to all attribute to Lachka attacks. He guessed they were also going after her telepathically, but they couldn’t actually hack in without physical contact. What they could do was ‘shout’ at her and try to distract, and however they were working it they had Sara slightly off balance as she stepped backwards and spun into a punch that swatted one of their long faces to the side.

The trailblazer surged forward, bodily hitting the Rit’ko’sor in the shoulder and summoning a Jumat blast strong enough to combine with her muscle strength to punt him out of the ring, but her feet were knocked out from under her by a tail swipe from another with perfect timing. She grabbed hold of the Rit’ko’sor’s smaller arm and launched herself up onto its back…but that was a mistake as the other Rit’ko’sor were suddenly ramming their own and pushed them both out of the ring.

Sara let go, falling and rolling out of bounds onto her feet as the 5 Rit’ko’sor in the ring looked at her with tilted heads and blinking eyes.

“Again,” she said, echoing them, and headed back to the center of the ring.

Randal saw her set herself, and when they began she didn’t get off balanced, but she did get overwhelmed. For some reason the Rit’ko’sor were operating with a coordination they hadn’t been showing in the first few rounds and all Sara could do was bat away attacks and hold her position for 30 seconds…then he saw that she had had it, obviously frustrated, and kicked it up a notch as her feet came off the ground a few inches and she went Saiyan on them, fighting from her flying pose.

Two Rit’ko’sor were knocked out before she got head butted towards the line…only to freeze in midair as she pushed back with her Yen’mer, then she flipped feet over her head and got behind the Rit’ko’sor and knocked him out with a Jumat blast, leaving her hanging high in the air above the other 3 and just staring down at them as they stopped fighting.

“You can fly?” one of them asked.

“The more advanced Archons can,” she explained, just hanging there a couple meters off the floor.

“We knew you could in armor,” Tarck added, still in the ring, “but how are you flying without it.”

“Our armor does not have gravity drives in it. They take up too much space.”

“Then how are you flying?”

“A psionic buried in Zen’zat coding. It allows us to fly the same way the V’kit’no’sat fliers do, minus their wings.”

“It’s been in your genome the entire time? You didn’t add it?”

“No, we discovered it.”

“Then why don’t you all have it?” another Rit’ko’sor asked.

“We have to achieve Frieza rank, our level 9. I’m currently level 12, Goku rank.”

“How many psionics do you possess?”

“Personally, I have 68.”

Randal could feel the stunned emotions of the Rit’ko’sor, who had no Ikrid blocks, making it clear they were flabbergasted. He’d assumed the V’kit’no’sat had counted how many different psionics the Archons had displayed in combat, but then again these Rit’ko’sor hadn’t been involved in that fight, so maybe they had less information than he thought.

“Did you create any of them?” Tarck finally asked.

“No. They were all encoded within the Zen’zat genome to be discovered by those who proved worthy. We figured out how to share them once we attained one, but at least one of us had to earn all of them. Something the Zen’zat apparently never did.”

“We were never told of flight being included. Nor were we told of 68. We thought there was less than half that number.”

“Battlemeld was never discovered, and it allows 19 more psionics, so that’s 20 you never knew about.”

“What is this battlemeld?”

“Something kind of similar to what you were just doing, only it allows us to communicate through a telepathic medium that auto-transmits. It’s not Ikrid, but something else. Randal, get over here.”

The Archon smiled and walked out into the ring, feeling Sara’s battlemeld prompt and accepting it.

“We’re now linked. We won’t use any psionics other than simple battlemeld. Try again.”

The other Rit’ko’sor came back into the ring, then the two Archons attacked them rather than waiting. As promised, they didn’t use psionics, going hand to hand as the 6 Rit’ko’sor worked together in telepathic harmony, fighting as a pack rather than individuals, with Randal humorously realizing that Jurassic Park had at least got that much right.

They were hard to beat, especially when they had 6 bodies to work with rather than 2, but Sara and Randal covered for each other so well the Rit’ko’sor couldn’t isolate one of them to knock out. Fortunately they didn’t use their Lachka, for she’d promised not to use any psionics, including Rentar, and had they wanted to the Rit’ko’sor could have just picked them up and threw them out.

But they didn’t. They fought hand to hand as well, though they also had tails. Their arms weren’t as strong, but they were still useful in close range, so they had 5 limbs each to worry about while the Humans only had 4. The group of 8 fought it out for several minutes before the Archons finally knocked one of the Rit’ko’sor out.

“Enough,” Tarck said, ending the fight early as both Archons were dripping with sweat while the Rit’ko’sor were only panting slightly. They didn’t sweat, and their internal heat production was far less, making them more efficient in that regard, at least. “You do have a formidable coordination. I do not understand why the V’kit’no’sat would encode you with this and then not teach you to use it.”

“From what we understand, it was a test of worthiness. A way of demonstrating that Zen’zat were inferior.”

“Can you show us what is is?” another Rit’ko’sor asked.

Sara nodded, then sent a telepathic link, essentially transmitting her thoughts to the Rit’ko’sor so they could glimpse the battlemeld link between her and Randal.

Randal sensed their anger immediately, and soon several snarled and paced around the ring in disgust.

“What’s wrong?” he thought, but it was Sara that said the words.

“We were told there is no such psionic. If there was, we should have been given it. We have the highest combat synchrony rating, even higher than the Dan’chey. If they created this for the Zen’zat, there must be another existing version. Who has it?”

“We do not know of any race in the V’kit’no’sat possessing it,” Sara said truthfully, omitting the Zak’de’ron who were now definitely not part of the V’kit’no’sat.

“What is the source of your information?”

“We had access to a fully unlocked planetary defense station.”

“How did you fully unlock it?”

“That’s a secret we will keep. How did you steal your information from the V’kit’no’sat?”

“A variety of ways, but we never accomplished a complete data breach. You’re saying you did?”

“We had full access prior to losing the pyramid when Earth fell.”

“Terraxis,” Tarck mewed. “Why did you change the name?”

“We didn’t. It was the name our ancestors used. We only discovered the name ‘Terrax’ after we found the pyramid. Before that, we didn’t even know the V’kit’no’sat existed. We found skeletons, but thought they were an extinct group of indigenous lifeforms.”

“You knew nothing of the Zen’zat who spawned you?”

“Nothing. Where the name Earth came from, we don’t know. But it’s our name, and since it’s our planet we decided to keep it, out of spite if nothing else.”

“We understand spite,” another Rit’ko’sor agreed.

“If not for your rebellion, Earth never would have been freed and our ancestors left to die there. So thanks, sort of. The leaving to die there part wasn’t very nice though.”

“We were not there,” Tarck said, “but if we had been we would have killed everyone on the planet. If some Zen’zat were left behind, it was not on purpose.”

“But you did leave the aquatics behind. Why?”

“They are difficult to kill. Are you saying they still inhabited the planet?”

“Briefly, then they evacuated.”

“Then they are the ones who left the Zen’zat behind.”

“That’s still a mystery we haven’t solved. The pyramid…”

“You call it by its shape?”

Sara shrugged. “It was what we first called it, then when we found out it was officially labeled a ‘planetary defense station’ we decided that was too much of a mouthful, so we stuck with ‘pyramid’ except when we talked to the V’kit’no’sat. You’re speaking English, so now that you know what I’m talking about I’m calling it what we call it.”

“You do not still have it? It was destroyed when you retook the planet?”

“Gutted, but the exterior still remains.”

“And the datafiles?”

“We copied them before we lost Earth the first time.”

“Would you allow us the curiosity of checking on a few things?”

“Possibly. What do you want to know?”

“Everything that they did not tell us. If you have access to the J’gar and Oso’lon files, we would like to see them.”

“We haven’t agreed to be friends yet, now have we?”

“We have offered. The decision is yours to make.”

“You said you were here to negotiate, so it’s not as simple as that. What are you unwilling to do?”

“It is not a matter of what we are unwilling to do, but what we are requesting that you do. We want you to incorporate our race into your empire in the most effective way possible to fight the V’kit’no’sat. We have some ideas of how that would occur, but you know better than us. We do not want to be reduced in stature to match the other races. We wish to be enhanced and unleashed on the V’kit’no’sat. You have knowledge and technology that we did not possess during our rebellion. We have ample experience fighting the V’kit’no’sat. We wish to combine the two to maximum advantage.”

“We always do everything to maximum advantage,” Sara pointed out, finally releasing the battlemeld with Randal. “But we fight with honor, and will not compromise it to attain a victory.”

“It is that honor that we are trusting in. We would not be here if we thought you would behave the same as the V’kit’no’sat.”

“But will you hold to the bounds of our honor?”

“Once we learn them, yes. Your combat record is enough to vouch for it, even if we do not understand it.”

“To put it simply, we do not focus on the short term. Doing something wrong might gain you something in the short term, but it weakens you in the long term. That’s why we are able to negotiate with other races to the effective level that we do. We have a history of trustfulness…and a history of doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing. That has gained us much over the long term, but we would do the right thing even if it gained us nothing. We fight enemies because they are threats, not because of vendettas. Sometimes the two overlap, but we don’t kill people who don’t deserve it, and we don’t barter lives.”

“Which is why you do not use death marks?”

“If you have to ask that question you really understand very little of us.”

“We are willing to learn if it helps us fight the V’kit’no’sat more effectively.”

“Well that’s a start,” Sara noted unenthusiastically.

“What is that alteration to your hand?” another Rit’ko’sor asked.

Sara held up her palm and pointed to the slit in it. “You mean this?”

“Yes.”

“Randal, bioshield please.”

“Fire at will,” he said, generating a shield over himself…and even that appeared to catch the Rit’ko’sor by surprise. Then when the bright white streak of plasma leapt out from Sara’s palm and impacted his shield he could sense even further anger and awe from their guests.

Sara didn’t fire a long blast, but held it long enough that the Rit’ko’sor got a good look at it, then closed down her hand slit with the glow disappearing entirely.

“It’s called Choratrik,” she explained.

“The Les’i’kron possess the same,” Tarck said, “but theirs emits from their mouths. It’s considered a weak psionic compared to Saroto’kanse’vam, but useful in certain circumstances. Do you use it much?”

“Not when we’re in armor with weapons, but it’s nice to know you’re never unarmed in case you’re separated from your armor.”

“That’s why we wear ours,” he said, referencing the pile of jewelry against the far wall that was their own battle armor in condensed storage mode.

“Ours is more formidable against single strikes. Yours is more flexible. A tradeoff we made.”

“Why?”

“We want someone to be able to survive a large, single hit. If they die from it, then the longevity of your armor becomes useless.”

“How often do you fight against that level of firepower?”

“Whenever the larger V’kit’no’sat races invade. Against Zen’zat our armor lasts long enough unless they poke a hole in a specific spot…but then that spot can be defended whereas yours fills in and weakens the entire armor.”

“So that’s why you wear static armor…” another Rit’ko’sor said, as if some long-held mystery had been discovered.

“Not entirely static, but we need to be able to take a large hit and keep fighting. We rely on skill and teamwork to deal with repetitive smaller hits.”

“And your psionics,” Tarck added, seeing another strategic advantage.

“Yes. It doesn’t make us superior to the Zen’zat, but it does allow us to fight in a style of our own choosing.”

“We were not even allowed full armor if we were not of high enough rank,” the Rit’ko’sor leader said with disgust. “We had shield generators, nothing more, and were expected to accomplish missions via our numbers. They valued our lives cheaply, and as a resource they would rather expend than let us build the necessary armor.”

“Why? Why did they waste you like that?” Randal asked, not fully understanding.

“They were given weak opponents,” Sara answered before the Rit’ko’sor could, “and were expected to win with less equipment. Otherwise they would not be dominant. Correct?”

“We were allowed full equipment against the Hadarak, but we were not even permitted to create it in sufficient numbers for our entire military. Other races had similar restrictions, but the larger ones did not. They valued their lives more, while the smaller races were seen as expendable. Star Force uses races as small as my foot to fight and kill V’kit’no’sat. You make use of the smaller races. You do not waste them. This is why we choose to trust you.”

“Your strength is your coordination,” Sara pointed out. “We can use that, but you must also be able to fight as individuals.”

“Our ability to do so would increase with additional psionics.”

“We don’t trust everyone with psionics. Only those who prove themselves worthy. Rit’ko’sor already having psionics is a problem.”

“One that you can solve for future generations as you see fit. We know that you will not waste power when it is presented to you.”

“No we don’t, but this war is going to be won or lost on the naval front. You were able to produce a massive fleet in secret. How?”

“We knew where the V’kit’no’sat would not look, and our Lachka was configured for smaller applications. We have undone that, to some extent, to give us more power in battle, but we were originally designed to use our Lachka in groups and individually as techs. We were not enhanced purely for battle as others were.”

“You have good techs then?”

“We are good at production. We are not as good at research, which is why we needed to steal blueprints to build our Mach’nel and other assets.”

“Do you have more than one?”

“No, and that one was extremely difficult to construct. We needed it against the Hadarak, but against the V’kit’no’sat it can be overwhelmed with lesser ships, as you know well. You have destroyed two of them.”

“Two and a half,” Sara corrected.

“You said there were battlemeld abilities,” another Rit’ko’sor interrupted. “Show us some of these.”

Sara glanced at Randal and the two linked up again, then they took off running in separate directions, turning and running around the perimeter of the circular sparring ring dragging an invisible Trielo conduit between them. When it passed through the Rit’ko’sor it transmitted the stun energy into their bodies, knocking them to the floor semi-unconscious, for the Archons had dialed back the intensity for demonstration sake.

Tarck and the others stumbled to their feet, trying to stand and regain their balance as they wobbled.

“Impressed yet?” Sara asked.

“Psionics are power, and a power that has been denied to the Rit’ko’sor in many ways…yet we still have enough psionics to make us superior to the races in Star Force. Your Archons have more power than we imagined, and if you can learn to transfer some of those psionics to us, you will not be disappointed with the results.”

“That’s getting way ahead of ourselves, but I won’t rule out that possibility.”

“Then you will accept us?”

“We have to work out a lot of details, but if you’re willing to accept doing things our way, the answer will be yes.”

“If doing things your way gets us our vengeance, we will happily accept following your lead.”

“Leadership is about direction, not suppression. That’s something the V’kit’no’sat still haven’t figured out. I hope you learn faster than they do.”

“The blood of our kin has prompted us to reassess many things over previous years.”

“As has ours. In that we share a common legacy.”

“We have hurt them more than any other,” Tarck said with a note of pride. “You have defied them in a way no other has ever accomplished. Together, I believe we can do a great deal more.”

“If they give us time to build,” Randal added ominously.

“If they give us time,” Tarck agreed. “If not, we will still be honored to fight and die alongside you rather than wallow in self-imposed exile.”

10

March 2, 4848

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Stellar Orbit

It’d been two years since the meeting with the Rit’ko’sor, two long years for Sara as she and half the members of the 1s had been assigned the task of annexing the most powerful race ever to join Star Force. The 2s had got to fashion the lizards into Paladin, and now it was the 1s job to do the same with the Rit’ko’sor…only this was considerably harder.

Ethan-014, Erin-016, Kevin-017, and Landon-019 weren’t here, being tied up with war duties on the Rim, but the other 5 members of her original team were and they’d been working with a trio of Rit’ko’sor who had stayed behind in Star Force territory while the rest returned home and began packing. They weren’t going to leave their current planets with technology that others could recover, so over the past 2 years they’d been deconstructing them and converting every ship they possessed into transports to bring their entire population here in one massive convoy.

The Mach’nel helped greatly with that, but Sara had been told they were still packed tight and would have few foodstuffs to spare by the time they’d arrived, which was why Star Force had been in a frantic hurry to construct the necessary facilities in this formerly deserted system to sustain them upon arrival. Even now there were an army of Kiritak and Bsidd working round the clock while a large chunk of the Kvash navy was patrolling the system and keeping everyone else out. This was the heart of Star Force territory, safely away from the V’kit’no’sat and other threats, but word had already begun to spread and travelers were coming to take a look at the construction even before the Rit’ko’sor fleet started to arrive.

Star Force had designated this system off-limits, but there were many ships that came anyway and had to be turned back and Sara doubted that would end now, for the Rit’ko’sor had come straight here and passed through one of the black hole routes in former Nexus territory, so there were many local eyeballs on them and Davis had to put out a press release informing people why a V’kit’no’sat warfleet was moving through their territory.

The response had not been kind, but then again the inclusion of the lizards hadn’t been popular either in the aftermath of that war, and it was just one more factor that Sara and the 1s were going to have to deal with. For now, though, they would be left here in hopefully quiet isolation to build while waiting to see how the V’kit’no’sat responded. Would they break their truce and attack immediately? If they did, at least Star Force would now have added a Mach’nel to its combat capability, but it was really the Uriti that would make the biggest difference and they’d already added one more to their ranks, though having a Mach’nel now certainly didn’t hurt.

Sara watched from the bridge of the Dominator as the Rit’ko’sor ships continued to pour into the system via their jumppoint and move directly for one of three planets that had freshly built Star Force infrastructure on them. None were even close to fully constructed, but they had the necessary bioharvest facilities up and running and right now the quartaries were at 83% complete. That meant some of the Rit’ko’sor would have to live on the ships for a while until the Kiritak and Bsidd finished their work, but both the 1s and the Rit’ko’sor had wanted to make this transition as fast as possible, for if the V’kit’no’sat did hold to their truce they only had a limited number of years to prepare for the resumption of the war and they didn’t want to waste even one.

Already there were maturias set up to receive the incoming eggs, and it had been decided not to reduce them in capability. The Protovic had been the first experiment with psionics in the general population, but even they had to earn them through merit standards. Creating a similar system for the Rit’ko’sor was doable, but it would still mean watering down their Ikrid to the point they couldn’t hack into other people’s minds and remotely control their bodies. That was a line that Star Force was not going to cross, and the few people that had that capability had to be those that were deserving of the power and the responsibility that came with it…not to mention Lachka, which could crush a person’s brain or heart with a single thought.

No race could be given that power, which was why either the Rit’ko’sor had to be reduced or kept separate from the rest of Star Force…and the 1s had decided on the latter. If any individual Rit’ko’sor wanted to leave they could, but they’d have to forfeit their psionics to do it, just like a Human that spontaneously generated their dormant psionics. If they didn’t agree to follow certain protocol they were denied the psionic, for Star Force couldn’t let unscrupulous people run around with that kind of power.

So what Sara and the others had decided was to treat all Rit’ko’sor as if they were Arc Knights until they opted out, and already Star Force’s medtechs were working on creating new versions of existing psionics to add to the Rit’ko’sor, first on the list being bioshields. Initially that hadn’t been the plan, but the 3 Rit’ko’sor that Sara had gotten to know fairly well over the past 2 years had changed her mind considerably, for now she realized what it truly meant to be elevated to a V’kit’no’sat member race.

She didn’t know what the Rit’ko’sor had been before the dragons found them, but now their bodies healed remarkably fast, making self-sufficiency much easier to maintain. More so than Humans or even Zen’zat, for Humans were really a watered down version. A lot of tinkering had been done to the Human genome by Star Force to close that gap, but the bottom line was that Zen’zat were never designed to reproduce so a lot of their power didn’t translate through the generations.

For the Rit’ko’sor it did, and not only could they attain self-sufficiency much easier, they also learned quickly. Their minds didn’t possess Sav, but they were structured in a way that made them superior and was not part of their original genome. They’d been upgraded, and Star Force geneticists had been studying that for millennia now, but with only a few small experiments of their own to show for it. Davis wouldn’t permit anything dangerous, for Star Force wouldn’t sacrifice people to gain scientific knowledge. The V’kit’no’sat were another matter entirely, but still there were some races in Star Force that had been upgraded here and there were there was an easy fix to be made.

Advancement through training was the preferred method, and often it yielded better results than from direct manipulation, but there was no denying the level the Rit’ko’sor were on was superior to Humans…and Humans were superior to every other race in Star Force. The genetic wizardry of the V’kit’no’sat was now clear to Sara in a way it had never been before, but it wasn’t enough on its own and that was why Star Force had survived so long. They didn’t rely on a race, but rather individuals, and Sara was individually superior to these Rit’ko’sor even if her base genome wasn’t.

That was a concept the Rit’ko’sor were having a hard time acclimating too, though they were trying. Everything about their previous culture was based on their race, and they were going to have to unlearn that…though the hatchlings wouldn’t. How to train a superior race from ‘birth’ was going to be hit or miss as they began, but Sara knew they’d get the hang of it eventually and she was eager to see just how fast they would progress.

Faster than Humans, she knew, for Rit’ko’sor grew to adulthood in less than half the time. It was how fast they learned and adapted that she was interested in finding out…though there was one modification they were going to make to them that would cause some trouble. Rit’ko’sor were telepathic from birth, as many V’kit’no’sat races were, but not all. Some restricted the telepathy and other base psionics, such as the Era’tran, until they developed further, but the Rit’ko’sor did not and the pack mentality was developed in them from infancy. Even now those in eggs could feel the others nearby, but the eggs that were soon to arrive in Star Force hands would be undoing immediate genetic alteration.

Doing so in a developing hatchling was dangerous, for the growth was based on very specific plans that, if messed with, could have disastrous consequences. Back when Star Force first began Sara had found out, after the fact, that Davis had searched the planet for malformed babies and had them brought in secret to be treated with V’kit’no’sat regenerators. Any bad growths, such as two individuals being born with their heads connected, would be fixed and separated within minutes because the base genome hadn’t been corrupted, it was only the growth sequence that had seen a glitch.

But this was far more serious, for making alterations to the base genome could have unintended consequences, and a regenerator could only repair you according to those genetic blueprints. It couldn’t adapt and solve problems, only rebuild you to specs. Fortunately the procedure that the eggs were going to have done on them was adding something rather than changing tissue, in that they were getting an Ikrid block identical to what all Humans carried, though by necessity it was slightly different due to the structure of the Rit’ko’sor minds.

That meant the hatchlings could still communicate telepathically, but they couldn’t read each other. How that would affect their development no one knew, and Sara assumed it was going to be troublesome, but both the trailblazers and the Rit’ko’sor agreed it was necessary. Mental warfare amongst the V’kit’no’sat was extreme, and for that reason their servants had been given an immunity to it, in order to keep them neutral, though physical touch could still bypass it. Give the Rit’ko’sor this immunity and they’d be even more dangerous in combat, not to mention their armor could be engineered lighter without having to have their own version of countermeasures installed…though they’d never been permitted that technology previously.

They’d had to steal/create it before their rebellion, but having an Ikrid block would be much simpler. Unfortunately they’d never had the necessary genetic knowledge to create it themselves, and right now Star Force stood as having a higher biotech level than the Rit’ko’sor did even without the added advantage of Chixzon knowledge. The compartmentalization of V’kit’no’sat knowledge, even somewhat compromised by data thefts during the Rit’ko’sor rebellion, was now plainly evident and made what they’d accomplished even more impressive. For as much as the Rit’ko’sor had been upgraded, they’d been deliberately kept in the dark about many things, and it was no wonder the V’kit’no’sat were surprised when they were able to mount a rebellion of the size and scope that they had.

You’d have thought they’d learn their lesson and have taken Star Force more seriously, but thankfully they hadn’t. Now, however, Sara didn’t think they’d make that mistake a third time, but who knew. If they were really as egotistical as their reputation suggested, they just might.

As soon as the Mach’nel came into the system it was sent to a separate planet and began offloading the civilians that were packed inside, using both their own drop pods and Star Force dropships to transfer them as quickly as possible. Once that was completed several Star Force cargo ships brought the Mach’nel an abundance of supplies and a new crew, with only a handful of Rit’ko’sor remaining onboard. Riona-111 was among them, and was going to take personal command of the Mach’nel while some of the best Rit’ko’sor naval officers went with her to help fly and fight the massive ship while learning firsthand what it meant to fight the Star Force way.

Sara knew she was heading out to assist Paul, who was already engaged in heavy combat against the Ziviri, one of The Nexus’s primary enemies that had not only been attacking their strongholds but running rampant through the territories they’d left abandoned. Tech-wise they were below Star Force’s level, but not so far below that it made for an easy fight. Paul was currently engaged in more than a dozen systems far beyond the Avta Region, with the Ziviri being tagged for complete conquest.

Sara knew they were too dangerous to be allowed to linger, but taking them out was a luxury Star Force didn’t have while fighting the V’kit’no’sat. Now that that war was on pause, Paul was hitting them hard and fast, and if he could fully conquer their 1,389 system empire it would relieve an enormous amount of pressure on The Nexus and thousands of other non-aligned races. Bottom line was the Zirviri had to go, and just having the Rit’ko’sor Mach’nel sitting in Axalon protecting a safe planet was a waste the trailblazers were not going to tolerate.

That, and the Rit’ko’sor wanted to get into battle immediately anyway, and this was a small opportunity for them to do so…without their lack of scruples being a danger to anyone else with Riona in direct command.

Knowing how bad Paul wanted that Mach’nel with him, Sara had arranged for the quickest possible transfer of supplies and personnel and was pleased to see it moving out of orbit just before the last of the Rit’ko’sor convoy finally arrived in the system. According to manifests the Rit’ko’sor had given them upon arrival, all ships were accounted for and every single member of their splinter race was now here in Star Force’s custody and under the protection of the entire Rit’ko’sor warfleet…minus the Mach’nel that was leaving.

With all that new firepower the bulk of the Kvash fleet was dispatched to other assignments, but there were still several battlegroups that remained to handle uninvited guests. Sara didn’t want Rit’ko’sor ships trying to do that, so she ordered all of them into parking orbit around the three planets while she and the other 1s that were here began heading down to the surface of Turok, which was going to be the capitol and experimental training center for figuring out how to best incorporate the Rit’ko’sor into Star Force. Already a lot of pre-work had been done with the 3 Rit’ko’sor that had volunteered to stay behind, but that was just the beginning. Now Sara and the other 1s had their work really cut out for them, and they weren’t going to waste any time getting started.

Already they had several basic challenge courses laid out and benchmarks established by the three ‘forerunners’, as Sara had started to call them. Now they needed to start sending the masses through and seeing how well they adapted while the Kiritak continued to build more training facilities. Sara was feeding them upgrades as they went, and the more information she got from running the Rit’ko’sor through the basics the more she could stay ahead of their needs, for it took time for even the Kiritak to build facilities of the scope that the Rit’ko’sor needed…especially with their Lachka, which made challenge courses much more intricate to give them problems that they couldn’t easily solve with their invisible hands.

Putting up psionic dampeners worked in some cases, but that was really a cheat and Sara needed challenges that would kick the crap out of the Rit’ko’sor while they had their full array of skills at their disposal.

To that end she had also sent out a request for some old friends to come and help, with Head Trainer Wilson indicating that he would arrive in a few years after he got enough baseline data to be of use. A few other elite trainers were already on their way, some of whom were Calavari, but the most important individual on her request list was already here and had been sparring with Sara and the other 1s for two weeks while they waited. She was glad Vermaire had agreed to come off the battle lines in the Rim, for he understood as much as she did how important the Rit’ko’sor were going to be to Star Force…and how they had an ego that needed to be whacked down.

So the original Black Knight that had terrorized the Archon trainees was returning to reprise his role, only this time on the Rit’ko’sor…and Rit’ko’sor that had been alive for thousands of years. They would be harder to own than rookies, but that would make their defeats even more stinging while keeping Sara and the 1s as allies rather than enemies. That was important, and a reason why the Black Knight had been created in the first place. He was a place for those learning to put their hate…and later their respect, but for now the Rit’ko’sor still had to learn the hard way to hate first, and Vermaire wasn’t due to start randomly kicking the crap out of them during challenges for a few weeks, but Sara couldn’t wait to see how they reacted to him.

Hopefully they’d learn, but there was just as much of a possibility of it going bad. She needed to know that and a great many other things before those in eggs ever got to this point, and talking only got you so far, including mental scans. Some things you only learned about a person when they were pushed to their limits, and Vermaire definitely had a knack for getting you there.

Actually, what he had was a mean streak, but one designed to give you no hesitation or mercy. It’s what the Black Knight was meant to be, but Archons never could quite go that far in training. Maybe that’s because they’d always seen the Black Knight from the receiving end and they couldn’t put themselves in the mindset of the one they’d always reviled. But thankfully there were plenty of Knights and Arc Knights that could and would willingly take on that role, but none were as good at it as Vermaire.

And since he was supposed to be an enigma, none of the Rit’ko’sor had met him yet…though they would soon, the hard way.

When Sara got to the surface, she and Aaron-010 met up with the Rit’ko’sor leader, Jovca, and a few others in the main embassy building that would allow more than just their elite to interact with Star Force during this transition period. With 53 billion of them, there were a lot of people to get to know and mental scans to go through before giving them access to Star Force positions. For the time being, though, these three planets were more of a refugee camp than anything else, though that would be changing rapidly in the days ahead.

“Trailblazer Sara,” Jovca said respectfully as his hip robes dragged slightly across the floor as he walked with a characteristically Rit’ko’sor bounce towards her.

“Jovca,” she replied, gesturing to her right. “This is Aaron.”

“I recognized him from the files, and I offer our greetings along with a request.”

“What?” she asked casually, for she’d gotten so used to dealing with the forerunners that they seemed like brothers by now.

“We once held great pride in the name Rit’ko’sor, and we do not wish to relinquish it or our history. We have made mistakes, but we have done great things as well, and our rebellion, no matter how bloody and costly to us, is something we intend never to forget. However, the traitors who returned to the V’kit’no’sat have assumed our mantle and our name. As painful as it is for us, we wish for there to be no misunderstandings as to our allegiance. We are the real Rit’ko’sor, but since the traitors have laid claim to our name and our previous position within the V’kit’no’sat, we require a new identity. Given that we are becoming part of Star Force, we ask that you create a new name for us.”

Aaron said something telepathic to her about ‘Chocobo,’ but she suppressed most of her humorous smile and turned it into a warm acceptance, glad that she did have an Ikrid block and the Rit’ko’sor couldn’t read her mind. She nixed that name and offered another one to Aaron, who quickly agreed, citing it was the obvious one and that he wanted to hold ‘Chocobo’ in reserve in case they needed a nickname or slur to use.

Sara agreed with that, but didn’t miss a beat in her vocal conversation with Jovca.

“We have a name from long ago, after finding your skeletal remains on Earth, that would suit you well and carries with it an ancient respect before we even knew what the V’kit’no’sat were. If you wish it, you can now lay claim to that name.”

“We wish it,” Jovca said with a slight head tilt. “What is our ancient, and now present name to be?”

“Raptor,” Sara said with emphasis. “You will be known as the Raptors. Star Force Raptors. And when we’re done converting you, no one will ever mistake you for V’kit’no’sat again.”

www.aerkijyr.com

Excalibur

1

March 28, 4850

Scicaryanen System (Hadarak Zone)

Middle Zone Null Orbit

Dorchav waited patiently, knowing his timing had to be right. His Kafcha was currently on the edge of the battle with the minions, throwing massive firepower into their clusters as they tried to pin down individual ships that the Level 1 Hadarak was slowly chasing after. Right now there were dozens partially disabled, but the two that had been neutralized were now being pushed out of the way by other V’kit’no’sat warships, badly damaging their hulls in the soft collisions, but keeping the crews alive a bit longer as the number of minions was being diminished continuously.

There was no point in attacking the Hadarak directly until the minions were gone…but before they were the Hadarak would retreat, knowing that it didn’t have the range to engage the V’kit’no’sat without the minions. So Dorchav had to guess when that moment would come and act before it, but at the same time the existing minions were going to be a threat once he sprung the trap. There was no protocol to follow, for this was the first time they’d attempted this, and Mak’to’ran was here watching, currently engaged in battle on the planet this Hadarak had been encamped on.

There were even more minions on the surface than there were in space, and as was typical of the V’kit’no’sat they were going to eradicate them all, purging the system of their presence, and the surface fighting had beat them back so much the Hadarak had chosen to leave the planet and attack the fleet directly. Dorchav had drawn it away from the planet to give Mak’to’ran the spacing he needed, but this attack wasn’t about clearing the system as much as it was a test of the technique Dorchav had recommended. He’d been on the receiving end of it once, but the Hadarak were much more formidable than a Mach’nel, so they’d had to make many modifications to the technology Star Force had developed.

Now, the Brat’mar said telepathically to his command deck, with the mix of his kind and Zen’zat already knowing exactly what to do.

Communications went out, with the attacking fleet breaking apart and trying to draw the minions in different directions, spreading them out while leaving two ships helpless to draw the Hadarak in further…only they weren’t as disabled as they were acting. They were still reporting partial engine power and Dorchav’s Kafcha was sniping minions from afar at dangerously close range to increase their odds of surviving.

But after a few minutes he saw he’d miscalculated…or perhaps the commanders of the vessels had…for their engine power diminished so far they could no longer escape the Hadarak, which was nearly on top of them. In the past the V’kit’no’sat would have let them die to accomplish the mission, but something inside of Dorchav screamed ‘inferiority’ and the Brat’mar audibly growled, drawing looks from the otherwise silent command deck crew.

“Take us in,” he said, anger billowing over into the specific actions he wanted, telepathically explained within a fraction of a second, resulting in his Kafcha and a nearby Na’shor accelerating towards the Hadarak and racing it to get to the two bait ships.

Dorchav couldn’t shake the image of that Human Archon who had defeated him before. She would be criticizing him now for leaving those ships to die, stating that Star Force would have saved them and pulled off the trap…and there was no way that he was going to let a rogue faction display more dominance than the V’kit’no’sat. If they could do it, then so could he…and if he died, so be it. He should have died years ago in that Star Force trap, and in a way he felt he was operating on borrowed time ever since.

As for his crew, they were doing their duty and if they died it would be in battle, fighting to accomplish an objective, not left behind to die because the other V’kit’no’sat were too cowardly to try and save them.

So even as new ships began to emerge from microjumps all around the perimeter of the Hadarak, the two intact warships jumped through a swarm of minions, disintegrating them on impact as they hard braked nearby, seeing their engine power drop off as the biological remains coated their shields emitting IDF fields that stole the gravity effect away from the engines.

But the V’kit’no’sat ships were so big those fields couldn’t reach deep within their hulls, and after a moment the shields reset in a flourish, throwing the goo out and away and returning full engine power. If the shields went down and they got that residue on the hull it would be another matter, but Dorchav wasn’t going to stick around that long. What he was going to do was make physical contact with the other ship, and that meant the impact point was going to be exposed.

But his ship was so big it wouldn’t matter. The only question was, could they push the Dak’bri clear of the chasing Hadarak in time? The ship was less than half as massive as his Kafcha, but tractor beams alone couldn’t get enough grip points to pull something of that size. They’d literally pull the hull plates off, and no exterior hardpoints had been built with connection to the superstructure to accommodate this amount of sheering force. Had the minions not been here, towing the ship would have been easy using IDF fields coupled with the tractor beams, but the minions were partially immune to IDF because they carried jamming fields, and in the past when IDF had been used as a weapon against the swarms they’d actually brought the entire field down.

So the only way to move the ships was with physical force applied hull to hull, and the Dak’bri in front of them was not Bra’tmar, otherwise the coin-shaped hulls would have matched up perfectly for such a pushing maneuver. Rather it was Tev’nan, with a hull that mirrored the hexpeds’ own bodies with lots of thick spikes coming off an internal mass longer than it was wide. There was no way to get past those spikes, so when the Kafcha made contact three of them crushed down, with the Brat’mar vessel doing more damage than the minions had…but far less than the Hadarak would do if it got within grapple range.

Dorchav’s own ship took damage from those spikes, but thankfully they also embedded into the hull rather than deflecting, locking the two ships together and allowing the Kafcha’s engines to push hard enough to accelerate the other ship even as minions fired on and plastered against the massive 36 mile wide ‘coin’ ship in a desperate effort to slow it enough for the approaching 62 mile wide Hadarak to catch up. Thankfully it was a ‘small’ Hadarak, but if it got within tentacle range of the Kafcha, Dorchav’s ship was going to be ripped apart regardless.

The ironic part was the V’kit’no’sat had a massive fleet waiting further out in the system that had not engaged, knowing that the Hadarak would have fled rather than fought, so the Brat’mar was engaging with far less ships to make it a fair fight…which meant they had to give it an advantage, but he wasn’t going to give it two of his ships willingly. That would have shown inferiority.

However, that’s what ended up happening anyway, as his Kafcha successfully pushed the Dak’bri far enough away to avoid the Hadarak, accelerating enough to stay ahead of it and gain distance, but the smaller Na’shor did not. It too was pushing a smaller vessel, but either the engine combination wasn’t quite adequate or the minions got to it more even though the Kafcha had come in first and drawn most of their attention.

Dorchav’s displeasure grew as he saw both the Na’shor and the Domjo it was pushing get grabbed by the grapple fields and their rate of movement slowed. The actual catch didn’t occur until several minutes later, but by then more minions were circling around and ramming the ships, sacrificing themselves to get as much IDF-laden goo on them as possible. Eventually one of the Hadarak’s tentacles reached out, targeted by the firepower of both ships, but it held up long enough to make physical contact and poke in through the hull of the Brat’mar Na’shor like a spear…and after that it was over, though the death of the ships took a while to complete.

Dorchav saw in mind’s eye the Human, but her tone wasn’t mocking. It was disgusted with the loss, but noted that at least they’d died fighting and hadn’t been betrayed by being left behind. Dorchav was forced to agree, though he was not happy as he watched more tentacles come out and help crush both ships against the outer hull of the Hadarak, which was so much more dense that it barely moved as both V’kit’no’sat vessels were deformed into trash, killing the crews inside with no way for Dorchav to help them now.

But he could accomplish his mission, and in a way their deaths were helping, for the minions were in close to the Hadarak now rather than being spaced further away as the 183 pieces of the capture sphere entered maximum range and began emitting the longest range IDF fields the V’kit’no’sat could figure out how to create.

Each one was like a long column that stretched out before the pieces, each of which was far larger than a Mach’nel, but with none of the defenses. The IDF conduits from all of them intersected on the Hadarak, broadening out enough to cover it entirely and deny its own gravity drives a grip on the star and nearby planets, essentially stranding it in place.

The minions that were not caught in the field immediately shot off towards the emitters, with Dorchav ordering his fleet inside the perimeter to defend them to the death. They had the Hadarak pinned and could not lose it now…except they didn’t quite have it yet. The fields were too fragile and the Hadarak’s own ability to disrupt them was having a partial effect. It began to move immediately, fleeing the trap, but even a casual brush with the IDF slowed it considerably and Dorchav had already instructed the crews on the emitters to move with it.

They had to stay in range as it began to head for the star, and if it reached it the Hadarak would escape them by going where the V’kit’no’sat could not. Dorchav knew the emitters had to get in closer, a lot closer, to fully trap it, but they couldn’t so long as the minions were here, for they were flying around the warships blocking their path and ignoring them completely as they raced for the emitters.

The following battle played itself out adequately, with none of the emitters being damaged enough to hinder their operation. Several had their shields go down, but there weren’t enough minions left, thanks to the thinning efforts earlier, and the emitters were able to close in and strengthen their overlapping IDF fields, taking away the Hadarak’s propulsion as it continued to drift towards the star.

Dorchav then ordered the fleet out of the interior, allowing the emitters to come closer, just beyond grapple field range, and connect to each other as they transformed. The massive hulks flattened out, becoming very thin and vulnerable as they spread into a massive sphere around the Hadarak, locking together into a single mass similar to the capture mechanism Star Force had used…except it had gotten inside weapons range of the Mach’nel Dorachav had commanded, allowing it to bypass their firepower with the extreme close range.

That would be suicide with a Hadarak, but unlike a Mach’nel, the Hadarak had no ranged weapons other than minions, a few of which were emerging from the Hadarak as it no doubt raced to produce more, but they were squirted out without engine power until they cleared the IDF field, and the limited ‘containment’ weaponry on the inside of the sphere shot them down before they could get to the outer sphere.

“Containment complete,” another Brat’mar announced as the capture device was fully deployed and now a perfect sphere hiding the massive Hadarak inside. The device was far larger than what Star Force had built, and necessarily so given the dynamics of Hadarak combat, but now was the true test.

“Pull it into a stable orbit,” Dorchav said, waiting to see if they could move the Hadarak on the engine power of the capture device, which wasn’t great considering how much mass it had to tow. IDF fields didn’t negate mass, they just tied it together inside an energy field, and all that had to be moved to counter the momentum they had heading in towards the star.

Wisely they accelerated sideways to try and create an orbit rather than doing a direct stop that would have required more power, but it was still too close for comfort. Dorchav actually had to use his fleet with deployed shields as a block, running ahead of the capture device while helping to tow with tractor beams. They plowed through the upper atmosphere of the star so the tiny exterior shields on the capture device wouldn’t have to face the full brunt of the collision with the disperse plasma, for even such small impacts at these speeds would do considerable damage.

But it worked, and even with that brush against the star the capture device held containment and began to gain altitude again as it curved around the star in an elliptical orbit and inside the Hadarak was helpless to affect its cage, reaching out futilely with tentacles that weren’t long enough and grapple fields that came up just short. Over the following hours a few minions emerged, to be killed instantly, then no more followed.

Dorchav knew that meant internal production was being stored, with a minion wave to be launched sometime in the future when it believed it had enough to make it to the cage edge, so their victory wasn’t assured yet, but without being able to feed on a planet or star the Hadarak would have to cannibalize internal material to produce more…which no doubt it would do over the course of time if needed.

“Well done,” Mak’to’ran’s hologram said half a day later when the V’kit’no’sat leader flew out from the planet to the null orbit around the star where they had the Hadarak trapped. “And well worth the investment in resources. How badly damaged is your vessel?”

“We can only attain 68% jump speed, but we are combat capable.”

“You exchanged a larger vessel for the loss of a smaller one, but you nearly lost all four. Why did you risk it?”

“I am tired of leaving people to die without a fight,” the Brat’mar said bluntly.

Mak’to’ran huffed in a sarcastic manner. “The Humans call us out with their actions, do they not?”

“You know me too well. Yes, they do. They rightly mock our dominance when they rescue their own and we leave them to die.”

“We have become too accustomed to losses against the Hadarak,” Mak’to’ran agreed. “We take great care to avoid it against other opponents, but our lack of victory against the Hadarak has caused us to become sloppy. Hopefully our victory today will alter that. You have given us a new weapon against them, and for that you will be honored. The loss of Dimu has given you insight to create this weapon, thus your failure has resulted in ultimate victory and everyone is soon to know it.”

“I care not for my reputation, and our hold on the Hadarak is tenuous.”

“Our being able to contain it for even a moment is something the V’kit’no’sat have never done before. Our victory is secure regardless of what happens beyond this point, but I too wish for more than a historical footnote.”

“What do you wish to do with it?”

“First we wait and see if it can free itself. We may have to make alterations to the second Harthur, and I would rather do so before construction than after.”

“Harthur?” Dorchav asked, recognizing the name from V’kit’no’sat legend as a weapon that could turn even the weakest of warriors into victors…which was not something that was seen as honorable, rather a cheat for the inferior to claim dominance they did not deserve.

“A reminder that we are still the lesser in this war, but also that we now have a chance to win.”

“We have a tactic, not a solution,” Dorchav warned. “It is progress, but not ultimate victory.”

“I know that as well as you do, but we now have the ability to stop the smaller Hadarak without bleeding ourselves so much that victory is almost worthless.”

“If we are able to contain this one, how do you wish us to dispose of it? The Harthur doesn’t have enough engine power to create sufficient collision speeds, and I doubt we can get it far enough away from the stars to strand it in deep space.”

“We will have to build a second carrier vessel to do either.”

“Then we use the fleet?” Dorchav asked, referencing the fact that several pieces of the Harthur could be removed in theory, if the field held sufficient density, and allow the warships to fire their long range weapons in on the Hadarak with impunity, very slowly destroying it from afar in a process that would take weeks, if not months to do sufficient damage from the limited firing lines.

“No,” Mak’to’ran differed. “So long as we possess this one and must endure to test the effectiveness of the Harthur, we will use the time to study the Hadarak as we have never been able to do so before. My primary concern is another Hadarak entering the system. We cannot shield their telepathy to hide this one, nor can we remove it from this system.”

“Shall I move the hidden fleet into blockade position?”

“Do so at your convenience. I fear if one does arrive it will not matter and we will lose this one regardless. If that happens, I want you to save the Harthur by abandoning the capture. It is too valuable to risk losing,” Mak’to’ran said, referencing the immense construction effort that had been undertaken to get it built/tested/refined in such a short amount of time, and all at Mak’to’ran’s insistence, for Itaru had not thought the experiment worth the expenditure of resources.

“Thank you for your wisdom.”

“It is I who owe you a debt for discovering what none of us had even considered. Our blood price has blinded us to other options for fighting the Hadarak.”

“I as well, until Star Force forced me to see. It is a pity we must destroy them.”

“I have not given up hope that they will see reason. When the truce ends, they may have tired of war. They are busy doing many things they could not before. I will offer them the opportunity to continue. They may take it.”

“They are not blinded by arrogance, but they are proud. I do not believe they will accept subservience.”

“I would accept allegiance,” Mak’to’ran admitted, drawing a surprised look from Dorchav. “They are a testament to everything we have done wrong, and they have accomplished more against the Hadarak than we have ever done. I intend to study and learn from them as much as I can, and if at all possible avoid their destruction. They are too valuable for the future.”

“Itaru will not accept their freedom.”

“That is my problem, and their hatred of us is well deserved, but we must preserve their power over the Uriti. Having to destroy it would be a folly beyond measure.”

“Then we must steal it from them. They will not give it freely.”

“I am considering many options, but know that I will not blithely destroy them when the truce is over. There is too much at stake.”

A thought occurred to Dorchav. “The Chixzon developed the Uriti from study of a Hadarak. Could we potentially do the same and learn how to communicate with the Uriti from this one?”

Mak’to’ran’s lips slid apart in a toothy grin. “That is a possibility that has not eluded me. We have more to learn from study than destruction, but first we must know whether or not we can actually contain this one or if it will free itself. That is your first priority. Let me worry about the future, but I do want any and all ideas that you have, no matter how absurd.”

“You will have them.”

“Well done, my friend. Your honor has been returned to you. We must all learn from our mistakes and move forward. Do not look back on your loss of Dimu in any other way from now on. You have given us the Harthur and your legend has now grown. No more will V’kit’no’sat study only those who have flawless records. They will see a true commander who uses defeat to their advantage…and that is a lesson the V’kit’no’sat badly need to learn.”

2

April 2, 4851

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

Aaron-010 stood above the tray of eggs, feeling the tiny Ikrid transmissions coming from each of them like a little beacon detailing their emotions. These eggs had already had their Ikrid blocks genetically inserted into them, as all new eggs were, and in a bit of wonderful irony the tiny minds inside the eggs were adapting to the blocks that prevented them from pulling information from each other the same way that the Twins had.

They’d developed the habit of constantly transmitting in response to others doing the same. Batch after batch of eggs went through the same process, and as soon as one or two started to transmit even the littlest of telepathic bleeps the other nearby eggs would do the same in a chorus of camaraderie, letting each little raptor know that it wasn’t alone.

Aaron was here now because the eggs were about to hatch, and one of the 6 trailblazers on the planet made sure to be present whenever it happened. Right now they were ready, but hadn’t started poking out yet, so the Archon gave them a little telepathic nudge and suddenly 250 eggs held in vertical position by a very low craters in the table began wobbling, with a few punctures popping through.

The others followed, quickly learning how to break their shells from experimentation as well as information flowing from the others. It wasn’t complex, barely simple thoughts, but it was extremely important to these little ones, for it was a wealth of information from their point of view, and they were beginning to taste air for the first time in their brief lives.

Ethan reached down and picked up one of the eggs that had half a head sticking out of it, helping to pull a piece of shell off as he stroked the slimy little raptor, bypassing its Ikrid blocks and easily getting into its mind…with a powerful reaction. It bonded with him immediately and he made sure not to overwhelm it with thought, otherwise he could accidentally damage it.

He helped it get out of its shell then set it down on a nearby table with a high, clear rim that would keep it from falling off once it figured out how to walk…which would only be a few minutes. Aaron picked up another egg then, one by one, made physical contact with each of them as they got out of their organic birth crates and he moved them to the nearby choral.

They weren’t quite chickens, considerably bigger but still very fragile, and when they bumped into each other half the time they’d fall as they learned how to balance on their tiny legs. He spent a few minutes with them, transmitting a few basic emotions before giving them their first instruction. Like clockwork, they all turned around and hobbled over to the small gate now opening in the back of the little pen that led to water and food, each on one of 250 tiny little serving tables.

As instructed, each went to their own table and began to drink, then eat, as Aaron handed over telepathic control to a handler. Her Ikrid was pathetic compared to his, given to her specifically for her job, which had previously been in Axius maturias helping non-Humans learn English and a lot of other things not native to their biology. Telepathy was so useful in that regard that there was a lack of high level trainers with access to it, which was why many maturia across the empire were seeing more and more Protovic being recruited, for their telepathy was not restricted.

This handler wasn’t Protovic, but one of the Humans that had her own reproductive systems disabled and her Ikrid unlocked, and Aaron knew that each one of the elite handlers were professionals focused on their job with no ‘social life’ to worry about where Ikrid could cause problems in the possession of unscrupulous people. And here it was essential, for the Raptors were born into generation after generation of telepathically-linked individuals, and denying that along with implementing Ikrid blocks would have been going too far.

Aaron knew they could adapt, but it would be rough on them and that’s not what the 1s wanted. The Raptors’ sense of camaraderie was vitally important, given the fact these were not going to be treated as civilians unless they opted out. These were little Arc Knights in development, and what they would end up being down the road was still unknown, but that basic template is what they were starting with. The eldest of the hatchlings were only up to knee height now, but their training was already proceeding in a sloppy manner as Aaron and the others learned what the Raptors could or couldn’t do.

What they could do was run, with Scionate-like speed. Aaron could still outrun them for now, but once they got full grown he wouldn’t be able to, and even this newly hatched batch was showing physical skills far beyond what a Human infant could ever be expected to. The superiority of the Raptors was evident even at this early age, but the trailblazer knew it was only a head start, not a guarantee of success. If life was a marathon, Humans got to start at the 1-mile mark while the Raptors got to start at mile 3. That was no guarantee that they’d run faster over the long run, but in terms of numbers across a huge civilization, that much of a head start was mind boggling, making it clear why the V’kit’no’sat empire had such strength even when they didn’t try that hard.

That said, Aaron knew several Mavericks coming from races that didn’t have their advantages and had to start back at mile 0. They’d had to come much further than the others, but the individual person inside the body had made up the gap, just as the trailblazers had. Would any of these little hatchlings ever catch up to them? Unlikely, but if they did they wouldn’t have as large of a gap to cross as others would.

Outstanding individuals could overcome any gap. Aaron had learned that over the course of his life, and if there were biological blocks, well, Star Force could take care of those now, freeing up a path for everyone even if their base biology prevented it. The Szisson were the most glaring example of that, having been one of the smallest Nexus races to join Star Force. They were an avian, but insect-like race with a lifespan of only 3 years. When they entered the fourth phase of their development their digestive systems literally shut down, allowing them only to survive on fat reserves for a period of 2 weeks…but during those two weeks their 4th form was highly superior to the others, physically speaking, making them very deadly in combat up until they just keeled over and died from starvation.

That was biology that the individual could not overcome, and Aaron hated the idea of a no-win scenario. If he had been born into a Szisson body he would have died no matter how hard he trained, for the ‘game’ was rigged. Star Force hated rigged games and had reworked the 4th phase of Szisson development so that they could actually eat, and now their lifespan was technically unlimited, though most didn’t make it past 5 years. Aaron knew of two that were now over 400, and both Mavericks, but they had a very hard time maintaining self-sufficiency without heavy training. Fortunately heavy training was an easy day for Mavericks, so they had a path forward, but it was a very hard path.

The Raptor path was so easy in comparison it almost seemed unfair, but each Raptor still had to earn their advancement. Strength didn’t come naturally, nor did self-sufficiency unless you were a Hadarak. Laziness was still a threat, but a minor one for a race as advanced as the Raptors. The group telepathic bond would virtually eliminate that so long as the majority of the Raptors were hard working, and having handlers that were telepathic who could set an example was critical, with Director Davis currently working on recruiting more for Ikrid upgrades from across the empire in preparation for the population spike that would be forthcoming when they released the Raptors from their population controls.

They couldn’t do that until they had the necessary infrastructure in place, and even today Aaron had many more batches of eggs to welcome into the galaxy before he began his own morning workouts.

Zak-015 would be here shortly after he left, so that hatchings could occur every few hours. The 1s had made it a priority to personally imprint on these Raptors before anyone else did, and it was already showing in the older ones, for they all had sporadic contact with the trailblazers, and each time they did they regarded them as the pack leaders above and beyond the handlers and trainers they spent most of their time with.

Aaron would be with them later in the day for about an hour, but after he got through his morning workouts he would be heading over to the other side of the planet where the converted Raptor adults were going through much harder training and the 1s were figuring out how to make use of their various skills, as well as identifying their weaknesses.

Number one weakness was their arms, which had little reach and less strength than a Human’s, but their tail power more than made up for it. It took longer to wind up, but if they landed a tail hit it would literally throw Aaron across the sparring ring, given the amount of mass and force involved.

But if he stayed in their face he had an advantage, and some of the Calavari trainers they brought in were proving to be a nightmare for the Raptors, for if they got within grapple range they’d lock on with one arm and prevent the spinning that a tail strike required…then they had 3 other arms to beat them senseless with. A weakness they had against Zen’zat was made all the more obvious against the Calavari, and Aaron was working with them to develop techniques to combat the four-armed monsters prior to getting new psionics that would help greatly in that department.

But most of the time the Raptors were being sent through challenge courses the likes of which Aaron had never seen before. Because of their speed, they had to be large ones similar to what the Scionate used, but add in their psionics and the courses were literally monsters. Aaron had been able to beat them, mostly, save for where leg speed was involved. Half the time his superior Human speed could match him evenly with a slower Raptor, but the requirements for the better ones he simply couldn’t match.

That would have been annoying if not for having encountered this before. Ikrotor were one of the first giant races Star Force had encountered, and they’d fully joined Star Force after the move out of the ADZ was made. They were so big and strong that Aaron couldn’t beat some of their basic challenges, and the Ikrotor’s tree-like proportions made it clear that he never would be able to match their muscle strength.

That was fine, and if he needed to take down an Ikrotor he could, but through other means, and during the fighting against the V’kit’no’sat in mech combat the Ikrotor had proved very effective once encased in battle armor…which made them look like mechs, but they weren’t. There was an advantage and disadvantage in that, and versus an Era’tran they didn’t stand a chance, but they had taught Aaron a lot about the limitations of one’s body. He knew he couldn’t solo many of the V’kit’no’sat races, for they were just too big and powerful, and while that annoyed him to a point he realized that what he couldn’t do individually he could do in a mech, or with a team. Ultimately the fight was Star Force versus the galaxy, and in that fight he saw no limitations.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep pressing his personal skills, and the extra Ikrid tissue he’d received after sacrificing his Ensek was allowing him to reach all time high training scores in that discipline, but he knew he’d hit the wall again eventually. His skull only had so much room in it, and if he was going to kick the crap out of his advanced enemies he was going to have to do it with guile and teamwork…which meant gaining more allies and helping them learn to kick ass using their race’s strengths, while also helping them armor over their weaknesses.

And the Raptors were going to add a lot to Star Force, Aaron could see that already, most notably their eagerness for combat. The training they favored the most was against the trailblazers, with the Raptors trying over and over again to defeat them, throwing more individuals together into a team to take down one of them…which also allowed the trailblazers to get a type of training in they’d never had before. It was a win/win situation, and the craving for challenge is something they were showing in greater group amounts than anyone in Star Force other than the Archons.

The Raptors were relentless, and with some help the 1s were going to shape what the V’kit’no’sat had turned into cruelty into an asset for the lightside. Already many of the adults were learning, and learning fast, but it was going to take time to undo millennia-long established habits, and what one did in training and what one did in the field were not always the same, but progress was being made…in droves.

And through it all Aaron was learning more about the V’kit’no’sat than the pyramid files had contained, particularly how they had suppressed the Rit’ko’sor. Not by asking questions, but in seeing how they responded to various things. The Raptors were genuinely surprised by how much knowledge the 1s shared with them, and with how the Archons would pull back during combat rather than injure their opponents. Aaron got the feeling that the V’kit’no’sat viewed injuries as a learning experience, or perhaps a punishment for inferiority, and he suspected that might be why some Zen’zat didn’t advance as rapidly as the Archons had. If you were constantly getting injured your improvement rate would tank like crazy.

The more Aaron opened up with the Raptors, both in knowledge and in not holding back his skills in combat, the more the Raptors responded in kind. It was like they’d never operated as a true team, always having to look over their shoulder for some kind of betrayal. Maybe that was just how they interacted with other races, but that hesitance was melting away as a mutual respect was formed.

It was almost as if the Raptors had expected Star Force to be better than the V’kit’no’sat, but not the real deal. Now that they were realizing that it was the real deal, their enthusiasm level was through the roof and they were relentless in their training in a way he’d never seen before in others. They needed no prodding, and they were already the most elite group of non-Archons he’d ever encountered.

Then again they were thousands of years old, some more than a million, and that was a dynamic that Star Force had not yet experienced…yet another reason why the inclusion of the Raptors was going to be a major change. Aaron and the 1s were actually younger than those they were training, which was a refreshing irony.

As he did every day, at the end of training he headed straight back to his quarters to eat and sleep and then get back into the heavily packed two day grind, for he only needed to sleep every other day with the non-training hatchling duties included, but before he slept he always went through the trailblazer message board, keeping up with what everyone else was doing across Star Force territory.

There wasn’t much being updated on a daily basis, so it didn’t take him long to get to bed, but today there was an update from Greg-073 titled ‘About Damn time.’

When Aaron opened it up he saw a few other similar exclamations from those trailblazers who had received the message board update before him, days ago due to the relay lag, and he shared their sentiments. Project Lee Sin was finally active in the Savoria System, and had successfully detected every cloaked ship Star Force sent through it.

Project Lee Sin was Tennisonne’s ghostbane sensor incarnated into a massive detection grid focused around a star. There was a weakness in that, for a ship could slow jump and brake far away from the star, but the bulk of all traffic would come within range of the ghostbane pings that were now going out at a rate of one every 32 seconds.

That was quick enough to detect a ship moving through, even if not to track it all that well. There was a lot of prototyping refinement to do, but at least Star Force had a functioning system rather than a hope for one, and he saw that three more additions were scheduled for construction in major systems after a few necessary tweaks were made in Savoria.

So far no V’kit’no’sat ships had been spotted in Star Force territory, or the Devastation Zone for that matter. Aaron didn’t know if that meant they weren’t here snooping around or were just so good at evading detection that they were and hadn’t yet been noticed.

Well, now Star Force had a way of finding out. It would take more than a century to get such systems established in the majority of Star Force systems, let alone the uninhabited ones, but every year that passed would see more and more detection coverage.

The days of the V’kit’no’sat, and others, sneaking around inside Star Force territory were soon to be over, and it was about damn time, as Greg had so eloquently said.

3

December 22, 4851

Ittini System (Preema territory)

Ataercy

Kara-317 stepped out of the dropship onto the open air plaza that had an energy shield covering it and containing the oxygen atmosphere that Humans and most races in the galaxy needed to breathe, but not so for the Preema. The atmosphere outside the shield had a black tint to it and was a mix of various hazardous substances that the Preema had to terraform into most of their planets.

Kara’s Archon armor that she wore would have sustained herself in it, as would the Preema’s armor in theirs, but using the atmospheric bubble to allow each in their own native environment was much more diplomatic, and it was in fact the Preema that had requested Star Force’s visit, with them going to fairly elaborate lengths to welcome the Clan Ghostblade fleet that Davis had sent out to negotiate with them.

It wasn’t all of Kara’s fleet, only 17 Warship-class jumpships plus her command ship, with the rest spread out beyond Star Force territory doing what they did best, but she’d made 4 other visits to races far beyond their borders who had taken significant interest since word of the V’kit’no’sat truce had spread to their worlds. Star Force was now the dominant player in this chunk of the galaxy, even more so than The Nexus, and a lot of races were wanting to at least make formal introductions.

The Preema were not, for they already had a limited relationship with Star Force, so their request for a meeting was deemed as a higher level request warranting Kara’s presence…otherwise they would have politely said to make inquiries through existing Babylon stations like everyone else.

Kara walked out alone, sampling the air, then caused her Archon armor helmet to retract so her purple/white hair flowed freely around her head, but didn’t quite come down long enough to touch her shoulders. There was no wind in the pocket of oxygen, and Kara was feeling a bit of a buzz because the Preema actually had the concentration at 50% rather than the normal 20-30% Star Force used in the otherwise nitrogen air. At least the Preema hadn’t put it at 100%, otherwise she would have kept her helmet on and let it filter the concentration down.

She wasn’t wearing her Zen’zat armor, for her jewel was tucked into her arm in passive mode. If she was going into combat she would have, but no point in flashing it around for others to see. Someone might recognize the Zak’de’ron design, and she didn’t want to potentially out their existence, though they had to have known it would happen eventually. Why they’d given it to her then she didn’t know, but she had a feeling they might have been sending a message to the V’kit’no’sat in a very limited, almost plausibly deniable fashion, when they eventually conquered Star Force.

That hadn’t happened, so she didn’t know what their plans were, but she was going to do them the courtesy of keeping it hidden today, and besides, it was better to be negotiating as Star Force’s representative in what was now their signature armor. The shiny plates that looked solid were not, now with micro-lines that would bend where needed to increase flexibility without having plates that slid over one another. The plates still existed, hard and unmoving, but their connections now flowed rather than overlapped, thanks to armor advancements that now put them on par with V’kit’no’sat armor technology, though with significantly different designs.

When Kara got to the center of the atmospheric bubble three Preema walked through the boundary, coming out of their air and into hers. She’d expected them to stay on the other side and speak through the barrier, but apparently not. They weren’t wearing armor either, just a little mask barely visible, similar to what their former representative had worn when they were coordinating the removal of the Preema Uriti so long ago. They hadn’t wanted to wear combat armor onboard Star Force ships…and hadn’t been allowed to either, per security rules…and it seemed they were extending that same courtesy here on their own world.

Their bodies glowed white, standing in stark contrast to the slightly dark ‘smog’ of the air beyond the shield, and the large, griffin-like aliens stared down at her from 6 green eyes each, making them a formidable and intimidating presence to most races in the galaxy…but not to Archons who could reach into their minds and freeze their bodies in an instant. The armor of those outside the atmospheric pocket were shielded from her telepathy, but those that had come inside were not.

The Preema themselves were telepathic, so they understood the threats involved, but theirs was somewhat on the level of the Protovic, lacking the raw override power of Ikrid. Kara knew that they knew of her abilities, so them coming here unshielded was another gesture of trust…as well as suggesting they wanted something badly from Star Force, yet not badly enough to come and talk to them in person.

“Why did you request we come here?” Kara asked bluntly, with translation equipment attached to the Preemas’ heads causing them to respond in English. That was an upgrade, for they weren’t vocally speaking their native language, and she guessed it was some sort of telepathic translator that kept their own words from overlapping with the translation.

“We do not want to draw unwanted attention,” the Preema admitted. “The V’kit’no’sat will be back after the truce, and we do not want to too closely associate with you, for we do not want to draw their wrath. We would greatly prefer that you won your war against them, but we feel this is unlikely.”

“So you’re not offering to help?”

“We are not. We cannot and hope to survive. We have to remain neutral.”

“Understood. What did you want to discuss?”

“We need to establish our relationship,” another of the Preema answered. “We cannot fight with you, but we are not your enemy and will not pretend to be so. We would like to sign a non-aggression pact detailing our association for others to see.”

“For what purpose?”

“You are expanding your borders greatly. There are those races in your eventual path that question their safety.”

“We are expanding into the remnants of abandoned Nexus territories. I thought that was obvious?”

“You are conquering everything in your path, Nexus or not, and that leads others to worry. They know you are born of V’kit’no’sat heritage and they worry that your ultimate intentions will mirror theirs.”

“Even though we’re about to be destroyed?”

“You can do great damage before then,” the third Preema noted.

“Are you worried about us attacking you?”

“No, we are not. We are seeking to insulate ourselves from V’kit’no’sat backlash while helping you with diplomatic stability.”

“How so?”

“If we firmly establish Preema territory as safe from Star Force expansion, we anticipate others will seek you out for similar assurances. V’kit’no’sat do not make such deals, they simply go where they want and do what they want. You have inherited that reputation, deservedly or not. We can help counter that appearance by signing an agreement the V’kit’no’sat would never entertain.”

Kara frowned. “I thought our reputation would speak for itself by now.”

“To those with personal experience, perhaps, but those far from your current borders know little but rumor. Three facts reach them…you have a temporary truce with the V’kit’no’sat. You have their power and heritage. And you are expanding rimward by leaps and bounds. With only that information, what would you conclude were you not of Star Force?”

“I see your point. How far away does this concern reach?”

“Well beyond The Nexus’s former territory. There is talk of forming alliances against you to stop your advance. Some of this talk is out of ignorance, others from real threats. We believe we can help stop the ignorant from attacking you out of fear by establishing a precedent that others can follow.”

“Your point is noted, however, we do not tolerate bad behavior because of a line on a map or an agreement made. The V’kit’no’sat offered us a deal as well, and we turned it down. We will fight anyone who deserves it, Preema included, if warranted. We will not let predation occur when we can stop it, and any such non-aggression pact would have to stipulate that.”

“What deal did they offer you?”

“Limited independence if we rejoined their empire.”

“And you rejected the offer?” the Preema asked, aghast.

“Of course we did.”

“They gave you a chance to live and you spurned it?” another said.

“They are our enemy, and we would rather die fighting than become the enemy.”

“We have never known the V’kit’no’sat to offer any enemy such accommodations,” the third said, his emotions more stable than the disbelief Kara was sensing in the others. “They must truly fear you.”

“They want the Uriti,” Kara said simply. “If they kill us, they can’t gain control over them.”

“Interesting. They will compromise their protocol in order to seek greater power. That is not a part of their psyche that we were aware of.”

“Because we have known of no greater power,” another Preema amended.

“Their first priority appears to be the Hadarak,” Kara continued. “They see the Uriti as a way to fight them, so they’re willing to make compromises, because compared to the Hadarak, Star Force is relatively unimportant.”

“Do the V’kit’no’sat actually think they can destroy the Hadarak?”

“That is their stated ultimate goal.”

“Then they are fools. No one can hope to do more than contain them in the Core.”

Kara smiled. “They’re still trying, and I don’t think their ego will accept anything else.”

“Is there a way for them to obtain the Chixzon knowledge you acquired?”

“Not from us, no.”

“But from another source?”

“A very remote possibility. In fact, I’d probably feel safe saying no. I just don’t like to rule out the implausible. I’ve been on the receiving end of it a few times,” she said, personally referencing the jewel on her wrist, though the Preema had no knowledge of it. “What else did you want us here for?”

“A sensitive matter. One that will draw the V’kit’no’sat wrath if they discover it.”

“Go on.”

“We have harbored fugitives from them for a very long time. They have not discovered them, and we have relocated many to the far Rim. Others have stayed within our borders, for they had nowhere to go and did not have the ability to rebuild in any sufficient manner. We still have remnants of those races under our care, and so long as we do so we hold a potential reason for the V’kit’no’sat to take interest in us. We would like to remove this liability.”

“By sending them to us?”

“Some are already trying to leave to join you, and we do not wish to hold them prisoner. They see hope where previously there was none.”

“And the ones that are not trying to leave?”

“We have sheltered them long enough. We would like you to take all of them into your Beacon and Axius factions, as you are doing for many other races. Under your care and guidance, we believe many of these races would add considerable power to your empire, for they were all formidable opponents that the V’kit’no’sat defeated, and an echo of that power remains.”

“We have more refugees than we can handle already and are scrambling to assimilate them all. Why would we take on more that you are already caring for?”

“It is part of a package deal we seek to negotiate with you.”

“What parts do you think we would like, because that sounds like us taking a burden off of you?”

“We cannot fight against the V’kit’no’sat through conventional means, but we have defied them and survived because we are beyond their borders. This allows us some flexibility, but we cannot go too far without drawing their attention. We seek to offload the refuges that we have sheltered because no one else would, but now you exist and any such refugees will seek you out, not us, because you are the visible opponent to the V’kit’no’sat. This would aid us greatly, but as you know such races incorporated into your empire, over time, strengthen you. They do not strengthen the Preema. Our strength comes from purity, and our wards are a burden.”

“I’m waiting for the part where this is mutually beneficial to us prior to the end of the truce…”

“We also wish for you to give us the necessary knowledge to engineer an immunity to the V’kit’no’sat telepathy.”

Kara raised her eyebrows. “Oh you do, do you?”

“In exchange we can offer many things, but given the distance between our realms supply assistance for your war is not logistically feasible, plus it would leave a connection that the V’kit’no’sat could backtrack. Thus we are offering that which is small, rare, and can be transported and transferred quietly.”

“Solari?”

“Yes, but much more than that, depending on your needs. We can also produce whatever technology you wish to share with us, and save you the expense of doing so yourself.”

“Specifically what are you referring to?”

“There are many options, which is why we needed you here to discuss and negotiate, but we have been told you possess the technology of the V’kit’no’sat, but you do not produce their highest models, which they refer to as Yeg’gor and Tar’vem’jic. Is this because of the manufacturing process?”

“Partly. They’re also not that effective in a war of attrition.”

“While you fight a war of attrition, the Preema have the time and resources to develop these technologies and anything else you wish. We can establish a secret trading relationship underneath our public one that will yield mutually beneficial results.”

“You assume too much. Giving you that level of technology would be a security breach. Our relationship may be amicable, but you are not a close ally…and even a close ally we would not trust with that level of technology.”

“What if we allowed some of your personnel to guide and operate our manufacturing facilities? You could keep your secrets while utilizing our industrial assets outside your warzone.”

“Which you could easily steal at your convenience. Again, trust takes time and experience. We are mostly strangers.”

“Strangers who gave you our Uriti.”

“That was for your benefit more than ours,” Kara reminded them. “Outside our control the Uriti are a menace you were glad to rid yourselves of. But that aside, why do you wish for telepathic immunity if you are not going to fight the V’kit’no’sat?”

“We cannot guarantee that one day they will not seek to dominate the entire galaxy, and we do not like harboring this glaring weakness. We cannot study it because we do not possess your Ikrid to test against, so we cannot develop even a rudimentary block of our own. We do not even know how you are capable of taking control of another mind so completely.”

“You are asking much of us while offering little in return. It is the kind of deal that assumes our eventual destruction, leaving you in a very advantageous place.”

The Preema in the center spread its huge wings wide, draping them in a way that was conciliatory in their culture, and fortunately Kara caught that sentiment telepathically, for the basic look of it was more intimidating than anything.

“We are open to negotiations. What can we give you of equal value to what we request?”

Kara sighed. “If you don’t want to fight, then that’s a difficult question. An Ikrid block is defensive, so there’s a small possibility that we could come to an agreement there. Tar’vem’jic are out of the question. Yeg’gor…”

“What if we were completely out of the manufacturing and simply hosted a planet of yours within our borders, to which we supply all the constituent resources required. You simply handle the assembly, so your secrets you would keep.”

“Some of the requirements for those technologies are probably beyond your ability to produce.”

“Then teach us what we need to know. If there are more rare resources beyond Solari, we will collect them for you once we know what they are.”

“I bet you’d like to know what they are,” Kara scoffed. “What I hear from you is that you think we’re going to be destroyed in a few hundred years and you’d like to get what benefit you can from us before we’re wiped out.”

“If doing so increases your chances of survival, would it not be worth entertaining a discussion?”

“You’d have to offer a shitload of resources for us to even consider that.”

“How many is a ‘shitload’?” the Preema asked, with Kara sensing that the word hadn’t translated.

“An exuberant amount.”

“We are not currently at war, and we have the production capability to produce your shitload if needed. You have technological and biological knowledge that is valuable for us. If we can attain something that we would not otherwise have for millennia of research, and perhaps not even then, the amount of resources is inconsequential in comparison. State your requirements and we will most likely be able to meet them.”

“There’s also the possibility that you could misuse what we give you. We don’t like making potential enemies stronger.”

“We have never been your enemy.”

“We have to worry about such things even with our allies, and you’re not quite on that level.”

“Is there no arrangement that can be reached? Even if you tailored it yourself?”

“Your territory is so far away from ours that it would have to be a damn good deal for us to even consider it.”

“And what if we were to reduce that distance?”

“How…” Kara said, seeing the only real possibility a split second later. “You want to build Grid Points?”

“Star Force has never built one, for lack of resources, we assume?”

“We can, but we have more pressing needs for the materials.”

“We have the luxury of such projects where you do not. If we were to construct Grid Points for your use, would that be of value to you?”

Kara didn’t hold back, diving into his mind and easily pushing past his rudimentary defenses…which he had expected, for they truly wanted to establish a deal and wearing telepathic-blocking armor would have eliminated that point.

“You want to influence this quarter of the galactic rim, but without expanding your own borders. And to do that you need us, or the ability to assemble alliances after our fall.”

“We would prefer you still existed, but we are making contingencies for both possibilities, as you would do in our place. We helped you fight the Li’vorkrachnika because we know that threats growing afar will eventually reach our borders, and it is best to deal with them when they are small. If we wait until they are so large to dare challenge us, we will be at a disadvantage. Now that you are successfully challenging the V’kit’no’sat the galaxy is in flux. We must take a more active role, even if from a neutral position, to help shape the future no matter what the outcome of your war may be. Linking into The Nexus Grid Point system would greatly enhance our reach, and since you control a piece of it we can negotiate with you rather than them.”

“We’d still need to run it by them, but not for the sake of compensation,” Kara said amicably, which even with her Ikrid block the Preema were able to pick up from her surface emotions.

“Then we have the ability to be mutually beneficial?”

“Potentially,” Kara said neutrally. “You are honest, but if your leaders are not and have deceived you there could be complications.”

“I can summon them here if you wish.”

“They won’t let me scan them,” she pointed out. “You were chosen because you don’t hold too many secrets.”

“And if they were willing?”

“Your top tier, not subordinates?”

“If they were, and you could confirm their earnestness, would Star Force be open to striking a wide-spanning deal?”

Kara eyed him carefully, searching his mind for a few classic traps but finding none of them. If the Preema were trying to trick Star Force, they’d succeeded in tricking their ambassador as well.

“How fast can you get them here?”

4

April 8, 4852

Unnamed System (between Preema and Star Force territory)

Stellar Orbit

Kara’s small fleet came out of its jump into one of the many systems they had to pass through to get to Preema territory. This one had no inhabitants, and no name, merely a catalog number for the star and the 3 gas giants that would probably be enticing to the Hycre, but this was too far away from Star Force territory where they operated to even consider colonization. Most races couldn’t use gas giants, so it wasn’t surprising these weren’t claimed, though there were a lot of habitable planets in other systems she was passing through that were also devoid of technological civilizations.

Kara wasn’t on the bridge, for jumping in and out of a system didn’t require her attention. She spent most of her travel time in the Archon sanctum, but not today. She’d already gone through some light workouts, but now she was floating in her quarters with the artificial gravity turned off, using her bioshields to reach out to the walls and touch them to adjust her position. Her Lachka could touch the walls, but she couldn’t use it to push herself away, for the energy field didn’t work like that, but her Nakane worked just fine to keep her in the center of the dark room, save for a few pinpricks of light from glowing buttons on the comm terminal.

Her eyes were closed, her thoughts turned inward as she was searching for something elusive. Ever since she’d had the Vorch’nas bonded to her arm her mind had possessed hidden information that she’d been required to dig out over the centuries, but in those efforts she also realized there was a lot more to her biological mind to discover as well. She’d been disappointed that her dream state wasn’t so revealing, for she hadn’t been able to personally access any of the tier 4 psionics that Star Force could now activate with a little trip to a secure medical station. Sharing wasn’t necessary anymore, though padawans still received psionics from their master in that manner, and always would.

Kara’s mind while dreaming was too undisciplined, which was why this type of introspection required a higher waking state. Meditation, for all of the myths surrounding it, was nothing more than altering ones current mode. Normally, when around other people and surrounding events, one would put up defenses similar to how an eye would iris almost closed in bright light. It was a necessary adaptation, but if one wanted to see in dim light it took time for the eye to adjust and open up. That was dangerous in bright light, and the same was true about certain mental modes.

Meditation required a let down of certain defenses, which was why it needed to be done in a secure location. Some meditation could happen in noisy places, but the deepest required quiet and seclusion…and in this case, lack of gravity and light. The less her body had to defend/adapt against the more she could loosen up, which wasn’t always a good thing. There were other types of meditation that happened during action, but right now she was going about this in a passive state.

What she was looking for she didn’t know. It was just a persistent nagging that there was something there but out of reach. Was it something from her Vorch’nas or something inherent to her? There was no way to tell, but Kara felt it was worth taking time to track down.

Clearing her mind was almost impossible for an Archon. She could do it, forcibly, but only for short periods of time. Kara always had to focus on something. Her breathing, heartbeat, the tick of a metronome. She just wasn’t geared to shut down completely, which was an essential trait in an Archon, so she had to work herself into a very low active state.

During that state her mind would wander, with her partially directing it, and the more she had something to chew on the more relaxed she would get. Already she’d worked through the deal with the Preema from multiple angles, looking for advantages and disadvantages, but nothing knew had occurred to her that hadn’t previously when she’d spent more than a month negotiating it. Davis still had to confirm it, and she was heading to meet him directly once she got back to Star Force territory, but that didn’t stop her mind from running through it again and again with minor variations.

What Kara was looking for had a very distinct feeling, and every now and then she’d encounter it. To her it was like a glow around a particular thought, telling her it was important and she needed to follow it. Often that glow would disappear soon thereafter, leaving her to chase a phantom…but that phantom usually led her to something valuable.

Though it was impossible, Kara had also been able to see the future multiple times. She couldn’t totally explain it, but her working theory was that she was able to feel out future versions of herself before they happened. That wasn’t time-based precognition, but it was something other Archons had been able to sense before regarding physical breakthroughs. Some could sense a new ability level before it happened, as if their bodies had the blueprints for it and were reviewing them before they actually got built.

That’s what Kara was feeling now, and it focused on speed, but it was indistinct. She could feel herself moving through a fluid medium with grace and ease…then something so loud hit her that she physically jerked, sending her into a light spin in the center of her room as her eyes snapped open along with the banging inside her head.

It took a moment, then she realized it wasn’t loud. She’d just been so scaled down it was like wide eyes in the dark suddenly being hit with a floodlight. Kara fought to adjust quickly, then realized the pinging was coming from the part of her mind connected to her Vorch’nas…along with a red glow from the normally clear jewel.

Kara found the ping in her mind and pressed back, having it respond with an information flow…a simple message with coordinates. She was supposed to come to the 2nd planet in the system.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, knowing that meant the Zak’de’ron had to be in this system, and probably close by, to send her a signal like that.

Kara telekinetically toggled the wall-mounted controls and turned the lights and gravity back on, dropping gracefully to the floor in a crouch before springing up and heading for the door in her bare feet and pajama-like casual clothing as she headed for the bridge. Halfway there she made telepathic contact with Captain Zeddi, ordering him to do a full sensor sweep of the immediate area.

When she got to the bridge the report was negative, drawing a frown from her. She’d hoped to get a least a small hit on a Zak’de’ron ship, for Star Force’s technology was still creeping forward now that they’d matched almost everything in the original pyramid database, but she wasn’t too surprised not to pick up so much as a fist-sized rock out there. Maybe when they got a ghostbane sensor system working for ships that would change, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t.

“Is there a problem?” the Kiritas Captain asked as Kara walked across the bridge with the pads of her feet making an odd patting sound compared to the shoe clicks from everyone else.

Kara held up her arm, with the dull red glow of her jewel becoming obvious. “I’ve been summoned. We need to go to the second planet.”

“Summoned by who?”

“Star Force didn’t make this,” she said, tapping on the jewel that virtually everyone in Clan Ghostblade knew about, though they didn’t know of its origins. “It was a gift from a race not to be mentioned, and I think they’re out there now. Either they want to chat or there’s something at the planet they want us to see.”

“We’re not allowed to know?” the Captain asked, not offended, but needing to know the situation.

“The less people that know the better, and if they hold to pattern they may want to come onboard. We’ve never been able to penetrate their cloaking devices, and apparently our sensors aren’t advanced enough yet. I was hoping they were, but…meh.”

The Captain exchanged a few glances with his bridge crew, then turned back to face their Clan leader. “Do we need to clear the bridge?”

“No. Just take us to the second planet. They’ll probably stay hidden, but who knows. This hasn’t happened to me before.”

“Can I assume they’re more advanced than us?”

“Very much so,” Kara said with a hint of defeat.

“Are you in their service?”

Kara shook her head firmly. “I’m not compromised, Captain, and this little baby has been very useful. I just didn’t know it also acted like a pager.”

“If they’re in the system, can’t you receive a full message?”

“Who knows. I’m in unknown territory here.”

“Just this ship?”

“No, we’re all going. I have no idea what’s out there.”

Kara’s 18 ships redirected away from the star and made a microjump out to the 2nd planet, a huge grey/orange gas giant that was so big it was almost a star. In fact there was considerable heat emanating from it, but the outer layers were still gas and not plasma, and not a single moon was present…nor any ships, and Kara had pulled a complete lap around the gas giant in the Yi looking for anything out of the ordinary.

We need to speak with you, a voice suddenly said into her mind, and this was definitely telepathy, meaning they were close by. A private meeting in your hangar bay.

“Captain. Clear a hangar bay of all personnel and deactivate the surveillance systems. They’re coming onboard and apparently they’re very shy. I’ll be meeting with them in private.”

“As you wish, but we’re not picking up any vessels or communications signals.”

“Telepathy, Captain. They’re very close by.”

“We’re not picking up any telepathic signals either.”

“If they transmitting broadly you’d all hear it in your heads. When a direct link is used the sensors won’t register it. It’s a tight beam.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said warily.

“I’m not worried, Captain,” she said, walking off the bridge with her soft, squishy footfalls. “In fact, I get the feeling we’re going to get some badly needed intel.”

“Hangar 8,” he said before she walked out the door, then he turned to the naval officer at the sensor paddock that could hold 6 people, but right now she was the only one manning the controls due to the lack of a combat situation.

“Anything?” the Kiritas asked the Human.

She shook her head. “Not so much as a wrinkle. If they’re there, they’ve got a perfect cloak.”

“Telepathic range is damn limited. Only a few miles. And you say we can’t detect a thing?”

“Nothing yet.”

The Captain whistled. “Friends in high places, I hope.”

“The Knights of Quenar?” another crewer wondered.

“You’ve heard of them. Whoever this is, Kara doesn’t want us to know their name. And as far as I know, she’s had that jewel on her arm most of her life. This must be a very old acquaintance.”

“And?”

“And it’s her play. Keep scanning constantly with conventionals. If we can pick up anything, I want it.”

“What about the disposables?”

“Not unless we’re shooting or Kara orders it. We need a blip with conventionals if we have any hope of modifying them. Try every variation in the book, but give me something. We don’t have opportunities like this very often.”

5

Kara walked into the hangar bay in her bare feet, not bothering to put on a uniform as she wanted to be in the hangar when the Zak’de’ron arrived. She succeeded in getting there just ahead of a slight shimmer passing through the atmospheric containment field. Kara watched closely as it came further inside, barely able to pick up any visual clue at all if she didn’t know what to look for. Their cloaking technology, even on their smallest transports, was damn near perfect, but Star Force had come up with ways to detect cloaked ships if necessary, though the range was extremely limited.

It involved creating either a mist field or a spray of energized particles that literally transmitted a beacon from their position. If they hit something invisible you could see their pattern redirect, but the further you got away from the ship the more volume they had to cover, making them almost useless at medium range. Right now, if she ordered the bridge to do so, they could probably pick up the Zak’de’ron ship’s location if it was nearby, though Kara had a feeling it would be further off.

She also knew that the Zak’de’ron were so strong she wouldn’t be able to defend herself against them very well if they attacked, either herself or her ship, so there was no need grabbing Archon armor, or even shoes for that matter. She had her Vorch’nas she could activate to give her both in a few seconds, but she wasn’t wearing it now. Part of that was respect, the other part cockiness. A fool would think they could stand up to the Zak’de’ron and win, but the wise wouldn’t bother with such defenses after they allowed the Zak’de’ron onboard. If they were truly worried they would have handled this conversation via holo, or not at all.

Kara wasn’t worried about the Zak’de’ron being a threat, and she knew them better than anyone in Star Force, despite having met only one, and once at that. But from the knowledge gained via her Vorch’nas she felt like she’d lived a lifetime with them, and wasn’t phased in the least when the transport appeared in the totally empty hangar. It was a swirl of red and blue, with various components colored fully one or the other and twisted together into a convoluted mass that looked like a bird nest, but without any gaps between the pieces.

Kara knew it was a ‘Shri’kori,’ a small personal transport capable of low speed interstellar jumps, but more often used as a shuttle between planets or for ship to ship transfers. She highly doubted it had flown here on its own, meaning they had a larger ship nearby. Possibly one had been trailing her fleet for some time, otherwise them finding her here would have been incredibly lucky…and she knew it wasn’t. She wondered how much they’d been able to rebuild since the first eggs had hatched, but she doubted this one would tell her.

And there was only one Zak’de’ron inside the Shri’kori, which she could sense immediately as it decloaked and tried to access her mind. It couldn’t, because of the Ikrid block, but it still offered greetings telepathically as it would one of its servants. She wasn’t a Zen’zat, but she’d been given the tool of one and apparently this Zak’de’ron intended to converse with her as such.

A piece of the hull appeared to melt, then a ramp formed from the material and a huge gold Dragon walked out, far larger than the ones Paul had met, and Kara almost gasped. Gold was not a traditional color, but a marking indicating great achievement.

“Are you the one I met previously?” Kara asked, not sure.

“I am not,” the huge Dragon said as it walked up to her and stopped just prior to stepping on and squishing the fragile Human.

“You’re too big to have grown from an egg in such a short amount of time,” Kara pointed out.

“Good. Your memories have integrated well. That will make this easier.”

“Make what easier?” she asked, having to crane her neck back to look up at his car-sized head that was tilted down towards her. Had he wanted to, he could roast her with plasma from two meters away with ease, and instinctively Kara held her bioshields at the ready. She didn’t think she’d need them, but being this close was a bit unnerving…especially considering she alone in Star Force knew how truly powerful the Zak’de’ron were.

“You are doing something extremely dangerous, and I have come to make sure you are fully aware of it.”

“The Rit’ko’sor or the Uriti?”

“I speak of the Rit’ko’sor.”

“Are the V’kit’no’sat going to break the truce over them?”

“No. They already know and there are no plans to strike early. They will honor it, though they are even more bent on your destruction. Defying them is enough to earn you a death mark, but annexing a piece of one of their races is an insult beyond measure. They will not attack early because it is not in their advantage to do so, though many disagree with Mak’to’ran on this.”

“You have access to the Urrtren?”

“Of course, though they are unaware of it.”

“Do you know what happened to the Hadarak we let go?” she asked boldly, not as a servant would, but a lesser equal…respectful, but not suggesting anything was off limits. If this Zak’de’ron didn’t want to tell her something he wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t ask, for you never knew how much information they would feel like sharing.

“They destroyed it. The secret of your Uriti has not reached the other Hadarak.”

“What about couriers?”

“All were destroyed.”

“What if it grew another enroute?”

“It did not. We were there and followed it. No couriers were released prior to the V’kit’no’sat fleet catching up to and destroying it.”

Kara raised an eyebrow. “Why follow it?”

“If the V’kit’no’sat did not destroy it, we would have.”

“Did you see the information we gave to Mak’to’ran?”

“We did, and I have been told to give credit to Star Force for your decision to preserve the Uriti. We would have destroyed them, but your solution has proved the wiser and given us far more information on the Hadarak than we have ever possessed.”

“What’s his name?” Kara asked bluntly. “The one who gave me this,” she said, holding up her forearm with the jewel that had been seared into it.

“That name must not reach the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You’ve already give me technology and knowledge that cannot reach them, knowing that they’d eventually have at least hints of your existence when they saw me in battle. I will not willingly give them his name, but I would like to know who he is, and who you are.”

The Zak’de’ron huffed, with a warm blast of air coming down on Kara’s face that she deftly parried with her bioshields so it didn’t move her hair a twitch.

“You know us well enough, and you are still arrogant. I am not sure if this is wisdom or folly.”

“I know how powerful you are, but we do have a few advantages over you.”

“Convince me, little one.”

“The Uriti’s strength is not ours, only one that we can direct, so I do not count it. I do count how we obtained it, and how we interact with others. You are wise, but only to a point. You live and breathe death in a way that makes you inferior. True superiority is being better, not simply outliving. The last man standing can still be a fool. True superiority is something more. We would rather die doing the right thing than survive by doing the wrong thing. You would not. You see survival as paramount. That is one advantage we have.”

“Your definition of ‘advantage’ is questionable.”

“Advantage two…unless you have surpassed all expectations, we heavily outnumber you at the moment.”

“A temporary advantage, I’ll grant. Continue.”

“Advantage three…experience. Wherever you came from, you did not build the Zak’de’ron, nor did the other. You are the product of a long line. We are the founders, and we have progressed through so many transitions we have gained a wisdom you will never have. The wisdom of growth. You replicate and make minor advancements. Those who built your civilization are gone, and you cannot draw on their wisdom.”

“You have formidable adaptational abilities, though most of your success is due to the knowledge you gained from the V’kit’no’sat and us.”

“Did you expect us to use it so well?”

“No. You have far exceeded expectations.”

“And what are your expectations for our survival after the truce?”

“Minimal. Had the Hadarak been provoked, the attention needed to be applied to them may have spared you, but that is no longer a possibility…nor will we allow you to contact them again. If they are spurred, the galaxy will suffer too great a fate.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Define ‘spurred.’”

“They hold most of their strength in reserve, how much even we do not know. Occasionally some of it comes forth, but we fear the response if they know the Uriti exist.”

“You think they’ll just attack everything?”

“The Hadarak are unfathomable, despite the information you obtained. We cannot accurately predict their actions, but if they surge their attacks even to the level of the past, the V’kit’no’sat will be hard pressed to hold them.”

“Their perimeter is too large?”

“Indeed, though Mak’to’ran has been leading efforts to decrease it.”

“Is that respect I hear?”

“It is frustration. We taught them much, and they have forgotten most of it. Mak’to’ran is beginning to rectify that.”

“Then why not kill him now? Quietly.”

“Because we are not ready to replace them. And without the V’kit’no’sat, the Hadarak will roam unchallenged. We will have our vengeance, but not at the cost of the galaxy.”

“How can you fight a war against them and hold the Hadarak back at the same time?”

“That is our responsibility, not yours. You have to survive before worrying about the Hadarak.”

“Your name?” Kara reiterated.

“I am Tew’chor, and my coloration is not an error.”

Kara frowned, for that was what she had been thinking…then she glanced down at her wrist in horror.

“You can access my mind through the Vorch’nas?”

“Yes,” the Zak’de’ron said with a ping of apology.

“Fuck,” Kara swore with a venom driven by her own incompetence. “I should have taken this thing off long ago.”

“You have the ability to block access,” Tew’chor noted, highlighting in her mind a particular spot that she’d never noticed before. “You did not have it activated.”

Kara felt like an idiot, finding and hitting the mental ‘button’ there and feeling the block slip into place as if it were a little status icon on the HUD of her Archon armor.

“How much did you get?”

“Everything,” the Zak’de’ron said, knowing what her reaction would be even before she shot the floor with her bioplasma, creating a small puff of vaporized material near her bare feet that would have singed them if not for her Rensiek heat shield, though a few melted spots appeared on her pant leg.

“Of all the…” she said, turning around and pacing in a circle as she fully grasped how much vital information she’d let the Zak’de’ron steal from her. The trailblazers had given her access to their message board, so she knew everything they were up to, along with most of what Davis was doing.

“We are not your enemy,” Tew’chor said conciliatorily. “The information will not fall into V’kit’no’sat possession.”

“It wouldn’t be in yours if I wasn’t a fool,” Kara said, facing him again angrily, though most of it was directed at herself.

“It was necessary that I take advantage of your weakness.”

“Why give me this and not tell me how to use it?”

“If you are worthy you will figure it out, and you have, for the most part, but there are elements you have been completely blind to. You seek abstract exploration while ignoring the physical unless it screams at you. The block is a mechanism all of our Zen’zat possessed. They would lower it in our presence out of respect, but you always had the ability to shield your mind. We do not want blind servants, little one. We want those who are capable.”

“Do you consider me your servant?”

“After a fashion, yes, though you do not take orders from us. This we know. However, your objectives mirror our own. That was why Zeno’dor gave you the Vorch’nas.”

“Zeno’dor,” Kara repeated, working it through her mouth as if she should have recognized it, but didn’t. “And you?”

“My path did not come from an egg, but from the body of a Les’i’kron,” he said with disgust. “I was able to partially free my mind from the imprisonment of our bastardized race, and when the other Zak’de’ron discovered this they rescued me and restored me to my birthright. I am far older than you, and my size comes from my previous life…as does my coloration. The process of freeing my mind was not an easy one.”

Kara looked up at him, realizing he was sharing with her things he probably wouldn’t have otherwise, meaning he understood how royally she’d just screwed up and was trying to compensate a bit.

“Are you going to rescue the others?”

“We cannot. They are what they are now. I rescued myself enough to be retrievable. The others are beyond help.”

“Will you kill them?”

“All V’kit’no’sat must be destroyed.”

“And that’s why you’re here,” Kara said, understanding. “We didn’t get your permission to take your Rit’ko’sor.”

“They are no longer ours.”

“Yes they are,” she argued. “You still see them as your responsibility, and that you have to kill them, otherwise they are running around with knowledge and power you gave them, doing things with it you don’t want. Then again, so are we, so why help us?”

“You are not V’kit’no’sat, and it was imperative that we know what you intended to do with the Rit’ko’sor. They are treacherous and pose a great danger to you…but as you have noted, you have a great deal of experience with annexation of hostile races. You have never dealt with anything like the Rit’ko’sor. They are advanced beyond the Zen’zat.”

“We’ve noticed.”

“Not fully, and there is peril in what you plan, but also great opportunity. One that we wish you to succeed in.”

“I thought you wanted them dead?”

“The hatchlings you have are not Rit’ko’sor. They are Raptors, and not under our death mark. Those Rit’ko’sor that have chosen to join you for the sake of their own vengeance against the V’kit’no’sat can never fully be trusted. But if they seek combat to the death, and remain under your command, we are willing to release them from our death mark. We will never forgive them for their betrayal, but they betrayed the other betrayers, and that pleases us to a limited extent. If they wish to continue that futile redemption as part of Star Force, we will relinquish responsibility of them to you.”

“So you kill V’kit’no’sat while we destroy V’kit’no’sat. Notice the difference?”

“I do. Your methods are not our own, but they can be effective,” he said as a piece of one of the rings on his toes broke off and flew into the air in front of Kara, then transformed into another clear jewel that headed for her wrist.

“Whoa there,” she said, telekinetically grabbing and halting its approach. The first time she had no defense against the melding, but she’d come far since then and wasn’t going to let him stick another one on her.

“It is an upgrade to what you currently possess, and with it comes our full knowledge of the Rit’ko’sor…more than you obtained from the V’kit’no’sat. In order to convert your enemy, you must know your enemy, and we know the Rit’ko’sor better than they know themselves, for we were the ones that uplifted and shaped their civilization into an asset. If you wish to do the same, using your methods, you would be wise to study our methods and utilize what of it you desire.”

“Why another Vorch’nas simply for information?”

“It’s not just information. It is an upgrade.”

“I…” she said, about to claim ignorance, but memories started to come forth that she’d never encountered before.

“Your knowledge must be prodded, little one. The same goes for your Vorch’nas. You now have the ability to shield your thoughts from me, and there is no override I possess. You are no longer a security risk.”

“Unless you’re lying.”

“If I am, it is of no relevance, for I have already copied your memories. You have nothing more for me to steal.”

Kara growled, but he had a point. She looked at the floating jewel, now knowing it to be the components for a level 2 Vorch’nas that few Zen’zat had ever earned.

“Do I deserve that, or are you just being generous?”

“Your path is a wayward one, but your deeds warrant it.”

“Very well,” she said, holding up her arm and releasing her Lachka fields. The clear jewel flew up to her left arm and touched beneath the other. Kara felt a burning that she knew was coming, but it passed quickly and the new jewel melded into her existing Vorch’nas…with the new combined version just as clear, but stretching from her wrist all the way up to her elbow.

As it connected she felt a prodding on her mechanical block, which was Tew’chor requesting access. As he had pointed out, she had nothing left to hide, so she relinquished the block and felt a rush of new instructions as he showed her many things, most of which focused on the wealth of Rit’ko’sor knowledge she now had access to.

She’d been expecting notes, but what the Zak’de’ron had given her was essentially a database of everything Rit’ko’sor that contained far more information than she could ever have imagined.

“You see now, Kara?” he asked, finally using her name.

“I do,” she said, light winded from the mental effort.

“If you are to die, we would have you kill as many V’kit’no’sat as possible,” he added. “I personally wish we could strike Itaru when they are busy fighting you, but we are not ready and will not be so within your lifetime. We cannot reveal ourselves until the time is right, and that time will be too late to save you.”

“I understand.”

“No, you do not, and you cannot. I tell you this because you are worthy allies. Inferior, for the most part, but worthy.”

“You see no chance of us surviving?”

“None worth speaking of, unless the V’kit’no’sat have become truly stupid. They cannot ignore you any longer. The Uriti made sure of that, and the Rit’ko’sor have sealed their wrath. I would recommend you expand your far rim operations. If you spread beyond Shangri-La they will never be able to find you all.”

Kara’s gut clenched at the mention of the ultra secret backup system, but something else caught her attention.

“Why didn’t you do the same?”

“We did, but all our colonies were tracked down and destroyed.”

“How?”

“They were prepared before their betrayal with scores of spies watching for our movements. How they accomplished it has eluded us. There is no information on the Urrtren. We should have been able to escape in greater numbers, and did so for a period of time, but ultimately they were all discovered and destroyed. We have looked and found little that remains to explain how they did it.”

“Why didn’t they find the eggs?”

“I do not know.”

“Did they have the ability to track gravity drives previously?”

“No. That discovery is new.”

“How could they follow your cloaked ships?”

“We didn’t have many. We didn’t need them when we were dominant. You have few as well.”

“It rattles you, even though you were not there at the time?”

“We have to be meticulous in our vengeance.”

“Yet you gave them clues to your existence through me. Why?”

“Zeno’dor did more than that. His reasons are his own, though I think it was due to spite. We have had to withhold our rage for so long, it is not a good thing. It is necessary, but it wears on us. Taking a small action of defiance can make a large difference.”

“And you’re taking one now?”

“The V’kit’no’sat believe that Star Force has had a sponsor from within the V’kit’no’sat. That is what fueled their recent civil war. In all that time they never suspected us, because they believe we are dead and the repercussions of them being incorrect are too vast for their egos to contemplate. If they have not made that logical assumption, then they have grown vastly inferior to those that betrayed us.”

“What specifically about a sponsor?”

“You had access to information from the planetary defense station that only the Oso’lon and J’gar could give you. There is a third set of access codes, ours, that were never removed from the system. There were only 3 possibilities and they considered the two, chasing a sponsor from within that did not exist. And to be fair, our ‘sponsorship’ has been very little compared to what they suspect. It is one reason why they have continued to underestimate you. They thought you were receiving outside direction.”

“Are we?”

“Information. What you do with it is up to your unique experience that is greater than ours.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“You have a perverse obsession with that word.”

“Are you so biologically advanced that self-sufficiency isn’t much of an effort?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps we work harder than you as well.”

“There is no doubt of that.”

“Why?”

“We know where our strengths and weaknesses lie, and there is no point in wasting time increasing a small strength when the battle is going to be won or lost in ship combat. Your obsession is a personal crusade and not the best use of your time.”

“We’ve found psionics that the Zen’zat never did.”

“V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat, not ours.”

“Do you have any now?”

“No, and we will not ever again. The V’kit’no’sat must be destroyed in their entirety.”

“But you still incorporate other races, I assume?”

“We do.”

“Then you’re starting over. V’kit’no’sat again, but with corrections the second time?”

“The amount of corrections is so vast it no longer bears comparison, but you are essentially correct.”

“And how do you feel about the Les’i’kron?”

“I regret they cannot be saved, but do not mistake them for Zak’de’ron. They are mindless brutes in comparison.”

“We wouldn’t give up that easily.”

“Mercy is the luxury of the dominant,” Tew’chor said, quoting the Archons. “We are not dominant in numbers, nor are we arrogant enough to believe so. Correcting our mistake is going to take all of our skills and power, and we must do so without unleashing the Hadarak on the galaxy to the extent they once were.”

“You expect they will gain ground again?”

“It is unavoidable. One thing the V’kit’no’sat value more than the Hadarak is us. We will have their full attention and paranoia once we are revealed.”

“All the more reason never to help us.”

“What is done is done, and we are not revealed. Zeno’dor was either wise or reckless, but we are still hidden.”

“Can you hide from gravity drive sensors?” she asked bluntly.

“We can, but we cannot scan at the same time.”

“Can you hide from the Hadarak?”

“No. They sense mass, and we cannot hide that. Our exploration of the Core was never completed due to the density of their minions.”

“How do they stop you if you stay away from the star?”

“Many ships were lost trying, but one made it through. They penetrated deep into the Core, but were hounded constantly. Every time they made a jump the gravity signature increased, like a flash that the Hadarak could see at any range. The ship survived by marooning itself in deep space and waiting them out. It was gone for more than 68 years. When it returned we saw the power they possessed, and knew any further attempts at exploration would fail.”

“What power?”

“Planet-sized Hadarak containing so many minions that ships could not escape them. They fill the volume like a nebula.”

“What about magnetic drives?”

The Zak’de’ron looked at her more closely. “We tried that as well, but mass is still mass. We can only avoid detection by staying far away…too far away for magnetic acceleration.”

“Do you have another method of making jumps?”

“None that work. We cannot get good reconnaissance of the Core.”

“How did you plan on defeating the Hadarak, before the V’kit’no’sat rebelled?”

“We did not know. We still do not know. What we did know was that we could not do so alone.”

“Can’t you reproduce fast enough?”

“Therein lies our disadvantage. We cannot take massive losses and replace them. It is also why we cannot rebuild as fast as we would like.”

“Why not use drone warships?”

“Signal lag.”

“How so?”

“Evading minions requires precision flight that lag reduces, and with sufficiently sized swarms machines cannot accurately predict their movements. We attempted to use drones, but they fell in combat at far higher rates.”

“Then you built them wrong.”

“If you survive your war, we can discuss that matter further, little one…”

6

4 hours later…

“No, no, no,” Kara said, pacing back and forth in front of the Zak’de’ron in her bare feet, leaving tiny sweat prints behind. The incorporation of the new upgrade to her Vorch’nas was having an effect on her body, in addition to the wealth of knowledge now interlinked to her mind, and her internal heat was rising as a side effect. “That doesn’t work.”

“Enlighten me.”

“If you’re going for long term strength you have to cultivate the individual, not the race. Short term you can go with cultural templates. We do with the Paladin. But long term they’re not as effective.”

“You’re used to dealing with races near your own, not those vastly inferior. You keep them as wards, with limited usefulness to your civilization. We have no peers. All races are inferior to us. We cannot groom them as equals. We tried that with the V’kit’no’sat, to uplift them and offer them a path to peerdom, but none of the races succeeded. They advanced, then stabilized at a comfortable level. They did not continue to rise.”

“Yet you admit to not being that training motivated yourself.”

“We are not obsessive about it, but we do what is necessary.”

“And they didn’t?”

“They wished us to give them more, rather than be grateful for the advancement we had bestowed upon them. They did not understand that we could only take them partway. You are learning this now with your myriad of races, many of whom do not wish to improve.”

“Which is why we hunt for the individuals within them that do, separate them from the slackers, then take them as far as they can go without that baggage. If you keep them with their race, the association will hold them back.”

“And if you take out those with the most merit, the race suffers that much more.”

“The individual should not be burdened with subsidizing the slackers.”

“How long do you think you can sustain your current pace?” the Zak’de’ron asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You lose the best of you to war and continue to annex inferior races. Growth is more than just numbers.”

“The wider the field we have, the more individuals of merit we can pluck from it.”

“But the fields have to be managed, and if not sufficiently directed they will take on a direction of their own.”

“If you didn’t have to remain hidden, how would you proceed? If there were no V’kit’no’sat to avenge yourself again?”

“We would be selective. Choose those races that were of merit and slowly groom them, utilizing what abilities they have at the onset, and teaching them to be self-sustaining. Direct them when needed and wait. Advancement takes times, and we will not burden ourselves with direct care of the masses.”

“We do.”

“And if you continue at this pace, they will overwhelm you.”

“We’ve got a handle on it.”

“Not as much as you think.”

“How much of my memories have you processed?”

“All of it.”

“How?”

“Programming helps us sort and catalog. I can review any of it I wish by subject matter.”

“Can you do that without a Vorch’nas?”

“It is a slower process with Ikrid, but yes. I can copy and record for later analysis.”

“Then tell me your assessment of Ghostblade.”

Tew’chor hesitated for a moment, and Kara sensed he was pulling up her stolen memories on her Clan for further review.

“You do not have the industrial muscle necessary for the war that you face, but you also do not have the vulnerability such industry entails. Your strength is mobility. It is also your weakness.”

“Why?”

“We know from experience. When we fled to the Rim we fled in a mobile fleet such as yours, harvesting resources on the move and not putting down permanent infrastructure for a long time. We could not build fast enough, and the V’kit’no’sat eventually tracked them down, cornered them with superior numbers, and prevented them from gathering resources. Your Ghostblade requires privacy to function. If you are hounded, that will evaporate and your Clan will starve to death with lack of resources.”

“Prior to the fall of the planet-based territory then, because I don’t think they’ll be hounding us while there are planets tantalizingly defying them.”

“Your Clan provides a useful, but limited function. The diversity of strategy does you credit, but it will be insufficient for what you will face.”

“Even if we decided to backline them?”

“You do not have the resources for planetary assault, even if you take a Uriti with you.”

“The V’kit’no’sat have a lot of systems, not all that heavily defended.”

“All it will take is a small fleet combined with planetary defenses to thwart you, because you will not fight in the most effective way. If you learned, and took a Uriti with you, then you could do sufficient damage to force the V’kit’no’sat to deploy a wider defense and draw some resources away from their invasion fleet.”

“Define ‘effective.’”

“Kill them quickly, wherever you can. You do not have the resources to take them prisoner, so you must bombard their planets using the Uriti and destroy them without mercy. Cleanse their planets as they did yours. I need not tell you how such a process works, for you are intimately aware of it.”

“We won’t fight that way.”

“Then you have no hope of backlining the invasion fleet in a sufficient enough way to cause them to care. They will be suffering so many losses against your other Uriti that whatever small damage you can do in their systems will be but a grazing hit. They do not like taking losses against those they consider inferior, and they go to great lengths to avoid them, but when they face a formidable opponent they change tactics and expect losses. They have suffered so many against the Hadarak they know well how to fight in this manner, and once they enter it the bloodshed will commit them to the destruction of their target. Nothing else will consume them. Backlining will not work unless you do the most damage possible.”

Kara started pacing again, thinking hard. Tew’chor was answering a lot more questions than she’d expected him to.

“Your lesser races cannot help you,” he added. “You must fight with your elite, and you hobble your elite with so many resources being diverted to the needy masses. You do not have the time to assimilate them all.”

“What would do you then, in our position?”

“Pour most of your resources into drone production, and stockpile them so you have sufficient numbers to blunt the initial attack. The V’kit’no’sat will try to use massive fleets to overwhelm your planetary defenses and minimize their ship losses in doing so.”

“If they mass their fleets, the Uriti will devastate them.”

“Only if they attack systems where the Uriti are.”

Kara stopped pacing and looked up at the giant gold head that had what looked like smooth, aerodynamic spikes flowing off backwards.

“Typically they fight in your face, strength against strength. Are you suggesting they will avoid the hardest fights?”

“If they cannot find a weakness in your Uriti to exploit, then they will fight you where the Uriti are not. They would be insanely foolish to do otherwise, and battle experience against the Hadarak has taught them many hard lessons in the absence of our leadership. They will avoid the Uriti unless they have the ability to destroy them in a more efficient way. If they do not, you have a significant chance of bleeding their fleets to such a level that they cannot take your territory even if they destroy most of the Uriti.”

“But not all?”

“You must retain some as a deterrent. If they destroy all of them, they will win far into the future. The V’kit’no’sat can replace ships faster than you can. It will simply be a matter of time before they amass another fleet and return to finish what they started. You must retain the Uriti. You cannot treat them as being expendable. Planets are less valuable. The Uriti are priceless.”

“Which is why I’d expect the V’kit’no’sat to target them first.”

“They cannot fight the Uriti like Hadarak while your fleets operate with them. They can’t deliver enough damage fast enough, and the Uriti have far more firepower than the Hadarak. The combination is too potent, so they must remove your fleets before they can try killing them. If not, the cost to the V’kit’no’sat would be too high and there would be no guarantee of success, for the Uriti could escape to a star and recover inside. The Uriti must be isolated in order to be destroyed.”

“So they go after our planets where the Uriti are not, and hope we don’t move them there quickly enough?”

“More likely they will stall in other locations, pinning your Uriti in place while other fleets do the hammering. You only have 74, so if they assault 75 systems with massive fleets, one will have to fight without Uriti. If the Uriti leave to assist, then they hit the system abandoned.”

“That will stretch them thin.”

“Not if they bring a large enough armada. They have the ships to do it, even without pulling resources off the Hadarak front. It will leave the rest of their empire lightly defended, but there are few who can take advantage of that considering the strength of the planetary defenses.”

“How many ships are we talking about?”

“Upwards of 20 million, and their vessels are much larger than yours.”

Kara closed her eyes, cringing at even trying to think of what that sort of an invasion would look like. “When’s the last time they deployed that many?”

“The Rit’ko’sor rebellion.”

“Have they ever used that many ships against an exterior opponent?”

“Other than the Hadarak, they have not. They have used more than half that number against the Dak’vis, but nothing on the level that you will face. Then again, you are not truly an exterior opponent either.”

Kara recognized that name, from a race that no longer existed, for the V’kit’no’sat had wiped them out long ago back when the Zak’de’ron still led them.

“Can we ambush them enroute?”

“I expect them to be in position and waiting the day the truce expires. You would have to attack before then, and I sense that is not an option for you.”

“In position where?”

“Beyond your borders.”

“So they’ll still have to travel to their target systems, and they can’t move that many ships very fast.”

“They will most likely use multiple routes. They will not use a single jumplane.”

“If we attack them in transit with the Uriti, will they run or fight?”

“They will run, unless their arrogance have made them truly stupid.”

“And if we attack without the Uriti?”

“They will fight and destroy you.”

“They will be vulnerable at the start of each incoming jump. If we can get there ahead of them, we can do significant damage before we have to run.”

“They will not make it easy to track them.”

“How?”

“They will hunt down and destroy your scout ships in multiple systems, letting them choose which to come through under a fog of uncertainty.”

“Our ships are as fast as theirs.”

“They have their gravity drive sensor. They can lay in wait and jump yours when they arrive. You will be driven away or destroyed, or at the very least have your communications network equipment destroyed. If that occurs, they can bring their fleets through before you have a chance to report back and summon an ambush fleet. The V’kit’no’sat know how to move massive fleets quickly and quietly.”

Kara smiled as an idea hit her.

“Your mannerism bespeaks an advantage. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking that if the V’kit’no’sat were passing through a system and a Uriti happened to be hiding inside a star, it could come out and sit on their incoming jumpline and destroy them as they entered.”

“You would have to get it there undetected, and your control ships as well, but it is a viable possibility if you can predict their route. I would recommend a system one jump away from a potential target, but do not expect to be able to move Uriti around without their scouts knowing of it. Until you can scan using your ghostbane technology, expect them to have a presence in all your systems.”

“Do you know a better way of detecting ships jumping into a system?”

“Yes.”

“Care to share?”

The Zak’de’ron lowered his head and twisted his neck so that his eyes were slightly lower to the ground than Kara’s, with his snout almost dragging on the deck as it came within a meter of her tiny body.

“I have put you in a bad position by stealing your memories. It was necessary and you had left an avenue for me to do so. If you had discovered the technological block I would have demanded you lower it when we met, for I had to know the nature of your civilization and your intention for the Rit’ko’sor. We do not want you destroyed. We very much want you to continue to be a problem for the V’kit’no’sat, and even if they did not exist your civilization would be considered a welcome neighbor. We cannot be allies, given our need for secrecy, but we are not enemies.”

“Your codes and vital procedures,” Tew’chor continued, “I have already deleted. The rest of your memories I will keep for myself and not share with the other Zak’de’ron unless it becomes necessary. The intrusion does not beget trust, and I wish to make amends for that. We have already trusted you with the knowledge of our existence, and you have not betrayed it. If you were to do so, the V’kit’no’sat would most likely ignore you and come hunt us. You could save Star Force, for a time, by revealing us.”

“You know we won’t.”

“Indeed, it is not your way to betray, unless first betrayed. Understand, little one, I had to make sure Star Force would not become another V’kit’no’sat. I am convinced that will not happen, but I still urge caution with the Rit’ko’sor. Never the less, I have behaved as an ally should not. You are not my servant, so I will honor your request in compensation.”

Kara raised an eyebrow, and not because of the dragon breath blowing in her face. “How so?”

“I will give you a technology that even the V’kit’no’sat do not possess. It will make it almost impossible to enter a jumpline so warded,” he said, with Kara feeling new data suddenly appearing in the part of her mind that was actually the Vorch’nas. “It will require a station at the jumppoint, but even we cannot get one of our vessels past it unless we enter at such a slow speed to make the travel non-functional.”

“A Dragon’s Tooth?” Kara asked, seeing the name in mind’s eye.

“A name I have fashioned from your distant past. I find it odd that your mythology would remember us and not the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You’re not the only avians.”

“How many others breathe fire?”

“The Les’i’kron,” Kara pointed out the obvious.

“They are a remnant of us, and yet even through that remnant we were remembered and not the V’kit’no’sat. It is an irony that we find highly appropriate.”

“How do you know so much about us? Have you penetrated our relay grid?”

“No. We have tried, but your communications system is secure. We cannot break it without making physical contact with your equipment, and out of respect we have not.”

“You’re really worried that we’re gonna get ticked and betray you to the V’kit’no’sat?”

“I am not, but I understand the temptation to do so. You are right to be angry, but you do not know the Rit’ko’sor as we do. You are on the right path with them, which is fortunate, but employing your methods on them is going to result in an unforeseen result. They have been our responsibility, but I am comfortable relinquishing them to yours. I could not be so without seeing them and your civilization through your memories.”

“You haven’t answered how you know so much about us?”

“There is no need to steal what is freely given, and knowledge of Star Force is shared openly within your empire. We simply listened.”

“If we play every advantage correctly, what do you think our odds of survival truly are?”

“Small, if you flee to the Rim. None if you try to stay where you are…as of today. What your odds will be at the end of the truce depends on how you advance in the interim. If you excel in this, you can provide a challenge to the V’kit’no’sat that they may not rise to meet. If we still led them, you would not have a chance. Mak’to’ran, however, is not our equal.”

“And what of his offer?”

“If you wish to live in submission, I would advise you to take the offer. Fortunately you are like us, and will not tolerate a master. In that, at least, you are our equal, and we wish you all fortune,” the Zak’de’ron said, pulling his head back up to his full height and raising his front left paw off the ground. A bump on one of the rings he wore detached, floating up into the air between him and Kara as the silver material transformed into what also looked like a relic from the distant past.

“Give this to your Master,” Tew’chor said as he spun around and unceremoniously walked back into his ship.

Kara telekinetically grabbed the sword and pulled it to her as the ramp melted and reformed into the Shri’kori’s hull. It was a long sword, sharp edged and something Star Force would never use, but it did look like something out of mythology. When she grabbed the hilt nothing happened, nor did her attempts to mentally interface with it succeed. All it appeared to be was a sword, but Kara highly doubted that.

She didn’t bother to ask what it was, for it was clear that it was meant to be a mystery as the Zak’de’ron ship cloaked again then disappeared out of the hangar as the slight ripple was evident in the atmospheric shield.

Kara swung the sword around a few times, getting a feel for its weight, then tapped it into the deck plates. It dented them slightly, but the cutting edge remained unblemished.

“Good workmanship,” she said, making sure not to poke her bare feet with it as she carved a scratch in the hard floor. Again, the tip of the sword didn’t dull at all.

“Maybe you are a weapon,” she said, holding it up and looking at it with her Pefbar…that failed to penetrate. “Shielded too. Hope you’re not a bomb.”

“Serve me right if it was,” she muttered, reversing her grip on the sword and carrying it point backwards as she walked to the nearest hangar exit. Kara was going to have it scanned every which way possible, but she had a feeling that nothing would come of it, much like her own Vorch’nas.

Kara paused, remembering the upgrade, and mentally triggered it. The red armor flowed over her body like normal, but rather than the smooth, flat scales that she had grown accustomed to, this version had spikes coming off it that looked much more like the Zak’de’ron’s own scales…and would make anyone hitting her regret the impact.

“Thornmail then,” she said neutrally as she moved around, expecting the spikes to get in the way but was pleasantly surprised as they melted to avoid hitting each other, keeping her full mobility intact.

“Thornmail,” Kara repeated, this time more enthusiastically. “Alright, I’m down with it,” she said, holding the sword up and feeling that it really didn’t fit with the armor at all, especially considering the enhanced Dre’mo’dons she now had in each arm…much bulkier than before with a power increase to match.

“Now what the hell is Davis supposed to do with this?”

7

July 3, 4852

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

Kara walked up the wide staircase that led to Davis’s office, passing by the mix of Human and Protovic staff below as she climbed to what was now the main ‘deck’ due to the fact that it had been designed to accommodate the large Meintre that this newly colonized planet was beginning to fill up with.

She passed through an audio shield as she climbed, allowing the large area above some privacy despite the openness of the design, and the Archon immediately began to overhear an ongoing conversation between Davis, Duke Burren, and three other people, none of which she recognized. Davis glanced her direction with mild surprise on his face, but he quickly picked up on her stern look as she noticed his harden.

“Clear the room,” Kara said, looking at the four other Humans. “Now.”

Her tone offered no room to argue, and the Duke rose from his chair with the others following suit. Kara held her standing position at the top of the stairs until they all filed out by her and down beneath the audio shield, then she simply looked across the wide room to Davis and began to walk towards him with a distressed look on her face that she’d hidden from the others.

“I screwed up,” she said bluntly. “I screwed up so bad.”

“What happened?” Davis asked, standing up and coming out to meet her halfway as she pulled her left sleeve up. His eyes narrowed as he saw her Vorch’nas…which was now much bigger than before. He didn’t know what to make of that at first, wondering if she’d done something to it herself, then he caught on. “The Zak’de’ron contacted you?”

“Yeah, they did. I’m sorry, I didn’t know they could do it, but they were able to bypass by Ikrid block through my Vorch’nas. Apparently there is an override that prevents that, and I never knew it existed. They showed it to me right after they downloaded all my memories. They know everything I know now.”

Davis raised an eyebrow, for this wasn’t adding up for him.

“Why is your Vorch’nas larger?”

“They gave me an upgrade, along with information on the Rit’ko’sor and blueprints for a jumpline sensor that even the V’kit’no’sat don’t possess…but they got everything, Davis. All our secrets. Shangri-La, Nefron, the Zeeross, our codes and procedures. Everything I knew they now know. They just downloaded it out of my mind.”

“Are you still compromised?”

“I don’t know. I can operate the block now, but that’s assuming they were telling me the truth and don’t have some other way to do the same thing. I’m tempted to have this thing removed, but the damage is already done.”

“What’s with the sword?” he asked, noticing the sheath on her back with a strap that ran across her chest.

“You’re free to punch me in the face if you like,” she said, telekinetically reaching back and pulling it out over her head.

“Would that help?”

“I deserve it.”

“Maybe I do for giving you information in the first place,” he said, seeing the long sword float down into Kara’s hand.

“This is on me, Davis. No one else. Right before he left he gave me this and said I was to give it to my Master. I’ve had it scanned, but it’s resistant. It’s a very strong sword, but other than that I can’t find a purpose for it.”

“The same Dragon you met before?”

“No, but this one was just as big. His name is Tew’chor, the one I met is called Zeno’dor. Tew’chor says he wasn’t one of the eggs I found, but was a Les’i’kron the Zak’de’ron rescued and transformed. He says something about the V’kit’no’sat alteration failed on him and he was partially freed from their brain box rework. He was gold, and that coloration is reserved for great merit, triggered internally, not granted by decision. He was gold before he was transformed, so he had a big fight on his hands internally fighting off whatever they did to neuter them.”

“Sounds like you’ve had quite a trip,” Davis said, taking the sword in both hands and slicing his finger on the blade.

“It’s sharp,” Kara warned.

“So it is…but I get the feeling this wasn’t meant for me. What Clan are you?”

“Ghostblade,” Kara answered, frowning.

“Ghostblade doesn’t exist. What Clan are you?”

Kara’s eyes widened. “I’m such a dumbass. They meant Paul.”

“Clan Saber leader with a flagship named Excalibur,” Davis said, holding the sword only by the hilt and raising it straight up. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”

“Hit me, please, it’d make me feel better.”

Davis smiled. “I’m not mad at you Kara, so let it go.”

“This is no small breach.”

“The Dragons have more to lose than we do if we reveal them to the V’kit’no’sat, and we’re an enemy of their enemy. I don’t think they’ll try to hobble us. That said, I don’t like them knowing everything you know, and Nefron’s security will have to be altered, but I always assumed they knew a great deal more about us than anyone thought. I doubt our computer systems are completely immune to their technological hacking.”

“They said our relay network is,” Kara offered. “They could be lying, but I get the feeling they’re not.”

“Really?”

“Well, they said they’d need to make physical contact to break in and they hadn’t tried that. They couldn’t break our transmission codes.”

“Assuming their honesty, that is a good sign, because I don’t think the V’kit’no’sat can do what they cannot.”

“The Viks can make physical contact.”

“Point, but we have their playbook, for the most part. The Dragons are another matter entirely. What did they give you?”

“Level 2 Vorch’nas. More power, more defense, and thornmail,” she said, triggering it and covering her body in the telltale spikes.

“Isn’t that hard to move in?”

“No. They melt,” she said, doing a backbend so he could see how the material moved whenever it risked contacting itself.

“Impressive,” he said as she stood back up and retracted the armor back down into her now forearm-covering jewel.

“But not worth it.”

“Why did they tell you they’d downloaded your memories?”

“They don’t want us pissed off at them and running to the V’kit’no’sat. That’s why they gave us what they’re calling a ‘Dragon’s Tooth’ technology.”

“They called it that?”

“Yeah. They know a lot about our history and mythology, and I don’t think he fashioned that sword after mind raping me.”

“Was it painful?”

“Not what I meant. I didn’t even know it was happening.”

“But if he told you the truth…just one Dragon?”

“Yeah, just the one. No little sidekicks like Paul met with.”

“If what he told you is true, then he can’t access your memories so long as you have the switch flipped?”

“I’ve been digging into it heavily, and from what I can tell it’s an extremely close ranged transmission. Probably less than 300 meters. They can send a signal to me from afar, but to pull information out it has to be in proximity. If I don’t meet with them again I should be safe, but there’s no way to be sure. Do you want me to get rid of it?”

“Can you do that safely?”

“If I have to, I can cut my arm off and regrow it.”

“As you said, the damage is done. We can rework our codes easy enough…”

“But Nefron…”

“Is a problem if they’re as obsessed with the Hadarak as the V’kit’no’sat are.”

“We had a long talk about that and a lot of other things. He was far more loose with information than I expected.”

“How so?”

“I think they want to be allies, but they can’t be because of their need for secrecy. I’ve got a lot to tell you, and the Dragon’s Tooth is supposed to be able to detect all cloaked vessels during their deceleration jump. Even the Zak’de’ron’s.”

“And they just gave it to you?”

“With an apology for the memory download. They said it was necessary to make sure we didn’t do something stupid with the Rit’ko’sor. Apparently we check out, because they’ve given us their blessing to do with them what we want. I’ve got their full database on the Rit’ko’sor in my mind now, including detailed information on how they genetically upgraded their race and what they expected them to become in the future. They haven’t lived up to expectations. The Zak’de’ron also said they have a death mark against all the V’kit’no’sat, but were removing it from our Rit’ko’sor. If we hadn’t checked out, I think they would have killed them too…eventually.”

“Now that…is interesting,” Davis said, dropping the sword in one hand point first into the carpet as he eyed Kara. “We have their blessing?”

“More than that. He went over possible battle strategy. I’ve got a good idea what they think the V’kit’no’sat will do once the truce ends.”

“Where did they find you?”

“On the way back from the Preema, who I struck a pretty ambitious deal with, pending your approval. They want to build Grid Points to link their territory into the network, along with helping us with massive supplies if we establish production facilities within their borders.”

“You have been busy.”

“Not sure it’s all worth the security breach.”

“I have a gut feeling the breach won’t be a problem. You’ve said for years that if the Dragons wanted us dead we would be. Has that changed?”

“We’re not so weak anymore.”

“We have to run through potential problems and work this, but we still hold the nuke of their existence. They trusted us with that knowledge when they had no need to. I think we can trust them…though I do not want a second breach.”

“Better keep me isolated then.”

“No. We’re not playing that game. Besides, you don’t know all our secrets anyway,” he said with an apologetic smirk. “I need you and whatever tech help is necessary to figure out every last function of your Vorch’nas. What it can do, what it can’t, and what the length of their interface with you is. We may be able to create a block between you and it if needed, but I don’t want you to lose it. It gives you a considerable advantage that we can’t replicate, not to mention the knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“I know more about the Rit’ko’sor now than the V’kit’no’sat ever did…and to be blunt, this upgrade makes me capable of taking down anyone, even Vermaire, one on one. It’s a huge upgrade, and not just technologically. My physiology has been altered again.”

“How?”

“Not entirely sure, but like last time I’ve gotten a boost in strength and speed.”

“I’ve got two missions for you. The second is to master your Vorch’nas and teach our Mastertechs everything possible from it. The first,” he said, pointing to his desk with the sword, “is to tell me everything you and the Dragon talked about. We’ll get to this deal with the Preema later.”

“What about the sword?”

“I’ll have my people analyze it, then I’ll let you take it to Paul and see what you can figure out.”

“I’m kicking myself for not seeing that connection,” she said, grabbing a chair and sitting down as Davis returned to the other side of his desk.

“Honestly, I didn’t think you considered me your Master, given how weak I am.”

“I was thinking from the Zak’de’ron’s perspective. You’re the head of our empire.”

“Partially,” he admitted. “Now, let’s start with this new sensor.”

Kara tapped his clear desk theatrically, then created a slew of holograms using her Vorch’nas that showed the advanced Dragon technology.

“It’s not going to be easy to make, but I know how to do it. They gave me full knowledge from their perspective. The downside is it’s limited to a cone, and we have to build one at each jumpline we want to monitor.”

“How does it work?”

“It senses the gravity flash.”

“What’s that?”

“When the gravity of the star is altered by the gravity drives there is a minor backwash. It’s too negligible to pick up on anything less than a full interstellar jump, but with a sensitive enough monitor it shows up against the backdrop of space like a light flash, and cloaking devices do not affect it.”

“I was under the assumption that gravity was a transmission, like light, and went one way.”

“It is, but the way gravity drives make the interaction of gravity and mass bigger creates the side effect in an energy form that our current science doesn’t even know exists.”

“From the Zak’de’ron’s point of view, was exchanging this technology for your memories worth it to them?”

Kara frowned. “Probably not. They really don’t like sharing their technology with their own subservient races, and we’re not under their control.”

“So it was an act of allegiance as much as it was of contrition?”

“You might be right. My thoughts are still clouded with anger at the moment.”

“You could have pulled a Skywalker long ago, so why didn’t you?”

Kara smiled at his use of the Star Wars reference. “I didn’t want to give it up.”

“And no one asked you to. It was an advantage that we’ve used for millennia. It’s less useful now, but don’t underestimate how much you’ve helped us with it. If this is the exchange for that, then I’d say it’s still worth it.”

“Say that if Nefron suddenly goes missing.”

“He won’t. And not because I’m confident we could defeat a capture attempt, but because all we’d have to do is make one call to Mak’to’ran. Now, if we’re losing the war badly they might try to scoop him up in order to save him, then make use of his knowledge. They won’t do it now. Concur?”

“I concur.”

“So you did screw up, but we kind of knew this was coming.”

“I didn’t.”

“I did. They have a control over you because we don’t fully understand their technology. We’ve allowed that because the tradeoff is the help they’ve given us, but we’ve never fully been in control, have we?”

“No, I haven’t been.”

“Master and Apprentice.”

“But can we trust them as our Master?”

“Partially. Not fully. Which is why we need to engineer some countermeasures where we can. But removing your Vorch’nas and turning away the Dragons’ help would be stupid. We need every advantage we can get against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“We’re playing a dangerous game.”

“When haven’t we been?”

“I’m still sorry.”

“If I were in your position I would be too, but sitting on this side of the desk I’m more impressed with the potential gains from this meeting than the loss. So start spilling, starting at the beginning. You said his name was Tew’chor?”

“Yeah, and he was a big one,” she said, producing a hologram of him, for her Vorch’nas was the one recording device in the hangar bay that had not been deactivated.

8

October 13, 4852

Gagrador System (Ziviri territory)

Stellar Orbit

Kara’s command ship, the Yi, came out of its jump after tracking down Paul’s multiple successful invasions in 6 other systems. Without being linked into the Star Force relay grid, she had no way of knowing exactly where he was so she went to his last known location and followed the bread crumbs from there in the form of decimated and now occupied systems with small bits of Star Force fleets possessing them.

From them she’d learned where he had gone next, now finally catching up to him in the Gagrador System. It wasn’t the Ziviri capitol, but it was one of their major strongholds and the passive scans of battle activity attested to that. The bulk of Paul’s fleet was here, but not in stellar orbit, and the weaponsfire was so excessive that Kara’s command ship could pick it up all the way from the 2nd planet in the system.

So she diverted there, passing by various bits of wreckage that were either dead ships or destroyed defense stations in near the star, and made a microjump out to a very large planet. It had twice the gravity of Earth, which was ideal for the rocky Ziviri, but it wasn’t something that was going to hinder Star Force troops too much. They’d all done high g training to some extent, and the powered function in their armor would assist their movements to maintain more agility than the Ziviri possessed.

They were all mech sized, similar to Star Force’s Ikrotor, but the Ziviri were much wider and basically plodders. Their homeworld had even more gravity than this planet, but it looked like Paul’s forces hadn’t made it to the surface yet. Kara got piecemeal updates during the microjump, then when she came into high orbit and linked into the battlemap network she got to see what was really going on in the face of a Tar’vem’jic blast that lit up everything around it as the orange beam streaked off towards the planet where it hit a very robust shield at the bottom of a thick atmosphere.

“What the hell,” Kara muttered, seeing a much more even fight than expected, then she got orders from Paul that wanted her ship in the fight immediately.

“Captain, all crew to battle stations,” she said, getting up out of the Admiral’s chair and heading across the bridge to the command nexus. “Looks like they need some help.”

“Happy to,” Zeddi said, triggering a ship-wide alarm followed by more detailed updates to specific areas. Her command ship was Clan Ghostblade, so these were the elite of the elite within Star Force and it didn’t take much to get them into combat mode.

It didn’t take 30 seconds before the first of the extra bridge crew began to run in and take their positions, but Kara was already mentally linking in and contacting Paul. There was a bit of lag, but it was decreasing rapidly as the Yi moved in closer to the planet.

What do you need? she asked through the technological mental link.

I was about to ask you the same thing.

It’s complicated, but it can wait. Give me something to shoot.

We’re about through the shield and they know it, so they’re going all in. Can you slip in through the gap and get to ground? Our landing craft could use some extra cover.

Give me your assault plan and I’ll be happy to play point.

It’ll be rough. We’ve got most of their capitol troops here. They’re not waiting for us to take half their systems before objecting heavily.

That’s an understatement, she said, seeing the hundreds of thousands of enemy ships over the planet in addition to the weaponsfire coming from the surface. Shield too strong?

We’re getting a 93% drain.

Kara cringed, knowing that wasn’t enough to stand off from range and poke it down with only the Tar’vem’jic. For every hit that was made, the recharge rate of the shields was slightly higher. That meant addition weaponsfire needed to be added to drain the pool of energy low enough that a single blast could momentarily penetrate and hit the generators below.

And that meant bringing the rest of Paul’s fleet into weapons range, and in the process exposing them to fire from the surface. The Mach’nel wasn’t hanging back through, rather sitting in front position and attracting the attention of most of the Ziviri planetary defenses. The stupid rocks were living up to their reputation, for every shot against the Mach’nel was a wasted one. They should have been attacking the drones and knocking out as many of them as they could.

How many guns do we need clipped first?

That’s what I want you to handle from up close.

Kara grinned. You give me all the fun assignments.

Be careful. They pack a punch.

As ordered. Knock me an entry point please.

You’ve got about 6 minutes before we punch through.

I’ll be there in 8.

Kara mentally plotted the course for her command ship and let her bridge crew handle getting there in the timeframe she allotted. Paul was busy enough there was no need for additional chitchat, so she let him continue to do his thing while her crew brought the Yi up to full combat readiness and they made a very light microjump in towards the planet, carefully avoiding debris and other ships as they zipped past the main fight and got underneath it as periodic beams from the Mach’nel linked the battlefield to the planet.

The Yi came in very near those beams as they began to poke holes in the shield. Not much at first, which just the very tail end of the energy stream getting through before the shield recharge rate filled in the gap again. Kara knew the Tar’vem’jic wouldn’t shoot her ship, so she didn’t bother keeping her distance and got within a kilometer of the beam as her ship took shots from the rather large planetary defense rail guns. The amount of mass they were throwing was significant, and her ship didn’t have the luxury of deploying dampening shields to easily catch them, so the Yi just had to take the big hits along with the Ziviri beam weaponry.

But it was worth it as the Tar’vem’jic fired again and just missed the command ship, poking a much longer lived hole in the shields that Kara dove her ship through. The enemy shields tried to close on it, causing a significant jolt as the edge of her hull hit them, but they failed and her command ship slid through…minus most of its own shields.

The weaponry on the Yi lit up immediately, targeting the weapons batteries tearing furrows into the hull and eliminating them even as Kara brought the ship lower and lower to the ground until the Ziviri on the planet had a good recreation of Independence Day with her command ship blocking out the sky.

Foothold secured, she reported to Paul once every gun within range had been eliminated. Widening now. Start sending down the troops.

Thank you, he said with a hint of sarcasm as Kara took note of the movement of a chunk of the overhead fleet as another big Tar’vem’jic beam hit the reformed shields again, this time in a different position, to further drain them and poke another hole, but the Ziviri had multiple overlapping shield generators and the Tar’vem’jic hadn’t knocked them all out yet. Kara knew that’s what she needed to do from the underside, then the Tar’vem’jic could start eliminating the planetary defense guns rapidly and spare Paul more drone losses.

Kara moved her ship across the surface faster than looked physically possible, plowing through the thick air so fast it caused a tsunami that tossed the heavy Ziviri on the surface around like debris and even collapsed a few weak buildings as the Yi headed to the nearest main shield generator complex. When Kara got within weapons range she lit it up, having to take down its own secondary defense shield, but that didn’t last long against the Star Force naval weaponry…though it would have held out a long time against mech and aerial attack.

As soon as it went down the building followed, with the massive amount of energy heading into the atmosphere being cut off and a permanent hole formed above more than a 200 mile wide area…but it was still trying to refill from other shield generators. On the sensors Kara could see it, creeping out across the landscape like waves on a beach, only to have the Tar’vem’jic fire again and cause it to recede as the energy was needed elsewhere. So long as the Mach’nel kept firing, the hole was going to remain open and the incoming troop transports were going to be able to get through without incident with their drone escorts taking the majority of the hits enroute to the surface.

Kara watched as her crew handled the surrounding threats, realizing that she wasn’t needed here anymore and that the troops just now getting to ground would.

“Captain, the battle is yours. Cover the landing as you see fit,” Kara said, heading across the bridge to the exit.

“Where are you going?”

“To the surface. You can mind the store, can’t you?”

“Shall I arrange an escort?’

“No need. I’m going out the airlock.”

The Kiritas looked surprised, but didn’t question her further. “Call if you need us.”

Kara left the bridge and broke into a run, knowing that the Yi would integrate into Paul’s command structure easy enough and she would just be redundant in the command nexus. The real fight was going to be on the surface, and that’s where she could make the most difference.

Kara did as promised, running through the ship to a lift that took her across the interior miles of the gigantic command ship to the hull where she found one of the ‘airlocks’ in the form of an auxiliary hangar bay. She ordered it opened up, then Kara ran across the deck towards the atmospheric containment shield and the Ziviri cityscape beyond, triggering her Vorch’nas and covering herself in blood red armor over the course of a few strides, then continued to run all the way to the edge where she exited the ship and let the heavy gravity drag her in a controlled fall down to the surface.

Before she hit it she began to fly, curving her fall into a trajectory that headed her towards the first of the gigantic landing ships that was beginning to spill out mechs and aerial craft ahead of the infantry, but already there were hundreds of Ziviri with armor over their rocklike bodies firing on the leading stars.

“Looks like we’re doing this the hard way,” she said to herself as she adjusted her flight towards a group that weren’t quite up to the mechs yet. “Cannon ball!”

Kara made the announcement, knowing that no one could hear it, just before she curled up into a ball and flew right into the back of one of the giant infantry, slamming hard and bouncing off, but transferring enough momentum that the Ziviri was knocked over, falling into another and producing a domino effect that took down 5 of them.

Kara rolled over the ground, coming up onto her feet with a ringing in her head but otherwise ok, then she activated her external speakers as she held position.

“Surrender now or you’re not going to like the outcome,” she said in their native language, but the only response she got was arms being raised her direction and heavy beam cannons firing at her.

Kara easily dodged them, zipping left and right as their aiming was restricted to the speed that they could move their bodies. She tried to access their minds and get them to shoot each other, but found she couldn’t. It was rare to find a race resistant to telepathy, but apparently the Ziviri were, and she was not able to take control of them as she could most other races in the galaxy…but she could still transmit to them.

She shoved the image of a mech approaching on the left and got two of them to turn and fire at nothing, prompting a smile from her. Kara might not be able to remote control them, but she could still cause so much havoc they wouldn’t be able to fight effectively.

More began to appear from around building corners, and Kara tapped into the battlemap network to see just how many there were…

“Oh shit,” she said, seeing that there were literally thousands of them within only a few miles. They’d be easy targets for a warship to kill, but they weren’t here to slaughter them. They were here to conquer them, which meant forcing a surrender or taking them captive, more or less. “This is gonna take forever.”

A stun blast shot over her head, impacting the shield on one of the armored Ziviri ahead of her, though she could tell from the battlemap that many coming out late were not. They must have been civilians while the armored ones were troops, but they were all mech sized.

Star Force was trying to take a planet inhabited by living mechs, and do so without killing them while the Ziviri were free to kill the attackers however they could.

“Paul would be the one to pick a fight like this,” Kara said, summoning up a huge Jumat field over both her arms and bringing them together beside her right hip. “Alright, let’s get this done.”

Kara threw her arms forward, releasing the invisible Jumat blast across a quickly filling courtyard into another armored Ziviri. That took its shields down and hit it square in the chest, knocking it not only off its feet but propelling it backward to where it fell and tripped up two others as Kara ran up on top of it and fired her stun weapons directly into a gap in its armor plates…only to have another hit her with a bright yellow blast that knocked her off and sent her rolling towards another Ziviri that tried to stomp her.

Kara used her Yen’mer to accelerate her trajectory, passing under the massive foot and standing up just behind it where she fired her Dre’mo’dons into its shields repeatedly, dancing around and evading its attacks and others until the shields went down, then she switched to stun weapons. She had to dance like crazy to keep from getting hit, and she wasn’t always successful, but slowly the giant began to stumble and wobble, with Kara eventually taking him to the ground and delivering several more stun blasts to make sure he stayed down for another hour, at least.

“One down,” Kara noted, leaving that Ziviri and finding another to pick on as more mechs poured out of the landing zone and worked their way towards her.

9

November 27, 4852

Gagrador System (Ziviri territory)

Javvrier

More than a month had passed since Kara had arrived in the Gagrador System, but she’d been so busy helping Paul with the invasion that she hadn’t had 5 minutes alone with him to explain why she’d come here. With the planetary defenses now totally down and the ground war continuing at a good pace, Paul was back onboard his flagship gearing up for the assault on the other two inhabited planets in the system and Kara was finally able to grab some time with him.

“They got everything?” he asked after she’d filled him in on the Zak’de’ron encounter.

“I assume so.”

Paul didn’t take that knowledge as easily as Davis had, and began to pace around the wide observation deck where he’d met her. The view of space outside was displayed in holo, making the interior chamber look like it was sitting on the hull of the Excalibur.

“That’s a huge problem, Kara.”

“I know. I screwed up.”

Paul eventually stopped and looked at her. “We can’t be sure the Dragons are telling the truth about the manual block. We can’t be sure about anything concerning your Vorch’nas. You have a choice to make. Remove it, or keep it and lose your access to our high level data.”

Kara glanced at the floor, having expected this conversation to happen with Davis, though it had never materialized.

“Davis said he thought it was a moot point, because we hold the knowledge of their existence over them. They won’t betray us to the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Hopefully not, but there is a lot more in play than that. We have to be able to keep secrets. If you can’t keep them, you have to be isolated. Is the Vorch’nas worth that much to you?”

“I should say no, that I’m an Archon and don’t really need it. But to be honest, it’s a part of me I don’t want to lose.”

“And what if they can take direct control of your mind with it?”

Kara frowned. “I highly doubt that.”

“Can you rule it out completely?”

“It would have to fight against my mind to do so.”

“Would it? It has a Kich’a’kat in it, meaning it can reach anywhere in your body and do whatever it wants. If they can drain your memories they might be able to do a great deal more.”

“Why let me keep it then?” she argued.

Paul shrugged. “I supposed we should have considered this possibility, but the Zak’de’ron had never bothered to contact you. They came to me the last time. But if they can hack you…then that’s a big problem, Kara. A huge problem.”

“It has to be close range, only a few hundred meters.”

“So they say...”

“I don’t think they’ve ever lied to me about anything, Paul.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. Are you willing to risk other people’s lives on that?”

Kara sighed. “No, I’m not.”

“If you want to keep it, we have to make adjustments,” Paul offered.

“We can’t hack it. It’s too advanced.”

“And if we put in a block between it and your mind, it can just go around it physically. You either have to trust it or remove it.”

“I want to trust it…but I have to wonder if I’m not programmed to.”

“I haven’t seen or sensed any alteration of you in that manner, so it’s possible the Dragons gave it to you as a legitimate gift, but one with a backdoor they can utilize whenever they wish. Those things were designed for their servants, remember?”

“I’m willing to risk myself on the fact that I can now block them, but I’m not willing to risk anyone else. I need to keep it, Paul. Tell me what I have to give up.”

“No further contact with the Dragons. I know you can’t totally control that, but no more face to face meetings. If they find you, talk over comm or not at all, whether they like it or not. But I want more than that. Assuming they backtracked you from your meeting with the Preema, that’s still damn good intelligence to find you. We have to do better. I want you to become a ghost along with your Clan. And I want you to learn how to evade them. You have to stay away from them Kara, and we have to begin to prepare to one day fight them. Hopefully we won’t have to, but we have to prepare just in case.”

“I have to be a ghost from you guys too?”

“Not in person, but you won’t have our information to access. Same goes for the Monarchs. You’ll have your Clan, which is used to operating outside the relay grid, and you’ll have plenty of standard updates, but on our secret projects you’ll have to be out of the loop. Is that worth keeping the Vorch’nas?”

“Well I have to for now, otherwise we lose the Rit’ko’sor knowledge.”

“After that?”

“I guess I have a lot of thinking to do between now and then. Blackout terms accepted, for the interim.”

“You understand why this has to happen?”

“Yeah I do. It’s the right call.”

“But?”

“I really do think the Zak’de’ron can be trusted.”

“How far?”

“Meaning what?”

“You said they have a death mark on the V’kit’no’sat.”

“And?”

“And they’re going to kill every last one of them. No surrenders.”

“We’re not their enemy.”

“Do not expect your allies to treat you any differently than they do their enemies,” Paul warned. “If they are dishonorable with them, expect that dishonor to seep in your direction someday as well.”

“Well said,” she relented.

“We’re exposed, Kara. They know almost everything because you know almost everything. We can’t get that back. Might as well get what use you can out of that thing, but we have to be able to do new secret stuff and not let them get access to it.”

“Totally fair. I created this mess and you guys have to start cleaning it up.”

“We’ve gained a lot from your Vorch’nas. Jason would probably be dead without it. So worth the exchange. We just can’t allow any more exchanges.”

“I’m still learning the upgrades, Paul. I’d bet anything they packed it with stuff useful to us.”

“Then figure it out…in the isolation of your Clan where they can’t get to you.”

“You’re totally right.”

“After you help the 1s with the Raptors.”

“Isn’t that giving me new secrets?”

“No, that’s you helping to create new secrets. Can’t be helped.”

“You think they gave me the information this way so that I have to be involved, so they can keep tabs on what the Raptors do through me?”

“If that’s the case, they’re going to be tracking you at some point. See if you can figure out a way to track them. That’s a permanent order for you. We have to learn to out Dragon the Dragons.”

“They did give us a badass new sensor tech.”

“Yeah, and if it pans out there’s a big reason why we might be able to become allies, but would the Dragons permit them to have a security breach where we know everything they know?”

“Not a chance. They’d probably kill everyone with knowledge just to be sure…” Kara said before she realized what she was saying.

“And there’s the dishonorable part,” Paul pointed out unnecessarily.

“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “They’re not Star Force. But I get the feeling they do have some honor in them.”

“Trust them, Kara. But never trust them.”

“Yeah. I gotta learn to own this,” she said, hefting her now much more bedazzled left arm.

“And figure out how we can make our own. Clan RaSeru would especially like that.”

“That’s a tall order, even with a Mastertech.”

“Work on it. I like the concept, but we gotta control it. Not an outside power.”

“Noted.”

“Now, about this sword.”

Kara pulled it off her back and handed it to him…with the sphere on the bottom of the hilt immediately glowing blue when she did.

“What the hell…that never happened before.”

“Guess it is keyed to me. And the fact that the Dragons have my genetic code is…disturbing. That wasn’t in your memory. They must have sampled it when I met them, or they have access to our computer systems. Either way, not a good sign,” he said, rotating the sword around. “I don’t feel any mental access point.”

“The blade is super hard. Go ahead, stab the floor.”

“And damage my ship?” he asked sarcastically, then did as she suggested. The blade sank a couple inches into the hard surface and stuck hard. Paul had to yank twice to get it out, then he examined the blade. “Not a scratch on it.”

“It’s a weapon, for sure, but not very useful the way we fight.”

“How about Zak’de’ron Zen’zat?”

“Not the way they fought either. Seems I’m the last of my breed.”

“So they’re going to kill the Ter’nat too?”

“Not if we’re still around. They said they’d give them to us, but the Zen’zat have to die.”

“And if we’re not around?”

“We didn’t discuss that.”

“An ally and a friend are not always the same thing,” Paul said as he worked the sword around, doing a few thrusts and swings. Other than the blue glow on the hilt, nothing happened until he tossed the sword back to Kara.

“Light’s gone,” she said, catching it in her bare hand. “It’s definitely for you, but what for?”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, motioning for her to toss it back. He caught it telekinetically, but the blue didn’t return until he finally make skin contact. “I’d like to keep you around here kicking more ass, but you know where you need to go.”

“Raptors, aye Captain,” she said with a mock salute. “Thank you for not kicking my ass.”

“Could I have?”

“Not unless I allowed it,” she said humorlessly. “Which I would have.”

“As of now, stop blaming yourself. Using that thing was a gamble, which we both gained and lost from. You keeping it is another gamble, one we are accepting within some limitations. It might come back to bite us, but we have a lot to gain so we’re going for it. As is, we might not last long enough for the Dragons to stab us in the back. If it’s a weapon we can use against the V’kit’no’sat, we’re using it, but we’re also playing the long game. You especially.”

“So ordered. I’ll figure this thing out or die trying.”

“And I’ll try and figure this thing out in my spare time,” Paul said, tossing the sword to the ground and telekinetically cushioning it as he walked up to Kara and pulled her into a big hug.

She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, making skin to skin contact and having a short, but very complex conversation directly mind to mind. When she pulled back she left the observation room without a word, heading back to her ship to leave the system with a single tear in her left eye. It was a mix of sadness and relief…relief at Paul having brushed her screw-up aside, just as Davis had, but sadness at having let her team down so badly in the first place.

Paul knew she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, though using the Vorch’nas was like playing with fire. There were no guarantees, but it was a risk they needed to take.

When she left he picked up the sword again, unable to make any sense out of it in the short period of time he had before the trailblazer had to get back to war still going on outside the hull of his ship.

Four weeks later…

Paul had spent a few minutes every now and then when he had the chance working with the sword. Eventually he had though there might be a way to unlock it through physical combat, so he had gone through many chopping challenges to no avail. The more it defied him the more it intrigued him, for he was literally wasting his time with no results to show for it.

He didn’t spend long on it, but he couldn’t let it go either, so when he got back from more ground combat he grabbed a shower then picked up the sword in his quarters and swung it around theatrically, doing nothing more than being stupid but not having any idea what else to do.

“Thundercats, ho!” he yelled, thrusting the sword above his head with both hands. A moment later he brought it down and cradled it in front of him.

“This weapon is your life,” he said, then switching it to a position that made it look like it was sheathed on his back.

“You’re about to find out what it’s like to fight a real Super Saiyan…and I’m not talking about Goku…”

“Sikanda…Brisingr…Gryffindor…where’s the hat when you need it?”

“Narsil…Glamdring the Foe-Hammer…Saba…Power Sword…Sword of Darkness…Inigo Montoya.”

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” Paul said, jabbing the sword forward, then brought it back up in front of his chest in both hands. “Excalibur, be my strength!”

Paul never got to his next line, for the sword blade suddenly glowed blue along with the hilt and his mind was flooded with so much information he reflexively dropped the sword, which cut off the mental invasion. It dropped to the ground, not glowing at all, and stared at it for moment, then smacked the palm of his hand against his face.

“I’m such a dumbass. It’s literally the name of my ship.”

He picked the sword up again, with only the hilt glowing on contact. “Excalibur!”

Nothing happened, and Paul whistled his appreciate for the Dragons’ subtlety. “How the hell did you know to program that obscure phrase?” he asked the empty room. “Excalibur, be my strength!”

Again the sword blade glowed blue and a massive amount of information hit Paul’s mind like a tsunami, but he held firm this time, realizing that the sword was actually a hidden database that he was able to physically link into.

There was so much information that it couldn’t possibly fit into his mind. His brain literally wasn’t that big, so the sword was allowing him to use it like a second brain…which was why it was such a shock. He immediately wondered about a potential security breach here, but it wasn’t attached to his body…

Paul let the sword go, then reached out with his mind and toggled the communications panel.

“Admiral, I need to know if any transmissions are originating from my quarters.”

“Standby.”

Paul waited for about 18 seconds, then the Admiral responded in the negative.

“Nothing except your comm to the bridge.”

“Search for exotics as well,” Paul said, picking up the sword and flicking the mute button for the mic before saying, “Excalibur, be my strength!”

He withstood the onslaught as he turned the mic back on. “Anything now?”

“No, nothing. Is there a problem?”

“Going to need some construction work done. I need a chamber shielded against all transmissions so I can play around with an artifact of unfamiliar origin. I don’t want it transmitting data, if it’s capable of that.”

“Something from the Ziviri?”

“No, it was something Kara brought me. I need that chamber built within a day.”

“Any particular place?”

“In the Archon sanctum. And get a fake stone made for the center. With a slot for a sword in it.”

“Like the Excalibur sword?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll get some designs to you within the hour.”

“Good. I’ll see you in an hour,” Paul said, cutting the comm and looking at the sword again. He hadn’t had long to interface with it, and he wasn’t going to again until he had that chamber built. If the Dragons thought they could steal his memories the same way they were going to be mistaken…unless they were outside right now and it’d already happened.

He doubted that, but there was no way to completely discount it. But once inside that chamber the sword wouldn’t be able to get any signals out…assuming the Dragons didn’t have a radically different comm system. Regardless, he was going to explore this, for while he couldn’t remember much of anything now that his second brain was disconnected, he could remember the gist of what was in there.

Paul smiled secretively as he stared at the glowing blue blade, sensing the significance immediately. “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

10

March 22, 4853

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

“We have to keep the pack mentality center,” Kara said from the observation platform over the training center where there were literally thousands of tiny Raptors moving about a commons area with various handlers keeping them on task, or at least corralled where they needed to be in the giant indoor park. “Branching off on individual tasks will allow for development, but they’re so wired for group think we can’t go the traditional route without significant genetic reprograming.”

“That bad huh?” Aaron-010 asked as he and Jace-013 were picking her mind again.

“From the Zak’de’ron perspective, they’re too small to operate individually and their only use is in unison. Zen’zat were an experiment in a totally different direction, and one not prompted by the Zak’de’ron, but they did their thing with them regardless. Rit’ko’sor are meant to operate with a hive mind short of hindering their individual efficiency.”

“Expendable troops?” Jace asked.

“Not quite, but when the Zak’de’ron were gone that’s where the V’kit’no’sat went with them. Ari’tat are far smaller,” she reminded him. “The key to the Rit’ko’sor is the fact that they have decent combat ability individually, excel in groups, and don’t require the same foodstuffs and support facilities as the larger races. They’re a second tier race by design, but one with a purpose. They’re support, through and through, which is why the damage they did in the rebellion was so surprising.”

“You have knowledge of it?”

“Yeah. They probably stole most of it from the V’kit’no’sat. I’ve got pretty much everything on the Rit’ko’sor now,” Kara said, leaning on the railing casually as her eyes were on the little ones below and beyond. “We’ve got to do something drastically different with these guys, but I don’t see how we can veer too far off immediately. There’s no way we have enough genetic knowledge to tinker with what the Zak’de’ron set up. Not yet, anyway.”

“Then we make adjustments through training, not direct genetic alteration,” Aaron concluded.

“Agreed.”

“But?” Jace added.

“When the Zak’de’ron found the Rit’ko’sor they were primitive by comparison, save for their mental development. They were actually smarter then, but viciously self-destructive as a civilization. They killed more of each other than they did their enemies. The Zak’de’ron fixed that problem by constricting their minds with a heavy inclination to protect the group, to serve the group, to think as the group. Their individuality was seen as a threat, and rather than try to retool it they went with the pack model.”

“So if we try to weaken the pack, we might be unleashing the beast?” Jace asked.

“That’s my worry. Especially with all the psionics.”

“Nuts,” Aaron said, leaning against the rail on Kara’s left.

“Smarter how?” Jace asked.

“Deviousness mostly. Savvy manipulators and scoundrels.”

“Why did the Zak’de’ron want them then?”

“They were seen as a plague on the galaxy and the Zak’de’ron wanted to turn that headache into an advantage and throw them against the Hadarak. It was deemed an act of great mercy after they attacked a Zak’de’ron world.”

“They attacked them?”

“Well, not them exactly. It was one of their servant races outside the V’kit’no’sat. The Zak’de’ron fought to repel them, and that would normally mean the eradication of the attacker, but the Zak’de’ron chose to take a different route with them.”

“Which is why they had to put some safeguards in place,” Aaron added.

“Yeah,” Kara said, seeing the little herds moving in unison. Whenever one changed direction the others mimicked it almost instantly, making them look like schools of fish swimming through the short grasses. “If we’re not careful here, we could be creating a very big problem for ourselves.”

“Do you know what that genetic alteration process was?” Jace asked.

“I do, but it’s not something that can be deleted now. They’ve developed too much with it in place. The rest of their brain couldn’t function without it any more than you can unbake a cake. We’d have to create a new genetic template from scratch, and that’s too dangerous to attempt with a race this powerful.”

“So we’re still using the V’kit’no’sat toys rather than creating our own?”

“I’m open to suggestions guys. My knowledge is of the old. In fact, I’m kind of stuck in it. If there’s an outside the box solution here, I’ll probably be the last to see it.”

“You’re just the helper anyway,” Aaron said, elbowing Kara jokingly. “This is on us.”

“What are you thinking about doing?”

“Working the problems when they arise. So far we’re not seeing any.”

“It’s early.”

“We turned the Veliquesh and Trinx around, not to mention the lizards. And we did it with training, not mental restriction. We can handle these guys.”

“These have psionics, Aaron.”

“So do we…and they have one right now. We’re not going to unlock their Lachka and Pefbar for a while.”

“Why not?”

“Archons don’t get those first, we learn to use our bodies, then we get upgrades. We’re doing the same here.”

“So they’re not eating with it?”

“No. Is that unusual?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It’s the arms,” Jace pointed out. “They can’t really feed themselves with them, so they eat like dogs, cats, Scionate, and most quadrupeds do. They’re fine with it.”

“The Zak’de’ron hate eating like that.”

“Why?”

“If they can’t direct the food into their mouths, it’s sloppy. With Lachka it goes right where they want it.”

“They’re prisses?” Aaron asked.

“You try eating with no hands and see how you like it.”

“But they do have hands.”

“Not like ours.”

“You’re telling me they can’t use them to eat?”

“They can, but it forces their snouts to point down, and they have to fight gravity. They can’t reach up to their faces like we can.”

“I’d call that a challenge,” Jace scoffed.

“They don’t. Eating without Lachka is seen as uncivilized.”

“They are prisses…”

“Is that why they gave all the V’kit’no’sat Lachka?” Aaron asked.

“Might be part of the reason, but not all of it. And eating gives them plenty of free Lachka practice.”

“I find that phrase insulting.”

“Ditto,” Jace agreed.

“We get practice using our hands,” Kara argued.

“Are you a Zen’zat or an Archon?”

Kara looked at him. “That bad?”

“You sound like a Dragon fangirl.”

She sighed. “Maybe I am.”

“Aaron, think we should yank that thing off her?”

“Might be a good idea.”

“We lose all the Rit’ko’sor data if you do,” she pointed out.

“So? We’d like our Kara back.”

“I’m not brainwashed guys.”

“Then start thinking like an Archon,” Jace said, poking her in the ribs telekinetically. “We do things our way, troubleshooting as we go, and if anyone gets out of line we have the ability to kick their ass. Stop worrying about the Raptors. We can handle this.”

“You don’t know them like I do.”

“I don’t care what their predecessors were like. These were just hatched and new to the galaxy. We’ll deal with them as they are, not as they’re predicted to be.”

“We also don’t have a lot of time, fellas.”

“She has a point there,” Aaron admitted.

“If we’re going to go down, we’re going to go down fighting our way. Not the V’kit’no’sat way. Clear?”

“Clear,” Kara said, glaring at Jace. “But we need to make the most out of the advantages that we have, and trying to rework everything with the Raptors isn’t smart when we’re pressed for time.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Jace said, hopping up on the rail and standing perched there as he looked down at Kara. “Pull your head out of your ass and look around for once. Database knowledge is just notes. It’s not reality.”

The trailblazer hopped off and flew/floated down to the park where he landed amidst a group of several hundred little Raptors that split at the last moment to give him room. He knelt as he landed, with the little bipeds coming up to him to get petted.

“See?” he said, looking up at Kara and Aaron while he petted two simultaneously. “You’re just being an old prune.”

“Prune?” she asked, chin rising. “Are you willing to back that up, prick?”

“Gladly. Get your ass down here. The younglings could use a demonstration.”

“Fine,” Kara said, jumping up and over the railing as the herd ran off well wide of the two in response to a telepathic order.

“No armor. Just you and me babe,” Jace said cockily.

“It still upgrades me, you know.”

“I’m not worried.”

“As you wish,” Kara said, running towards him the moment her foot hit the ground.

Jace threw a Jumat blast at her, but Kara bisected it with a bioshield so it didn’t slow her much, getting up to him and throwing a punch as a Lachka field hit her in the foot. It tripped her up before she could pulse her Rentar, and Jace used the opportunity to launch into her, half running half flying, and landed an Archon punch into her chest that she only partially deflected.

It hit on her left shoulder and spun her around, with Jace getting behind her and grabbing her in a headlock. She tried to pry herself loose but she couldn’t. She was stronger, but he had leverage and was using his Lachka to enhance it. Kara pulsed her Rentar to cancel that then threw a Jumat blast from the center of her body to knock him off…but somehow he still held on and even wrapped his legs around her waist, lifting her off the ground and flying her up a couple meters before coming back down and smashing her underneath him into the ground.

He held her there, with her squirming to get loose, as Aaron calmly floated to the ground beside them and reached down to pet some of the watching Raptors that stood almost as high as his knee.

“This…isn’t…fighting,” Kara argued, still trying to get free.

“Can’t get free, huh?” Jace said, remarkably calm. “What happened to that superior strength?”

“Be…honest. You…just…want…to hump…me.”

“Now there’s some spite,” he congratulated her, but still wouldn’t let go. “But I can do this all day. Get yourself free, if you can.”

Kara flew upwards, fighting against Jace, but with gravity on his side she couldn’t get more than a few inches up. She tried to twirl, but he fought that as well and his own Yen’mer was stronger than hers…probably because she used her armor to fly a lot of the time and he didn’t have that luxury.

“Enough,” Kara said after a few more minutes. “I…can’t.”

“Sometimes you can’t win,” Aaron said, talking to the little Raptors. “It’s not your fault, but if you quit trying it is. She tried, but she wasn’t strong enough. Jace is an ally, so he wasn’t going to hurt her, so she could surrender. Enemies don’t give you that option, so you keep trying until you are unable to keep fighting. No quitters here. We live and learn from our mistakes so we can get strong enough to win when we fight our actual enemies.”

“Right now we’re protecting you so you can learn and grow here safely, but there will come a day when we can’t, and it will be on you to fight to protect yourself and each other. Remember, never give up against an enemy, no matter what, but there are no enemies here. We help each other learn and grow, and we never stop learning. Quiaff?”

“Aff,” the little Raptors said in unison, agreeing with him.

“Back to what you were doing,” he said, taking to the air along with the other two Humans as the Raptors scurried around, most of whom were looking at the much larger leaders until they were back up on the observation platform.

“What happened?” Jace asked when they were back amongst themselves.

“I held back,” she admitted.

“How?”

“I didn’t use my armor.”

“I didn’t have any, so we were equal. How is that holding back?”

“My Vorch’nas is part of me. Your armor is not.”

“Your?” Aaron said with a ‘tisk, tisk’ sound following. “You mean ‘our’ armor.”

“You said you were stronger even without it,” Jace said, not relenting. “Why couldn’t you free yourself?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted with a scowl.

“I do. You’re not thinking like an Archon, and you’ve become addicted to that thing. You don’t know how to fight without it anymore.”

“That’s not even remotely true.”

“You said you got a strength boost. Why couldn’t you free yourself?”

“You’re not that much weaker.”

“You dumbass. Why didn’t you even try any mental psionics? If you had made me twitch for even a moment you had a chance to wiggle free. You didn’t hit me with anything other than physical attacks.”

Kara froze, not even having considered that. “I didn’t, did I?”

“Hold still,” Aaron said, putting a hand on her forehead.

“And?” Jace asked.

“It’s been a while, but her mojo is different than I remember,” he said, pulling his hand back.

“How so?”

“Not sure, but you don’t feel the same.”

“I need more than that.”

“You feel…stiff.”

“That explains a lot,” Jace noted.

“How…” she asked, then she caught on. She wasn’t thinking beyond a few basic tactics. “Excuse me.”

Kara walked off the platform and through the doorway to the interior of the city, leaving the pair of trailblazers alone.

“Did we help?” Jace asked.

“I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, but she suspects something now. Give her time.”

“You think they did something to her?”

“She got a load of new Vik knowledge in her head. That’s going to take some time to assimilate. If we keep pressing her, she’ll probably work through it and get her mojo back. She also unwittingly gave away all our secrets. I’d be kicking myself for a long time if I did that…”

“She should have been able to get free. I didn’t have to try that hard.”

“I noticed. She’s not herself right now, and I think it’s partly because she feels like she let us down.”

“She’s not wrong about the Raptors. The group think is gonna stay unless we come up with an epiphany.”

“They’re not the Archons, we are, so the herd can be useful so long as we provide a pathway for individuals to emerge. It’s clear the Zak’de’ron didn’t want that happening.”

“So…wanna play with the kiddos?”

“The more contact we have with them the better. I’ve got another half hour, so why not?”

“I’ll match that,” Jace said, with both trailblazers hopping over the railing again to spend some time with the little dinosaurs that would eventually grow into a major asset for Star Force if the 1s came through on this, and after the success of the 2s with the lizards, there was no way in hell they were going to do anything less.

The next three days were unpleasant ones for Kara as she dug into her own psyche for the majority of that time, doing very few workouts and just trying to get a handle on what was going on. She should have been able to beat Jace even without her armor, but she couldn’t even get out of a headlock. And what made it worse was she hadn’t even tried everything. For whatever reason she hadn’t even considered using her mental psionics, and that bothered her more than anything. She’d given up without trying everything, and to be honest, at the time, she was focused on her Vorch’nas as the key to getting out and her not using it was her holding back.

She was seeing it as the answer to everything and hadn’t even bothered to use her wide array of psionics…and that wasn’t her. Aaron was right, her mojo was gone, and she couldn’t even remember when she’d lost it.

Kara was sitting in her quarters on her bed in a cross-legged pose, digging into her mind further when her comm unit beeped, pulling her out of her introspection. She unfurled her legs and walked over to it, knowing only a handful of individuals had been set to ping her upon receipt of a message, and she was pleased to see it was from Paul.

“I figured it out, Kara,” his holo said when she flicked it on as she stood in front of the console. “There was a key phase needed to activate it, and an obscure one at that. I was just messing around when I found it. It’s ‘Excalibur, be my strength,’ which comes from a very old and obscure cartoon. I don’t know why they expected me to know that, or if they expected me to figure it out this quickly…and I’m guessing not on the latter.”

“Kara, it’s a database. It contains the Zak’de’ron notes on the Rit’ko’sor, probably the same that you got on your Vorch’nas, but it also contains similar notes for every race in the V’kit’no’sat. Every damn one Kara, and only I can use it. I can’t remember much when I’m not touching the sword, but when in physical contact I can access it like a second part of my brain. It’s a wealth of knowledge, and I’ve got it secured in a special chamber onboard the Excalibur, just in case it can transmit and is a Trojan horse to get information out of me.”

“My read on this is simple. If we can find a way to survive the V’kit’no’sat, and actually start beating them, this is the Dragons’ way of saying we can annex whatever we can from them. They’re done with the V’kit’no’sat and are going to wipe them out one day, but we’re free to collect and reuse as much of them as we want. It doesn’t say that directly, but the implications are pretty clear. The only reason we’d need that level of information from the past is if we are going to assimilate them like we’re doing with the Rit’ko’sor…”

Kara listened as Paul went on, detailing some of what he’d discovered and wanting her take on it, but she only half listened as a different conversation was taking place inside her.

She looked down at her Vorch’nas, realizing that the valuable Rit’ko’sor data wasn’t unique to her anymore. The Zak’de’ron had probably given her that sword for Paul to use some day down the road, long after the truce ended and the war resumed. They probably thought it was a long shot…an investment for the future, just in case Star Force prevailed.

Kara had never heard that phrase before, and if it was really obscure it wasn’t meant to be something accessed immediately, but a puzzle the Zak’de’ron knew that Paul wouldn’t let go.

But they’d underestimated him and he’d figured it out in only a few months. That meant Kara no longer needed to be the Rit’ko’sor expert and she could disappear into the galaxy with her Clan and not be a continuing security threat to Star Force anymore.

But there was also this mojo problem, and for the first time in a long time, Kara looked down at her left arm and seriously considered why she was keeping it.

She sat down on the edge of her bed, questioning her sanity for not having had this discussion with herself earlier. Before the security breach the Vorch’nas had been an asset, but now it was also a liability, so why keep it? She hadn’t even been able to take Jace without deploying the armor, and at the very minimum she should have been able to get out of that headlock.

“Kara you fool,” she said to herself while looking at her arm. “This has to end, and if Paul has the Rit’ko’sor knowledge then…hell, even that doesn’t matter. Aaron and Jace were right. We can deal with the Raptors our way and learn as we go. Why the hell haven’t I…”

Kara looked down at the clear jewel running the length of her forearm. “Damn you. You’ve been helpful, but you’re not worth this,” she said, getting up and leaving her quarters on the planet to head up to her command ship that was sitting quietly in orbit.

When she got up there she went straight to the armory, getting a death saber and strapping the pack on her back before grabbing a stun pistol and heading off to her personal quarters onboard the ship, drawing a few odd looks from the crew in the corridors.

Kara closed and locked her door, then stood in the center of her room as grim determination took hold of her. This was stupid, but the most direct solution to the problem. And to be honest, she deserved this for the security breach. There was no way the secrets she’d let slip could ever be taken back, and Star Force was going to be the weaker for it.

Nefron was exposed, as was Shangri-La and dozens of other secrets that had to be kept, and she had unwittingly let them get stolen. No more. She had to be an Archon, not a lackey for the Zak’de’ron.

Kara had the death saber strapped to her right arm, with the power line connected to the backpack, but the left one was still tethered on the pack. It wasn’t going to be needed, and Kara pointed the stun pistol in her right hand towards her left arm, making sure one last time that she was really going to do this.

“Now or never, Kara,” she said, then shot her arm multiple times until it fell limp, hanging off her shoulder. Her head felt the wash of stun energy, making her a little loopy, but the rest of her body was still functioning more or less and she used her telekinesis to lift her arm back up in front of her and gave it one more shot for good measure.

Kara dropped the stun pistol and ignited the death saber, with the glowing white blade leaping off the back of her hand where the gauntlet was attached. The perfectly flat blade was so narrow you could barely see it from the edge, but was better than an inch wide, and would cut virtually anything on contact.

Kara, keeping her numb arm level telekinetically, slipped the blade underneath her elbow, then flicked it up with such a casual gesture it seemed inconsequential…as did her severed arm with the Vorch’nas attached dropping to the floor with a gentle thud.

Even though her arm was numb, she felt the effect somehow, not to mention smelling the cauterized tissue that was now seeping blood. She saw the drops falling on the floor as she deactivated the death saber and shrugged off the backpack…then recoiled in horror as the Vorch’nas began to transform, leaving her severed arm and crawling on little spindly legs it spawned towards Kara’s foot.

She stepped back, but it jumped towards her upper leg. Thankfully she got her bioshields on in time and it bounced off, but it tried to come after her again, maybe programmed to attach itself to the main part of her body and begin repair, knowing it couldn’t regenerate a new body from her severed arm, but it didn’t matter. There was no way it was going to get back on her again.

Kara telekinetically grabbed the death saber pack, half pulling it over her shoulder as she slid the gauntlet back on her hand while pushing the Vorch’nas away with her bioshields each time it jumped at her…then she ignited and swiped the glowing blade across it…which knocked it into her bed with a glowing red gash in it, but it hadn’t been cut in two as she expected.

“Fucker…” she said, grabbing it telekinetically and pulling it into the air where she went feral on it with the death saber, requiring dozens of slashes before it was cut into pieces that didn’t try to reform themselves as they did the first few times.

Kara didn’t stop there. She kept cutting, making sure the damn thing was dead, then dropped to the ground next to it as she shrugged off the pack again and stood on her knees and one arm while the other dripped blood with the stump hanging from her still numb shoulder.

She kept an eye on the fragments, but they didn’t move. Her head did, swirling in more than just stun effect, and in less than a minute her mind cleared and she was fully able to see just what the Zak’de’ron had done to her.

“You fucking bastards…you fucking bastards!” she yelled, recognizing the suppression effect now that it had lifted.

Kara stood up and dragged herself to the comm, punching it with her good hand as her head hurt…a lot, and she knew her injury would be soon to follow once the numbing wore off.

“Captain, I need a security containment team in my quarters now! I also have a severed arm and need a medtech here. Don’t ask questions, just get a toxic containment unit. We have alien tech that is a threat, and I’m not sure I completely killed it. Contain it, and get me to a med bay before I bleed out.”

“On route,” the Captain said, not wasting any time despite his not understanding.

Kara flicked off the comm and sat down on her comm chair, staring at the remains of the Vorch’nas as an ache in her arm began to manifest. It would be getting a lot worse, so she knew not to go roaming around the ship. Let the medtechs come to her, and she had one last duty to make sure the Vorch’nas didn’t ensnare anyone else.

“I’m an Archon,” she said, looking at the remains of the Zak’de’ron tech, “not your damn tool. And neither is Paul. If we win and annex the V’kit’no’sat, we’ll do it our way. The Star Force way.”

“And if we have to fight you bastards someday, so be it. I’ll be at the head of the waiting line.”

www.aerkijyr.com

Scorpion

1

March 25, 4853

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

Kara sat in her quarters, a few drops of blood dripping off the cauterized stump of her left arm as she began to feel sick. She wanted to use her Haemra to speed the healing of her arm and stop the blood loss, but she couldn’t with the numbing effect interfering, so she tried in vain to slip into a Sesspik trance, failing for the same reason. Her head was awash with the lingering stun effect and she didn’t dare try to use her Haemra to try and flush it out. The pain was already creeping its way into her mind, and she didn’t want to take the brunt of it before the medtechs arrived with a regenerator.

She could afford to lose some more blood, so she just sat and waited as the sickening feeling continued to creep up on her. Kara had never had a limb severed before and was wondering if this was part of it. She almost shot herself again to keep from throwing up, but at least the bleeding was stopping. Her Uzti boosted her natural healing rate, and it was still active without her mentally being involved. It was successfully accelerating the clotting of her blood and boosting the regeneration of a thin layer of tissue at the point of the cut, but would not regenerate her missing arm.

Kara would need a regenerator for that, because her natural healing would just seal over the wound and lock it down. Her Haemra could regenerate her arm a little bit at a time over the course of weeks, but the regenerator was the best way to deal with this. It would heal over the wound immediately, then they could get her to a medical station where additional biomatter would be available to give the regenerator enough mass to replace her arm…or maybe they could just reattach this one.

Kara looked at the severed limb bleeding out on the floor and telekinetically reached out to it, floating the dying limb over to her with a creepy sensation. She no longer had any control over it, and seeing it disconnected was eerie. Now that the Vorch’nas was disconnected from it she should be able to reattach it, assuming there wasn’t any bits left inside.

Kara floated her arm over to a nearby table and left it there, not wanting to take the risk. Better to just grow a new one to be safe…

She slid off her chair and took a knee on the floor, suddenly throwing up as her stomach couldn’t take the sick feeling anymore. She retched and recoiled three times before the first of the crew arrived at her door. Kara didn’t even feel them outside, that was how bad her wound was affecting her, with the pain continuing to leech forward into her mind.

“Do not touch that,” she said, pointing with her remaining arm at the clear shards of what looked like glass spread over a meter or two of carpet. “Put it in containment,” she said, clenching her stomach and managing to keep what was left of her fuel load inside her.

“What happened?” a medtech said as he came over and knelt beside down, pressing a Star Force regenerator against her upper arm over the injury.

“I had to take it off. This was the only way…” she said, yelling the last word as she fell to the ground.

“Kara!” another Archon yelled, rushing past the medtechs as she began convulsing. The mage placed a hand on her neck, using his Haemra to help heal her along with the Vorch’nas…or at least figure out what was happening…but the medtech beat him to it.

“Shit!” he yelled, reaching down to the regenerator and pressing his thumb against it. He mentally ordered it to deactivate, with the internal tendrils withdrawing and it popping off. The medtech grabbed it and pulled it away from her while she still twitched violently on the floor.

“What the hell just happened?” the mage asked, his hand still on her.

“Poison,” the medtech said, looking at a scanner that had been linked to the regenerator so they could know what exactly it was repairing.

“Why didn’t the regenerator…” he said, stopping short as he figured it out too. He was goosing her healing using his Haemra, but as he did so the cells he triggered to hyper regrow began oozing new poison.

The mage recoiled, then looked down at Kara and forced his voice through his telepathy to make sure she heard him.

“Kara, your body is producing a poison every time we heal you. What is going on?”

“Something the regenerator isn’t programed for,” the medtech answered. “It’s triggering a malfunction that’s creating a toxin.”

“Stop,” Kara moaned, pointing to another Archon that was telekinetically lifting the Vorch’nas shards into a canister that a tech was holding while more people rushed into the room. “Give…it…to…me.”

The other Archon didn’t waste time, grabbing the open canister and pulling it over next to her as Kara stood up on her hands and knees and puked again…this time half of which was blood.

Kara telekinetically reached in and pulled out several pieces of the dead Vorch’nas, then flew them to her right arm and pressed them against her skin.

“All of…them,” she said, puking again after the third word.

Both Archons picked up the pieces and flew them near her, with her grabbing them all and pushing them against her arm as she fell to the ground, staring at it as her Uzti continued to try to heal her, unwittingly triggering the poison that was killing her.

“Please,” she whispered, staring at the broken pieces that did nothing. “Please…”

“What can we do?” the mage asked the medtech.

“If it’s something the regenerator isn’t programmed for we need to get her to a medbay and treat her with healing patches and other conventional…”

“No!” the mage said sternly. “My Haemra is triggering the poison. That means any healing on her part is creating more poison. How can we get it out of her? We have to draw it off,” he said, ignoring the medtech even as he answered the question and putting a hand on Kara’s neck. He hacked into her nervous system and got a good look at what was happening inside her, then tried to use his Haemra, not to heal her, but to direct the poison through her body to specific points on her skin.

A moment later she began to bleed out a sickly brown goo, but it wasn’t enough, for every bit of her body that touched the stuff was literally disintegrating…and he couldn’t heal the pathways, for that would just create more poison.

He didn’t have a choice, causing limited healing along the routes he was using to transport the poison away from other areas in order to keep them from literally exploding from tissue degeneration as the medtech came up and took a sample of the poison.

“Clean it off her and don’t touch it,” the mage warned as Kara puked again, this time almost all blood as her body was being torn apart at a rapid pace now that the regenerator and the Archon had triggered the onslaught.

“Please…” Kara said, so low nobody could hear her as she just stared at the pieces of the Vorch’nas while her vision began to go dark as her eyes were succumbing to the poison and beginning to bleed internally.

The medtechs, which were growing in number as more arrived, and the Archons worked as fast as they could to siphon off the poison inside Kara, but she was dying and she knew it. The only hope she had was her Vorch’nas, which she thought she’d destroyed, but maybe the Zak’de’ron tech was more resilient than it looked. It was her only chance now, for she knew what was happening. Zeno’dor has told her never to take it off, and she knew this was punishment for doing so. Somehow they’d sabotaged her body, and if a regenerator wouldn’t fix it, then her Vorch’nas was the only thing that could.

Kara’s eyes went brown and even her Pefbar was getting looping as brain tissue was being liquefied. She was a gonner and she knew it, feeling like such a sucker. The Zak’de’ron had been playing her all along. They’d only enhanced her while she was useful to them. Their ‘honor’ was nothing more than a tactic they used to endear their servants to them…but now she saw the full horror of what they were, and how if she wasn’t going to be their servant they’d eliminate her.

She hadn’t chosen to have the Vorch’nas attached to her arm so long ago. They’d forced it on her. And if she didn’t have the option to remove it then she was their slave…and it seemed they didn’t want their slaves being freed.

It was the same stupid ego that the V’kit’no’sat had. You had to be part of the group or you were killed. No one could leave. And damn her for ever thinking the Zak’de’ron were different.

Kara kept what was left of her vision on her good arm, willing the pieces to reform, but she didn’t get what she hoped for before she lost consciousness, quickly followed by her heart stopping.

“Damn it, Kara, hang on,” the mage said, manually restarting her heart and causing it to produce poison even as he healed it into a zombified functionality. “Try something!” he yelled at the medtechs. “We’re losing her.”

“Almost there!” another one of them yelled back, working feverishly to reprogram the regenerator via a small datapad. “Move!”

The mage pulled back as the medtech slapped the regenerator on the side of her face, with it sinking into her skin and diving its tendrils down into her body. The mage could see it internally as he still was linked into her nervous system, with the tiny tendrils reaching out and sucking the poison out of her body wherever they could…but more was being produced along the tiny tunnels it had to carve through her body.

The overall amount dropped though, which was something, but the damage to her body was so extensive that she was still losing the war.

“How is the poison being produced?” the mage demanded.

“Her cells have been reprogrammed. There’s a tiny production module inside them now, pumping out the poison…but only the new cells. Her old cells are fine.”

“So anything we heal gets converted? How?”

“I don’t know how. The regenerator should tear them apart if they’re not a part of her genetic code…”

“Shit,” the mage said as he and the medtech had the same though. “It altered her genetics.”

“That’s why she tried to put it back on.”

In the back of the crowd that had gathered Captain Zeddi pushed his way through the sea of Human elbows until he was in view of the bloodbath that was around Kara and continually spilling forth from her body. Her skin looked like it was covered with tiny rivers that were oozing out from everywhere and soaking into the thick carpet. He also saw her severed arm nearby and the mage kneeling with his hand on her neck and a regenerator attached to her face.

“Report,” he demanded.

“She removed her arm to remove her jewel,” another medtech said. “But her body’s been sabotaged and any healing creates a poison that’s killing her.”

“We’re losing her,” the mage said, tears in his eyes. “I can’t keep her going much longer. Her body is tearing itself apart.”

A piccolo had entered just after the Kiritas Captain and he pushed his way forward, shoving the medtech out of the way as he got down on the other side of Kara’s prone body. He pressed his hand against the other side of her neck while offering a battlemeld prompt to the mage.

“Together,” he said, then their minds were linked and their hands suddenly burned with pain as they used their battlemeld psionic Nevat to increase their healing ability and actually bored holes in their own hands so they could link their blood vessels to Kara’s. Through them they gave her their blood and shoved bits of tissue into her body…that they then caused to grow, finding that the poison wasn’t being generated from it.

That meant they had a chance, despite the fact that she was going to be gone within a few minutes. They prioritized her vital systems, heart, lungs, and brain, sending tiny bits of their own cells to where they needed to be and caused them to ‘heal’ and grow more tissue, absorbing surrounding nutrients and providing a little bit of structure even as the nearby poison damaged it.

The regenerator was sucking it out of her fast, but there was still so much coming from her body as it instinctively tried to heal that this probably wasn’t going to work, but they’d be damned if they didn’t try, and her heart was stabilizing as more and more of it became their tissue and not Kara’s.

“Nanites,” the piccolo told the medtechs. “We need to cyborg her out. Go!”

Two of the techs bolted from the room, knowing they couldn’t carry her while the Archons were linked in, and raced to get the necessary equipment that they hadn’t bothered to carry with them, for usually a regenerator fixed everything.

They weren’t going to be able to save her, and they knew it, but facing challenges had taught them to never give up, for they never knew when circumstances would change beyond their prediction, so if they could keep Kara alive another hour, then they would, though both of them doubted they had that much time.

As more and more of Kara’s body was destroyed and little bits of it were replaced with parts of the other two Archons’ bodies, nobody noticed the clump of her broken jewel that was still sticking to her arm despite the fact that she was unconscious and unable to telekinetically hold it in place. In fact they didn’t even notice as two of the larger pieces began to slowly melt into one another, creeping painfully slow as they physically linked up and began to rewrite their internal code from redundant backup programming.

It wasn’t until a regenerator shoot from the reforming lump dove into Kara’s arm did the two Archons realize it was still active. That shoot immediately went after and attacked the tendrils coming from the regenerator on Kara’s face that had extended throughout her entire body, sucking poison as fast as it could without attempting to heal her.

The Vorch’nas tendril intercepted the nearest copies of its counterpart and began to hijack them, first taking control then liquefying the solid regenerator on Kara’s face as it drew tiny bits of the machine through the tendrils and back to the Vorch’nas, which accelerated the melting process even as other tendrils shot out and began to heal the poison damage in the area of her right arm nearest the jewel shards.

Buy time, the piccolo said telepathically as they both saw what was happening.

“What the hell?” the medtech asked when his datapad suddenly lost connection to the regenerator.

“It’s fine,” the mage said. “It’s cannibalizing it for spare parts.”

“What is…” the medtech said, then looked at her arm where the previously jagged shards had melted like ice cubes and were now linked by little conduits to each other. “It’s still active!”

“It’s starting to heal her, but it’s not working very fast. I think we can keep her going, but the regenerator isn’t sucking poison anymore. She’s falling apart.”

A few seconds after he said that a new tendril shot out from the Vorch’nas that extended through her arm and up into her chest and head, attacking the poison and the bits of new construction that the Archons had implanted while initiating new healing in the most vulnerable of areas. The pair saw that no new poison was being generated in those places, then stopped their own repair work and focused only on pulling out more of the poison.

That didn’t last long, with the two Archons needing to disconnect entirely as the Vorch’nas tendrils grew like a tree that soon covered her entire body and began to fight even their light interference, forcing the mage and piccolo to disconnect from their biological hacking.

They both stood up, releasing their touch on her as the others looked on.

“What happened?” Zeddi demanded.

“She’s coming back, I think,” the piccolo said. “It’s taking control of her, but I don’t know if it’s late. She’s broken inside.”

“How long before we know?” he asked, but no one answered as they saw the little blood rivers across her skin suddenly dry up and get reabsorbed into her body. The cracks in her skin did not, but they weren’t seeping blood anymore and the pale white coloration of her skin began to redden up again.

“I think we’ll have our answer soon,” the mage said, with the medtechs returning soon with boxes of equipment that they rarely used.

“No need,” the Captain said, waving them off. “Her jewel is active and repairing her.”

Both of them sighed in relief, dropping the boxes on the table near her severed arm as they bent over and sucked air, having sprinted all the way to and from the medbay to try and save precious seconds.

Kara didn’t regain consciousness for several more minutes, and when she did it was an unpleasant sight. She jerked violently, then began thrashing around on the floor in obvious pain. The piccolo reached down to restrain her and try to help numb the pain, but he got hit so hard by her arm that it knocked him up and onto her nearby bed as she yelled.

She yelled many times, and with her mental defenses down everyone could hear her telepathic screams as well. Those without telepathy didn’t understand what they were hearing, but the Archons did. The Vorch’nas was healing her without pain numbing, and it was literally tearing her apart inside in order to put her back together.

All the Archons responded in sync, diving on her as they linked up in battlemeld and held her down while hacking into her body and numbing it as much as they could. The Vorch’nas fought them, but it couldn’t keep them all out and didn’t have the resources to try. It had too much to repair to even bother with numbing, so it was up to the Archons to make Kara as immune to it as possible.

Holding her down wasn’t easy, especially when she blew out a random Jumat blast. They knew she wasn’t trying to, but she couldn’t help it. It was like she was being attacked from all angles and Kara had to push back against something.

Captain Zeddi ordered the room evacuated after getting thrown into a wall from one of the energy blasts, leaving only the Archons to try and restrain and help her through this on their own. He dismissed all but two of the medtechs, then waited with the pair outside for nearly an hour before the door to Kara’s quarters opened and the Archons walked out with the piccolo carrying Kara’s body over his right shoulder.

“She’s alive,” he told the Kiritas. “It’s over.”

“Unconscious?”

He nodded. “We need to feed her jewel. Power and material.”

“How is she?” Zeddi asked, walking alongside them as they didn’t waste a second on idle conversation.

“Bad, but she’ll live.”

“It tortured her,” another Archon added. “No numbing as it worked. It is now, but after what she went through…she’s not gonna shake that off anytime soon.”

“But is she out of danger?”

“It saved her life.”

“Yeah, and probably did this to her in the first place,” another argued. “I don’t see how else a regenerator wouldn’t work.”

“I’ll let the trailblazers know,” Zeddi said, letting them take her down the hallway as he stopped and turned around, heading for the bridge. Kara had never told him where she got the jewel from, but he’d learned a decent amount about it, as had most of Clan Ghostblade. If she’d cut her own arm off to get rid of it something bad must have happened…and if it had sabotaged her so she couldn’t take it off, then this was definitely something beyond his security level.

He didn’t know how long it would be until Kara woke up, or what condition she would be in when she did, but he needed to get the 1s up here, for whatever was going on here was clearly their turf.

2

Erin-016 was the first one to get to orbit, boarding the Yi via dropship and storming through the command ship until she got to the medbay where Kara was…but though she could feel her presence on the other side of the room, it was a wall of medtechs and Archons that came into view when she rounded the doorway coming out of the hall.

“Move,” she said lightly, with the others making a path for her to get through as soon as they recognized the trailblazer. Erin pushed through the gap roughly, nudging those out of the way that didn’t move fast enough and finally got her eyes on Kara.

She was alone on a med table, sitting in a cross-legged position and staring at the wall in a zombie-like trance that Erin could feel as well. Her emotions weren’t hidden to Erin’s telepathy, and Kara was emitting them like a low level beacon sending out stun signals.

“Hey,” Erin said, sitting down on the cushioned table in front of her, but Kara’s eyes didn’t track her way. “Hey,” she repeated, grabbing her chin and making Kara look at her. “You still in there?”

Kara’s eyes finally focused, almost painfully, on Erin’s face, but the physical contact between the two allowed Erin to see what was really going on inside her mind. She almost let go in reaction to the pain, or rather memory of pain, but she held firm as the full damage to her psyche was tallied.

“Come on, sister,” Erin said, sliding off the table and lifting Kara up telekinetically, then dumped her into her arms as she spun around and began to leave the med bay. “They can’t help you anymore here.”

Kara didn’t resist or say anything, letting herself being carried like a rag doll through the ship to the Archon sanctum. By that time Sara-012 was already onboard and Erin telepathically called to her to follow them to one of the larger training courses that wasn’t in use. Erin entered, still carrying the nearly comatose Kara, and climbed up the arcade-style mountain made of colorful blocks until they were at the flat peak where many a pitched battles had been fought against drone units trying to knock the Archons off…but none were active, and the mountain was silent save for the light footfalls of Sara below as she bounced her way to the top behind them.

Erin set Kara down then assumed a seated position behind her as she wrapped the beleaguered Archon in a firm hug and didn’t let go. Kara felt like a wet noodle, offering no resistance and barely holding herself upright.

When Sara caught up she bounded over the rim and walked slowly to the pair, kneeling down so she could look Kara in her eyes that seemed to see nothing at all as she stared off into oblivion.

“Kara, what happened?” Sara asked while the other 1s that were currently on planet were on their way up to the ship.

She reached her hand out and Sara took it, then a flood of visuals and internal memories hit Sara like a sledgehammer.

“Shit,” she whispered, exchanging a few telepathic comments with Erin as they tried to figure out what to do. Kara’s brain functions were normal, so far as all the components were there, having been regrown thanks to the Vorch’nas, but her mental state was sheer chaos that was in a holding pattern as Kara tried to process what had just happened to her…but without an active enemy to lock on to. One couldn’t fight an enemy in the past, and the trauma she’d suffered was going to take time to wear off as she mentally punched phantoms with no effect.

It took more than an hour with the trailblazers in Kara’s head helping her work her way to some semblance of stability, then out of nowhere her first spoken words surprised all 6 of them.

“You have to give Ghostblade to someone else,” she said in a whisper so weak they couldn’t have heard it if not for the silence in the chamber. “I can’t lead it anymore. I have to hide.”

“Hide?” Sara asked?

Kara held up her right arm, which now held her Vorch’nas while her reattached left was bare. “It reset. The programming was destroyed. The remnants are quarantined in corrupted files. My knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat is gone. My knowledge of the Dragons is gone. And their programming is gone. My mind is free. I can’t let them reprogram me. I have to hide.”

“What proximity?” Jace-013 asked.

“I don’t know. If they’re in the system I could be compromised.”

“What programming is gone?” Sara asked.

“There was some in the first one,” Kara answered, her voice getting a little stronger. “I can see the difference now. I think it just made me more familiar with the way the Dragons work…and I’m calling them Dragons now. Not Zak’de’ron. That was probably coded too. But the big change came with the upgrade. They did something to me. Something major. And I think it was to control the Rit’ko’sor information. They knew I’d be the one involved, because I was the only one that had the information, and they wanted to guide the development of the Raptors through me. So they made me think the way they wanted.”

Kara finally looked up, staring at Ethan-014. “I can’t go back, Ethan. And I can’t take this damn thing off. They sabotaged me. They told me never to take it off, and they put some kind of kill switch in it. I cut my arm off to remove it, and it grew legs and tried to jump on me to reattach. I didn’t let it. I tried to kill it. I thought I had. Good thing I didn’t. It’s the only thing that saved me, and now it’s unlocked. I have access to all of it. Stuff the Dragons didn’t want me to have access to. They’ll seal it back up. Jamb their programming in my head again. I have to disappear. Fake my death if needed.”

“What exactly did they do to you?” Sara asked.

“This thing acts like part of my brain. Right now it’s just tech linked in, but add programming and it takes control. I was stupid to think they were honorable. Their wisdom and loyalty is just a sham they use to endear their slaves. Try and break away from their control…and you see their true colors. If you live long enough to figure it out. They’re as bad as the V’kit’no’sat. They’re why the V’kit’no’sat are so bad. They taught them. That’s why they were betrayed. The Dragons are the master betrayers and their apprentices learned too well. We can’t trust them. Tell Paul to destroy the sword. Just get rid of it. It’s not worth the risk. They may be trying to mess with his head too. Just destroy the thing, now!” Kara yelled.

“On it,” Jace said, realizing how adamant Kara was about this and knowing that if something was wrong every second could count and he wanted to give Paul as many as he could. The trailblazer jumped off the mountain and disappeared, heading towards the nearest comm terminal so he could warn his brother who was still beyond Star Force territory fighting the Ziviri.

“Don’t worry about Paul, or your Clan,” Sara told her. “We’ll take care of both. Was the torture intentional?”

“No. The Vorch’nas was damaged. It wasn’t numbing right,” she said, a tear breaking free as Erin tried to help her keep her wits. The damage to her body had been healed, but her Core had been tortured by the process and that wasn’t something she was going to shake off anytime soon, Archon or not.

“And now?”

“It’s healing itself, but needs more material to grow. I can grow it as big as I want now. All the way up to a level 12. I have full control of it,” she said, raising her right arm and causing the now smaller jewel to transform into armor that only covered her from shoulder to fingers…and it was white, smooth armor, not the red dragon scales, of either version, that it had been before.

“I can make it any color, any shape. The damage to the Vorch’nas wiped all the programming save for the base that was redundant in all pieces. It had to combine the fragments in order to fully rebuild it, but it’s now without training wheels. If they find it like this they’ll slap them back on. I know they will. They’re like the V’kit’no’sat. I didn’t earn this, so they’ll try to deprive me of it. I’d take it off if I could, but I can’t, so I have to hide. Somewhere they won’t find me. Somewhere they won’t look.”

“Maybe we can build a jamming device,” Ethan suggested. “Then they’d have to make physical contact.”

“I don’t know enough yet,” Kara warned. “Maybe there’s a way, but I need time to dig into this and find out. It’s so complicated, but I have access now. I just need time. Somewhere they can’t find me.”

“Can they track you?” Aaron-010 asked.

“I’m not transmitting now. But if they send a pulse it will reflect it. They can find me anywhere in a system if they know where I am. I have to hide. I have to be lost.”

“So we need to block the signal,” Ethan pressed.

“It’s not a comm system like ours. There’s the standard one, but beneath it is another beyond our technology. I don’t know how to block that one. I can turn some of it off, but if they have base programming to override…get me out of here. Somewhere. I don’t know. But get me out of here, please.”

“If they have a ship here watching, it can follow us anywhere so long as it can track you,” Sara said. “Can you figure out when they ping you?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Figure it out. If you can tell, then we can see whether or not they’re following and we can make you disappear. If not, then there’s no point in moving you anywhere.”

“If she dies, what will they do?” Aaron wondered.

“They can’t know about the sabotage,” Kara warned. “They can’t know I know. Fake my death some other way.”

“No,” Erin said, shaking her head and bouncing the little curlicues of her semi-short hair back and forth. “They might try to retrieve the Vorch’nas, or it might send a signal if she died. Better to let them think she’s still alive if they’re not in the system monitoring now.”

“If they are they might already know,” Sara pointed out.

“She’d be reprogramed by now,” Erin differed. “I’m guessing they’re not here and they’re counting on their programming to guide her to guide us to make the Raptors what they want…or to avoid what they don’t want.”

“Do you know what that is?” Sara asked Kara.

“No. It’s all gone. I just remember what it did to me, though it’s all blurry now. I can breathe now. I couldn’t back then. I can’t let this take hold of me again. I’m stuck with it. I’m vulnerable. I’m compromised. I have to run. It’s the only way.”

“We’ll help you,” Sara promised. “Even if we have to find Cal-com and beat down the Dragons’ door to make them fix it.”

“No,” Kara said, nearly bolting off the mountaintop at the thought, then she settled back down into a seated position with Erin still holding onto her. “No. They can’t know we know. They have to think we’re still dupes. If they know we know…they might make a move against us. We’re valuable as servants, or allies they can control. If we break away from that, there are no guarantees.”

“We hold the knowledge of their existence,” Ethan reminded her. “We have leverage.”

“If we use it, they’ll destroy us. They have sneaky ways to do it. We have to play for time. Time for us to catch up. We can’t make an enemy of them. Not until we’re ready to fight. Let them think I’m still ignorant. If they can’t find me, they’ll assume everything is normal. If they find me, they’ll know it’s not. I have to disappear.”

“First things first,” Sara insisted. “Your mojo is way off. You need to punch something. Can you pull yourself together enough to smash a few drones?”

“No,” Kara said, withdrawing a bit.

“What’s stopping you?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“She got thrown into a blender,” Erin argued.

“And she needs to fight her way out. It won’t be pretty, but it’s the best way for one of us. Start by standing back up.”

“She’s right,” Erin agreed. “Baby steps, Kara. I know you don’t feel like it, but I’ll help if you can manage battlemeld.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Try,” Erin insisted, holding onto her so she could hack into her body and force it as much as needed. Erin extended the battlemeld prompt, but it took several minutes before Kara’s very raw and touchy mind finally accepted it.

Erin nearly puked when she did, but as promised she held on and acted as a point of stability for Kara…while Kara acted as a destabilizing factor for Erin.

“Me and my big mouth,” she said, wobbling as she stood up with Kara following a moment later. “I feel sick.”

“I feel better,” Kara said meekly. “Thank you.”

“Use it,” Sara prompted.

“We can’t do much,” Erin warned.

“Anything will be an improvement,” Sara said as Ethan jumped down the mountain and flew to the start area where the challenge controls were. Soon there was a spherical drone floating up to the top and stopped in front of Kara. It shot her with a tiny stun blast, so low it basically did nothing, but it was enough to make her left leg buckle. She caught herself and remained standing, though Erin almost fell as well.

“Hit it,” Sara prompted.

Kara hesitated, then got shot again. Before the drone could fire another tiny blip, Kara raised her right arm and her Vorch’nas morphed into a lump over her hand as her emotions flared with anger. A white flash emitted and the drone vaporized in a cone of expanding debris that shot out away from the mountain top, then floated/fell to the ground below.

“O…kay,” Sara said, stretching out the word. “That works.”

“Sorry,” Kara said, recoiling again with her Vorch’nas returning to jewel mode.

“No, that’s fine. Kill a few more if it’ll help. We need to wake up the badass in you. You took too many hits you couldn’t defend against and you’re stuck in victim mode. You need to hit back and we can always build more drones. Blast as many as you want.”

As if on cue, three more appeared from below, floating up to eye level.

“Try punching one,” Aaron suggested, walking up and casually hitting one with his fist. It flew backwards a few meters, then seemingly annoyed, shot him with a tiny stun blast that he took with impunity.

Kara walked up to one and hit it, meekly, then hit the other as both came back closer and shot her with one of the weakest possible settings for the drones. She hit them again, a bit more forcefully, with Erin stepping up and working with her. They both punched and defended as Ethan gradually increased the difficulty level, letting Kara work her way through the active healing process while using Erin as a crutch.

Kara wasn’t going to be ok for a long time and they all could sense it, but she was making progress…and give an Archon progress, of any amount, and they would latch onto it with a death grip. Kara was no exception, though in her persisted a constant fear of losing what little she had if the Dragons found out what had happened. Working to improve yourself while knowing it could all be lost was anti-motivational, knowing she could get hit with an attack she had no defense against, but Kara still eeked along for the next few hours before they called it quits.

Erin disconnected their battlemeld, still feeling a bit sick afterwards, with Sara taking over for her as the rest of the 1s split. Kara headed to a new set of quarters to sleep, with Sara staying with her and curling up in bed with an arm wrapped around her. Both to keep her company and to maintain the skin to skin link that allowed her to monitor and help adjust her mind as she continued to fight through the memories and damage of what had just happened.

Kara was a mess, but Sara and the other trailblazers weren’t going to let her out of their telepathic range until she pulled through this.

3

November 13, 4853

Khaterass System (Kiritak colony)

Mewsovex

Kara stopped at the base of the glacier, standing a few meters away from the icy cold river cascading down through a crack in the monstrous mass of ice as she looked up. It would be a hell of a climb for a normal person, but with her ability to melt handholds for herself it would just be a matter of slow and easy climbing for the Archon…assuming she didn’t just fly straight up.

But she was done hiking for the day, having already covered more than 30 miles in three separate snowstorms wearing nothing but a T-shirt, shorts, running shoes, and a backpack. She had her Vorch’nas if needed, and could cover herself with a protective layer of armor with a thought, but she wasn’t using it and had declined the standard Archon armor for this trip as well. Relying instead on her Rensiek to keep her internal body heat in and the arctic cold out.

She’d done this before in training, but had never maintained the constant effort this long. Feeling a bit strained, Kara decided this was as good as any place to make camp and pulled her backpack off, dropping it next to her foot as she shook her entire body to banish the snowflakes that were not melting on her skin, rather sticking there dryly. She ran a hand through her hair, shaking it out as well, before pulling out the tent canister and triggering it to deploy.

It set itself up, expanding out into its large setting at her command. The foot-long cylinder transformed into a 16 foot-wide hexagonal chamber 9 feet high and two feet off the ground, standing on 7 footers that sank into the snow several inches and sought out the ground. They adjusted to different lengths to level everything out, then the newly formed door swung open and Kara walked over to sit down on the doorstep.

She blew out a breath, looking across the frozen terrain she’d just covered. The glacier behind her sat between two mountain ranges 58 miles apart and ran for 219 miles. Below it was a series of small rivers that meandered into each other and combined into a monstrous one that traveled down through descending terrain and out of the snow zone on the planet. It eventually ran all the way down to the nearest Kiritak colony where they were busy mining and building the necessary components for export to the rest of the Star Force empire.

There were 3.6 billion of them on the planet, and a total of 18.3 billion in the system with only a scattering of Humans and other races acting as managers where needed. This region of Mewsovex hadn’t seen their expansion, leaving Kara completely alone ever since arriving on the planet and being dropped off via dropship in the upper forest 5 days ago, with her traveling on foot ever since.

It had been Sara’s call, for the facility that the Kiritak had built for her lay up in the glacier. It’d take another day or two to get there, and while she could have just had the dropship take here there directly, Kara was glad that Sara had nixed that option. This was the first real vacation Kara had had since becoming an Archon, and it was badly needed in the aftermath of what had happened to her.

That was months in the past, and the memory of pain had faded, but the implications of what had happened were still fresh in her mind. If the Dragons found her she had no doubt they’d reprogram her Vorch’nas as they wished, for it had fully unlocked when it had to rebuild itself, and she was learning a great deal about what it could truly do.

But for now she didn’t need to train…as odd as that sounded...and was on this planet to hide. It had been suggested that she go to an uninhabited planet, but hiding on a highly populated one would make it harder for the Dragons to pick her out amongst so many others. No one other than some of the trailblazers knew where she was, with no record of her presence being recorded. As far as records were concerned, she was still onboard the Yi with Amber-403 acting as her doppelganger.

Her fellow second gen had even taken on her purple/white hair to make her look more like Kara, but in truth her command ship…her former command ship…was so big that a person could get lost in it easily. Aside from the Captain and a few other personnel that were let in on the secret, no one onboard the ship, or in the rest of Ghostblade, knew that she was gone and replaced.

As far as Kara knew she was off the Dragon’s radar now, and with how big the galaxy was she hoped to stay that way. From now on she wasn’t going on combat missions, wasn’t participating in training Trails, and wasn’t going to have contact with another living person on the planet. She was going to be totally isolated while the billions of Kiritak nearby went about their hyperactive business without knowing she was here.

They’d built the facility she was heading towards, but only on the in person orders of a low level Archon messenger that Sara had sent, for there was to be no record of its production and if any of the trailblazers traveled here that might tip off the Dragons if they had penetrated Star Force database security despite their assurances they hadn’t. That Archon didn’t know who the facility was for, and the ship that had brought Kara here hadn’t realized it, with her hitchhiking along without any official record after a word with the captain of the cargo ship that Sara had shuffled her out to through 4 other systems. She’d really tried to hide Kara from prying eyes, and hopefully all the stealth work had paid off.

Kara felt alone out here, despite the occasion glimpse of a ship in orbit. None came down into the atmosphere over the frozen zone, and with her Rensiek activated she wouldn’t appear as a heat signature amongst the snow and ice even if someone was looking.

Then again, she was walking in the snow open for any eye to see now that the most recent snowstorm had mostly blown off and the sky was clearing. Kara knew her solitude here was going to be one of anonymity, and if the Dragons were in orbit to be looking for her, then this mission was already a failure.

That said, she wasn’t going to be up on the ice much longer. Once she arrived at her destination she’d be below ground, for the facility was hidden from view and sensor scans. Now that Kara had no more responsibilities to attend to, she could disappear and work this out on her own schedule, and that peace of mind was something she was realizing she badly needed.

Part of that peace of mind was due to the fact that Aaron had traveled out to find Paul and deliver her warning about the sword and tell him everything that had happened without risking it going over the relay network. Aaron had told her he’d pulled a deep mental scan of Paul when he was there and couldn’t find anything amiss…along with the fact that Paul had taken her advice and chucked the sword into the nearest star, not wanting to take the risk of keeping it onboard the Excalibur in storage.

And that meant Kara was done. No one needed her for anything, her Clan was now someone else’s to lead, and she was no longer a security risk. The Raptors would be dealt with the Star Force way, with the trailblazers learning and adapting as they went rather than relying on V’kit’no’sat and Dragon knowledge. That was probably for the best in the long run, but Star Force didn’t have that long to tinker with them before the truce expired.

How much they would lose because of this she didn’t know, but it had to be done. Star Force had to lead, not follow the Dragons, for they were not trustworthy, and even after two millennia of learning from the V’kit’no’sat database Star Force was easily going beyond it and charting their own course, as they’d done all along modifying tech and tactics as they deemed necessary. Kara regretted them not having that asset to springboard off of, but when the database was tied directly to one’s mind, it wasn’t worth the risk of tampering.

But that was behind her now, the decision and actions were made and could not be walked back. Star Force was committed to moving forward on their own, and Kara’s future was equally locked. She had to remain a ghost now as she explored the depth of her Vorch’nas and tried to figure out a way to keep the Dragons from altering it.

Was there a way? Maybe, maybe not. She didn’t know and the depth of customizations her Vorch’nas offered was mindboggling. It would take her years, at the minimum, to explore it all, but she was no longer blocked with what she guessed were ‘worthiness’ tests. Those had been destroyed along with the data and mental programming when she’d thought she’d killed the thing, though now she was glad she hadn’t. It was the only thing keeping her alive, and after a very clandestine meeting with Star Force’s best medtechs, including Nefron, it had been determined that her genetics had been slightly altered in a way they couldn’t fully fathom.

The alterations were stealthed against a regenerator’s ability to see them, which meant it couldn’t alter that bit of sabotage coding that caused her own body to produce and release the poison that had nearly killed her. Even without her psionics and the regenerator, the poison would have built up slowly as her natural healing ability repaired individual cells, meaning she would have died more slowly, but she still would have died. Only her Vorch’nas was ‘safing’ the sabotage programming and allowing her body to heal normally, and without it she was as good as dead.

Nefron had tried several Chixzon remedies on tissue samples taken from her, but the genetic coding the Dragons’ used was so different he couldn’t crack it. They literally had a means of producing code that was not based on standard molecules, and every time he was able to neutralize or remove it, it would reappear…because there was also a stealthed virus within her replacing the coding if it was ever destroyed.

She wasn’t contagious, for the virus was unique to her body, but a regenerator couldn’t see it to eliminate it, nor could her own immune system. It was a very elaborate trap designed to not allow her freedom from the Vorch’nas, and right now, with their current level of technology, Star Force didn’t have a way to permanently remove the Dragon coding.

And so long as that remained, her body would poison itself when healing without the presence of the Vorch’nas.

So she was stuck with the thing, but it was different now. Halfway between a level 1 and level 2 Vorch’nas in size and on the opposite arm, it was a visible reminder that she was entering a new phase in her life…and a perilous one at that. She could not allow them to find her again, and if she was ever to be truly free she had to find a way to either remove the Vorch’nas or master it. Since the first wasn’t an option now she was going to work on the second. It had been a part of her for nearly her entire life, and now that it was unlocked she was more powerful than before in a multitude of ways…but always vulnerable to the Dragons.

That was her Achilles heel, and one she could not tolerate.

Kara sat on the doorstep for a while just looking at the snowy plains before her and the distant mountains bracketing them, though she could only sneak a peek here and there in between the clouds dumping snow off and on as if they were doing strafing runs.

“Well, at least it’s a nice place to hide,” she said, letting go her Rensiek and feeling the cold hit her warm body for the first time today. “If you’re an Archon.”

Kara stood up and walked inside, passing through the energy shield keeping the warm air contained within. Kara felt it hit her as well, along with the continuing relief of powering down her Rensiek. The effort to maintain it so long was taxing, and combined with the walking she was actually tired despite having done no training since arriving on the planet.

She pulled some rations out of her pack and ate them, then slid into a sleeping sleeve and got some rest as the two tiny distant suns set and the temperature outside plummeted even lower.

Kara woke before sunrise, packing up her tent and pulling her backpack on as she braved the cold that had frozen the top of the river water in a myriad of irregular shapes while the rest of the liquid continued to flow beneath it. In a few hours the temperature would rise enough to melt it off again, but the water itself would not get more than a handful of degrees above freezing no matter how much sunlight it soaked up.

When Kara breathed, the air passed through her Rensiek perimeter, stripping it of excess heat and keeping it on the barrier as the liquid in her breath froze into an icy plume, then the cold air she breathed in picked up the heat on the inside of that barrier as it passed through, keeping her lungs from getting chilled as she began hand climbing up the sheer glacier wall that was right behind her campsite.

Only it wasn’t quite sheer, with many odd crevices that offered something in the way of handholds. She made others as needed, taking her time and letting the environment soak into her senses as she chose not to fly to the top. It was her way of letting go and diminishing herself, yet still being passively badass enough to take the hard route up.

A little less than an hour later she was at the top and took a moment to look back the way she came from the glacier edge, seeing a small rivulet of water tracking past her on the right and taking the dive off the edge to join the rest of the melt lines that began to increase their flow as the sunlight was already reaching this height while the area below was still fully in shadow.

More snow storms were visible on the horizon, one of which was tracking her way fast, but it didn’t concern her. She was immune to the cold, so she soaked the moment in then casually began walking up the glacier in her T-shirt and shorts, finding a couple hours later the setting in her Vorch’nas that allowed her to alter her hair and skin color. The trek across the endless white sea gave her a lot of time to mentally dig into its now open interface, and she was both pleased and sad to trigger her purple/white hair to disappear into a dark brown.

Her time with Ghostblade was done, and now she needed to let go and move on. She was just back to being Kara, an Archon, who had a very dangerous and powerful bit of jewelry melded onto her arm.

More hours of walking followed, then one more night spent in her tent before the last leg that brought her to the coordinates she’d logged in her Vorch’nas to navigate by.

“Well nuts,” she said, looking around and seeing nothing but more ice with a fresh blanket of snow on top as it continued to fall all around her. “I’m either lost or you’re really well hidden.”

Kara activated and stretched out her Pefbar, reaching as far as she could until a nodule appeared some 50 meters below. It was only half a foot wide, but she recognized it instantly as a telepathic relay. She reached out to it with her Ikrid and found the link to the door activation, triggering it and feeling a small rumble as a boring device clawed its way up through the ice to just below the surface.

Kara walked over to it, seeing that it had stopped a meter below breaking the upper ice and snowpack, but everything else below it had been sucked down rather than forced up, leaving the visual cover on top unmolested. Kara felt another function and triggered it, seeing a small hole melt in the ice and reveal a hatch. She reached down and pulled it open, seeing a small lift car below.

The Archon slid in feet first and closed the hatch, seeing with her Pefbar as water was squirted on top and quickly frozen to replace the ice, concealing her entry point before the lift descended through the now hollow shaft and docked with the facility below.

Kara walked out through the opening doors into an Archon sanctum built just for her where she would be spending potentially the rest of her life in solitude…and befitting trailblazer humor, she saw a plaque hanging down from the ceiling in plain view of the entrance that read FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

Below it, neatly folded and laying on the floor, was a set of blue and red clothes, complete with a cape and very short skirt.

Kara rolled her eyes and smiled in an annoyed fashion as she knelt down and picked them up, seeing a big ‘S’ symbol emblazoned on the center of the top.

“You jerks…there is no way I’m wearing this.”

4

December 7, 4854

Vliol System (Brat’mar territory)

Glaxtiel 289 shipyard

Dorchav took a moment away from his scheduling work to walk out onto the observation deck of the now greatly expanded shipyard. Unlike the rest of V’kit’no’sat designs, this deck was only separated from space by an invisible layer of material 2 meters thick. On a warship that would be unwise, for the outer hull needed several protective barriers to help protect the crew, but shipyards were not meant to fight and if this one came under assault and the shields were breached, a little extra armor would do no good.

Since this was the birth place of so many vessels, an observation deck had been deemed an integral part of the design despite the weakness and Dorchav had to admit it was a worthy exception to the V’kit’no’sat building rules. A hologram didn’t truly do the view justice, and seeing the direct light with his own eyes just felt different. Perhaps it was the tiny imperfections in the glass that a hologram did not have, but whatever the case the view from here was better than any hologram could hope to be.

Right now that view was little more than a construction ring that had been enlarged beyond what was needed to build V’kit’no’sat ships, including Mach’nel, to a scope of several thousand miles. It looked much smaller, for the ring was so fat it appeared thin from this distance, but moving to and from that ring were hundreds of thousands of ‘tiny’ craft carrying materials and crew out to the Harthur under construction.

Rather than build each segment individually, the Harthur was being constructed in its fully deployed spherical shape in order to allow maximum surface area for the workers to get at simultaneously. Far beyond this one, Dorchav could see the second under construction as well, along with a third shipyard that was not yet large enough to hold another. It was being furiously expanded as well, and all under Brat’mar control. For as a reward of the success of the prototype, Mak’to’ran had declared that the Brat’mar would be tasked with the sole production of additional models while the other races shipped their contribution to this system via never-ending streams of cargo convoys.

It was a great honor for his race, and to him personally as Mak’to’ran had put him in command of the infantile program, though he felt he didn’t deserve it. Part of him still felt dead at Star Force’s hands, for he would not have survived without their mercy. The mercy of an enemy they had marked for total eradication…and yet they had chosen to spare him and his crew. Even after all these years that still didn’t feel right and Dorchav had yet to shake the sense that in some way he was the walking dead, carrying his failure with him in each breath.

The empire felt otherwise, for where he had been scorned for losing a Mach’nel he was now heralded as the greatest hero since the Rit’ko’sor rebellion for giving them a new weapon to use against the Hadarak. And even that was a copy of Star Force, stolen from them and modified to a new purpose. It was true that Dorchav was the one that pushed the idea, and with Mak’to’ran’s help had gotten a prototype constructed, but the original ingenuity had come from their enemy and a part of him could not legitimately accept the accolades now granted him.

Mak’to’ran had given him something much more valuable, and that was the responsibility of combat against the Hadarak. Perhaps if he killed enough of them this Human stain would be purged from him, though the destruction of the first had not been enough. It had been a rough two years keeping the Hadarak imprisoned, for it continually sacrificed parts of its body to grow minions that would then attack the Harthur from inside. Entire segments of it had been destroyed, but Dorchav had learned from those losses and successfully contained the beast while making repairs and shipping in replacement segments up until Mak’to’ran had finally given the kill order.

When that happened a Mach’nel was brought in and several holes were deliberately opened up in the Harthur to allow them to shoot through. When they did the Hadarak had no defense, for it could not flee while trapped within the IDF aura and its tentacles could not reach the Harthur. Bit by bit the Mach’nel and supporting fleet chewed into its body, taking well over 3 months to finally kill because they could not mass around it at close range, but dead it now was and with the fewest ship losses in V’kit’no’sat history.

That was a deed that was giving the empire new enthusiasm about the never-ending war, and with its success Itaru had stopped resisting Mak’to’ran and decided to put their full support behind this new approach…but Mak’to’ran had insisted that only the Brat’mar be commissioned, and had made that stick despite severe protest. That, at least, was an honor he had gained for them, along with the responsibility for creating bigger Harthur, for the prototype had only been large enough to capture the smallest of them.

To capture tier 2 and larger, the Harthur’s diameter had to be bigger and that required more robust IDF generators. Current designs were sufficient to snag a tier 2, and those were what was being crafted before him now, but tier 3s were too large and the emitters would have to be placed too close to the Hadarak’s grapple field range, allowing it to damage or destroy them despite the fact that the tentacles could not reach.

And in that too was a threat, for the Hadarak captured by the prototype had begun lengthening its tentacles the same way it was creating more minions…by using internal stores of resources and cannibalizing parts of its body to feed the tentacle growth. Dorchav wondered if that was an emergency fallback or part of the Hadarak’s intentional design like the fat cells on his own body, though he kept his relatively low so not to inhibit his movement. These Hadarak didn’t move through quadruped motion, rather simply sitting and pulling on gravity to maneuver them about while their minions did the agile combat work, so perhaps they were designed with their own version of ‘fat’ to use as they needed.

Regardless, if the V’kit’no’sat tried to contain one for a long period of time it was going to alter itself to try and escape, and with these Harthur designed to capture tier 2s they didn’t have that luxury. The range of their grapple fields would end just before they reached the circumference of the Harthur, and any alteration or upgrade would compromise the containment. It was up to the Brat’mar to build longer ranged IDF emitters, otherwise they’d never be able to capture a tier 3, let alone the bigger monsters that were the true fleet killers, and researchers across every race were now tasked with helping the Brat’mar figure out how to do it.

But Mak’to’ran wasn’t waiting to figure it out. So long as they could kill level 1s and potentially 2s, he wanted Harthur to be built as quickly as possible so they could hold the Hadarak border with far less casualties than they were suffering now. That would require dozens, if not hundreds, depending on the Hadarak activity level…and how they would react when word of this new technology reached the others Dorchav did not know. Mak’to’ran was insistent that they delay that discovery as long as possible, pursuing couriers and all minion types that could potentially send such messages back to the enemy with extreme haste.

If this new technology prompted a stronger surge from the Hadarak, then so be it. It was their first real advantage against them and they were not going to hold it in reserve…but they weren’t going to advertise it in a taunting fashion either. Simply making the Hadarak disappear for a while was preferable, but eventually one of their death screams…which the V’kit’no’sat still could not silence…would travel between systems and a passing Hadarak or minion would hear it and register the last communication, then copy it on to the others.

That was how many defeats of the Hadarak were reported to their civilization, albeit with years of delay. The V’kit’no’sat moved much faster, but the sheer mass of their nemesis could not be ignored. When they came they did massive amounts of damage, and they always came at some point. Many times the V’kit’no’sat would have ample forewarning, but aside from massing their ships for a very costly battle there was nothing that time allowed them to do.

Remote turrets had been created to assist in this, and they did help in the battles, but they could not maneuver well against the minions. Even the Rit’ko’sor could not fully use drone warships, for they had to have crewed ones in close proximity in order to have the necessary reaction speed to effectively fight the minions. Without it the efficiency rate dropped, and the Rit’ko’sor did not have the production capacity to replace the losses fast enough.

The V’kit’no’sat did, and in system defenses along the border they had very large guns sitting in space that would add damage and, frankly, soak up minion attacks allowing the fleet to move more freely, but the V’kit’no’sat had never had a good way to fight the Hadarak.

Now they did, with one kill already on the charts and Mak’to’ran taking the prototype out looking for another tier 1 to engage while the fleets continued to fight the larger ones in traditional bloody fashion whenever they encroached on V’kit’no’sat territory. Right now expansion into Hadarak systems was paused while the Harthur strategy was developing. Holding the line now was more than just a stalemate…it was buying them valuable time to build the Harthur, and pushing needlessly into bigger fights without them was something Mak’to’ran was not stupid enough to waste ships on.

So now the entire war that the V’kit’no’sat had been created to fight lay on Dorchav’s shoulders, after a fashion, and he was eager to work towards that end, but every now and then a break was needed from the endless logistics that he was having to oversee.

Looking at the progress of the first tier 2 prototype allowed him to put his mind at ease while also offering a chance to consider the irony of the fact that for 6 million years the V’kit’no’sat had not conceived of this idea and it had taken the ingenuity of an illicit splinter faction to prod his own into coming up with this tactic. Without them he doubted it would have occurred to him, so why should he be getting the praise and they still be marked for death? Was not this new tactic worth their independence? Was the collective dominance of the V’kit’no’sat more important than the war against the Hadarak that was their very reason for existing?

Or were the V’kit’no’sat comfortable with stealing merit from others. Dorchav did not like that idea at all, and wondered if Itaru wanted Star Force dead because of the many accomplishments they’d made using the V’kit’no’sat tools they’d inherited. Some of which were more impressive than what the empire had. Did Itaru want them gone in order to rewrite history, or was it the threat they posed?

It was no longer Dorchav’s concern, yet it still haunted him to this day, for in his case, he was the inferior that had been spared by the superior cleverness of the Humans.

His solitude on the observation deck was interrupted as another Brat’mar dressed in the golden/blue robes that engineers wore hastily trotted in and came up behind Dorchav’s tail, though he could clearly see the smaller Brat’mar with his Pefbar, so he did not turn around.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, Dorchav. I apologize for the interruption, but I assumed you would want to know immediately.”

“Know what?” he asked, shuffling his feet so he spun around in place and looked into the horns of the engineer.

“News. From beyond the rimward border of the Chadfre Region. A sleeping Uriti has been found.”

Dorchav’s eyes narrowed sharply. Mak’to’ran had told him he’d been sending out a massive number of Era’tran search parties despite Itaru’s border restrictions looking for the remaining Uriti. According to the Humans there were 118 created by the Chixzon. 2 had been destroyed, leaving 116 hidden in captivity after they were successfully neutralized with a sedative that the V’kit’no’sat had procured and tested on the Hadarak…with no success whatsoever.

But it did work on the Uriti, and of the 116 hidden there had been 73 discovered, revived, and now in Star Force possession until the recent addition of a 74th brought to them by the Knights of Quenar, who seemed to be the ones hunting the galaxy for the hidden beasts. That meant there supposedly were 42 more out there somewhere, and Mak’to’ran had been adamant about finding them before the Knights of Quenar could.

“In containment?”

“Yes. Buried on a planet full of primitives. They are being eradicated and we are claiming the system. The Uriti is still dormant, so we will have a chance to study it up close.”

“How large is it?”

“I do not know. At the time of the message they had not reached the chamber, but the telepathic aura was impossible to miss from orbit. I believe they want to pacify the planet before attempting to breach the containment chamber.”

“Wise,” he said, with the words ‘but bloody’ sticking in his throat. Securing the planet was obviously a necessity, but the Humans had never slaughtered native populations to secure their Uriti…though stories of what the Knights of Quenar had done were another matter entirely. “What else?”

“That is all. Should I not have disturbed you?”

“It is a worthy disruption, but it does not alter our work here.”

The other Brat’mar understood the implicit dismissal and simply bowed his head. “I will leave you to your thoughts.”

Dorchav spun back around as the engineer left, wondering what Mak’to’ran was going to do with the Uriti. He doubted they would try to kill it. While that would deny it to Star Force and give the V’kit’no’sat a test case for killing them, it would be very costly even if they tried to kill it before it fully awoke. Data from those who had captured them indicated that the sedative was negated by even the slightest of damage, and the Uriti had the fortitude of the Hadarak, meaning they would not be killed quickly.

And Harthur would be useless against them, for the Uriti had weaponry that could easily destroy the containment shell. No, Mak’to’ran would study it as it slept while guarding the system. It was now a race to find the remaining 41 before Star Force’s allies could, and though there had been some hope that communication could be established with them Dorchav now doubted it. The captured Hadarak had been bombarded with every known communication method the V’kit’no’sat had and it had ignored them all.

He doubted the Uriti would be any different, for they saw the V’kit’no’sat and other races as mere vermin, and Dorchav granted they had reason to do so. The Hadarak were such a different race that they literally outscaled all others. Their minds were so large that they had a telepathic aura around them that ship crews had reported feeling when in close combat, and despite that obvious presence there was no response to the V’kit’no’sat’s own telepathy. Dorchav had even tried himself, shouting across the distance with his Ikrid from the edge of the Harthur and even using a booster to try to amplify the power and range, but neither he nor any of the others could make contact…not even get the slightest of twitches from the Hadarak.

Either they couldn’t understand or didn’t care, and Dorchav suspected the latter. How the Chixzon had engineered them to obey their commands was such an enormous feat that Mak’to’ran had also begun sending out search teams to try and find any traces of their former or current existence. Star Force had obviously found something, but what that was had not been revealed to the public and the V’kit’no’sat spies hadn’t been able to discover it. But if they had found something, then there might be more out there to be found, and Mak’to’ran was right to go after it.

Itaru had disagreed with that as well and seemed to be stuck in the protocol of the past. Perhaps this discovery would jar them out of their complacency, for even the smallest possibility of being able to find the technology to capture and reprogram the Hadarak to obey the V’kit’no’sat was worth any amount of search effort. Why Itaru could not see that Dorchav did not understand, but thankfully the empire now had a leader who did, and who was going to drag Itaru and the rest of the less wise into a future of hope whether they permitted it or not.

V’kit’no’sat did not discuss the futility of fighting the Hadarak, for such was deemed treasonous, but many felt it. It was the war that would never end and could not be won, but now Mak’to’ran was changing that. The Harthur were changing that. And Dorchav was grateful for both, though he had to admit some credit was due to those that he was pledged to destroy…and who had not destroyed him when they had the chance.

And in sparing him they had delivered the Harthur to the V’kit’no’sat.

That did not sit right with Dorchav, and a part of him suspected that it never would.

5

October 2, 4855

Unnamed System (far side of galaxy)

Unnamed Planet (Uriti Shell)

Hamob had to lean forward and crawl on his belly, wiggling his way forward to get through the entrance to the Ancient facility that held the newly discovered Uriti, but once he was through he was able to stand up and avoid ducking in most locations. It was clear that the shell facility was not designed for visitors of Era’tran size, with the V’kit’no’sat using Zen’zat almost exclusively on the location…both for their small frames and their Ikrid blocks.

The Uriti’s passive telepathic presence was affecting Hamob already, but he pushed it aside with mental strength forged over the more than 2 million years of his life. It would get worse the closer he got, but right now he was alright holding out against the constant pressure. What would happen if he let it through was unclear, but he knew there was a zone of proximity further in where any biologicals would become compromised and rendered inert. That range differed based on an individual’s strength and their race, but it had already been confirmed that the Zen’zat could briefly tolerate that zone all the way up to the dark grey, almost black skin of the Uriti contained within.

The Oracle interface had been most helpful to the initial research team, learning their language and answering questions freely after the perimeter defenses had been destroyed. It seemed that containment was the priority for the computer system, and once someone got inside such containment hinged on negotiation and enlightenment.

The name the Ancients had given this monster was Bulmuthal, and it was a large one. The first created by the Chixzon and one of the last to be captured. It was over 200 miles wide, but did not have a thick center of mass like other designs. It was essentially a large net with six thick strands running parallel in one direction and four crossing the other. They were fairly flexible, and right now the Uriti was bent on top of itself and crammed into the shell’s interior that was only 93 miles in diameter. There was a buffer zone around the Uriti of 18 miles, meaning it was constricted down to only 57.

Hamob hoped he could lay eyes on it himself, but as he walked through the facility and got closer to the epicenter the pressure on his mind increased, along with several active attempts to penetrate. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and it was obvious to him now that even in this sedated state the Uriti was still partially active. It might just be autonomic reactions, but his mind was definitely received hack attempts even at this range.

“Hamob, welcome,” an I’rar’et researcher said as it scuttled across the floor, unable to fly with the low ceilings, and looked up at him with its long beak-like face. “I am glad you have arrived. The scale of this facility and what it is meant to contain is staggering. These Ancients were a formidable alliance, though not on our current power scale. The Uriti, however, is another matter entirely.”

“Hello, Gardef. Have you been able to make contact?”

“Not at all. Its telepathic aura is unresponsive and omnipresent. You should be wearing a telepathic inhibitor, Hamob. Prolonged exposure, even for us, is problematic.”

“I just arrived. I will weather it for a while. How is the sedative being produced?”

“Impressive automation that draws resources from the planetary crust along with a magma tap. It also has a stockpile to compensate for unforeseen complications. We are secure against it waking.”

“Good. What have you learned of the Chixzon?”

“Much, but little of consequence. The Ancients did not know how the Uriti was created, nor were they able to reverse engineer Chixzon technology…at least as far as the database here details. We are learning stories, and fascinating stories at that. Star Force did not reveal as much to the public as we had thought.”

“I am not surprised at that,” Hamob said, ducking to get underneath an archway as the pair walked. “Where is the Oracle?”

“Integrated into the entire facility,” Gardef said, then he turned his attention to the infrastructure around them. “Oracle, a question.”

A hologram of an odd symbol appeared floating beside them as they walked.

“What is your inquiry?”

Gardef gestured to Hamob.

“What is the combat record of this Uriti?”

“As I have informed your colleagues, it is called a ‘Hamoriti’ and Bulmuthal has one of the most impressive war records, though one full of smaller conflicts. The galaxy’s strongholds were not targeted with Bulmuthal and reserved for future Hamoriti. It was believed that after two Hamoriti losses that the originals were tasked with bulk work, moving from system to system of lesser magnitude and cleansing vast tracks of territory. This Hamoriti has the most planetary kills on record, utilizing an assault mechanism that…”

The Oracle continued on like that for many hours, with Hamob asking a variety of questions before finally deciding to test his strength against the Uriti. He arrived on the periphery of the main chamber where no other V’kit’no’sat would go and flanked by more than 50 Zen’zat. They were having issues, but minor ones, with the telepathic pressure, and were here to assist him if he required it. Hamob began to walk towards the mountain of folded, rock-hard flesh as he fought the telepathy that was trying to take control of his mind.

The sight of the Uriti was far more intimidating now, even in its sedated state, than all the holograms of combat he’d studied in seclusion. He could feel its presence, and that visceral aura imbued power on a scale that Hamob had not felt since his days of combat against the Hadarak. He’d been on a planet with a Hadarak implanted on the surface multiple times and the telepathic presence was similar, but he’d never been this close before. Add on to that the fact that the Uriti was sedated. How powerful its telepathy would be when awoken sent a shiver of genuine fear down the Era’tran’s tail, and Hamob found it to be a valuable epiphany after so many years spent in analysis away combat.

Hamob continued to walk a few miles, then stopped as the attacks began to hit home. He took it as a challenge and managed to stabilize himself, so he held position and studied the Uriti for some time as his Zen’zat fought off the futile headaches that the Uriti’s presence was causing them.

“We are the inferior,” he finally said aloud. “These Chixzon possessed a power that we have not even begun to approach…yet they were defeated because they relied on a single avenue of attack. The sedative was their bane and something they could not anticipate. They trusted in the Uriti too much and it was what killed him, but what they accomplished is not to be underestimated.”

“What are we going to do with it?” one of the Zen’zat asked him.

“Deny it to those who can use it against us and search for their means of control. If we can harness but one Uriti, it will provide a weapon against the Hadarak that we badly need. You may withdraw. I am not going further.”

The Zen’zat didn’t argue, turning and running back to the distant entrance as Hamob remained. It was an effort to do so, but he had not been tested like this in such a long time the he did not want to retreat. He knew he could not stay indefinitely, but an Era’tran that ran too quickly from an opponent was one that could not be depended on. Wisdom knew when to retreat, but retreat was always reluctant and Hamob’s mental strength was holding…though dwindling.

“Bulmuthal,” he said, addressing the Uriti both in words and telepathy. “You are a mighty warrior far older than I. I apologize for not being able to release you from your capture, but we must protect you from those who do not understand your full potential. So here you shall stay until we can come to an accord. There is a galactic core of Hadarak threats that we must defeat, and you are the key to that, though you do not realize it. Your former masters misused you greatly. I promise that we shall not…”

Jessica Avril walked into Davis’ new office…though by the size it was more of a command deck now with a view of a spectacular beach beyond. The Meintre planet was absolutely gorgeous, but she hadn’t been summoned her for sunbathing. Rather she and every other Duke were here along with all 8 Arch Dukes for a summit meeting the likes of which had never happened before as far as she knew.

Jessica wore a cape over top of a pair of very short shorts that showed off her legs while her arms were covered all the way up to her wrists and her blonde hair was pulled back in an elegant braid a bit more gaudy than what the other Dukes were wearing, but they all had their own unique twists to the standard Star Force uniforms. Most were Human, but there were two Protovic here as well. Dargok and Vera’de. She’d never met either of them, but both had advanced up through the Monarch ranks at an astonishing pace and their reputations were well known…however, they were amongst the newest of the Dukes and still had a lot of learning to do, so they were the most junior members here.

Davis had told everyone to be here at 4:32 am local time, and all the Dukes had been prompt to arrive and take their seats at a monstrous circular table with Jessica sitting down between Dukes Zarren and Covne, the latter of which she was fairly close friends with.

8 Arch Dukes and 251 Dukes made up the circle that contained exactly that many seats, but oddly Davis had none. Rather, when he began to speak, he slowly walked around the circle behind them all as a huge holographic map of their empire glowed to life in exquisite detail.

“I apologize for pulling you away from your duties, but this conversation is one that we all need to be here in person to deal with. Lag times are too inefficient, and this is a realization that the Archons came to long ago. We have much to discuss over the following days as we come to a potential cataclysm that I wish to avoid. It is so evident that even some of our enemies have noticed it, and we must address it now.”

Davis theatrically snapped his fingers and the hologram altered, splitting Star Force territory into two sections. One being the core of what they had left, the other being a band of newly acquired systems with some shotgun exceptions across the choppy dividing line.

“We are annexing territory at a significant rate, reaching out and trying to stabilize as many imperiled planets as possible. We are doing this for a number of reasons, top of which is to help those who are in need. But in doing so we are weakening our empire while strengthening it, and we are weakening it by diluting our experience levels. Note, we are gaining more and more experienced personnel now that our major war has been put on pause, but on average we are losing ground and losing it fast.”

“This is because we are pulling in people barely out of indoctrination and throwing them into populations that truly know what it means to be Star Force. For those of you here in the early years, you will remember that it took a long time to define what that meant in the lower level populations who learn as much through osmosis as they do the maturias. That osmosis comes from the civilians around them…and our civilian pool is becoming tainted with too many refugees.”

“We integrate the refugees into the populace so that they may learn from osmosis and shorten their learning curve, but there is a reverse effect as well. Every outsider we take in dilutes our identity in exchange for enhancing that outsider and making them more Star Force. By the time they reach a tier 2 colony, let alone a tier 3, they’re fully one of us based off of their need to calibrate to reality…or at least enough that their lingering culture isn’t a negative. But in the tier 1s we are seeing degeneration. It’s not a lot at this point, but I can see the writing on the wall and apparently so can others. We have to counter this without stopping our influx of refugees.”

“The tier 3 and 4 colonies are taking care of themselves due to their entry requirements, but it’s the tier 1 and somewhat the 2s that are the problem. We have people in newly annexed worlds leaving those worlds and traveling anywhere else in the empire they wish. This is now coming to an end. Migration within our borders will remain open to those who come out of a maturia, but those who go through indoctrination will be restricted to the new Frontier Region barring special circumstances.”

Davis pointed and the outer band on the map highlighted with three slow pulses of blue highlights.

“We’re going to keep the barbaric refugees out of our main territory and keep them there. This is going to be a big negative to those tier 1 and 2 worlds in the Frontier Region, but from the refugees point of view it will still be a huge upgrade. There they will remain with their offspring going through the maturias and being free to relocate, but the originals will be stuck within the Frontier Region unless their skill level rises to tier 3, then they’ll be free to relocate freely.”

“I know this will create cesspools in the Frontier Region, but we can no longer allow the refugees to culturally contaminate our existing worlds. To do so will create a cascade negative that will then spread everywhere, destroying what it means to be Star Force and undoing centuries of work we’ve all done to create Star Force culture. It has to remain a refuge, and many of you have already noted the increase in crimes that have come from the influx of refugees. The more they group together the worse it gets, including pulling in weak minded people who came through the maturia system.”

“While we all have strong minds, the majority of our populace do not. We must guard their freedom and enlightenment, for they cannot guard it themselves. They will go whatever way the wind blows, and the winds of maturia training fade after graduation. They are never completely forgotten, but they should be reinforced by the culture the younglings enter. Now they are seeing a negative cultural trend after graduation. We have to put an end to this before it gets any worse.”

“If we cut the inflow of refugees now, those already here will stabilize as their percentage decreases. Their offspring will not carry their taint, and those who do not train will eventually die out anyway. Time is our ally, as it always has been, so long as we are not introducing a large number of outsiders. I am not going to abandon the people out there that need our help, but we’re going to have to help them in a different way than we have been due to the increasing numbers involved.”

“Migration to the Frontier Region will remain open, and the more Star Force culture we can transmit out to it by osmosis the better, but we will not allow the influx. That is the price of annexation going forward. If you earn tier 3 you will be fully integrated into the empire. If not, then you will remain within the Frontier Region. It will become a second rate part of Star Force, but it will still be Star Force…though more like many of our worlds used to be a millennia or two ago.”

“Axius has taught us much about integration, both the benefits and problems. Too much integration is a bad thing, and this is now where we’re drawing the line for the civies. Scarven?”

“The problem is the worst in some Axius colonies,” the Arch Duke who oversaw Axius testified. “We have to maintain a delicate balance to abridge the variations between races, and that balance is based off of common experiences gained through maturia training. Indoctrination is far less exhaustive, so we’re seeing disturbing trends developing from the remnants of exterior cultures brought in and mashed up. Quite a few individuals now see our security forces as an enemy to be countered rather than defenders. They obey the rules when they have to because of the threat of the security forces rather than because the rules are there for the sake of wisdom. This distrust is toxic and spreading, with many ungrateful individuals attempting power grabs by casting Star Force as the villain.”

“This is laughable to those who came through the maturia system, but when we have so many differing races overlapping there are inherent conflicts that have to be overlooked in good humor. Take that away and Axius is a ticking time bomb. Trust and brotherhood is what binds Axius together, and exterior cultures based on quite different things are a threat. Indoctrination is not enough to eliminate this. Therefore we have to keep indoctrinated individuals out and in their own Axius colonies. I do not like the state those colonies will be in, but as Davis said, they’ll be in far better condition from where they came from.”

“The bigger we grow,” Davis added as he paced around the backs of all the Dukes’ chairs, including Jessica’s with him patting her on the head for emphasis, “the more problems we will face along with the strength we gain. Some of us are working on projects with the distant future in mind, but present problems are why we are bifurcating our territory now. This is a stopgap protocol, and a rolling one, I expect. Once certain planets in the Frontier Region reach a certain level of civility they will be moved across the line while more planets are being colonized or annexed. This is a transitional status, and one that will require heavy policing of the jumplanes. We cannot allow the civilian traffic to circumvent this protocol, so cross line trading will have to occur through designated intermediaries. No direct trading will be permitted without special license.”

“Independent businesses can choose to operate on one side or the other, but aside from credits, none of their property flows between the two and we must outline and maintain protocols for trading with parties originating outside our territory.”

“Bottom line, people…we have to tighten the screws before our empire wobbles itself into pieces. More regulation separating pocketed freedom. And I want to hear brainstorming on the most effective way to implement it. The floor is open. Start talking,” Davis said, floating a donut from one of many trays on the huge table over to his hand and taking a bite as the assembled Dukes began to chat amongst themselves.

6

February 18, 4858

Bulmuthal System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Unnamed Planet (Uriti Shell)

Hamob was sleeping on a cushioned pedestal, half sunk into the soft material with his tail curled around and almost touching his face when the alarm sounded. He wasn’t onboard a ship, but rather in a V’kit’no’sat facility built nearby the Uriti shell, and his first thought was that Bulmuthal was waking up and breaking free…but as Hamob’s mind snapped out of its lethargy he realized it was the wrong alarm for that.

He stood and hopped off his sleeping pad, racing for the nearby door while reaching out telepathically to interface with the alarm system, drawing information from it and realizing the heavy defense fleet the V’kit’no’sat had brought in to secure the Uriti was under attack by an even larger force and was suffering heavy losses.

When Hamob got to the nearest command deck…which required a quick walk outside to a nearby building…he mentally asserted himself and bumped the Les’i’kron defense coordinator from his command position with the heavy avian reluctantly stepping aside as the Era’tran began altering the holographic displays to see who it was that was attacking them.

The ships were not known to the computer tracking systems, but Hamob knew instantly who it was despite the new ship designs. The technology was the same, but employed differently, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the Knights of Quenar. These ships had never been seen in the Uriti Preserve, but it was them none the less and their firepower was far greater than what they’d demonstrated in their previous limited combat with the V’kit’no’sat in the Preserve.

“They are here for the Uriti,” Hamob declared. “It is the Knights of Quenar. I’m assuming this is their version of a battle fleet and what they had in Star Force territory is expeditionary ships, that’s why they don’t register.”

“They did not show on our Neavi sensor. They were upon us before we realized it,” a Brat’mar reported.

“They must have a way to shield themselves. Assume they can reach the planet undetected. Are we set up to repel a ground assault?”

“No,” the Les’i’kron said. “We do not have sufficient troops to fight a full scale battle, only enough to defeat a light force. We did not expect anyone to be able to get past our fleet.”

“I estimate four hours, Hamob,” the Brat’mar added warily. “Then we will have no fleet left.”

The Era’tran glared at the tri-horned quadruped. “Are we that badly outmatched?”

“Yes. Their ships are comparable to ours, perhaps slightly more potent, and they have 4 times the tonnage that we do. We are going to lose this without reinforcements, and there are none nearby to call for. I see no way to hold the Uriti.”

Hamob growled angrily, and no one else on the command deck spoke. Neither did he, merely staring at the tactical display of the V’kit’no’sat ships engaging in very close range to the Knights of Quenar and ripping each other to pieces. This foe did not stand off like Star Force did, they were coming face to face and blasting away as if they were the dominant one…and in this lopsided engagement, it appeared they were.

Hamob did not want to relinquish the Uriti. It was vitally important to the V’kit’no’sat, and to Mak’to’ran in particular, but his analytical mind had already come to the conclusion his emotions did not want to accept. They could not hold the Uriti, and wasting ships in a losing effort was pointless.

“Evacuate the planet immediately,” he ordered, drawing several gasps along with a bolt of plasma into the air from the Les’i’kron.

“We cannot!” he declared as the flames subsided. “We must defend the Uriti at all costs.”

“No. What we must do is deny it to the Knights of Quenar if we are unable to hold it. Thus we are leaving, and now,” Hamob said firmly.

“How do we deny it to them by…” the Les’i’kron asked before the obvious answer hit him.

“It is our only play if our fleet cannot hold. Or am I wrong?”

No answer came, and eventually Hamob ignored the conflicted avian and began to walk out of the command deck. “Evacuate immediately. I will see to the Uriti personally.”

Nearby the Uriti shell a KoQ ship landed under stealth, disgorging hundreds of mechanical walkers along with infantry that followed a short distance behind. The crab-like Knights moved far faster than they looked capable of, hopping more than running to keep up as the first of the V’kit’no’sat fliers began to strafe them from the sky…drawing immediate return fire from the walkers that downed two I’rar’et immediately with overlapping and well-coordinated firepower.

That forced the others back and lower to the ground, still taking shots at the invading troops but limiting the number of return shots they had to take. They continued to do so as the KoQ advanced easily all the way up to the Uriti shell, encountering no ground troops whatsoever. Only the avians were fighting back, and soon the infantry were at the entrance and cutting through the doorway with quick efficiency.

They had a four meter wide hole half completed when the first tremor was felt. The cutters continued, but the rest of the infantry exchanged glances and lowered their telepathic inhibitors. They’d known the presence of the Uriti could have a negative effect on them so they’d come prepared, but only when they turned them off did they realize the Uriti’s aura was deafeningly loud. Too loud at this range if it was still sedated.

Before the cutters could finish there were more tremors, then a violent crack as the structure broke. At that point they knew what was coming and the Knights of Quenar turned and ran as fast as they could, reengaging their telepathic inhibitors so the Uriti couldn’t grab hold of their minds. Right now it didn’t seem to even notice them, but the area of effect was still problematic. Two of the KoQ didn’t make it in time, falling to the ground with too much mental noise to be able to function, but their fellow Knights doubled back for them and manually engaged the countermeasures.

After that they just ran, including the mechanical walkers, and got back to their waiting ship just in time to see the first piece of the nearly black Uriti poke up through the roof and soil over top, for the facility was situated underneath a network of canyons. It broke free with such ease that huge chunks of rocks flew off like they were little more than dust, then the entire landscape began to churn and the tremors threw the remaining infantry to the ground just shy of the ship that was both visible and hovering over the surface as the landscape twisted and thrust subsurface rock up at odd angles like knife blades.

When the last of the Knights got onboard the ship slowly lifted off, with them looking out the cargo bay as the Uriti unfurled into a giant net as it reached up towards orbit. They’d come to claim it while sedate, but either the V’kit’no’sat caretakers were extremely careless or they’d intentionally woke it up to deny it to them.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Once the Knights finished off the V’kit’no’sat they’d begin the hard work of resedating the Uriti. They’d been preparing for this for millions of years, but it wasn’t a task they envied. In the past each Uriti sedated came with unbelievably high losses of life sacrificed to deliver the sedative without damaging their target…for even light damage would counteract the effect.

There would no need for the ground forces now, but fortunately the Knights of Quenar had come prepared for a wide variety of situations they might find on the other side of the galaxy from their headquarters, and this nightmare situation was one of them.

Hamob boarded a drop pod as soon as he had secured the explosives against the Uriti’s body and sabotaged the sedation system. With the timer set he was able to get to his ship in orbit just before the Knights of Quenar troops got to the now sealed entrance. By the time he arrived on the command deck of his personal Kafcha the battle was even in more disarray as the enemy would not give an inch and viciously pursued their ships as the V’kit’no’sat began to retreat.

Once the last of the avian troops holding a limited rear guard action boarded their ships, Hamob ordered a full retreat…but the KoQ would not disengage. They chased and blasted into the trailing ships all the way to the star where the V’kit’no’sat had to fight a holding action while Hamob’s ship and others jumped out.

The KoQ didn’t follow through the jump, with Hamob’s Kafcha and the other heavy ships waiting at the end of the jumpline two days later to hit them as they came in…but they never did. Nor did the last third of the V’kit’no’sat ships that probably were destroyed holding the jumpline. Previous attempts to cloak and run hadn’t been successful, for the KoQ could still track them somehow, so Hamob figured they hadn’t been able to get away. If they did, they’d move through other systems and rendezvous here within days, but he wasn’t holding out much hope.

And what was worse was the fact they had no eyes on the Uriti. The KoQ had completely run them out of the system in addition to stealing their prize. Hamob had no choice, unable to reengage without reinforcements, so he dispatched 8 courier ships to different destinations on the border of V’kit’no’sat territory to send the message of what had happened here.

If the KoQ thought they were going to keep the Uriti from the V’kit’no’sat they were mistaken. If Bulmuthal couldn’t be kept sedated and studied, then it was going to provide the V’kit’no’sat with their first Uriti kill…and they were going to go right through the Knights of Quenar once Hamob’s message reached their empire and a proper war fleet was summoned.

After the V’kit’no’sat were driven from the system, the Knights of Quenar proceeded to pulverize the remaining semi-active debris from their ships, eliminating the survivors and any potential threat they might have posed while Bulmuthal slowly made its way towards the star. Halfway there some of the KoQ ships intercepted it and opened fire, not doing any real damage but prompting the Uriti to reactively turn around and engage them.

The Knights of Quenar then fled, trying to draw the Uriti further away from the star and lost a few ships in the process as the rest of their fleet assembled and began making strafing runs against it…but with sedative missiles, many of which didn’t make it through. A few did, smashing against the hull and squishing like goo that clung to it and began to seep into its body. The hard, rock-like skin of the Uriti drank it up greedily due to the energized charge within the sedative. The Uriti was built to shrug off physical damage, but it absorbed energy and the Ancients’ design for the sedative used this attribute to get the sedative inside and distributed quickly through the miles of tissue.

The sedative itself was pulled along, often one molecule at a time, deep into the Uriti and began to slow its functionality…but it was so big even those few hits did not do much to hinder it. Unlike their ancestors, the Knights of Quenar had millions of years to study better ways to do this, and those first few missiles were only meant to dampen its senses. Bulmuthal had proximity discharge capability, so half the goo on its surface was blown off before it could sink in, looking like a nuclear blast wave as the entire net-like body pulsed outward, cleansing its surface.

That’s what the KoQ couldn’t have for their second attack, and with the minor sedative effect in place they launched more missiles that purposely detonated prior to the Uriti as it shot many of them on its own. The ones that blew apart by design left debris clouds that were actually little orbs that held sedative and tiny gravity drives. They were no larger than a meter, but they gradually drifted closer as none of the missiles actually hit the Uriti. If they did and landed their goo, the Uriti would shrug it off again and destroy the clouds of orbs, so they couldn’t let any of the missiles get that far as the KoQ fleet continued to lose ships from the Uriti’s ranged weapons.

They couldn’t shoot back, so they just had to take the losses as the clouds of ‘debris’ continued to build up and drift in towards the Uriti that didn’t see them as a threat. Hopefully they were too small to register, and eventually the first of them made contact with the hull…where they transformed into miniature walkers and began to spread out to different locations so they didn’t clump together enough to register as a larger object. They couldn’t walk far and didn’t want to fly in a way that would attract attention, but as the clouds ‘drifted’ in closer and closer, the little landers spread out and waited until the time was right.

Eventually all of the initial clouds hit, with a second and third wave of missile ‘debris’ building up around the Uriti as it tried to chase the bulk of the KoQ fleet but couldn’t engage its medium-ranged weaponry. It was forced to snipe them with what amounted to dozens of massive beam cannons that would nearly destroy a KoQ ship with a single hit. Some survived and limped off, others didn’t, but the Uriti was so large that it wasn’t doubling up shots, rather shooting individual targets with single batteries.

Bulmuthal’s greatest power lay in its siege capability, with the square holes between body strands being collection apertures that would gather energy orbs that would gradually grow in size, then it would release them down to the surface of a planet with devastating effect. It was the Chixzon’s first design, and they clearly had intended to use it as a planetary assault device, though subsequent versions were more suited to actual fleet combat and even had low level shields, such as Nami. Fortunately this one wasn’t, but it was still doing a lot of damage to the KoQ, though not as much as the V’kit’no’sat had.

The Uriti would win out in the long run, for its longevity was far superior, making the sedative the only true weapon the KoQ had to use against it. They could not kill it. Not one of this size with the fleet they had, and if they tried it would just run to the star to recharge and repair itself. Sedating it truly was the only viable option, and when they had enough landing orbs in place at key positions the KoQ sent an activation signal and all of the little orbs discharged their goo onto the surface.

It wasn’t a large attack, just tiny little pinpricks so small the Uriti couldn’t notice a single one, and since they weren’t clustered together the totality of them all didn’t register either. It took several minutes to begin to take effect, but the activity level of the Uriti dipped considerably. Its firing rate diminished by 48% and multiple scans indicated that the surface of the Uriti where its proximity sensors were located were thoroughly numb in several spots.

Gravity sensors were deeper, and could pick up a KoQ ship easily at this range, including their big, fat missiles, so they waited as the additional clouds drifted in and attached themselves. They didn’t wait to discharged, adding to the sedative effect as more missiles were launched and detonated prematurely, for they didn’t want even the slightest impact to register.

Slowly the return fire diminished, and once it cut out completely the Knights of Quenar knew they had it. Many, many waves of sedative had to be applied to get it down to ‘safe’ status, though the telepathic aura was still dangerous and would take several days to scale down, for there was a lag effect. The Uriti wouldn’t truly ‘sleep’ until all its internal processes slowed down, but the KoQ couldn’t wait for that.

After deeming it safe enough, a huge transport ship decloaked near the star and traveled out to the Uriti. The ship had to transform in order to match the Uriti’s shape, barely being able to stretch out wide enough to cover the diameter of the net, though as it went deeper and deeper into sedation it didn’t stay flat. It began to curl and twist, and the giant transport ship had to alter with it to avoid breaking, but the KoQ had prepared for this possibility when designing it, for they didn’t have information on all the Uriti. They didn’t always know what size or shape they would be dealing with, and this was no exception.

But they’d almost miscalculated, for the transport dimensions barely fit the Uriti. They hadn’t expected one to be this big, and the curling action was also unexpected. Never the less they managed to keep it inside without breaking the hull as they directly applied more sedative at a regular rate. With it captured and now under their control, the Knights of Quenar collected what of their own survivors they could find and pulled all their ship debris into the star so no one could claim and study it. Then they amassed what fleet they had left, which was still considerable, and cloaked all their ships as they headed for the outgoing jumppoint that would start the very long journey around the perimeter of the galaxy, staying clear of V’kit’no’sat territory, that would eventually bring them to Star Force’s Uriti Preserve.

7

October 1, 4858

Jamtren System (Era’tran capitol)

Holloi

When Hamob returned to his personal residence he found that Mak’to’ran had let himself in and was waiting for him. How the other Era’tran got here ahead of him wasn’t hard to understand, for he’d reported the attack and release of the Uriti through the Urrtren as soon as they got back into V’kit’no’sat territory. However, how Mak’to’ran had gotten past his security programs was something he didn’t have an answer to.

“Your hacking skills are more formidable than I thought,” Hamob said, not getting angry at the intrusion and sounding like he could care less.

“Why did you not remain?”

“My scout ships could not stealth. The Knights of Quenar could detect them and pursued all with vengeance. I couldn’t leave any ships behind, and those that tried to get out after me were probably caught and destroyed. As to why we didn’t monitor surrounding systems, that should be obvious. The Uriti was awoken and out of both of our reach.”

“Unless they had one of Star Force’s wranglers with them.”

Hamob stopped walking and turned back to look at Mak’to’ran. “I was informed that the Knights of Quenar were recovering the Uriti without Star Force’s assistance.”

“There is nothing to stop them from retrieving one now to subdue the Uriti. We needed surveillance.”

“If we cannot be in the system, how can we surveil it?”

“You ran,” Mak’to’ran accused.

“There was no other viable option. If there was, state it.”

“What was the range of their stealth detection?”

“We saw no limit to it. And their vessels were of a design we’ve not encountered before. I suspect they were a battle fleet, and their power rivals ours. Releasing the Uriti was the only way we could deny it to them.”

“I do not argue that point, but there was no real effort to defend made. Your ships were sloppily aligned and fought like hatchlings.”

“I was on the ground when the battle began. I could not command them.”

“I gave you a significant defense fleet and it was misused.”

“I have not given that much thought,” Hamob admitted. “But I believe even if you were there to lead it, we would have lost. The Knights of Quenar had far more ships than we thought possible for a mere Order.”

“If they are not actively engaged in warfare they can build up their forces over time even if their production facilities are small. I should not have to be lecturing you on these matters, Hamob.”

The elder Era’tran sighed. “No, you should not. I admit I am rattled. That should not have happened and I can’t identify the underlying mistake.”

“Then it is time I play the master and you the apprentice. You are thinking as the dominant destined for victory, rather than acknowledging that we should not have won that fight.”

“You contradict yourself.”

“You don’t know how to wage a losing fight. You panicked and ran.”

Hamob glared at Mak’to’ran, but after the initial gut reaction his superior mind found no ground to disagree with the V’kit’no’sat leader on.

“Perhaps we did.”

“Even if they can detect our ships, that does not mean they can catch them. Their speed was formidable, but given enough of a head start they could not be captured in small numbers. By keeping your ships moving, you could have left some behind to monitor until fuel concerns warranted them leaving.”

“And if they guarded the jumppoints and had hidden ships waiting in various locations to spring traps?”

“I saw no evidence of that in the battle records.”

“I would not be surprised if it did occur. We were not ready for that formidable a foe.”

“And there Star Force is our better again. They have fought so well at such disadvantage that they shame us with their mere existence…and yet we will not learn from their example.”

“Have you dispatched another fleet?”

“I have. With a commander that I can trust to know how to fight ugly battles.”

“If you came here to berate me, I would suggest it is not a matter worthy of your time.”

“Do you consider this a violation of the truce?”

Hamob tilted his head slightly. “You are worried Itaru will and demand an immediate invasion of Star Force? I will not support that. Star Force’s allies attacked, not Star Force. If we are to invade anyone, let it be the Knights of Quenar homeworld.”

“I need you to go to Itaru and say just that.”

“Why not just order the strike yourself?”

“We only know the region they are in, not their exact location. We do not have a visible target to hit, and I suspect Itaru will not want to conduct a search. They will want blood and go to those they can get it from rather than those responsible.”

“It sounds like you’re protecting Star Force.”

“I am protecting our honor. They did not violate the truce and I will not tolerate us doing so. They gave us the information I requested. I will not sanction an attack before due time.”

“And then will you? Or are you going to find a reason to keep them alive further?”

Mak’to’ran flashed his Saroto’kanse’vam, with his glowing red talons indicating that Hamob had hit a nerve. “I am tired beyond measure of the idiocy within the empire. Star Force has provided us with two things the V’kit’no’sat and even the Zak’de’ron never possessed. Information about the minds of the Hadarak and a weapon we can effectively use against them. Dorchav never would have conceived of the Harthur without being the victim of a similar version. Star Force has done more to hurt the Hadarak than the V’kit’no’sat have ever done!”

“Your words border on treason, but I know they are not.”

“I’ve been branded a traitor before,” Mak’to’ran pointed out.

“That you have. The fissures in the empire have been sealed over, but they still exist. The Hadarak should be the uniting factor, and the success of the Harthur is rallying many to fulfill their oaths, but we are not a single entity. Far from it. What do the Oso’lon and J’gar have to say on the matter?”

“The J’gar oppose, the Oso’lon encourage an immediate strike against Star Force. The Era’tran must be the tipping factor, and I need you to tip it into a quest to find the Knights of Quenar worlds and destroy them.”

“They are working on behalf of Star Force.”

“Our truce is not with the Knights of Quenar. As such, us attacking them is not a violation of it.”

“True in detail, but not in spirit.”

“If we break our word, what of us?”

“You still think what we gained is worth the truce?”

“It is our first achievement above and beyond the Zak’de’ron. Is that not worth it on the merits alone?”

“You are playing a long term war, while others see only the immediate.”

“That is why I lead and not them.”

“Your leadership is tolerated, and is no more than that. Itaru still holds power.”

“They can delude themselves with such thoughts if they wish, but if they challenge me it will start another civil war.”

“We cannot afford that. Star Force would survive and only grow stronger.”

“And what of the Hadarak? Have you lost sight of our true enemy?”

“They will remain, as they always do. We can seek to destroy them after we deal with other matters.”

“That perspective is why we have made no progress in such a long time.”

“Many people tire of Star Force’s existence and see it as a direct challenge to our dominance.”

“If we were dominant, the extermination forces I sent to end them previously would not have failed. I regret not returning myself and assessing their truth strength, but my fight is rightly with the Hadarak and if others cannot handle the extermination of a small rogue faction then we have no claim to dominance.”

“What do you wish done with Star Force?”

“We honor the truce. That is non-negotiable.”

“And beyond that?”

“That is up to them. I have offed a path for their survival. So far they have refused.”

“What path?”

“The same one you pushed for the Rit’ko’sor.”

Hamob was taken aback. “You offered them membership?”

“Of a sort. Again, your focus suggests you are one of the arrogant, not the one who fought to destroy the arrogant. The Uriti are an invaluable asset we should not discard lithely.”

“You do not need to tell me this in light of recent events.”

“Did you make any headway into communication or control?”

“None.”

“The only ones that can command the Uriti are Star Force, and I do not believe we will be able to steal their secrets from their corpses.”

“Do you think they will actually help us fight the Hadarak?”

“If framed in the proper way, perhaps.”

“They despise us.”

“Why should they not? We have been trying to kill them.”

“And you think you can change that?”

“We have negotiated a deal once. They are not blindly filled with hate. Their hate comes from a legitimate source. I can negotiate around that. I already have once.”

“And they maintain the ability to do great damage to our empire if they choose.”

“Which is why we work out of caution, not fear. The dominant do not fear. You are rattled because you encountered a worthy opponent and lost. Itaru fears Star Force because they are the same. They cannot hurt us in any appreciable fashion through offense, but they can cost us far more ships if we attack on their territory and have to face their planetary defenses. Realize our advantage and stop panicking.”

“I am not panicking over Star Force.”

“Then go to Itaru and direct their ire where it belongs. You were the one who suffered the attack. It needs to come from you and the Era’tran.”

“And will you lead the search?”

“No. My place is fighting the Hadarak. We finally have a weapon against them. I will not be distracted. Do you have what you need to create the Ancient sedative?”

“The sedative, yes. Do we have a delivery system…no. I cannot fathom how they used it in combat. It has such slow adhesion. Without direct physical proximity over a prolonged period of time, the systems in the Ancient shell are worthless. They must have used something different for capture. We do not have a weapon to use against Star Force’s Uriti. Even if we did, we would have to fight through Star Force’s fleets to get to them, and the sedative is quickly countered by any damage.”

“What did you learn of consequence?”

“That the Chixzon possessed a knowledge of genetics far superior to our own.”

“You were able to retrieve samples?”

“We did. The coding of the Uriti is in a language we haven’t been able to identify. It does not match Hadarak genetics in any recognizable way. I believe they have kept their strength but rewritten it their own format.”

“How is it different?”

“The genetic coding molecules are different and incomplete. There is no functional possibility that we can derive from them. There must be another missing component we have not yet identified.”

“Interesting.”

“Disturbing,” Hamob countered. “I truly hope the Ancients were successful in killing them all.”

“It’s been millions of years and we have ascended to dominance within the galaxy. I think it’s safe to assume they are gone or have devolved into a form that is not a threat to us.”

“Or they’re hiding until they can find a fix to the Uriti weakness.”

“Noted.”

“I agree that we cannot lose focus on the Hadarak, but we cannot allow others to weaken our strength. We need it to hold the line, so we must prioritize our growth rate over Hadarak kills.”

“Star Force only costs us ships when we attack them. The Knights of Quenar are another matter.”

“I view them as a lesser threat. They wanted the Uriti. They do not want to fight a war against us.”

“Leave Star Force to me.”

“Do not overestimate your reputation.”

“Do not trifle me with reputations.”

Hamob huffed. “I will go to Itaru and do as you have requested. You must find a way to unite us further before you propose more radical ideas.”

“We adapt or die. I will not coddle the incompetent.”

“I wish the empire were in the state you wish it to be, but it is not. We need time to heal it. Do not push too hard too quickly or it will fracture again.”

“All the more reason to honor the truce. And we wouldn’t want to let the Knights of Quenar think they can attack us with impunity. There must be a reckoning.”

“That Itaru will agree with, but the lack of a viable target is problematic.”

“Scouts have already been dispatched. We will locate them sooner or later.”

“Depending on how well hidden they are.”

“We were able to track down the Zak’de’ron that fled. I think this will be no more difficult.”

“It will take time. Itaru will want blood now.”

“They will have to wait for a legitimate target. I will not tolerate a fake one. Those who attacked us must pay. We will not let them slide and blame another...”

Mak’to’ran left Hamob several hours later, not entirely satisfied. The elder Era’tran did not seem his normal, confident, wise self. Mak’to’ran had been on the losing side more than most V’kit’no’sat had, other than against the Hadarak, and this was the first time he had seen a crack in Hamob. Perhaps he was too used to winning, and perhaps that was part of the reason why some V’kit’no’sat were not eager to fight the Hadarak unless needed.

Mak’to’ran saw things differently. The Hadarak begged to be fought, and the V’kit’no’sat he had sworn loyalty to would not retreat from that fight. It was the reason they existed, and Mak’to’ran was going to pull them back to it or pull the empire apart. There was no relinquishing this duty, and better for the V’kit’no’sat to end than for it to continue on in a treasonous form…for to ignore the Hadarak was a betrayal of the very foundation of what it meant to be V’kit’no’sat.

And for Itaru to want to destroy the very weapons that could be used against the Hadarak was stupid beyond measure. Star Force was an asset, though one Mak’to’ran hadn’t yet figured out how to make full use of. The truce was as much about the exchange of information as it was to give Mak’to’ran time. He did not want the Uriti destroyed, and in truth, he didn’t want Star Force destroyed anymore either. They had proven their mettle through survival, as well as their cunning and honor, twisted as it might be into passivity.

But that passivity meant they were not a threat to the V’kit’no’sat. Not right now, at least, and the knowledge of the tier 6 Hadarak at the inner Core of the galaxy was pressing foremost on Mak’to’ran’s mind…though it seemed to be absent from most of the others’. Until they could find a way to beat planet-sized Hadarak, their squabble with Star Force, the Knights of Quenar, or anyone else was irrelevant…and the Uriti might be the key to figuring out a way to fight the real Hadarak nemesis that had never bothered to show themselves to the V’kit’no’sat.

The more years that went by the more he was certain that Star Force was the key to their ultimate victory over the Hadarak, but he didn’t know how and he couldn’t let Itaru destroy them before he figured it out. If he did, the V’kit’no’sat might not have a chance like this for another 10 million years, if ever.

8

March 23, 4861

Unnamed System (Beyond V’kit’no’sat territory)

Stellar Orbit

Soronera was commanding the leading scout vessel in the Knights of Quenar convoy as it came out of its jump into yet another uninhabited system. His ship had a several minutes lead on the others, and it was his job to make sure there wasn’t opposition or obstruction waiting at the end of the jump as the KoQ moved through more uncharted systems as they took the long way around V’kit’no’sat territory to get to Star Force’s Preserve.

The scout ship could move much faster than the transport vessel, and they’d already spent 3 years in transit and weren’t even half their way to their destination yet, but traveling through the inner half of the galaxy was just too dangerous. The KoQ fleet had taken significant losses against the V’kit’no’sat, then even more against the Uriti while they were sedating it. They still had a significant force left, some 72,000 ships, but if the V’kit’no’sat were able to locate them they could bring millions to bear against them.

The KoQ knew the V’kit’no’sat had recently acquired a new sensor that could locate active gravity drives or artificial gravity generators. The KoQ could block those sensor pings, but they were blind while doing so because they used the same technology to navigate by when fully stealthed. They’d had to mark the positions of the V’kit’no’sat ships from afar when they attacked the Uriti system, then navigate in the blind to where they were in order to spring the trap. That had been dangerous, for if the V’kit’no’sat ships had moved they could have collided, but it was the only way to defeat the higher level sensor system.

If the KoQ wanted to travel while fully stealthed, as they were now, they had to use that sensor to detect ships in their path…but that wouldn’t do anything to pick up asteroids or other debris. So they had to have conventional sensors sometime, which was the scout ships’ job. They looked, charted the course, then transmitted data back to the fully stealthed ships via fluctuations in their own gravity drives. It was a low volume means of communication, but enough to send short messages and navigational data…and only those with the high level sensor technology active could read them.

That meant if they encountered a V’kit’no’sat scout ship they were vulnerable to detection, and even a single encounter would highlight their approximate area and more enemy ships would flood into the region, eventually pinning them down and forcing a fight. They had to stay hidden, and that meant moving around the galaxy the long way to stay amongst the uncharted systems the V’kit’no’sat did not patrol.

When Soronera’s ship finished its deceleration it maintained partial stealth and scanned the region, both actively and passively, finding no immediate ships or objects to obstruct the convoy’s incoming jump. He sent the information back as two more of his 12 member crew came into the control atrium. During the jump they had been hibernating, with him awake in case something occurred or a message was sent, but now that they were in a system and the relatively safe jump was over, they needed more crew to fly the ship, for they didn’t want to overtax a single individual and miss a sensor contact, no matter how small.

So the three KoQ shared duties, overlapping and double checking each other as a few other scout ships emerged and spread out in multiple directions around the central star, checking out what was on the other side while Soronera’s ship held station and relayed their data stream to the convoy as some of the scouts disappeared around the curve of the star.

Everything appeared to be fine, just another quiet jump like the hundreds they’d made over the past years, but once the first of the convoy ships began to arrive fully stealthed they came under immediate attack.

Suddenly ship silhouettes started to appear everywhere around Soronera’s ship, firing a mix of energy weapons that the KoQ couldn’t all identify. They also didn’t recognize who was attacking them or how they had been able to stay hidden, but they were clearly waiting for them and hitting the convoy as it came through a few ships at a time.

Soronera’s ship didn’t last long before it was targeted and quickly destroyed, but he lived just long enough to see one of the twisted enemy ships unfurl and shoot a cylinder-like tube out from its central structure and into one of the larger KoQ warships that had just lost its shields under a mass of firepower. The tube didn’t hit the hull…it broke right through and several others followed as the enemy ship barely a third the size of the KoQ battlecruiser drew even closer and slowly ripped the vessel apart, completely severing the forward section of the cone-shaped ship and setting it adrift from the rest.

Sononera didn’t see anything else, for the energy weapon orbs being fired on him could move and track like missiles, following the evasive maneuvers the KoQ made, including an emergency microjump, and hit the ship several million miles away. There were more than 40 of them, and it didn’t take that many to puncture the shields and rip through the hull…but they didn’t explode on contact. They burnt through and met up inside the ship, forming into a much larger orb that finally did detonate, blowing the ship into oblivion while the rest of the KoQ fleet continued to jump into an ambush they could not avoid.

Some of the ships got a short heads up and were able to alter their final arrival point, but there were enemy ships everywhere waiting for them and chasing down those that tried to flee, with the KoQ forcing the enemy to either let them go or split their forces, giving the incoming ships a better chance of survival. The attackers chose to pursue, but had so many ships waiting that it didn’t matter. Eventually the KoQ ships began to build up, so large they couldn’t be killed fast enough to keep up with the convoy rate, and a pitched battle ensued. The KoQ had rarely met an opponent superior to them, but this unidentified race clearly was. Their weapons were so alien and potent that the KoQ would have had a hard time fighting them straight up even with a slight numerical advantage…but being ambushed in this way, they didn’t stand a chance.

When the Uriti transport arrived it was immediately swarmed with more enemy ships decloaking and ramming it. They got through the shields quickly then attached themselves to the hull…but they didn’t damage it. They stuck there like ticks, cutting entry points that allowed boarding parties in with remarkably little delay.

The KoQ didn’t have much in the way of crew onboard the transport, but they did have a small battle division just in case the ship was boarded. They responded immediately, all 20,000 of them, to the multiple breaches that were spread out over different areas in the transforming ship that was now 129 miles wide and 58 high to accommodate the twisting the Uriti had done while sedate. That was a huge amount of territory to cover and defend, though most of it was an empty interior shell that held the Uriti.

The KoQ troops wore full body armor, looking like a cross between a commando and a spider/crab, and skittered out on their four legs to meet the invaders, immediately sensing telepathic contact and attempts to override their minds. It was strong, but the KoQ had long ago made themselves immune to such interference, so when the first of the armored quadrupeds appeared they were still in their right minds.

But their opponents were huge and possessing many powers beyond telepathy, including telekinesis that they used to pick up and crush pieces of the ship that they then threw at the KoQ while the defenders fired tiny bolts of energy so fast it appeared to be a rainstorm of destruction. The first of the invaders withstood it long enough to knock down and partially crush 9 KoQ, but there were hundreds of them here and all targeting the long tailed quadruped encased in flexible red body armor.

Behind it eventually came two more, one of which had silver armor, but they all that the same powers and when they eventually realized their telekinesis wouldn’t work on the KoQ they switched to attacks that could not be blocked, primarily in the form of semi-invisible energy waves that rippled through the air and scattered the KoQ like bowling pins save for the few that reacted quickly enough to lock their feet to the floor.

The first attacker’s shields eventually dropped under the coordinated firepower, but as it began to take armor hits they were up and on top of the tiny KoQ, physically stomping them when they could and knocking them around with the energy waves only to finish them off one by one with an arrogant attack. They opened their face armor to reveal a few hard scales around their mouths that then released a large amount of raw plasma in a stream, apparently biologically generated. It was an inferior attack, and only effective when the KoQ defenses were already down, and the enemy was using it as a finishing move that opened them up to a counterattack at the same time.

The KoQ tried to take advantage of that, but they couldn’t. The attackers were too good and while it looked reckless, they did not allow their momentary weakness to be taken advantage of. Not even once.  And these KoQ didn’t last more than a few minutes against the combined might of the three unidentified quadrupeds.

The Zak’de’ron strike teams had to work quickly. If the Uriti didn’t stay sedated they couldn’t claim it, and the V’kit’no’sat had already released it once to spite their attackers. However the Knights of Quenar had resedated it was beyond the Zak’de’ron’s knowledge so they had to take the ship before that happened. Fortunately the crew was more interested in fighting the invaders than they were in sabotage, but it was a huge ship and all it would take was one individual ending the sedative flow or attacking the Uriti in some way.

The main control centers of the ship were quickly discovered, seized, and cleansed of all threats, including the automated internal defenses that did more damage than the defending crew. Two Zak’de’ron took body hits and had to be evacuated back to their ships, but none died. Between their size and technology the KoQ didn’t stand a chance. It was the release of the Uriti that threatened the Zak’de’ron, and boarding a ship they had not been able to scan from the outside left a lot of questions and numerous possibilities for sabotage.

Eventually the sedative production areas were located and it was confirmed they had been turned off. Two crew members were discovered in the area and they tried to fight to the death, but they were not allowed to die yet. They were captured, stripped of their armor, then physical contact had to be applied to get through their formidable mental defenses, part of which were mechanical, for apparently the KoQ were cyborgs, though in a very small fashion. Still, such mechanisms couldn’t be affected by telepathy and worked to counteract the influence on the rest of their minds.

But their mechanical components were too few, and once flesh to flesh contact was made the Zak’de’ron’s Ikrid gave him an advantage that he then used to fight a brief but intense war for control of the KoQ’s mind…with the small creature preventing him from taking full victory, but he didn’t need to gain control of its body, merely drain the necessary knowledge from its mind.

Once that was done, the Zak’de’ron applied full pressure to his foot and squished the KoQ to death within a second, then wiped the gore off on the deck plates and peeled the rest off telekinetically as he moved to the sedation equipment. Fortunately it hadn’t been damaged, but it had been deactivated and if it wasn’t reengaged the Uriti would wake up eventually.

The KoQ technology was impressive, with a few variations the Zak’de’ron didn’t recognize, but with the stolen memories he and his brothers were able to eventually access the controls and override the lockout that had been put in place. It took two days to do it, but fortunately the Uriti was not one to quickly awaken, and the amount of activity it had begun to show was immediately reversed as the sedative flow was reinstated.

By that time the fighting was long over, with the debris from the KoQ ships being towed from the battlefield and shoved into the star to dispose of it. There could be no trace of this incident left for others to discover, so the Zak’de’ron fleet spent another 3 days searching for and collecting even the smallest pieces of debris before taking navigational command of the captured KoQ carrier ship and moving it out of the system under stealth. Its systems were not as good as the Zak’de’ron cloaks, but it would do against almost all of the galaxy, including the V’kit’no’sat, and the few that could penetrate the KoQ technology were not known to be in this region.

A few Zak’de’ron ships stayed behind as a rear guard while the rest took up the place of the KoQ convoy and escorted the carrier ship off its original course towards a new destination. One where the Zak’de’ron could quietly study the Uriti on their own, away from both the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force, with no one knowing what had happened to the Knights of Quenar or their prize.

4 days earlier…

“We are being towed,” Bashmeh reported from the remains of one of the Knights of Quenar warships. “Trajectory is towards the star. They are going to burn us rather than finish us off in combat.”

“Then we have a chance,” Yarnin said over their unified comm network. “They may not know of the Durolin. Everyone move there now!”

Bashmeh did as ordered, moving through what corridors were still intact even though many had no air. His shields retained a pocket for his use, supplemented by recyclers, allowing him and others to move where they needed through the wrecked ship. They passed through two sections that still had life support, meeting up with four more KoQ survivors before they passed through another breached section, eventually arriving at one of four Durolin the battleship possessed, only one of which was in this piece of ship.

Before they got there the light from outside was becoming oppressive, heralding what was to come, but the first of the plasma didn’t begin to eat into the ship until all 18 survivors arrived at the Durolin, eating into the KoQ personal shields that would hold for some time, but the deeper they fell into the Star’s upper atmosphere the worse it would get.

Yarnin looked around at all the KoQ then pointed to Bashmeh.

“You are chosen. You will go alone.”

“There is room for us all inside,” he protested.

“But the supplies are limited. One of us must survive and report what has happened. This foe must not be allowed total victory. The Durolin has limited speed. If we all go, the supplies may not last. Sending one maximizes the chances of our data returning. You are the smallest of the uninjured. You are the logical choice. Go now before the burning begins in earnest.”

Bashmeh looked at his fellow Knights, accepting their decision and sacrifice. His mission now was clear, so he did not delay. He opened the aperture to the Durolin and walked inside, seeing the increasing wisps of plasma hit its boundary shields and stop there, protecting the interior. He then sealed and locked the doors, condemning his brethren to death, but it had to be done.

Bashmeh walked through the small emergency vessel and came to the control compartment where he activated the specially designed shields that would allow it to survive within the star. The rest of the battleship would burn off around him, but the Durolin would survive away from the sensors of the enemy…unless they were superior as well.

Bashmeh knew he could take no chances, so as the other Knights died in silence outside, for they cut their comm link to him so he could not witness their deaths, he allowed the Durolin to sink farther and farther into the star along with the debris all the way down to a level that he could not pass. Using shield dispersion rather than gravity drives that could possibly be detected, he altered the density level of the Durolin and caused it to hold position in the deepest layer of the star that it could survive.

And there he waited. He waited not hours, not days, but two months before finally rising to the surface for a look at what was beyond. If the enemy could defeat their sensors they could still be here and the Durolin had far less sensing capability, but still he kept within the outer atmosphere of the star waiting to dive back in again if something did appear.

No one did, so he lowered the stellar shields and engaged his cloaking device, heading towards the jumppoint that would put him on a direct line for the nearest KoQ outpost. The engine power on the Durolin was not great, but it would be sufficient and he could hibernate for long stretches of the 18.2 years the navigational computer calculated. The Durolin were meant to be survival pods, but no one knew the fleet was in this system, so no one knew to come looking for them. That meant he had to take the long journey back on his own or seek out allies nearby.

He couldn’t risk the latter, for if he revealed himself to anyone the mysterious enemy might take notice and hunt him down. If they thought he was dead along with the rest, they wouldn’t be looking for him. That was his only advantage. He could not squander it. So he had to embark on this journey with no assistance, for the information he carried was too important to risk otherwise.

He did have enough supplies, if stretched through hibernation. Had two of the others come, they would have ran out. One other might have been possible, but it would have jeopardized the mission with unnecessary risk.

Whoever this new enemy was, there would be vengeance if he returned. If not, they would succeed in attacking with anonymity. This could not be allowed to pass, making Bashmeh’s mission one of both revenge and something a great deal more important.

Someone else now possessed a Uriti, for it hadn’t been in the system when he’d emerged from the star, and if they went to the effort of stealing it from them, odds are they were going to try to do something with it other than stick it back in the crust of a planet somewhere.

Word had to reach the other Knights, and this was the only way to do it without risking the mission. 18.2 years it would be, then there would be a war of annihilation as soon as they located this race’s territory.

9

April 3, 4862

Mjolnir System (Preema territory)

Asgard (Star Force planet)

Andia arrived in planetary orbit via a small convoy of Star Force cargo ships, escorted by a single warship that had brought them all the way out to Preema territory and the only system inside it that housed a Star Force colony, and a recent one at that. Already there were several cities and even two small shipyards, but the latter were building construction craft to assist in the development of the planet as fast as possible. In order to do that Star Force had sent their fastest builders in the form of two expeditionary forces of Kiritak and Bsidd, along with several Paladin ships that had apparently gotten very busy reproducing.

Kiritak and Bsidd required time in maturias to learn their trade, but Paladin came with their genetic knowledge inherent. They still had to gain experience over time like everyone else, but they were work capable right after their ‘birth’ where everyone else was not, and from the scrawling blots of Paladin infrastructure scattered across the planet, they were expanding their workforce rapidly.

Then again they had to. Shipping massive amounts of construction crews this far away was impractical, at least in the numbers that were needed to build up this planet into an industrial powerhouse before the truce with the V’kit’no’sat expired. The Paladin were the only way to do that, with the Kiritak and Bsidd experts here to supplement them.

Andia wasn’t Kiritak, Bsidd, or Paladin. She was Protovic and a level 10 Mastertech, two grades below the most elite in Star Force. Her superiors were needed elsewhere, and rightly so, but Davis had pegged her with overseeing this entire planet in lieu of a Monarch given the fact that there would be no civilian population here at all. This was a work planet, with Archon backup, making a Monarch unnecessary. Andia was going to be in charge of everything industrial, and with the help of the Archons start producing the very high end equipment that Star Force hadn’t been able to field yet due to the need for resources to be applied to more economical projects.

Star Force had never built a Tar’vem’jic, but now Andia was going to. They’d never build Yeg’gor armor, but now they were going to. They’d never built a Seinac Lancer, but now they were going to. Those three items she was very eager to get to work on, but first they had to build the planetary infrastructure needed and that was going to take decades. Fortunately the Preema were beginning to make good on their part of the deal and their supply convoys could be seen in the system with ships numbering in the thousands as they dropped off crates of raw materials in orbital slots that were now becoming small nebulas.

There was too much for Star Force to get to as fast as the Preema were delivering…but that was going to change. Andia knew it was just a matter of snowballing, and once that happened the Preema wouldn’t be able to deliver the materials fast enough and she’d have to building mining infrastructure in the system, including a Star Forge or two, but right now they weren’t lacking for raw materials.

Another part of her job here was going to be to work with the Preema techs to teach them how to create a Grid Point. They couldn’t do that here, nor could Star Force. They’d have to build it on site or build a fleet of moving craft to drag it slowly across the stars. Star Force had seen how inefficient that was, so they weren’t going to try to replicate that feat. New Grid Points would have to be built on station with ant-like supply trains running nonstop to deliver the necessary resources over the decades required to construct them.

Right now the Preema didn’t know how to build one, and Andia would have to teach them. Star Force had never built one either, but they did control many and had mastered the technology long ago. It would take 6 new Grid Points to link the edge of Preema territory to the rest of The Nexus transportation network, and that was stretching it. Most likely it would end up being 9, plus the three the Preema had agreed to construct for Star Force elsewhere.

That was a more massive construction project than Andia had ever seen, but the Preema had the advantage of not being at war with anyone and having a very large and densely packed empire. This was going to be an effort for them, but they had the luxury of time and resources to apply to it, and obviously felt it was worth what they were getting in return.

Having a link into The Nexus network was going to allow them access to a huge chunk of the galaxy and cut the travel time of the trip that Andia had just taken drastically. Davis had told her that the Preema wanted to control events around them in order to prevent threats from arising that could harm them later. They were very proactive, and giving them access to The Nexus would allow them to watch and prod everything anti-spinward of them in a way they’d never been able to do before.

But the deal didn’t just include that. Davis had negotiated some technology trades and even some biological ones. He hadn’t told her what they all were, for she only needed to know the industrial stuff she’d be working with, but the Director had agreed to give the Preema an Ikrid block. Andia didn’t even have one of those, and making a race immune to telepathic interference was an incredibly powerful thing. Andia knew this better than most, for she was telepathic, as were most Protovic. She didn’t have the more powerful Ikrid, but the Ikrid blocks would stop her telepathy just the same.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t talk to someone telepathically, for the blocks didn’t stop that, but it stopped her from reading their minds and in a war against enemies with that power, having that backstop was something that the Preema obviously valued highly. And they understood that power as well, for they were also telepathic, but apparently hadn’t been able to figure out how to create a block of their own.

As for the parts of the deal that involved her, which were all secret as far as the treaty was concerned, she was to meet and exchange information on the list of technologies agreed. Star Force would give the Preema a lot, they would give her a few new things in exchange, but most of the Preema’s part of the deal was the endless influx of raw materials. That was the only reason a colony was being establish here, so far away from Star Force territory. The Preema were going to supply the building materials and Andia was going to do the building here away from prying V’kit’no’sat eyes.

And what she was going to be building was the big toys. The chess pieces in warfare that were very valuable and hard to kill, but the ones that were often not economical enough to exchange for standard warship production. As long as the Preema were going to feed Star Force unlimited supplies she was going to have the option to take on the long list of projects that the Mastertechs had wanted to pursue but never could, leaving her in a very envied position.

The downside was the isolation and being stranded amongst the very powerful and numerous Preema. If they betrayed Star Force there wasn’t going to be anything the Archons assigned here could do. Even once they built up the planetary defenses, they were still sitting inside potentially enemy territory. This deal was based on a high level of trust and mutual advantage, and she trusted Davis’s judgement as much as she trusted in the Preema’s desire to be linked into The Nexus Grid Point network. They couldn’t do that while betraying Star Force, for the links were going to go through their territory and Star Force could shut them out from it, after it was constructed, with a simple ‘off’ button.

And the up sides of this deal were massive for both sides, which was why Davis had decided to go through with it. Not much was known about the Preema, for they were very secretive about their own territory, keeping everyone else out forcibly. They were almost xenophobic, yet they wanted to have contact with outsiders…but on their terms. And with them harboring races that the V’kit’no’sat had marked for death, Andia could understand their paranoia.

Once her cargo ship settled into orbit and began to disgorge dropships, the Mastertech hopped on one and headed down to Asgard, a world of rock and more rock. No greens or blues whatsoever. It was a dead, but very valuable world. A clean canvas on which the Mastertech could work and she wouldn’t have preferred it any other way. Beaches and forests just got in the way, and having to build around them was a pain in the ass. Bare rock was much more preferable, so she was happy with the selected location and the Preema’s willingness to give it to Star Force, for it wasn’t a loan. This was now permanently Star Force territory amongst the thousands of Preema systems.

Isolated she was, but that downside was worth the potential she saw here, and Andia was eager to get down there and assume full command of the other techs.

David-441 had traveled with Andia’s convoy out to Preema territory, but he wasn’t being assigned here. There were lower level Archons that could mind the store well enough and his Piccolo-level skillset was needed elsewhere, but right now there was a high level task requiring him to be here in place of the trailblazers who were insanely busy with other priority tasks.

David was here because the Preema were bringing the representatives of the races that Star Force had agreed to take off their hands, and even as the warship that he was on entered planetary orbit he could see dozens of non-Preema ships sitting quietly in a high orbit waiting for him to arrive. Once he made contact and arranged the transit, Preema transports brought them over to David’s warship in two tightly packed groups, with one representative from each race only.

There were 92 of them in total, ranging from one no taller than David’s knee to a four-winged furred avian bigger than a Les’i’kron.

David waited for them alone, standing silently still as they all debarked along with a few Preema who then approached him with a respectful bow as the Griffin-like aliens bent on their forward knees slightly.

“All here have learned your language. No translation will be required.”

“Thank you,” David said evenly. “Names please?”

One of the Preema pointed a wing and a quadruped taller than David walked forward.

“Deenra. A race that once spanned the entire length of the Sani Belt before the V’kit’no’sat found them. A few of their traders had contact with us and we gave safe harbor to no more than 2,000 of them. They now number 42 million.”

The Deenra walked forward as the Preema spoke, then quietly curled its scaly body and rolled forward like a ball until it came beside its host, unfurling again to stand looking down slightly at David.

“You look familiar,” the Archon said.

“They are physically similar to the Star Force member called Rammus, though we know of no former bloodline connection,” the Preema explained.

“We are honored to greet you, Archon,” the Deenra said with an oddly high pitched voice that sounded like it was being crushed by gravel. The Rammus, on the other hand, always sounded like they were coughing when they talked.

“Why did the V’kit’no’sat mark you for death?”

“We had several worlds they wanted. They told us to forfeit them. We refused.”

“What specifically did they want?”

“Trade routes. We controlled four important black hole links. Had we forfeited the systems they wanted, they would have inherited that control and greatly increased their ease of travel as they expanded their territory. We were an impediment to them. When we did more defensive damage than they expected, they decreed that we all must die. We would very much like to help you fight them.”

“Well you’re in,” David said, thumbing over his shoulder. “Next.”

The Preema waved the Deenra on, essentially handing over responsibility for him to Star Force, as they brought a smaller biped up next. It stood about even to David’s elbow and resembled a rabbit, except it had two spikes on its head instead of ears and its body was covered in yellow/tan/black scales rather than fur.

“Bwie. They came to us individually, in large numbers as they scattered across the galaxy. We collected those that we could quietly, and they now number 183 billion. They have unique skill burrowing underground and have assisted us with some mining operations.”

David leaned forward slightly, looking at the Bwie. “Show me your teeth.”

The alien drew its mouth open, showing a row of normal teeth along with two large fangs up front.

“Poison?” David asked.

“Yes,” the Bwie said smoothly.

“We’ll have to remove that. Some of our Protovic also had poison, but we couldn’t allow them to keep it.”

“I am less dangerous than you,” the Bwie quipped.

“True,” the Archon admitted. “But poison is a dishonorable weapon. We have the technology to genetically reengineer your race. We can remove the poison production while leaving your teeth otherwise the same. It will not hurt or damage you.”

“We do not wish to be altered.”

David sensed resistance, so he dove into the Bwie’s mind and discovered that it was not one of the races that wanted to join Star Force. Rather it was one the Preema wanted to offload on them.

“Does your poison work on each other?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“No. We are immune to it. It is to defend ourself against other races.”

“Well then. You can keep it so long as you stay within the colonies we build for you. If you want to intermix with the other races in Star Force, you will have to forfeit the poison.”

“We have no wish to intermix.”

“Problem solved then,” David said sarcastically, thumbing the little rabbit/snake behind him. “You’re in. Who’s the big one?”

“They are the Hanisva,” the Preema said as the Bwie hopped off to stand next to the Deenra and the giant avian stepped forward to stand with its wing over top the Preema and looked down on David from a head bigger than the Human by a factor of 4. “The V’kit’no’sat offered them membership, then when they refused they sought to destroy them.”

David got inside its mind quickly, then was disgusted by what he saw, for the Hanisva was drawing similarities between the Archon and its food.

“What are you feeding them?” he asked the Preema angrily.

“Something you would not approve of, but something the Preema do not eat. They could not eat our food.”

“So you let them kill others…you bastard.”

“We assume you can find a better food source for them, thus the transfer will be in everyone’s best interest.”

David pointed a stern finger at the Preema. “This stops now, everywhere in your territory. If you’re participating in the meat trade, we’ll end up invading you to stop it.”

“Which is one reason why we want to end it now by transferring the Hanisva to you. We want to rid ourselves of the meat trade.”

“You could have done that on your own long ago,” David sneered. “Why is it we are the only ones that care to clean up the galaxy?”

“They brought their food source with them. We simply didn’t deny it to them.”

“If they are your wards, then you are responsible for them and their misdeeds. Are there any living snacks on their ship?”

“We prefer our food live,” the Hanisva noted.

That did it for David. The avian was huge compared to him, but its mind was weak and he was inside it within a heartbeat, crippling the monster and dragging it to the ground without even touching it. David flew up into the air and landed on top of its chest as he forced it to turn its head to look at him, completely unable to control its own body.

“I will not allow this barbarism to continue. You will submit to our standards or I will kill you myself. We protect people. We don’t eat them, and any that do are our enemies,” he said, glancing briefly at the Preema before looking back at the huge avian. “Do you wish to be our enemy, or will you accept our rules?”

“You are no better than the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Take him back. I don’t want them,” David said, flying back down and releasing the Hanisva. “But you will find them an alternative food source immediately or our deal is off. We won’t be allied with sick bastards.”

The Hanisva rolled to its feet then turned and lashed out at David with its wing, trying to sweep him off his feet with the frame bone of it, but a Jumat blast leapt out and hit the wing, stopping it in its tracks and breaking it in the process. The huge Hanisva recoiled and screamed in pain while David held his position.

“Stop!” the Preema demanded, looking directly at the Hanisva and using his telepathy on it to convince it to just hold still and wait. “Just stop! We can negotiate an appropriate deal.”

“We don’t negotiate with other people’s lives,” David said with violent intent in his eyes.

“We’re not asking you to. We want to end the meat trade, which is why we want to transfer the Hanisva to you. They are unruly, but you have dealt with worse before, have you not?”

“I will not tolerate them killing and eating people during the transit to Star Force territory.”

“Then we will produce whatever food they require if you can design it for us. We will take their current food source from them as soon as the replacement can be acquired.”

“No, you will take it from them now. They can eat food they don’t like in order to survive until then.”

“They cannot eat Preema food.”

“Cannot or will not?”

“They are allergic to several ingredients we use.”

“Identify them and remove them. Then feed them what is left until we fashion something better.”

“Then you will accept them?”

“Only if you end this now, across your entire territory, with no delay. This is abhorrent.”

“We agree. I will send the messages immediately.”

“Their slave race of food has to be freed immediately. Who are they?”

“They are called Nioti, and they cannot speak.”

“I don’t give a damn. You will separate the Nioti from them immediately and turn the Nioti over to us separately. We will include them in the races we are taking from you.”

“We will not relinquish our food.” the Hanisva said firmly.

David help up his palm towards the Preema before it could speak, but his eyes were directly on the big, fur-covered avian.

“Yes…you…will,” David said, launching himself into the air directly towards the Hanisva’s chest where he punched it with both his fist and a Jumat blast, knocking it back a few meters, but he didn’t relent. He flew around, kicking the crap out of the thing for good measure as it tried to fight back but couldn’t move fast enough. Eventually, after cracking a few more bones, he rendered the Hanisva unconscious with it dropping to the deck in a heap as all the other races stood as far away from it as they could.

“We accept them,” David said, landing next to the Preema again. “Next?”

10

July 5, 4863

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

“We can maintain two,” the little triped Dati said, pointing its cute, stubby little fingers at the holographic map of the Rim with The Nexus’s territory only occupying a small portion in the approximate center. When he did the map zoomed in to the Perseus Galactic Arm where Dati territory was located, but ultimately he pointed somewhere spinward, or ‘west,’ of their worlds to a region that held several massive black holes. “Will that be sufficient?”

“Three are needed,” Davis argued, selecting the appropriate and very long black hole jumplanes. “I don’t want to stretch my infrastructure into the Vdir Region without your support. It’s too far off The Nexus grid for me to get reinforcements to within a year and I can’t devote a large defense fleet in light of the V’kit’no’sat war. I need you to secure all three of these routes so your fleets will be within support range if the Kamier or Taeru decide to try and cut our trade links.”

“That’s farther than we’re comfortable pushing,” the Dati said hesitantly. “Our fleets are not as large as yours.”

“I’m not asking you to secure the region, just the links.”

“If we agree to protect and manage these three spacelanes, will you allow us to colonize pieces of your systems on the chain? Without having to defend them?”

“Are you talking planets, moons, or little rocks?” Davis asked sarcastically.

“Little rocks will be sufficient so long as there is enough to put a foundation into,” the Dati said, catching his sarcasm and returning it.

“I can agree to that. We’ll provide the protection bubble over you if you can handle this far end of the chain.”

“It will stretch us, but I believe we have an agreement.”

“Good,” Davis said, leaning back in his chair as the Dati continued to stand on top of his desk amongst the holograms. “It will be a relief having a major power on the far end.”

“If The Nexus collapses any further, the chain will break in the middle,” the Dati warned.

“That is something I am intricately aware of, and it is going to happen. It’s just a matter of when. They’ve so horribly mismanaged their territory there is no way for them to stabilize it now. The Nexus is dead, it just hasn’t realized it yet.”

“Can you not help them? You’ve turned around far worse situations with the initial races they were forced to abandon.”

“They don’t want help. They won’t accept help that involves me telling them what to do. I’ve taken many problems off their hands, and that help they will take, but they will not change their ways. Most people would, given how many systems they are hemorrhaging, but the Sety do not care so long as their own worlds are intact.”

“I am forced to agree. Their shame is great and they do not want to admit that they are the center of the problem.”

“I am picking up many of The Nexus’s former races, but range is an issue. I expect to have almost all of them begging for membership at some point, and I need the trade chain established in order for me to save as many of them as I can. Already 39 significant races have been conquered or outright annihilated because we could not get out to them. I need the chain and you anchoring it at the far end so I can save what’s left of The Nexus when it finally breaks.”

“Why have you not sought to do the same with the Chamra? Or have you?”

“No. I have not. We currently have the Paladin deploying to the region between us and the Chamra. They’re going to do more than create a trade chain. That front is going to be locked down through massive colonization from which we can link to the Chamra, but the Chamra can’t help us there…not in the way we need, even if they offered. Which they have not.”

“And the others of The Nine?”

“Most are keeping to themselves and don’t seem to care about the collapse of The Nexus. The Jonstar are the exception and working with us to prepare for the V’kit’no’sat’s return.”

“How so?”

“They’re going to fight with us.”

“Why?” the Dati asked bluntly. “They are nowhere near the V’kit’no’sat border.”

“To paraphrase them, Star Force has replaced the Trinx in The Nine and become the heart of the alliance. To lose us would be the destruction of all and the release of the Hamoriti.”

“They still refer to them as Hamoriti?”

“Their ambassador does.”

The Dati considered for a moment, then expanded the map out large enough to cover the widely spread territories of all in The Nine.

“You are trying to establish trade routes to all while stabilizing the intermitting regions…how can you do that? There is far too much territory even if you were not at war. It is impossible. The Nexus failed making the same mistake with far less territory.”

“Go big or go home,” Davis said, knowing the Dati wouldn’t understand the cliché. “It needs done, so we’re doing it, with your help and the help of others. At least we’re trying.”

“How can you grasp that much? We are far older than you and have learned out limits. Are you mad or possessing a knowledge we lack?”

“We have a saying, and it’s called ‘crazy, but crazy like a fox.’ What we are doing may look impossible, but there is an underlying wisdom most people ignore.”

“Will you tell me what it is?”

“Trust. Our highest leaders trust one another, and we are all linked. Monarchs and Archons. All Archons are trained together in the same facility, so we are all from the same mold. Monarchs are selected more widely, but all must co-op with a senior Archon before reaching the level of Duke. I also carefully select each Monarch personally. We, the leadership, are all on the same page and trust one another. When we have that, the distance between our worlds is irrelevant. None of us are going to change without someone constantly monitoring us. We don’t operate our command structure on authority, we operate it on trust. So there are no limits to our expansion, so long as we don’t try to accelerate it too fast.”

“And your chain will provide the framework for you to expand from at a pace of your choosing?”

“Exactly.”

“You are that confident in your leadership? Even one could lead to revolt if not trustworthy.”

“I am confident. In fact, it’s what I’ve been betting the existence of Star Force on from its inception. If I can’t find a few thousand individuals worthy of full trust, we’re doomed anyway. Forced obedience always failed over the course of time. We rely on people doing the right thing even when no one is telling them to. I don’t pretend that most of our people are that trustworthy, but if the leaders are many of the others will reciprocate. Likewise, if we had bad leaders, they would reciprocate that as well.”

“How do you keep so many races from tearing each other apart? There are so many differences that even well-meaning individuals will come into conflict.”

“We experimented with solutions to that problem when we created our Axius faction. You are correct that there are many biological incompatibilities. Because of that we have two different types of Axius colonies. One large scale, one small scale, so the larger races aren’t literally walking on and killing the smaller ones accidentally. There are other concerns too, but we’ve outlined a methodology that keeps all running smoothly, the basis of which is our maturia. All younglings are trained to be Star Force, and that provides enough of a bind to maintain an integrated society.”

“We have learned to keep to our own, otherwise we run into too many problems. I envy your success, but I do not envy your chances given the boldness of what you intend.”

“I would prefer a slower rate of growth…hell, what am I saying. I’d prefer a more stable rate of growth, but the collapse of The Nexus means the slower I act the more worlds are wrecked. I’ve learned how to be reckless without compromising what I’ve already built. If you had asked me a couple millennia ago, I probably would have agreed with you.”

“All of this depends on your survival. When the V’kit’no’sat truce ends…”

“We’ll be ready. I’m not compromising our survival for expansion.”

“How are you not? Resources should be spent on further fortifications rather than…”

Davis held up a hand. “On the surface that might be how it looks, but it’s not. We can’t stand toe to toe with the V’kit’no’sat in terms of industrial power. They have far too many worlds. If it comes down to attrition, they will win.”

“Unless you gain far more worlds,” the Dati said, suddenly catching on. “Can you hold out long enough for that?”

“We plan to.”

The Dati adjusted the hologram again, zooming in to their own borders. “We cannot fight the V’kit’no’sat from our position, nor do we wish to draw their ire, but if there are other ways we can be of indirect military assistance, state them.”

Davis leaned forward, telepathically adjusting the map. “Actually, there is…”

Transporting the captured Uriti took two years for the Zak’de’ron, but eventually they arrived at a planet inside the borders of V’kit’no’sat territory, but one they never bothered to monitor. An appropriate facility had already been constructed when they arrived, and the complicated transfer occurred within a day’s time, returning the barren system back into anonymity even for those with the advanced sensors to see otherwise.

The facility was below ground and completely hidden, inside of which the Zak’de’ron studied the sleeping Uriti for many years before several ships arrived carrying thousands of the Dragons. They arrived cloaked, landed while cloaked, and from any potential observer’s perspective they were never there at all, but 3,839 of the strongest Zak’de’ron gathered together inside the Uriti chamber, braving the telepathic aura as they clustered together in a tiny dot of a crowd next to the miles wide mass of Bulmuthal.

They stayed back, not needing physical contact, and the closer they got the more trouble they had with the telepathic pressure, but they needed to be closer, for the farther away they were the weaker their own telepathy was. 12 miles had been determined to be the sweet spot, so that was where they gathered in the figurative shadow of the Uriti in the otherwise dim chamber lit only by artificial lights.

All the Zak’de’ron focused hard to keep their balance, but as they began to use their Pa’no’semak ability, which Star Force called battlemeld, to link their minds together that changed. As soon as they joined in clumps of 3 or 4 the mental pressure decreased, but they didn’t stop there. They kept linking up with others until 3,472 of them became a single mind and they could handle no more. The others stayed nearby, linking into a second group, but they were just extra. How many could actually battlemeld together in the aura of the Uriti had been a guess, and they’d guessed high, but now the presence of the huge sleeping beast was a mere tickle against the Zak’de’rons’ combined mind.

Yet it was still tiny compared to the mind of the Uriti, even in its sleeping mode, but it wasn’t totally dormant. No living being could be shut down like a machine. Not even the Zak’de’ron when they went into stasis. Slowed down, yes. Shut down, no. And it was to that slowed down mind that the combined Zak’de’ron battlemeld reached out to.

And they got a response.

www.aerkijyr.com

Baron

1

July 7, 4863

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

Tanni Daegan had never been outside of Protovic territory before. As an administrator he’d been overseeing various logistical duties on three different Protovic worlds within the Star Force empire, but he’d never had cause to leave. Now he had been summoned to Treneis, the current transitory capitol where Director Davis had set up shop and brought a lot of his support team with him. In addition to that, the various vultures from outside Star Force were tagging along with numerous embassies where they hoped to leverage the Director to do this or that.

Daegan’s orders hadn’t specified why he had been sent here, nor to whom he was to report. There was no reassignment order, just a transit one, so he didn’t know if he was going to be briefed on some matter and sent back or if this was a prelude to a reassignment. He was a lower level Administrator who’d only recently risen to a planet-wide position overseeing the Protovic mining division on the planet of Eurothal, and the possibility of him being needed out in the frontier region was foremost in his mind.

Resources out there were in short supply, and hauling out cargos that far was inefficient. Those newly acquired regions needed to support themselves, which meant mining their own raw materials. Perhaps Davis’s team had tagged him for his quick rising through the Protovic administrator ranks and were going to give him something bigger, or perhaps more tenuous to oversee.

But nothing had been said to him about any of that. All he got was a summons to the headquarters facility, and as he stepped off the dropship that had been sent to retrieve him his mind was still calculating possibilities without being able to settle on odds.

“Administrator Daegan?” a waiting Human attendant asked from just beyond the boarding ramp as Tanni came down.

“I am Daegan.”

“Follow me please,” she said, all but spinning on her right heel and walking towards the massive building at which they’d landed on an extended platform.

“May I ask why I have been summoned?”

“You weren’t informed?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I was not.”

“I don’t know the content of the subject matter, but I have been instructed to take you to the Director’s office.”

Tanni raised an eyeridge, for Protovic had no eyebrows or hair of any kind. “Curious.”

“I’m sure you’ll find out shortly. The Director has many daily appointments from people across the empire. We don’t understand why, and have learned not to ask, but he always has a reason.”

“I am sure he does,” Tanni said as the pair walked in silence into and through the building until they came to a lift that brought them up to the center of Davis’s headquarters. They had to pass by a security station with several armored Commandos present, but after that it was just a matter of working through the numerous staff stations until the attendant stopped at the base of a huge stairway.

“Up there,” she pointed.

“Thank you,” Tanni said evenly as he began climbing at a measured pace. He felt the slight tickle of an energy field as he moved partway up, immediately recognizing it as an audio-suppression field that would keep those below from hearing what was going on up top and vice versa. It was a way to maintain an open air architecture without the noise pollution that such open spaces typically suffered from.

When he reached the top of the stairs he wasn’t in an office, rather a huge deck with windows many times higher than his own 6’ 3’’ inch height. Beyond them was blue skies and an even bluer ocean sprinkled with sandy islands and the occasional view of the large, elephant-like Meintre that made up the majority of the planet’s population.

Almost all of the deck was empty with a firm, but mildly deep carpet covering part of the floor. Off to one side was a single desk with a sole person sitting on the far side of it with his back to the massive ocean side windows.

Tanni walked slowly over to the desk and stood at attention before Director Davis, who didn’t seem to notice him as he was busy working through what looked like shipping manifest holograms, though Tanni couldn’t be sure because he was seeing them from the reverse side.

The Human raised a hand and pointed at the empty chair, not looking at the Protovic for another 43 seconds. When he did it was after making a few inputs to the lists and shutting down the holograms entirely, leaving a clear desktop and airspace above it that only added to the spacious design of the Director’s ‘office.’

“You look confused,” Davis said, leaning back in his chair.

“My orders were to come here. They did not specify why.”

“The why is simple. I wanted to speak with you in person and didn’t have the luxury of traveling to Eurothal. The larger Star Force grows, the more I have to do.”

Tanni twitched, sensing an irregularity in his mind. “You are telepathically scanning me.”

“Yes I am.”

“Should I be resisting?”

“Feel free to, if only for the effort. I need answers to questions that words cannot provide.”

Tanni tried to harden his mind against the presence, much as he had done with other Protovic in training, but instead of applying more pressure and breaking his resistance the Director’s touch seemed to slip and pass his pressure by. Tanni reset himself and tried again three times, but he could not pin the Director’s presence in one place and everywhere he tried to resist the opposition fled, heading elsewhere in his mind.

“Your infiltration is elusive,” he finally said, relenting and letting the Director look where he wanted.

“I have Ikrid. It is superior to Protovic telepathy. That, and I’m a couple millennia older than you.”

“I was surprised you wanted to speak to someone as young as I am.”

“I do not care about your age, only your skill. And a Protovic who rises to Administrator level 4 at age 52 indicates either a breakdown in our system or an individual who is learning very fast.”

“And you are checking my memories to determine which is the case,” Tanni said, stating the obvious rather than asking a rhetorical question.

“I’m doing more than that. Have you been monitoring V’kit’no’sat activity?”

“To a point, yes.”

“Your thoughts?”

“They are setting up new colonies just beyond the border of the Devastation Zone. I believe they intend to use those as staging bases when the truce expires and we cannot eliminate them now without jeopardizing the truce. This is a problem.”

“Is it?”

“Their supply chain is critical this far out from their primary systems.”

“Yet we have the Uriti.”

“They obviously see value in it.”

“They are setting the chess board as they like, but it’s not as significant as you suggest. They cannot build up those worlds in a defensive manner because we can smash them with the Uriti rather easily. They are merely staging bases, nothing more. Given the level of carnage that will occur when fighting resumes, they will still be hurting for supplies.”

“Unless they make first strike their only strike.”

“We have ways to slow that down, but I do not believe they will be that stupid. They can’t take all our worlds in such a manner, and they will lose too many ships if they do. The war will be a long, grinding one. Anything else is to our advantage.”

“Why did you allow Earth to be recolonized?” Tanni asked.

“I didn’t.”

“There are people there now, if not a civilian population.”

“It is a battleground, not a colony. It also belongs to us and I wanted it back. I anticipate it will be the first planet assaulted by the V’kit’no’sat. If it is not, then we have a base in their backwater once they assault the border. That’s me setting our chess board as I like.”

“Won’t they be wiped out?”

“We know how to run when needed. We’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I obviously have not. Nor is combat my specialty.”

“Yet you do study it. Why?”

“I do not believe in compartmentalization. All aspects of reality interact, so in order to make the most accurate predictions one must be knowledgeable in all areas.”

“Interesting, for your physical scores are only barely increasing once you made yellow.”

“I study as an observer, not a participant. Yellow was my goal, to set myself above average, but climbing higher is not a priority when my skillset lies elsewhere.”

“Change that. Training only for self-sufficiency is not enough. There are many things that can only be learned from experience. I learned that when I became an Archon. Pursue some aggressive physical training over the coming centuries. It will do you well.”

“Is that an order or a suggestion?”

“Both.”

“Meaning it’s an order that won’t be enforced?”

“I can’t be looking over everyone’s shoulder. I need people who do the right thing because it’s the right thing. Who do the smart thing because it’s smart. If my orders are wise, then that’s enough. There doesn’t need to be any leverage.”

“I will consider it then.”

“A bit of ego there, I think,” Davis said, still looking into his mind.

“Confidence in my skills. Nothing more than that.”

“One mark of a good leader is being aware of how much you do not know. The very young are not aware of enough of the universe to realize what they lack. That too comes with experience.”

“Am I to be demoted?”

Davis shook his head. “No. If that was the case I would have just sent the order. I brought you here because I need confirmation of things I suspect. Good things. Namely your potential. You have a lot to learn, but you are very observant. That can be a weakness if you are always observing, as I noted previously, but for you it is your greatest asset at the moment. Do not draw comfort in that, for one needs to cultivate multiple assets, but it does you credit regardless.”

“If my position is to be maintained, is that not also only worth a remote order?” Tanni asked, fishing for more information that he could not get from the Director’s mind.

Davis knew what he was doing even without being inside the Protovic’s mind, and Tanni knew that as well, so it wasn’t a cloaked comment, rather a polite way of asking a blunt question.

“I don’t care for word games. Bluntness is preferred,” Davis admonished him.

“Am I being reassigned?”

“That’s better. Yes, you are. You’re also a bit of an experiment.”

“Because of my age?”

Davis nodded. “I was your age when I began Star Force, more or less, and I had far less resources to work with than you have on Eurothal. You’ve had the benefit of others’ experience. I had to make up everything as I went along. Still, there are a few similarities, and I view you as an investment for the distant future.”

“Doing what?”

“Figuring things out for yourself. I think you have the potential to become a peer over time. You’ll never match my experience level, but I could use someone who can figure things out without being given hints. You’re not there yet. Not even close. But I think you could be, some day. And above all, the most important aspect of a leader is one who does the right thing because it’s the right thing. Without that, nothing else matters. You are borderline there, seeing logistics as supreme. Rather, logistics are a means to an end, and that end is doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy your empire in order to remain the good guys. That’s something you are clueless about now.”

“If you destroy your ability to effect events, how can you do the right thing?”

“By preventing yourself from doing the wrong thing and allowing everything you have built up to be misused. Compromise, in this scenario, is failure. The infrastructure might still be intact, but without the purpose behind it there is no reason for it to exist. Your mind is focused on the pieces, not the purpose. And to be fair, you’ve not been exposed to the purpose before. You’ve been managing already established infrastructure. Polished by others before you. You’ve made upgrades, which is why you’ve risen as far and as fast as you have, but you’re still been insulated from the real purpose behind everything.”

“And you’re going to expose me to it now?”

“I am, now that I’ve been inside your head and taken your measure. You are not my peer. Not now. But I sense potential in you. Only time will tell, but leaving you on Eurothal would be a waste of your somewhat unique skills. Therefore you are hereby reassigned.”

“To where?”

“A world that hasn’t been built yet. To a race that is not yet part of Star Force. We will be receiving a number of races into Beacon that come from afar. They have been marked for destruction by the V’kit’no’sat and have been hiding out for longer than I have been alive. They are coming to us now, not all by their own choice, but their current benefactors want them no longer. We will have to incorporate them into Star Force, and while there are a great many stories of us doing similar things with other races, each race is unique. Adaptation, learning, and imagination are required. And above all that, doing the right thing. Many people don’t understand what that means until they come into contact with the wrong thing, and there are many things wrong with the races we are getting.”

“That is the job of a Monarch, not an Administrator.”

“Yes it is,” Davis said amicably, with the reason the Director had brought him here now fully sinking in.

“No one has been made a Monarch prior to 300 years of age.”

“Not until now. As I said, you are an experiment. I could let you gain further experience in other areas, but this kind of adaptation is what I had to go through in the beginning. Throwing you in a bit over your head will be a good test of your ability to learn and adapt. If you fail, Arch Duke Scarven will step in so the race you are assigned does not suffer. They are our mission, and are not expendable for a newb like you to learn on. I am assigning you this because I think that you, like me, are capable of handling it with little to no experience. If I am wrong, you will be swiftly replaced and I will reassign you to a position that is not a startup.”

“But I will remain a Monarch?”

“I do not penalize people for learning slowly. There are many Monarchs that have learned slowly and risen to the level that deserves that rank. You are not there, but if you cannot handle this assignment I will put you somewhere you can learn more slowly while maintaining what others have built and making small improvements where possible. The only reason you would lose your Monarch status is if you do something wrong or prove to be incompetent.”

“What race am I being assigned?”

“Scarven and I have not decided yet, but it will be one with a smaller population. One that can fit on a single world. The larger ones require experienced Monarchs to coordinate across systems. You are not ready for that.”

“What will my greatest challenge be?”

“With new races come expected difficulties, but it is the unexpected ones that require an inventive mind. I do not know all the problems with these races. You will have to find out for yourself. However, this is not an isolated assignment. Feel free to ask me questions. I will not be there in person, and the communications lag is a burden, but I want you to stay in contact. Not so I can micromanage you. If you require that then you are not a Monarch. But we operate as a team, and newbs especially need to have access to other Monarchs to converse with. You have a direct line to me, as of now. Use it and those to the other Monarchs, whether they be in Beacon or elsewhere.”

“And the trailblazers?”

“You have a direct line to them as well, and they’re better troubleshooters than Monarchs. Care to guess why?”

Tanni considered that for a moment, then linked it to one of Davis’s previous statements.

“They are hands on while Monarchs tend to observe and direct from afar?”

“Indeed. Save for me, though you’ll find that Arch Duke Scarven moves around quite a bit. He will go to see things for himself rather than relying on reports. I suggest you ask him about it, for with a new race you will need to see, feel, and probe minds. You cannot put into a report telepathic information. I hope you know this already.”

“I do.”

“You need to do everything first, in person, then let the Administrators copy your successes through redundancy. That means you in the field, not in an office, until you get a handle on who it is you’re annexing into the empire.”

“A significant challenge, to be sure, and one I am willing to undertake.”

“Good. But be warned, you will be in over your head. I’m counting on your learning curve to be as high as mine. If not, you will fail.”

“Then I hope your assessment of my skills is accurate.”

“There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“Where is this planet?”

“In the Frontier Region. Security will be handled for you, as far as from offworld threats. You will be able to focus on your planet and it alone. Events beyond that are not your responsibility.”

“So there is to be little interstellar trade?”

“None aside from supply shipments coming in initially. You need to get your infrastructure self-sufficient sooner rather than later and you will have a Kiritak colony to work out from. How long it will take your race to be able to support themselves is unknown. Do not expect it within 100 years.”

“Will I have Archons to work with?”

“Yes. Use their skills whenever possible, but the annexation of this race is ultimately your responsibility. The ideas don’t have to come from you, but the results I expect you to deliver in whatever way, shape, or form appropriate.”

“Results you will have.”

Davis extended his pale hand across the desk and shook the glowing one from the Protovic.

“Welcome to the Monarchs, Baron Daegan.”

2

September 17, 4863

Citadel System (Pavana Region)

Spectre 14

Baron Daegan had spent many days with Davis as he schooled the Protovic on this and that during the brief breaks in his schedule. Most of what the Director told him he had never heard before, or was a slightly different take on familiar concepts. All of it was concise and easy to remember, though a few things Daegan did not fully understand. Davis had told him he wouldn’t for some time, but to remember his words for later when he had the prerequisites to process the information.

After his choppy indoctrination into the Monarch ranks, Daegan was sent to the Beacon capitol of Citadel that was one of the largest systems in Star Force. It contained 152 planetoids, all of which were inhabited in some format by over 128 different races. They were not mixed together like Axius was, rather with each having its own little piece of turf, though 3 of the planets here were Axius ones. Arch Duke Scarven was in charge of both the Axius and Beacon factions, though the former was much more powerful than the latter.

Beacon was more a work in progress and, in some cases, a hindrance to Star Force. While Beacon technically counted as a faction, none of the races within it were. A faction had to be capable in all five forms of combat plus have considerable industrial capability. Beacon could supply everything it needed…until recent years. The influx of new races had put it’s ‘faction’ status into doubt, for now other parts of the empire were having to supply it with the necessary raw materials and foodstuffs it required to house the influx of refugee races until they got them producing at sufficient levels.

Axius was a smoothly functioning faction with two millennia of experience, but Davis had mentioned that the Frontier Region Axius worlds were a lot more hazardous. He hadn’t gone into full detail, but there was a problem looming that had caused a rift between those worlds and the rest in Star Force. They were essentially quarantined until they could become civilized enough to interact with the rest and that worried Daegan, for he was going to be given a race with no Star Force experience whatsoever. Not even a prior trade relationship. And he was going to be assigned a world in the Frontier Region.

He’d just gotten to Citadel three days ago and had met with Arch Duke Scarven immediately. They’d discussed which race he was receiving, as if the final decision had not been made yet, but eventually he was given the Hdjkarvenitshevi…whom an Archon had thankfully ordered to be renamed the ‘Tahm.’ Baron had looked it up, for Davis had insisted that many of the names Star Force used were homages to the distant past, or in some cases jokes, and this was no exception. Tahm Kench was a fictitious character from a game that looked remarkably like the Hdjkarvenitshevi, and the shorter name was much easier to pronounce.

Right now there 50 Tahm in the system, undergoing testing to determine their biological needs and Daegan had already met with two of them this morning. Of the 50, only 6 had learned to speak English, and programing their native language into translation computers was taking time, so he had to work through those six as translators and even his new Monarch Ikrid upgrade didn’t provide him enough power and skill to be able to figure out what the hell they were saying in their odd mix of blurps, squeals, and rumbles.

Their English accent wasn’t too bad though, and he could understand the 6 of them well enough, though at times he had to use his telepathy to check on a word or two. The Tahm, as they told it, were victims of both the V’kit’no’sat and the Preema…but the latter wasn’t true and the Preema had warned them that the Tahm were incessant liars. That was a problem he was going to have to deal with, among many others, and he could see why the Preema had wanted to get rid of them.

The real question was, why ever take them in to begin with? He hadn’t gotten any information on that from the Preema and so far he couldn’t get anything useful out of the Tahm about it, but one oddity of their race was the fact that they reproduced very slow. One offspring per Tahm, who were asexual, per 64-68 years. Their biology was so lethargic it was surprisingly resilient, giving them very long lifespans even without training. Amongst the Preema they typically ranged from 300-600 years, though they claimed they used to live over 1000 before the Preema poisoned them with toxins that reduced their lifespan.

No such toxins had been found in their bodies thus far, so that was probably another lie.

Within a few days Scarven’s medtechs would figure out what they could and could not eat, and then fashion foodstuffs designed specifically for them…along with a version of ambrosia, though Daegan was not going to give that to them immediately. There was a lot that had to be changed prior to that, and the Baron anticipated quite a lot of resistance.

Add on to that the fact that they were aquatic…or technically amphibious, but they preferred to live under water. They had to breathe air off and on, but had small gills that could temporarily support them for more than an hour. They would eventually have to get to a pocket of air or they’d essentially become drunk from low oxygen levels and the Mastertech that had been assigned to Daegan for this assignment suggested that they could look into a genetic alteration to increase their gill efficiency to eliminate the drunken state and make them fully aquatic.

The Baron had told him to hold off on that for now, but to keep it as a possibility for later. He needed to learn what the Tahm were first, before he decided to make any changes, and getting foodstuffs and basic shelters established for the 128 million Tahm he was getting was his top priority. A Kiritak colony had already been established on a world known as ‘Bench,’ but they were waiting for his design specifications before they started to construct facilities for the incoming amphibians. Right now the Kiritak were busy expanding their own mining and industry infrastructure, but Daegan only had 8 months to prep before the Preema convoys carrying all the Tahm arrived.

He wished Davis had given him some more time to prep, but as he said he was being thrown in head first and had to adapt his way through all this. It was a massive challenge, but not one that Daegan felt was overwhelming. He knew the key was to take it one piece at a time while keeping the overall program in mind…yet without letting the mass of what was ahead crush him. Races didn’t become annexed in a single moment, it was a long transitional process even for the most applicable ones, and a virtually indefinite one for the recalcitrant races.

And with their habitual lying, Daegan had a feeling he had gotten one of the recalcitrants.

“Hello, Tahm 2,” he said as he walked through a door into a very humid chamber that was half deck and half pool with three of the Tahm floating in the water with their wide heads just above the surface. “I have more questions.”

“Ask,” the deep voice said as the deceptively fat Tahm walked up the submerged stairs and stood before him. Tahm 2, for Daegan wasn’t even going to try to pronounce their original names, stood as high as his chest but was three times the Protovic’s width. He was biped, with two flipper-like arms that had fingers build into the webbing that could grasp objects about as well as Daegan could. However, they preferred grabbing a lot of objects with their very sticky tongue and pulling them towards them rather than walking a few extra steps and picking them up…so it wasn’t unusual to see little bits of saliva everywhere.

“Warship construction,” Daegan said, sitting down in a chair after telekinetically brushing off a few droplets of liquid. “How did your ships compare to the V’kit’no’sat…and no embellishing please.”

“I never embellish,” the Tahm lied. “Our ships were formidable, but considerably smaller than theirs. We preferred close combat, and could savage them when we got into range, but they cowardly held back and shot us from afar whenever they could. They could also reproduce much faster than us, so even if we killed 10 of them for every one of us, there was no way we could win the war. We eventually fell to the attrition and were forced to flee.”

“You know this how? I assume you were not there.”

“I was not, but we have extensive records. We will bring them with us. You can view them then.”

“I plan to. You said you prefer close combat, why?”

“It is the only honorable option.”

“I see. How many warships do you possess now?”

“None. The Preema took them from us. All we have are cargo ships.”

“What did you do for the Preema? I doubt they would have taken you in without some form of compensation?”

“They hate the water. They used us as slave labor.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“Fight the monsters in their deep worlds. They hate the water, but they have worlds that are completely covered by it. I think their egos made them. They could not pass over the worlds so they had to own them…but they could not without our help!”

“What did they get from those worlds?”

“Valuable resources from the sea floor…but it was guarded! We had to fight the aquatics down there on a regular basis to get even a small harvest.”

“Harvest of what?”

“Nodules. They are the excrement of some of the monsters, but certain ones contain concentrations of compounds only found in very small amounts in the water. The monsters collect them in their bodies over the years then, every now and then, drop them to the sea floor along with their foul excrement. We had to go down there and find them for the Preema, but we didn’t give them all of them. We hid some for ourselves.”

“Do you know what exactly those compounds are?”

“I can do better than that,” Tahm 2 said, closing his mouth and wiggling in place for a moment. Daegan heard a gurgling sound and suddenly the Tahm’s mouth opened and his tongue unfurled with a golf ball-sized gleaming green orb. His tongue dropped it into his hand, which he then held out to Daegan.

“A gift to our new friends.”

The Baron took it slowly between two fingers as the saliva dripped off it, finding it to be very heavy for its small size.

“You kept this in your stomach the whole time?”

“No. We have internal pouches in our stomach where we can save various things. The Preema never knew.”

“Why didn’t this show up on our scans?”

“Because we passed it back and forth,” Tahm 2 said, causing Daegan’s own stomach to clench up in disgust at the thought. Apparently gut swapping objects didn’t bother the Tahm at all. “We have two more, if you also want them.”

“Are they all the same?”

“No, they’re all different colors. We don’t know exactly what they are, but the Preema wanted them pretty bad.”

“I think I know what this is,” the Baron offered. “It looks like corovon. Pure corovon.”

“And what is that?”

Daegan glanced at him oddly. “You’ve never heard of it? Or just don’t recognize our word?”

Tahm 2 turned and shot his tongue out at a nearby shelf, grabbing a small device and pulling it to him. “I shall check.”

Daegan waited while the Tahm reviewed the English language database the Preema had given them, then after several minutes he flung it aside, clattering on the floor and nearly falling into the water.

“It says it’s a building product, but I have no knowledge of it. How valuable is it?”

“It’s a very strong building product. And quite valuable. Not the rarest of the rare, but close. Normally you don’t see it in its pure form. You have to process enormous amounts of ore to get even a small amount of the raw material. Which is also why this is quite heavy.”

“Pure stuff, huh?” Tahm 2 said, using a colloquialism that suggested he’d studied quite a lot to learn the Star Force language while the others hadn’t bothered to even learn two words. “How much is it worth?”

“This right here could be used to produce decent civilian armor covering half a starship when combined with other materials.”

“How big a starship?”

“Half a mile long.”

“And those cheap bastards never even bothered to share. Just gave us a few worlds and kept us there. We couldn’t trade with nobody, and they made us work collecting these to earn our ‘lease.’ Damn slavery if you ask me.”

“I was told you didn’t want to come to Star Force?”

“In truth I didn’t. Figured whatever you would have us do would be worse.”

“So why give me this?”

“You’re asking what we like to eat. The Preema never did. Gave us ghastly stuff before we were able to make our own.”

“Are you traders?”

“The best there ever were. The V’kit’no’sat envied our corporate empire, which was why they attacked. Couldn’t beat our prices and everyone came to us instead of them.”

“You cheated them, didn’t you?” Daegan guessed.

“Absolutely not! We never traded with them. They wouldn’t allow it. We were beneath their dignity to interact with…except when killing us, that is.”

“How do you remember that much? Is historical study your specialty?”

“We keep detailed records that all little, ah, Tahm are required to watch.”

“Movies?”

“Yes. What you call movies. That’s how we teach them, by example.”

“And who creates these movies?”

“The people who lived in that time.”

“Not after?”

“No, never. We couldn’t be assured of the truth of the matter if the recreations were not made by those who experienced the events.”

“So no real data?”

“Whenever possible, but most important things in life are not recorded…or recorded properly.”

Even without his telepathy Daegan could infer what ‘properly’ meant to the Tahm.

“Thank you, Tahm 2. If this is what I think it is, it’ll help us secure some credits that will go towards your new colony.”

“You’re going to trade it? I thought Star Force didn’t pay for such things?”

“We have a vibrant trade market, or did the Preema not tell you that?”

“So we’re going to be charged for our new colony construction?”

“No. No. Our markets are a luxury. All our important stuff we build for free. But that doesn’t mean I can’t put this on the market and get a little extra, you understand?”

The Tahm smiled wide, with his mouth stretching farther than Daegan’s shoulders. “Oh I understand perfectly. You understand trade like we do.”

“Perhaps not that much, but I learn fast.”

“If you can make a deal on that one, I’ll get the other two to you soon. I don’t have them inside me at the moment. Nor do they,” he said, gesturing with his flipper towards the others in the chamber.

“I’ll keep you updated,” Daegan promised, then turned and walked out while purging the orb of its saliva using his telekinesis and trying to keep it off his fingers. He squeegeed it all off before getting out into the clean hallway, then tossed the orb up in the air once, catching it as it fell and feeling his arm give slightly under its weight. It was damn heavy, and he was all but sure it was pure corovon, but he needed to make sure.

“You are correct,” the Kiritak foreman assigned to his rapidly growing staff said after returning from the research lab. “It is pure corovon.”

“Could it have been stolen from one of our warehouses here?” Daegan wondered, thinking that a small possibility but not wanting to rule it out entirely.

“No. We don’t fashion them into orbs. Wastes too much space. We use cubes.”

“Of course. Did you find any biomatter in this?”

“None other than the Tahm saliva on the surface. The corovon lacing pattern is, well, irregular. A biological source sounds plausible, though I’ve checked our records and we have no knowledge of any race in or outside Star Force that produces corovon pellets.”

“I imagine anyone who does know of such things would want to keep that knowledge to themselves. What can we use this for?”

“You mean in the new colony?”

“Yes.”

“We use corovon in our building construction, but not for the Tahm. Those are weak structures just designed to temporarily hold them and our own buildings are already established. We don’t have any use for it until we start building the Tahm’s permanent structures, then it will be quite useful.”

“And if we trade it away, can we get something of value for the temporary structures?”

“We’re operating off of seed status now, so anything extra would be valuable,” the Kiritak said, meaning that after the initial Kiritak colony was constructed, all future building materials had to be mining, refined, and fabricated on site, for no additional supply convoys would be arriving to supplement them given how small a population the Tahm had.

“How about some additional aquatics craft?”

“Additional? We have none at the moment.”

“Then use this and get whatever you can.”

“Not my area of expertise, but Hohovni should be able to,” he said, referencing another of the few Kiritak that were here to help Daegan with the analysis of the Tahm and plan the construction efforts that would have to begin within a month.

“I’ll get it to her then,” the Baron said, taking it back from the shorter biped.

“You said they have more of them?”

“Not sure if the others are corovon, but they said they were different colors.”

“Not corovon then. It’s always green in pure form.”

“That’s what I thought too. Digestion isn’t going to alter this, is it?”

“I doubt it. That’s about as inert an object as you can get. Bonding it to other subatomic particles requires a massive amount of energy. I doubt a biological could ever produce a fraction of what was required.”

“So how is this formed?”

“Stripping it out from other stuff isn’t that complicated, but when the corovon particles get in close like that it’s hard to pull them apart.”

“Noted.”

“So the Preema really have some biological collectors?”

“I have no idea. The Tahm are not a reliable source of information and this orb was not collected by the one that had it. His memories are not of underwater harvesting, but of diplomatic relations.”

“Interesting regardless.”

“Yes,” Daegan said, holding up and staring at the curious corovon orb. “Yes it is. Quite curious, indeed. Especially since the Preema just kicked out their harvesting crew.”

3

April 7, 4864

Guldef System (Frontier Region)

Bench

Baron Daegan had one month left, more or less, to prepare his world/system that at present only contained one inhabited planet, and that planet had only Kiritak on it plus his staff that contained a mix of Humans, Protovic, Kiritak, and Calavari. None of them were aquatic, which was odd, but the Tahm were so damn slow in the water even he could almost swim as fast. And with aquatic armor that contained squirt jet engines his staff could move around easily enough in the water to keep pace with the lethargic Tahm.

Whether or not that lethargy was biological or cultural was something he was going to have to figure out over the course of time, and building the book on the Star Force Tahm was his sole responsibility. Fortunately most of the structures needed to house the 128 million of the incoming refugees were up and running, with the remainder on schedule for completion within the next week. The Kiritak were as good of builders underwater as they were on land despite the limitations of the environment, and they’d done a damn good job of implementing Daegan’s plans.

The world of Bench was mostly water with some large continents on it. That water was shallow over 93% of the oceans with the remainder being a very deep trench that carved a crescent moon around the northern pole. He planned on making use of it later, but for now he needed to keep the Tahm in the shallows near the shoreline, for the majority of their training was going to be on land.

In fact, the maturias that had already been built but not yet inhabited were completely artificial marshes, and indoor no less. Daegan knew the younglings needed water, but he had a feeling if they didn’t develop their ‘land legs’ enough they’d end up sluggish. They needed to adapt early on, but a ‘dry’ maturia wasn’t going to work well. They were truly amphibians that needed a mix of environments, but putting them in the ocean was a bad idea. He needed to fully control the environment, so he’d simply had the Kiritak build one for him.

Elarioni were still the premier aquatics race within Star Force, but they were not amphibian and could only deal with the Tahm in the water. That made them ill-suited as trainers for this scenario, so the Baron had recruited land races with good aquatics marks…plus the Calavari who had the muscle mass to move the fat Tahm around on land with ease. He’d picked up a vibe that they tended to use their heavy stature as a defense, and in Star Force that would not fly, so he wanted trainers that could make it clear they were not too heavy to throw around the room if need be.

His maturia staff was fully assembled and ready to take in younglings as soon as they were born, including a transitional maturia for those already born but not yet to adulthood…which took about 8 years for the Tahm. They reproduced slow but grew fast, meaning they also ate a lot. Maturia training was probably going to take 25 years, so most of it would be with adults, but the proper maturia programs only accepted infants at birth. Any others had to be in transitional programs.

For the 126 million adults they were getting, they were going to go through indoctrination training without the benefit of indoctrination programs. Daegan had to house all of them without being able to put them individually through an indoctrination program. That was one of the major headaches of the Beacon faction, because he had to deal with an existing civilization and couldn’t individualize them out one by one. The maturias would produce proper Tahm, but the first few ‘batches’ were going to be an experiment in the process with lots of tweaks having to be made as they learned what would and wouldn’t work with this new race.

But the ones that were soon to arrive were not going to fully change, so Daegan had to make use of them in their current state while forcing some changes on them. To help with this he’d had small settlements built rather than large cities, with several extra where he could move individuals around based on their behavior, grouping together those that were compliant and isolating those that were causing trouble…all the while keeping them working to build their new world and reminding them that he was in charge.

Daegan doubted they were going to accept that if he couldn’t offer them an angle, for everything he had learned about them said they were cunning businessmen…with too few ethics. They wanted to make deals, so the dealmaker he was going to have to become. One potential angle he had already thrown out to their representatives in Citadel, who would be arriving along with the main convoy, was the new divide within the empire. The Frontier Region could not trade with the established regions, meaning there was going to be a vacuum of products in the Frontier Region. Those who got their exports flowing fastest would be able to capitalize on that and potentially develop a bit of a monopoly in the absence of the major trading powerhouses.

Bench was a long way from that, but the potential was there and the Tahm had responded much better to the offer of greatness than being told to just sit and reproduce as refugees. It was odd, because they were so lethargic, yet give them an objective they liked and suddenly there was an uncharacteristic enthusiasm there. Whether that turned into actual work or was just talk was unknown, but it was clear everything was going to come to a head when the convoy arrived. How well this was going to work he didn’t know, but he was sure that he was going to have to adjust on the fly, which was the reason why Davis had put him here.

He just hoped he’d designed the infrastructure in a way that was advantageous for him to hold sufficient leverage. There was only going to be one arrival, and if he botched it he wasn’t going to get a second chance for a first impression…and he was pretty sure that the Tahm were heavily influence by reputation. Daegan had to create a powerful and fair one, but as always with liars there were no rules, so he expected there to be some trouble, though he had no idea how much was actually coming his way.

5 months later…

“Get back in line!” the Calavari trainer yelled, with his voice being processed through a headpiece into the Tahm’s native language with a slight delay, but it wasn’t that delay that was causing the Tahm to stray out of position.

“My feet hurt,” he complained, still shuffling off to the side where he defiantly sat down on a low bench…which for the Tahm was little more than a bump on the ground due to their very short legs.

“A lot more than that is going to hurt if I have to hurl you into the chute,” the Calavari warned. “Move into position yourself or I’m moving you.”

“My feet hurt,” the Tahm reiterated, unbudging as two more Tahm waddled over and sat down, echoing similar difficulties that prevented them from walking a few more meters to the entrance of the waterslide where they would be moving on their butts, not their feet, so the complaint was painfully invalid, which only further infuriated the Calavari.

“That’s it. Everyone else stay put. You’re going next,” the trainer said, pointing his lower left arm with a thick finger on the end towards the short, pudgy alien.

“I am not,” he said as the huge Calavari walked over to him and reached down, grabbing him by both the arms and the legs, one Calavari hand on each, and picked him up by them. The Tahm screamed, burped, and made all other kinds of sounds in protest, but he was essentially a dead weight and couldn’t do anything other than use his tongue…which he did, smacking the Calavari in the face with it.

The trainer didn’t budge, carrying him over to the surging waters in the little oval pond that flowed down a chute. He didn’t put the Tahm into the pond, but rather swung him clear over it and sent him down the waterslide head first, then turned and pointed at the other two sitting.

“On your feet now, or you’re going the same way!”

One of them did stand up and got back into line, but the other didn’t. When the Calavari began to walk over to him the Tahm got up and began to run away with surprising speed, but a few long strides by the Calavari caught up to him and soon he was baggage as well…but being carried face down so his tongue couldn’t be used against the trainer.

He got tossed face down into the chute and disappeared as the flowing water and gravity pulled the obstinate alien out of view and into the challenge course that they did not like being put through…for if they stopped midway they’d get shot by drones, meaning they had to keep moving to the finish and couldn’t sit down in protest like so many of them had done over recent months.

The new challenge course had been a modification made on the Baron’s order, and it was working, because they really didn’t want to go into the thing again…which was why more of this style were being constructed, with the trainers offering many little advice wrinkles to the designs, finding ways to irritate and motivate the Tahm who did not want to be here, did not want to be part of Star Force, and certainly did not want to be made to train.

But they were going to learn, the easy way or the hard way, and aside from a small group of individuals who had been separated from the others and allowed to go through normal training, the rest were being thrown through these ‘gauntlet’ challenges, and it looked like this was the only way for the adult population to learn anything, for they were stubborn as hell.

Fortunately this Calavari and the others knew how to deal with stubborn, and it almost always began and ended with muscle. Which they had plenty of.

The Protovic trainers were taking a different approach, using their telepathy to trick the Tahm into doing things and calling out their lies and punishing them for them. And via punishment, it was usually another run through a gauntlet course. The only other thing they hated worse was being denied their choice of food, but the Baron had already decreed that wasn’t to be touched, for it would be a legitimate complaint and he didn’t want to give them any. So they got to eat all the food they wanted, and Star Force had designed a lot of new things specifically for them, then they were required to put that food to work in training…and so far none had gone on a hunger strike in protest, and the Calavari didn’t think any of them ever would.

“Alright, let’s keep this moving. Next,” he said when the countdown timer expired, allowing those ahead of them long enough for the system to shift from one chute to another so they didn’t end up going to the same location. This gauntlet trial was randomized between groups and individuals, and whenever they went down it they never knew what they were going to have to face, for there were 183 different scenarios.

And the recovery wards for those that got shot were always busy, with their stunned bodies being hauled there and revived inside a small box that they had to then sit out a penalty time in. That was actually preferable to some of them, until they realized that they were missing a meal because of it.

For those that didn’t care, the stun shots had been dosed up with pain inducers so they now literally stung on impact…and after. When destunned, the stinging didn’t go away, so they now sat in their little boxes in mild pain. Nothing major, but enough to be an annoyance.

The Tahm that were in the ‘good’ group didn’t have those modifications, but it was necessary for the rest because they would literally just sit down on the ground in protest and do nothing. So now, they could sit in their little box and feel tiny stings as long as they did, and they hated it. The completion rate of the gauntlet challenges had initially been 1.4%. Now it was up to 58%, proving that the Tahm weren’t incapable, just unmotivated.

“Next! Move along. You’re gonna get used to this sooner or later. Might as well make it sooner for your sake,” he said as one of the Tahm slid over the edge and sat down in the pool, then pulled himself forward into the heaviest current with his flippers, not giving the Calavari cause to do any ‘motivating’ and sent himself down the chute on his own muscle.

“I hate you,” another Tahm said, but still in line. It was a female, which was only noticeable by the head shape. Otherwise they all looked identical. They actually reproduced using their tongues, so there was no visible genitalia to differentiate them with, and none of them were wearing clothes. There was no point indoors, and outdoors it would require temperatures outside the comfortable range.

Calavari did wear clothes, because they did have exterior genitalia, but the Tahm were a race that didn’t and their grey/green blubbery bodies all looked alike, but the trainers were able to tell most of them apart by now, and this one was Amber-16.

“If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job you lazy ass. Get in there before I have to use my foot again.”

Amber-16 reflexively rubbed her round backside, remembering the last time she’d refused right on the edge of the pool and had been kicked in face first. That memory was enough to get her grudgingly to step in on her own, swearing a long string of vitriol that the computer translation couldn’t articulate.

Whenever he got that the Calavari took it as a sign of success, and a few seconds later Amber-16 was sliding down the chute and turning to the left out of view, reducing the number of Tahm up top that he had to make sure got started.

“Next!”

Baron Daegan walked out on the deck, tasting the warm, humid air of the planet as he came to the rail and leaned on it, looking over the edge at the gigantic drop-off that gave an awe inspiring view of the coastline and the hundreds of dome-shaped buildings below. Each of those had a water tunnel inside that led to the ocean and little infrastructure on the outside, for this planet suffered from severe hurricanes on a regular basis. One was brewing even now on the horizon, but it wouldn’t be here for another day. Those inside the domes wouldn’t even notice it, and go deep enough in the ocean and you could ride it out with ease.

As it was, most Tahm were not even permitted in the ocean, for some had tried to skip workouts by hiding out there. They eventually came back when they got hungry, but a few had tried killing local sea creatures to eat so they could stay out there indefinitely. Daegan had shut that down as soon as he heard about it, and those that had were now sitting in the few prisons he’d had constructed. They probably liked not having to do workouts, but they had zero connection to the other Tahm. As social of creatures as they were, he figured that isolation would be punishment enough to keep them from repeating their bad behavior when they were let out after their 3 month sentences expired.

This entire mission was one headache after another, but there were a few bright spots. The maturias were doing adequately well, despite their youth, and the ‘good group’ of adults was actually making considerable progress. It was the percentage that was so alarming. Almost all of the adults were basically baggage, and Daegan wasn’t going to be able to get anything even resembling a work crew suitable to replace the Kirtiak within decades. They’d have to stay and keep underwriting these lazy, egotistical liars…so the idea of planetary self-sufficiency was a far-fetched notion at this point without the Kiritak.

Their reproduction rates were also dropping drastically, for they didn’t like the idea of handing over their younglings to Star Force. That meant it was going to take forever to replace the adults. At least he had a workable population in the maturias to repopulate with over time if the adults stopped reproducing altogether, but it seemed like everything positive he tried to do, the Tahm found a way to block or at least slow him down.

And what he was doing was for their benefit, which made this situation all the more infuriating.

Davis was right about this being totally different than Administrator work. Daegan had always found little bits of inefficiency in the Protovic ranks, but they were literally perfect compared to the Tahm. How people could be this stupid he couldn’t fathom, but he was learning quickly and now had a great deal more respect for Davis if this was the type of environment he had had to build Star Force within in the very beginning. Daegan at least had an empire to pattern off of and pull personnel from. Building it from scratch…now that was a challenge he did not know how Davis had ever accomplished.

He’d said that Daegan would be thrown in over his head, and now he knew what the Director had meant. His Archon assistance had laid out the path that had to be taken, knuckles first, with the Tahm, but there wasn’t much they could do that the trainers could not, so they were being wasted here, training in their sanctums until something arose that needed their attention.

Daegan knew this was just going to take time. A lot of time. Grinding time, small victory by small victory whenever and wherever he could find them. That was something a Monarch had to do, and would be a waste of the Archons’ skills. At least they could train and tune all this out, but Daegan was the one that had to be waist deep in it, and was having to earn his Monarch rank from day one, for these Tahm were all but totally intractable.

But then again, if it wasn’t hard it wouldn’t be a challenge. And a challenge for a Monarch that the Director thought might mirror his own potential. In that case, Daegan might actually be getting off a bit easy. And that thought thoroughly scared him.

4

April 19, 4864

Kollop System (Frontier Region)

Nexus Station

David-441 stepped off the Star Force dropship onto the foreign hangar deck that had a myriad of The Nexus races inhabiting one of the last intact refuges in the spinward, or ‘west,’ side of what had once been The Nexus territory. This system didn’t even have an inhabited planet in it, just this 340 mile wide space station that was still active as a hub of commerce. Star Force had a sizeable presence on it and was using it as a staging base for their emergency efforts in the region, with David just having returned from fighting in two different star systems.

It was a mess out here, and the only reason why this station hadn’t been packed up and moved was The Nexus didn’t have enough super-huge ships to do the moving, nor did they have enough small ones to network together to transport the valuable pieces of their infrastructure elsewhere. Already 8 Grid Points had been relocated, stranding the local inhabitants as the more powerful races tried to reform their existing territory into a new, stronger network, but that meant hemorrhaging the lesser races that were in the wrong geographical regions.

And they were hated for it, but when you were pulling out and running away from regions you never intended to inhabit again you really didn’t care what those that were being left behind thought of you. In the case of this station, situated well out from the star between the first and second gas giants in the system, it had become the defacto property of the lesser Nexus races that were trying to hold on to any shred of a link to the stronger races. A shaky trade route to the Anshala Grid Point still existed, and it was the last lifeline for the region that saw everyone with the ability to flee traveling down it in hope of finding someone elsewhere in The Nexus to take them in.

David knew many were getting bottled up elsewhere, not permitted from going into certain areas where the Sety and others did not want them. The mismanagement of The Nexus had been having horrific consequences for centuries, but it was only getting worse with time and there was too much territory for Star Force to annex. They were taking on as much as they could and sending teams like the one David was currently on out beyond the annexed area to try and stabilize what they could, hoping to buy time for races that might be able to survive until Star Force expanded out to them.

But already there more races than David could count who were imploding. They didn’t even need anyone to invade them, for without the economic ties of The Nexus that they’d foolishly relied upon their infrastructure was failing. Their factories grinding to a halt now that the specialists they usually hired to fix such things were long gone. Their food supply then suffered from the lack of machinery and trade that had been used to bolster it in the past.

Entire planets were starving to death, some as bad as the Kiritas had been when Star Force first met them. Some even worse. David had seen a few planets firsthand that they’d gotten to too late, and more than 99% of the population was now dead with the few survivors having gone cannibal. More often than not Star Force would drop some supplies and leave them be, for they didn’t have the resources out here to take prisoners. Right now it was helping those who wanted to help themselves, without the luxury of forcing those who did not into sustainable frameworks.

Outside the station David was on were two Star Force warships…the one he’d come in on and another that was just about ready to leave on another mission. They always kept one here, but only one, and so far that had been enough to dissuade the predatory races, pirates, and other groups out there taking advantage of the chaos from hitting this system. There was a small fleet of local warships, but none as powerful as a Star Force model, and the locals had begged Star Force to establish a permanent presence here in order to try and keep this tiny link to The Nexus intact.

It made sense for Star Force to do that rather than try and establish a colony of their own this far out, so they’d claimed a small section of the station for themselves and set up shop. Now David and others were going out on missions using this station as a central hub to stockpile supplies and switch out personnel. As for David he needed a rest, having suffered an arm injury over a week ago that the regenerator had sucked the life out of him to repair.

But he’d been exhausted before that, and not just physically. The sight of so many people suffering and dying wore on a person, so when his warship needed to return for fuel he went with it rather than staying behind and trying to pick a few small fights that would amount to little in the grand scheme of things.

He had to recharge himself, otherwise the carnage would overwhelm him and cause greater problems later. Unfortunately that meant leaving some present fights hanging in order to insure he was fit to fight others down the road.

When he got back to the station he headed straight for his temporary quarters there and crashed, but not to sleep. He disconnected himself from the region, the people on the station, and everything else. Mentally he had to get away from it all, so he retreated to his little quiet room and dove into the communications link Star Force maintained with the station. The relay network didn’t reach out here, but message packets were carried by ships and dealing with events back in the ‘homeland’ was a good way to get his mind off the sludgefest around him.

He hadn’t checked in for months, and there many updates that he was curious in monitoring, but there were a handful specifically for him and they were all related to the Preema. Since he’d been the one to transfer over the Preema races to Beacon he’d been monitoring their progress and running an investigation into what exactly the Preema had been doing with them. Virtually no one had any information on the Preema from the inside, for they kept very closed borders, but Star Force had plenty of witnesses now and sorting out some kind of story from them was in the works.

The Monarchs overseeing these races were gathering as much information as they could and syphoning it off to him to try and put all the pieces together, and with this latest batch of information some of his earlier speculations had been proven wrong, but he thought he was finally getting a handle on the Preema’s motivations.

Fear is what motivated them. That was becoming more and more clear, yet they didn’t panic. Most of the fearful did, but these Preema were cold and calculating, working ten steps ahead to avoid problems before they happened, and they saw the V’kit’no’sat as a gigantic problem, for they had nearly expanded out into Preema territory before the Rit’ko’sor rebellion. David thought they feared a conflict and conquest of their territory by the V’kit’no’sat more than anything…but it was their territory that he thought they valued more than their lives.

If you were faced with an opponent you could not beat, then the only logical course was to run. The Preema were not running. Rather, they were treating this like having to weather a storm. They kept everyone out of their little corner of the galaxy and didn’t interfere with others unless they absolutely had to. David got the feeling they hoped to ride out a V’kit’no’sat expansion by playing dead and not picking a fight, but by having enough strength to defend themselves if needed.

But they needed to know their enemy, and the fleeing races that had been marked for death by the V’kit’no’sat were assets, for if they weren’t why would the V’kit’no’sat bother with them? They’d gotten a handle on the fact that the V’kit’no’sat ran rough shot over the inner half of the galaxy without owning most of those systems. So they tolerated a lot while picking others for eradication…and the Preema wanted to know why and how they could keep themselves on the ‘ignore’ list.

That was David’s feel for it, but he’d misjudged them when he thought of them as cowering. They were playing a very long term game, and in the long run the only way to be safe from the V’kit’no’sat was to destroy them. The Preema could not do that themselves, but they could help others take them down while sitting quietly in their own systems.

Star Force had known for a long time that the Preema had diplomatic connections to a great many races and that they wanted greater links to what was left of The Nexus…especially now that it had collapsed, but they were not willing to expand their territory beyond their borders. David had initially thought this was out of fear of drawing attention, but now he knew he had been wrong.

Information from the races that had lived and worked with the Preema was now indicating that they had not been good hosts, but not out of malice. They had to keep them quiet, but they were also not helping them in order to be generous. Everything they did had to have some gain for the Preema, so them putting these races to work for them in various ways in addition to the information they could provide made sense…as did turning them over to Star Force now that they’d plucked all the information from them that they could.

They’d imposed population restrictions on several of the races, and when some of them violated those numbers they had not responded by killing the excess as the V’kit’no’sat would have, but they had tightened their grip on their wards even further, which was why there was considerable animosity towards them. These races wanted to grow and the Preema did not want them to expand to other systems, hence there was an underlying problem that could only be solved by getting them out of Preema territory.

But there was more than that going on, a great deal more, David thought, that he was just beginning to piece together. The small orbs the Tahm had brought with them, despite their penchant for lying, were evidence of resource gathering. Given the numbers of Preema, why would they even bother having these races work for them? The number of resources had to be so small to not be worth it on a grand scale, but the nature of the gathering is what piqued David’s interest. For it wasn’t just the Tahm that were collecting orbs and other organic droppings.

There were now 5 different stories of races being used to collect organic discharge that was extremely valuable. Too many to be coincidence, and David now guessed that the Preema had been cultivating lesser races, perhaps even genetically altering them, to act as gradual resource collectors and refineries. The Tahm had been gathering on the ocean floor, as had the Itiumu, but the other three had been collecting on land from either roaming herds of hexpeds the size of dropships or stealing the inner lining of insect dwellings that were unusually plentiful in valuable raw materials that didn’t make for such great building materials.

It all looked to David like the Preema had put together a primitive slave empire where they let races free roam unwittingly doing their bidding…and if other races stumbled across these uninhabited planets within the Preema domain, they’d interfere with their network and might even realize the natural resources available and try to steal them.

So the Preema keeping people out made more sense now, but it was also this reluctance to do the work themselves that told David something about the Preema. They liked to sit back and direct rather than do the work, and that was an important datapoint. They wanted to be the puppet masters, not the battlefield masters that the V’kit’no’sat were, and their growing relationship with Star Force allowed them many more options without having to leave their own territory in any meaningful way.

David had seen the plans for the Grid Point bridge they’d agreed to build, including with branches into areas Star Force wanted. The Preema would build them, but after that he expected them to sit back and let others operate the locations, swelling the economic presence and reshaping the geography around those locations. The Preema would gain great wealth from this over the course of time, but it was a huge up front expenditure that even Star Force would have trouble accomplishing if it had the luxury of attempting a project of this size.

And that made David wonder how large the Preema stockpiles of resources were. He got the feeling that they just collected and stored the bioharvest until they needed it, and if that was the case they could be sitting on vast amounts of wealth the likes of which David couldn’t even imagine. Yet another reason not to let anyone snoop around to see how wealthy you were, lest they might try and take it from you.

David also felt the Preema had tried taking in these races as an experiment and got burnt from it. He didn’t expect them to offer such assistance again now that they’d gotten rid of their burden, and the worlds those races had previously been inhabiting were now empty and offering more space for whatever the Preema wished.

Then there was also the matter of the Ikrid blocks they’d negotiated for. He got the feeling those were not meant to fight the V’kit’no’sat, but to deal with other telepathic races. It also suggested they had secrets to keep more than battlefield considerations in mind, which made David wonder what else they were hiding inside their territory. The races that were now in Beacon had only seen small parts of it, forbidden to travel elsewhere, and the Preema’s prudence in fighting the lizards to keep them from getting to their borders was now in retrospect making greater sense.

They did not want anyone or anything encroaching on their territory, and David felt it was not a territorial ego that was driving them, but rather a host of secrets they couldn’t afford to let be known to the galaxy. So they were hiding in plain sight, playing a guiding hand in regional events while staying on their perch unless absolutely necessary. The lizards had apparently scared them enough to get them to come out, but as of now they were tucked in there nicely and not bothering anyone, having relinquished all the temporary worlds they’d assumed control of during the war.

The Preema were a greater mystery than he could figure out at present, and trying to analyze every bit of intel the Monarchs were giving him from the newest Beacon races was a suitable distraction for the Archon while he hid out on The Nexus station and rested his mind from the horrors taking place in this part of the galaxy.

5

March 3, 4865

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

Sara-012 sprinted across an open field, staying ahead of the young Raptors that were now full grown but still not quite capable of keeping up with her. That would change with time and training, but the fact that they could almost run as fast as her was both disturbing and exhilarating for a biped. Scionate had always been faster than Humans, but they were quadrupeds and had the advantage of huge stride length. Raptors had more than Humans, but they were still biped too and had the same disadvantage, yet the genetic superiority of their now very refined design was damn impressive to see.

All of these adults were new Raptors, not converts, so they were still learning about everything. If one of the adults that had not been born into Star Force were out here they’d run Sara down with ease, but right now she was still queen of the castle…or field in this case.

The objective was simple, keep away from them and avoid contact. It was a giant game of tag with the Raptors learning to work together to track down a target. The pack mentality was still very present in them despite their new Ikrid blocks, and Sara needed to teach them to think when in a group rather than just pattern off the others…and in typical Archon fashion, that meant beating it into them through physical force or repetitive failure, the latter of which was appropriate in this case, for they weren’t landing a nose on her.

That’s all it would take to end this game with a win for them, but Sara had such endurance now that they weren’t going to be able to wear her out. The reverse was true, knowing that they had about 22-26 minutes at this pace before they tanked. This was the 54th time they’d run this game, and they still could not touch her…despite her not using her psionics to evade. This was pure running and agility, with Humans having an advantage in the latter. Raptors could move fast, but turning on a dime with their leg structure and tails was not easy.

They were still good movers, but they were better when operating off a straight line. A Human could spin in place with ease because of their vertical back, but the horizontal back of the Raptors meant a lot of momentum had to be redirected in both head and tail, and it was something that Sara was using to her advantage whenever one of the Raptors got close, as she did now with one coming in from her left while the others were trailing a few dozen meters behind her.

They wanted her to go right, trying to herd her into a better position to surround her and she knew it, which was why she turned hard left and faked with her head. The Raptor thought she was pulling a U-turn, but a heavy foot plant launched her to the right at the last moment and the Raptor flew past her left shoulder, futilely reaching out a tiny hand that missed by a meter.

Sara continued her right turn until she got back on her original course, but by then the other Raptors were only 4 meters back. She could see them with her Pefbar, so there was no need to turn around, but she had an urge to telekinetically trip them up and make them faceplant, for they were running so hard they were having trouble staying on their feet every time they hit a little divot in the grass-covered ground. They were trying too hard, but her showing them that now in that fashion would be cheating so she resisted the impulse and eased up just enough to keep them close.

The trailblazer was getting tired now, but they were literally falling apart. The only chance they had was the other group that had broken off and gone far ahead several minutes earlier. They were better rested and slowly drawing their lines in around her at a range of more than half a mile. If she kept running straight she would be near them very soon, and she knew she could get past them without too much trouble. That would effectively end this attempt, because the Raptors would be too tired to mount any more credible attempts, so she threw them a bone.

Sara picked up speed, gaining a few meters on those behind her before turning right and running in a circle, dragging those behind her in a line like ducks as they just couldn’t make the catch. As she did the larger circle came in closer and closer, until all 40 of them were within a quarter of a mile. At that point Sara couldn’t cut them any more breaks and went evasive, plowing a line in the grass and leaving a dirt streak as her foot braked hard, then she redirected at an angle back past her trailing Raptors. Without that angle they would have got her, but she stayed just out of reach going almost the opposite way, causing the Raptors to try and follow at the same speed…which they couldn’t.

Half of them tried the same skid stop and couldn’t handle it. Most Humans couldn’t either, but Sara was very good at it now after centuries of experience. She almost laughed as half of the Raptors rolled heads over tails as they lost control, but she was breathing too hard to waste the air. The others abandoned their hard breaking and instead ran through long, out of the way loops as the outer ring was now collapsing on her.

Sara slowed down and dodged left and right, no longer running as much as evading. The Raptors, also breathing heavily, slowed as well and pooled up with the Archon moving from point to point and not giving them a fixed location to surround. With a series of fakes and quick redirects, she continually frustrated the Raptors as they came within inches of touching her but the slippery Human just moved too damn fast. Their bodies weren’t built for this type of close-in movement, and even with 40 of them they couldn’t cut off enough escape routes, for she wouldn’t stay in the same place for more than a few seconds.

That evasion game went on for several minutes, with Sara working up a furious sweat and getting the type of high level workout that only advanced drones could provide…except that Raptors were not predictable programs, forcing her to adapt and getting, frankly, a better workout for her than through artificial means. She was doing this for their benefit, but the trailblazer was also benefiting as well.

Then something happened she didn’t expect. Two of the Raptors collided with one another, but rather than falling and tangling, they bounced off each other and redirected…with one of them coming towards Sara’s path.

She had to drop and roll to avoid getting touched, and as soon as she hit the ground she knew she was screwed. The delay it took her to get to her feet had 6 of them close in on her, with her evading them but getting too surrounded. There were too many bodies closing in and too few escape routes, with her finally resorting to jumping as high as she could without using her Yenmer, but she did use her Yetu, for that only briefly enhanced muscle movement, launching her into a ‘Jedi jump’ up and over the back of one Raptor.

It tried to hit her foot with its head but missed, though while in midair she couldn’t redirect, making her landing predictable. Another Yetu burst leapt her over the diving Raptor that nearly hit her feet, but when she reached the apex of her jump another Raptor came flying at her from the right. It didn’t have Yetu, nor did it need it, for they could jump just fine on their powerful legs.

Sara contorted midair, missing a collision with its head, but one of the tiny arms reached out and slapped her on the butt no less, before she hit the ground and rolled to a stop.

The other Raptors knew instantly when it happened, for they were always telepathically talking to each other and had figured out a way to do it in a widespread sense without allowing her to eavesdrop. They all came to a stop, some heaving with the heavy effort and one that actually hurled after rolling over on the ground.

Sara cringed, seeing the puke and knowing the taste of it from her own past experience.

“You alright?”

“No,” the Raptor said in obvious discomfort, “but I’ll live.”

“Been there,” she offered, while sensing the wave of pleasure spreading through the group at their success. It had taken 54 tries, but they’d finally succeeded. “Did you two mean to run into each other or was that an accident?”

“Accident,” one of them admitted, “but it worked in our advantage.”

“Yeah it did. I didn’t expect the deflection and that screwed me over. Nice work using it to make yourselves unpredictable. You finally got me.”

“We’re supposed to be faster,” another pointed out. “And all we managed was a single touch.”

“You’re barely out of the egg, youngling,” she said, using the Star Force version rather than the ‘hatchling’ the V’kit’no’sat used. Both were correct for egg layers, but the trailblazers had gotten used to using ‘youngling’ for everyone. “I wasn’t even half this fast when I began. Training will make you far better, and you’re just getting started.”

“Will it make us switch directions fast like you?” another asked.

“You’ll get a lot better at it, but your tails are a problem. Good for straight running, not for redirects. All our bodies have advantages and disadvantages. You’ll learn to minimize yours, but it will take time…and by time I mean centuries, if not millennia. You’ve got a long way to go, but you’re making good progress. Focus on maintaining that trend and the years will pass on their own.”

“What now?”

“You’re not ready for me at full strength, but we’re getting there.”

“You mean you were running slower than you could?”

“No, I mean I’m not using all my psionics. I’ve got a lot that can disrupt you so you can’t coordinate and hit me. So far I’ve just been using my muscles.”

“How so?”

“Alright, one more lesson for today. You earned it with that touch. Spread out about 20 meters around me in a circle. I’ll hold still in the center, then try and touch me. You won’t be able to.”

The Raptors did as said, then waited until she gave them the telepathic go signal. They all moved as one, but didn’t get more than a step or two before they started falling to the ground twitching as she created a huge Fornax field around her. Whenever they hit it they lost most of their body control and she kept reducing its radius. They’d get up and try again, only to the hit the field and go down. She let them get within 10 meters then sent a Saven blast out that operated like an Ikrid flash bomb. They were so distorted some of them actually turned around and walked backwards, while those that staggered closer to her got hit with a Jumat blast and knocked away.

When the Saven blast wore off they came at her again, relentless as always, then all of them froze in place as she released her Ubven, dropping a telekinetic field over the entire area that she did not have to control. It was a field saturation and she could leave if she wanted, but they’d be locked there for a couple of minutes no matter how hard they tried to push free. They could wiggle around a bit as they destroyed the field, but they were stuck and totally vulnerable as Sara was able to walk forward melting the field in her path with the second component of her Ubven that was an alteration of her Rentar, but far more potent because it was geared to her own field.

If the Raptors had Rentar they could have moved with some limited resistance, but they didn’t have that psionic, so they were stuck and totally vulnerable, which is why Ubven was the scariest of the tier 3 psionics, or perhaps even the scariest of them all.

“You can’t move. You’re encased in a very thick Lachka field. It’s my psionic called Ubven, and it’s a single discharge. I’m recharging now, but won’t be able to do this again for some time. Note how vulnerable you are. This is why we wear armor with psionic countermeasures, otherwise you’d be getting shot and killed right now if this was during a battle. Over time you will earn additional psionics, but before you get them you must master your bodies as they are now. We do not give psionics to those who do not earn them. They are not a cover for a weak body. They are not a cover for a weak mind. They are an enhancement for the strong, so get strong and we’ll give you the tools to fight against those with powers like this. Otherwise, you’re just target practice.”

Sara theatrically snapped her fingers and triggered the entire field to melt instantly, dropping some of the Raptors to the ground who were off balance and not expecting to be unstuck.

“Lesson over. Good work today. Now go get some food and a nap, then get back to your daily workouts. Training is about working over and over and over and liking it. If you don’t like it yet, keep doing it anyway. It’s the only way you’re going to advance. You’ve got a lot of advantages with the way your bodies are built, a lot more than most races in Star Force, but they’re not enough to beat highly trained individuals in ‘lesser races.’ I can’t outrun a trained Raptor, yet I can outrun all of you…for now. Star Force operates as a team, but each piece of that team needs to be as strong as possible. That’s how you contribute. Make yourself stronger and the team becomes stronger. That’s how we win. That’s how we survive.”

Sara looked around at all the long faces. Their eyes were intensely focused on her, and she knew they were drinking in every word she said, for these sessions with Archons, let alone the 1s that were in charge of the Raptor faction, were exceedingly rare. All of these Raptors had to compete and beat out their kin in order to get in this training group, so they weren’t going to waste a moment of it.

“We are at war with the V’kit’no’sat, and while that war is temporarily on pause it will resume. Others will fight it, not you. You are not ready yet, but if we can survive long enough your skills will be added to ours. You are our hope for long term survival, so your mission now is not to get ready to fight. Your mission is to improve and keep on improving. If the V’kit’no’sat land on this planet, you’re already as good as dead, so do not concern yourselves with what you would do in that situation. We all make the best of whatever is presented to us, and if the situation is unwinnable then we go down fighting with honor. The V’kit’no’sat are our enemy for a reason. They are not honorable and do terrible things. If you face one of those terrible things, it is something you will have to figure out in the moment, so don’t waste time now on it.”

“I do not say this to scare you. I tell you this so you can focus on your objective. You have to improve until you get to the point where you can help us fight. You’re not there. You’re not even close. So if the war resumed today, you would keep training while I go and fight. Because I would be fighting to buy you time to get stronger. Your part in the war will take place in the distant future. Right now, your only job is to learn your bodies, learn your minds, and advance. Keep advancing. Keep moving forward. The responsibility for the empire is mine, not yours, but if you can improve enough then we will share that burden together.”

“I need as many allies as I can get, and the Raptors are going to become a powerful faction…but a faction is not built quickly. We will buy you time. That is our job. Yours is to grow. Improve. Learn. And the only way you can do that is to train, train, and never stop training. Save for food. So go get some…and run in, slowly. No need to waste another few minutes,” she said, pointing for the distant bunker that led to an underground facility on the otherwise all natural landscape.

“By your will, Archon,” one of them said as they turned and slowly ran off, pulling together into a loose, two-wide column as they headed across the grassy field. It was a saying that had come from somewhere, and she suspected it was one of the other Archons. Not the 1s or any other trailblazer, but one of the lower level ones. Regardless, the Raptors had picked it up and adopted it as their way of offering respect rather than just saying ‘yes.’

Sara blew out a long breath, still feeling the effects of her own workout. She let the Raptors disappear over a small rise before she used her Yenmer and took to the sky, then flew high above them, watching the 2x20 column meander over the terrain until they got back to their bunker, then she accelerated and flew off towards the nearest city where her skeet was parked. She’d flown it here from the main Archon training sanctum that was some 1200 miles away. With the skeet she’d be back there inside half an hour for some additional workouts, then she’d head over to one of the maturias where hatching eggs were kept. She still welcomed as many of them into the universe as she could, but with population levels rising fast it just wasn’t possible for her and the other 1s to meet and greet all of them.

She regretted that, but it was a sign of how fast this faction was growing…and that wasn’t even counting the converted Raptors. Their civilization was being kept somewhat separate, and they were making such huge progress it was surprising all of the 1s. So much so Sara wondered what the V’kit’no’sat had been thinking holding them back as much as they had…and now that Star Force was finally allowing them to live up to their potential, they’d gained their loyalty in a way the V’kit’no’sat never had…as well as adding fuel to their fires of revenge. The more they grew here, the more they hated the V’kit’no’sat for keeping them ignorant and suppressed for so long. Even in their freedom they still only knew the V’kit’no’sat ways, and that now obvious fact combined with the volume of knowledge Star Force was freely sharing made their hate of the V’kit’no’sat even more potent.

It was having the same effect on Sara. As powerful and galaxy spanning as the V’kit’no’sat were, they were screwing over people for no real gain. If someone hurt someone else for a reason, that was unacceptable. If they did it just to do it, then that was even worse.

And it looked like they had kept the Rit’ko’sor under their foot. Why Sara didn’t know, but it was clear that these newly converted Raptors were far more powerful than their Rit’ko’sor kin once they learned how to work together as a true team and stop distrusting and backstabbing each other.

Yeah, Sara had yet one more reason to hate the V’kit’no’sat…and one more advantage for Star Force to wield against them. They’d once looked unbeatable, now they were looking flawed and vulnerable, and the difference wasn’t in them, but rather in Sara and Star Force. They’d grown so wise and experienced that they had a new point of view now.

If they could survive the super war that was coming, they were going to become the IlClan of empires and show the V’kit’no’sat what ‘dominance’ truly was…and it wasn’t stabbing your competition in the back at every turn possible.

6

December 23, 4869

Anxzor System (Ziviri Region)

Bujom

Paul had been engaged in heavy combat against the Ziviri for 27 years, moving through their 1,389 systems at a pace of one every month or two. He’d chosen their toughest systems first, hitting them hard and fast with a group of other high level Archons assisting him led by Riona-111. Sometimes they’d be in the same system, other times he had them moving against others. He saved the toughest assignments for himself, which usually also included Riona, for she was commanding the Raptor Mach’nel that had been sent out to him.

And Paul was immensely grateful for it. It was saving him so many drones, including a few lives, for this war wasn’t a simple one. The Ziviri were not Star Force’s equal, but they were a worthy opponent and were managing to kill some of his people. Archons, Commandos, aerial pilots and mechwarriors. There hadn’t been any aquatics losses to date, but that was because the Ziviri had little in the way of a water navy. That said, Paul still had aquatics units on many worlds taking advantage of that fact and using the oceans as a point of strength to combat the long ground wars that were taking place after Paul moved on with his naval fleet.

He would stick around long enough to batter the enemy with orbital bombardment and then did some ground fighting of his own, hopping into a mech or occasionally going hand to hand. He didn’t want to leave any system with there still being doubt who was in control, but fully taking possession of the Ziviri and their worlds took years, even if it was just tracking down rebels running loose in the wilds.

Most of the Ziviri population was being captured and contained, meaning Paul had an army of support personnel following in the wake of the invasions, but despite what others might have thought this was not a safe operation. He hated losing any people, but this really was a war and Star Force personnel were dying. To date he had lost 1,209, and hopefully that number would not increase any further, but there was no way to know for sure. Some of those losses had been ambush attacks on ‘pacified’ worlds were Paul wasn’t, but those losses still ground on him.

This was the cost of people not doing their job in the distant past. Threats like the Ziviri should never have been allowed to gain this much strength in the shadow of what The Nexus had been. He could understand the Ziviri rising to power in a relatively unoccupied section of the galaxy, but it happening under The Nexus’s umbrella was just infuriating. All of the people he had lost dealing with this problem would have been alive if The Nexus had done their job, but they hadn’t, and he was having to clean it up.

It wasn’t fair. The people dying didn’t deserve it, but this is the way the galaxy worked. There was no such thing as a ‘safe’ place to be, even within the heart of Star Force territory. As James T. Kirk had once said, ‘Risk is our business,’ and truer words had never been spoken. Paul and the others went where the trouble was, and sometimes despite their best efforts some of them still died. And after all the deaths at the hands of the V’kit’no’sat Paul had not become numb to it, thankfully, but losing people in his command was always harder than seeing reports of others dying elsewhere. That was because he was responsible for the battle plans, and in a war like this, he chose when and where to attack.

He wasn’t picking fights with too few units, but he also didn’t have the luxury of coming in with overwhelming force. If he did, the number of systems he could assault would be limited and he didn’t have the time to go slow. So he had to send enough forces without overdoing it, and he was constantly reassessing his choices. If he had sent a few more would that person have died?

It was something that haunted him constantly, but he also acknowledged that there were many things he could not control. He didn’t accept that, but he did acknowledge it.

Even now, with the last battle having been fought and won, he was thinking back and trying to find ways to improve. Not because he could change the past, but if he could find better ways to do things, let alone mistakes he could correct, he could avoid losing more people in the future. Paul wasn’t kicking himself like he used to, for he no longer doubted his own motivations, but he knew the fate of so many others were dependent on him and that he needed to be at the top of his game constantly while always reaching to new heights.

Without him and the others in Star Force, he could easily see how the galaxy would fall apart. They were holding so much together it looked easy to outsiders. Star Force was the rock that so many depended upon that they just took it for granted…until you came out here and saw what non-Star Force territory was like. But even then people didn’t see the full truth.

Paul and the other trailblazers and elite Archons were the ones who had to make this all work. And without them…Paul didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get, for everything that he had encountered so far, he knew it could get worse. Far worse. As bad as the collapse of The Nexus was, and how angry he was at them dropping the ball, if they hadn’t been here at all, this section of the Rim would have been a very different place. They weren’t good guys, but they had been keeping a lot of bad ones in check for a long time. They were just no longer able, or perhaps willing, to continue in that regard and all the threats they had suppressed but not eliminated were now rearing their ugly heads.

The Ziviri were one of them, but Star Force had just solved that problem at the cost of lives and a hell of a lot of equipment. This planet was the last to fall, but in truth Paul would have been at this for another 20 years if he hadn’t hit the hardest ones first, for in the last 6 years most of the remaining little ones had decided to surrender rather than fight. Bujom was one of the few that chose otherwise, but they didn’t have much to stop Star Force. The fighting here had lasted only 18 hours, but there was mop up work left that Paul was helping with personally.

He was flying around the planet looking for pockets of resistance in his personal skeet, then going to ground and hand to hand trying to keep another person from dying. Right now he was perched atop one of the Ziviri buildings that looked like fins or knife blades sticking up from the surface in menacing fashion. It was totally undamaged, as most of the buildings were, and from here Paul could get a good view of the surrounding city as he monitored the battlemap for activity while his skeet was parked 20 meters behind him.

There was nothing to do at the moment, so he just sat on the edge with his armored legs dangling over and monitored the feeds while letting his mind drift. His problems weren’t over yet, for he had captured 87% of the Ziviri population across their entire empire. He didn’t have to do that. He could have killed those that fought him, but there were always people that got born into a race or empire that they did not like and they were forced to go along with a lot of crap because of it. Those people he needed to rescue, not kill, so using stun weapons and just bagging everyone was the best way to do it.

However, that meant he now had a very hostile captive population that had to be babysat and Paul wasn’t going to stick around here forever to do it. Duke Yani was expected to arrive within the year to take command of the restructuring efforts whenever Paul chose to left, but he knew he was going to have to stay around and troubleshoot along with the Duke. Ziviri territory was beyond the Star Force Frontier Region, and as such everyone here was stuck in the middle of nowhere and somewhat vulnerable to an attack by someone other than the Ziviri. Paul couldn’t take his fleets elsewhere, for they needed to roam this region as a deterrent and put down anyone who tried to take advantage of the lack of system defenses.

On top of that Star Force had to feed everyone, utilizing Ziviri production initially then replacing it with their own facilities as soon as possible. Paul had both Kiritak and Bsidd workers spreading like wildfire across the new Ziviri Region, but they had to train their own people as they expanded, so most of the workers Paul was getting were not local born but shipped in from Star Force territory. Even Paladin could not reproduce fast enough for the needs here, so this post war annexation was drawing down a lot of resources and experienced personnel, but it had to be done.

There were so many Ziviri, estimated at 9 trillion survivors, that Star Force had to come in and take control of it now, not grow into it over time. And the longer the conversion took the more the highly experienced personnel would be tied up in babysitting operations. Star Force only had so long before the V’kit’no’sat truce expired, and by then the Ziviri had to be fully capable of supporting themselves, if not exporting. They couldn’t be allowed to be sucking resources from the rest of Star Force by then, but there was a long, long way to go to get to that point.

Right now there were constant convoys running all the way out here and back delivering personnel, cargo, and raw materials that couldn’t yet be harvested on site. The might of the empire was now supporting the Ziviri, and Duke Yani and Paul had a significant problem on their hands…for the maturia system was not going to work here.

Ziviri were basically rock monsters, and they reproduced by mitosis. Previously Paul had thought that was impossible for a person, and it turns out he was right. When the Ziviri split in two the person in the body stayed in half of it and a new person was born into the other…with all the memories of the original. They had the same mind structure, same body, same everything except a different Core, and that made them look identical. Detailed study had been able to determine a slight variance, allowing Paul to see who was the original and who was new, but they both behaved the same.

That meant there were no younglings to confiscate and raise in a maturia. That also meant all the bad habits the Ziviri had would be passed on to their duplicate, for there really were no younglings. Adults reproduced other adults, though half the size. Both would have to eat a lot to regain their original mass, but there was no maturation process in the Ziviri, so Paul was going to have to do something different.

And he wasn’t waiting for the Duke to get here to start. He’d been confronting this ever since the first system had fallen, for when they’d taken possession of that population they’d first discovered that there were no younglings in the population. What he had learned since then was that there was another way for the Ziviri to reproduce, which involved spawning a tiny new one with no memories, but they had to choose to do that and they never did unless they were too small to do the regular split. Ziviri were asexual, so there was no driving force to reproduce other than growing to such a size that they became too large to move around adequately.

They couldn’t stop their growth rate, so the only way to diminish their size was to reproduce. Eat less and the population rate diminished. Eat more and they grew so damn fast that they could double their adult population in remarkably little time, all of which would have cloned memories of the originals. That wasn’t exactly the same as experience, but it was so close the difference almost wasn’t worth mentioning.

So the only way Paul had been able to set up maturias was when the Ziviri cooperated and spawned a tiny new version with no memories…and most of the conquered Ziviri hated Star Force, so they weren’t helping them.

That meant Paul had a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of the Ziviri that was now learning the Star Force ways and beginning to reproduce on their own and copy the Star Force ways when they split, but 99.999997% of the population refused to reproduce the way Star Force wanted and with the new ‘clones’ having the memories of the originals, teaching them new things was extremely difficult.

The flip side was, if they ever did convert, they’d be like the Paladin starting off with genetic memory…only they’d be adults. They couldn’t reproduce as fast as Paladin, for it was a split rather than growing separate individuals in artificial pods, but it meant that certain bloodlines would all essentially be the same person from a memory sense. Individual experiences would alter it over time, but this bonding factor kept the Ziviri extremely unified and the only reason a lot of them had bothered to surrender was the fact that Star Force had kept their communication network intact so they could see how badly their other systems were getting their ass kicked.

They’d surrendered knowing that their worlds would take unnecessary damage, so they’d decided to spare themselves that and resist in non-military ways. They were being very stubborn, and that was something that Paul and Yani were going to have to deal with.

That was why Paul wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, but he had already sent Rioni and the Mach’nel back. It was no longer needed here, but there were plenty of other warfronts where it could be put to use punching through planetary shields. In fact most of the elite Archons were already on their way out, leaving Paul as the sole badass remaining, and not for his combat skills. What was required now was empire building, or empire wrangling in this case. He wasn’t sure what the final solution was going to be, but the existing population wasn’t going to die out over time if they failed to reach self-sufficiency.

That meant he had to find a solution, otherwise this problem would persist forever.

7

April 6, 4870

Maokai 19 System (Protovic territory)

Lighthouse 4

Kena Verris was Human in a system of Protovic, one of a handful of elite wranglers who had been given both Ikrid and Lachka/Pefbar in order to do her job. Normally those psionics were not available to citizens, but her work in the Sanctuaries required it. The telepathy of the Protovic was the number one reason why they had been tasked with the care of 68% of the Sanctuaries within the empire, but there were some tasks they just couldn’t handle without having the ability to take control of the minds of those under their care.

She could do that, as well as push and pull things with her mind. That was very helpful when dealing with less advanced races and allowed her to avoid most injuries. Kena had devoted her life to working this little, often overlooked corner of Star Force, and had been rewarded with the trust that came with the bestowing of such psionics on a citizen.

1,289 years old next month, Kena had worked in many different systems as Star Force evacuated the ADZ. She was in her final year of the maturia when the V’kit’no’sat returned, never having known what Star Force civilian life was like before that time, but during the evacuation more than just Humans, Protovic, Calavari, and the other advanced races were saved. Those that could not talk or defend themselves also were, at least as much as Star Force could manage. Little critters like insects that free roamed Earth’s atmosphere had been left behind, but anything of decent size that could be saved had been saved.

And not just from Earth, which was Kena’s homeworld. Races from all across Star Force territory had been rescued and moved, most of which had already been in Sanctuaries prior to the invasion. On the less inhabited worlds there were more free roamers, and she’d helped capture and move them, which was not an easy process in some cases, especially for the aquatics.

They’d been bounced from Sanctuary to Sanctuary as Star Force lost territory, with new ones having to be built further and further rimward. This one was located in the Lachre Region and far from the V’kit’no’sat warfront, but not so far from the myriad of other smaller wars being fought on the rim. With each decade that passed that fighting got further and further away, with them now being in a mostly civilized area.

But one couldn’t rest on the defense of others, so there was one world in this system, named Tatania, that was a full Protovic colony. The other 8, labeled ‘lighthouse’ as all Sanctuary worlds within Protovic care were called, each had a Protovic city or small continent colonized, but the vast majority of those worlds were housed by Sanctuary races with armies of wranglers taking care of them because they could not take care of themselves…at least not in any civilized way.

And the newest addition to their ranks where the Nioti, a small hexped race that stood about shoulder height to Kena. They’d been rescued from being the food source of another race that Star Force had just annexed called the Hanisva, but unlike the Hanisva the Nioti could not talk and had been kept in pens their entire short lives until they were eaten. It was horrific, but at least those that had been saved would not meet that fate.

Kena was on her way to them now, in a grassland area that was still partially under construction. All Sanctuary habitats, referred to as ‘paddocks,’ were indoors. There the wranglers could design the living environments however they liked with optional outdoor parks to be made use of whenever appropriate, however the indoor facilities often were constructed as parks, meaning there were grasslands inside the buildings on the grasslands, but there were too many Nioti, some of which were still being transported to them from the Preema, who apparently wanted to rid all their worlds of the Hanisva’s foodstuffs, for they’d had to colonize several with the race just to provide adequate amounts to the huge furry avians.

The entire situation made Kena’s stomach turn, but at least she didn’t have to deal with those bastards out there. The Archons thankfully handled that, but she did have to deal with the aftereffects, and the Nioti were in bad shape. Even those that she’d been working with for more than a decade were slow to change, with their constant fearful and stagnant existence being encoded into their behavioral genetics. Such things didn’t change rapidly, so she had to work with each individual to get them into a better state, and when they reproduced little of that change went to the offspring.

Right now the Nioti were separated into different paddocks, males in one and females in another, in order to control the population levels. That was standard practice for all bi-gender races in the Sanctuaries, with them allowing limited reproduction where needed. Because most of the races in the Sanctuaries could not maintain self-sufficiency their populations would eventually die out, the wranglers were not supposed to let that happen, but it did allow them to turn such a large population like the Nioti into a small one down the road. They didn’t want that to happen, for they tried to keep them all alive as long as possible, but they knew it was going to happen so they used it to their logistical advantage.

There were small pockets of races across this planet and the other 7 in this system, plus there were many other Maokai systems that also held Sanctuary races, staffed primarily by Protovic that could read and interact with the minds of races that could not talk. That made such a huge advantage that no Human was allowed to work the Sanctuaries without having at least telepathy. Communication was essential if they were going to help these individuals improve, let alone help their races ascend.

When Kena arrived at the Nioti paddock she wasn’t alone, for Trigger was with her. He was a member of one of the oldest Sanctuary races, but one not quite ready for ward status. Trigger already was, as an individual, which was why Kena used him as an assistant. He was a Kayna, which was an alteration of an older term that had similar pronunciation…Canine, otherwise known as a ‘dog.’ Wranglers, including a number of Archons, had been working with them for over a millennia telepathically and had established their own language, but they couldn’t quite pronounce English words. A slight genetic alteration to their vocal chords had solved that problem, so now, as odd as it might have sounded to the people of Earth when she was born, Kena was now partnered with a talking dog.

Most of the time she just read his mind and communicated with him telepathically, but if he wanted to get her attention he would speak. Most of the time he was silent, save when around other Kayna. They were not telepathic, so they had to talk to each other the old fashioned way, but when he was with Keena he was always trotting near her legs and ready to act as needed, and he’d been a great help with the Nioti thus far.

Part of that was because they were afraid of him. That fear was so ingrained in them that he didn’t have to do anything but walk in their direction and they’d flinch. They’d eventually gotten used to him, but when he barked the fear returned and that made him a very effective herder when they took the Nioti out of their holding pens for the most basic workouts they could manage…that being a cross country trek.

The Nioti that had been here the longest had an extensive routine established, but these newer ones were having trouble adjusting to doing anything more than standing in place. Their bodies had adjusted to that over the years, and just walking across the grasslands was traumatic to them.

Traumatic, but they were thrilled about it. Getting out and moving was so foreign to them it was difficult, but she could feel the exhilaration every time they left their confines…which were not so confining now. In fact, the internal facilities, even the temporary ones, were so big compared to what they’d been ‘stored’ in before that they had been congregating in various corners and packing themselves in so tight they were about touching each other.

It was a sad sight to see, and with each group that made progress other wranglers would take them from there, leaving Kena with working with the ones that needed the most help, so this nightmare didn’t end so long as more Nioti were being brought in. She’d been told another 5-8 years of this before they got them all into Star Force Sanctuaries, and they had enough room here that they’d be taking them in right up to the end. Other Sanctuaries were basically full up, but this one was a newer one with plenty of open land space available for conversion.

Right now that land space was being used for these cross country treks, moving them from one holding facility to another. Kena didn’t want them getting used to a single location and grasping onto it. She wanted them to free their minds and roam, both physically and mentally, which at this point took some prodding.

Kena met up with a lot of lower level wranglers, all Protovic, two of which mounted speeder bikes and would follow from above and able to move around quickly while the rest of the wranglers walked. But first they needed to get the 4500 Nioti out of their pens, so Kena called out to them telepathically. She didn’t force them to move, as she could have, for there were too many to move like that, and when she released one it often just circled back to the others.

“Trigger, get them moving,” she said aloud. “Vari, the door.”

The Protovic she named jogged over to the release panel and a huge door three times as wide as high slowly rose up revealing the natural sunlight beyond that was mimicked by the overhead lights inside, but the smell of the natural landscape rushed in to replace the sterile air inside the Nioti living space that was a series of grassy paths and padded sleeping areas.

“Moving,” Trigger said in an accent that was gruff and huffy, but clear enough to be understood. He took off running into the midst of the Nioti and disappeared between the legs as they scattered to get away from him…then a few moments later the main group began to move towards the doorway and away from the Kayna that was running around and barking on the far side.

The wranglers used their telepathy to help guide those heading their way on out into the grasslands when they flinched and tried to recoil. That kept the leading edge moving, and the others followed as Trigger kept those in the rear motivated. He had to move around to the various nooks in the wide facility, making sure to get every one of the Nioti moving, for some were hiding in corners or still laying down and sleeping. He rounded them all up, then was the last one out the door as the Protovic lowered it again.

Another group of Nioti would be coming here later, with this group being rotated to another facility some 27 miles away. It would take them four days to get there, and they’d be camping outdoors on the way with foodstuffs already laid out at the waypoints.

Well done, Kena congratulated Trigger privately. Keep an eye on the west edge. I don’t want them getting too close to the river. They don’t know not to drink it.

I keep them away, he thought, knowing that she was listening to his mind, as he darted off to the left and shooed a few meandering off back into line with just his presence, knowing to save his barks for those that didn’t take the hint the first time.

Later that day they arrived at the first waypoint where there were a few Star Force tents set up for the wranglers to sleep in along with crates of supplies that included force field fencing. Kena laid out the basic perimeter that she wanted and the Protovic went out and put the pole-like pylons down into the soft ground. When activated they produced a semi-invisible barrier that would stop the Nioti from moving through it or anything else from coming in.

All the wranglers wore a bracelet on their right forearm that allowed them to walk through the barrier, and Trigger had one that he wore as a collar that functioned the same way. They also contained an emergency personal shield generator should they experience trouble with the Nioti or any of the other sanctuary races.

Tired from the ‘long’ 7 mile walk, the Nioti laid down immediately upon stopping with only a few curious stragglers attempting to wonder off. Keena saw that as a good sign, but she couldn’t let them get separated so she had Trigger nudge them back towards the group until the fencing was set up. After that the wranglers broke out the foodstuffs and water, with the smell of it prompting the Nioti up off the ground without any direction. They gulped down the water through their short, flexible snouts then ate with a ravenous appetite.

Their metabolism was very misaligned for activity, so even short, easy walks put them into a state of fuel emergency. The more of these walks they endured the more they would adapt, but it was a long process that these Nioti were just starting. This was their 8th cross country trek, but she could still feel their fear of the surroundings and the lack of food and water. They’d been given so much previously, in order to make them as fat as possible, that they would gorge themselves if allowed to. That meant the wranglers had to lay out the foodstuffs in specific patterns that had a certain amount for each, and when they ate it they were moved into a subsection of the shield fencing so they couldn’t eat twice.

There was a lot of pushing and bumping going on, as expected, with Kena using her Ikrid override a few times to knock down the worst of it, but once they all had a full meal and were sent back into the sleeping area, the Nioti went back to their sedate habits and laid down…with most immediately going to sleep, fatigued as they were from the day of walking.

Kena stayed and watched them for a while with Trigger beside her as some of the Protovic got to sleep. They’d take shifts over the night, so someone was watching over the Nioti constantly, but it didn’t take more than an hour before one of the Nioti got up and walked over to Kena…shying a bit as Trigger looked at him from the ground where he was laying, but the Nioti was brave enough to creep forward and laid down a meter away from her chair.

It looked up at her and Kena connected to its mind, having a very basic conversation…not in words, but in thoughts and feelings and memories. This one had spoken to her before, and it wanted to again, with her recognizing it as one of the few Nioti that were truly different from the others. It wasn’t genetic, or cultural, but the person that was in this Nioti body was a curious one. Curious people, of any race, wanted to explore and learn, and this Nioti was no different.

We’ve got another one for the prime herd, she told Trigger. He can’t be held back here.

We move him now?

No, we’ll finish this hike then I’ll have him moved. He likes it out here.

Rain comes.

Kena’s eyes looked up to the horizon then she spun her head a quarter turn until she could see the storm clouds on the horizon as the sun was setting a little further to the north.

You’re right. I’ll turn the shield on.

Kena mentally interfaced with her bracelet and linked to the large object in the center of the sleeping area. It held some water troughs so the Nioti could get a drink over the night if they needed, but the bulk of the thing was a large shield generator that activated on Kena’s command. It stretched up some 30 meters then spread out like a giant umbrella coming down all the way to the shield fence and melding with it, making an invisible tent that would cover both the Nioti and the wrangler’s tents.

By the time the rain started to reach the camp area and impact the energy shield with tiny little ‘bleep’ sounds, one of the Protovic wranglers walked up behind Kena and Trigger, glowing brightly in the dark as his skin made her a living glowlamp that had prompted the original Protovic to never having created the Star Force equivalent of a flashlight.

“Get some sleep,” he said, putting a hand on Keena’s shoulder.

“You’re early.”

“I didn’t get to run today, so I’m not very tired. You awake Trigger?”

“I am.”

“You staying out here or going with her?”

“Do you need me?”

“I think they’re just going to sleep, so go ahead and get in tents. You’ve done the most running of any of us. Rest up.”

“Ok,” he said, standing up and trotting off to the tents and nosing the ‘open’ button so the door slid to the left and let him inside.

Keen stood up and stretched. “Thanks. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s tired and tries not to fall asleep out here.”

“He had to run down a lot more strays than usual. Some of the Nioti are breaking out of their shell.”

“It still takes too damn long,” she said irritably.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Preema are stalling us. They don’t want to devote the necessary ships to get the Nioti all here in a hurry, so they’re making multiple trips. That means more like these are still stuck in fake food pens.”

“Are they still being killed?”

“We have no way of knowing, but we’re told no. I still hate that we’re working with people that would do this.”

“If we weren’t, we never would have rescued these Nioti. The Preema might have just killed them if they no longer served a purpose.”

“A race that powerful doesn’t need to resort to barbarism. There’s no excuse for that.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest there was, but this is nothing new.”

Kena sighed. “It feels like we make no progress. I know that’s not true, but when we keep getting new ones in we have to start all over again. It’s disheartening.”

“Do you need a break?”

“No. I just don’t like it, and we’re scheduled to get a lot more new races from the Rim.”

“Isn’t that why the Sanctuaries exist?”

“I prefer to solve problems, not perpetually babysit them.”

“We are. Trigger is living proof of that.”

“It took them so long to get to even this level, I…” she said, stopping suddenly.

“What?”

“Maybe I do need a break.”

“You can start by getting some sleep.”

Keena cracked a tired smile. “Point,” she admitted, then turned and walked over to the tents.

She went inside the same one Trigger was in and grabbed a sleeping sleeve, laying it out next to his own heated bed circle and sliding inside. She was still frustrated, but seeing the Kayna there was a reminder of what the Sanctuaries were all about. She just wished it didn’t take them such a long time to get them to this point.

Though compared to ‘natural’ advancement, they were still moving at lightspeed.

8

January 29, 4877

Titagra System (Paladin Zone)

4th planet

Megan-026 wasn’t doing much fighting, unlike her fellow trailblazers. In fact she wasn’t doing any at all in recent years. Rather she was the spider at the center of the growing Paladin web while Supreme Viceroy Thrawn was roaming their now vast territory dealing with problems that arose. Right now they had no control over that territory, with just a sprinkling of systems here and there, but they were establishing a logistical chain and growing their new colonies at a rapid pace, though there was no way to fast track infrastructure growth to the level they truly needed.

Megan had taken part in a few military operations soon after arriving out here to knock down some of the biggest bad guys…or at least to give them a bloody nose and deter them from excessive predation, but the Paladin were not in a position yet to lock down the region they’d been assigned and Megan was playing the part of master organizer from a system at the approximate center of the Paladin Zone.

Communication relays were extending out from the Titagra System and courier ships were filling in the gaps elsewhere, leaving a lot of lag and fog of war to deal with, but that was why Thrawn was out roaming. Having them both in the same place would have been a waste, and the same went for the other Viceroys she’d brought with her. They weren’t quite as good as Thrawn, but they were close and the former lizard Masterminds especially were quite good at work like this, so she was coordinating while watching the star map grow constantly.

But there was so much territory in their zone, with so many native races and native threats, that if they started to try and police it they’d wipe out their own forces in the effort. It was annoying, but they had to turtle up and build for several decades, for the supply convoys running nonstop out through the frontier region could only supply them with a trickle of the resources they needed. It was enough to get them up and running comfortably, but only if they weren’t engaged in active fighting that would add an attrition factor to their growth.

Bottom line was they had to build just about everything they needed out here, which was what Megan was focused on. The Paladin were tasked with establishing and defending the ‘western’ wall, which was on the spinward side of the galactic swirl. Beyond it was the Chamra, which were friendly, and a lot of other non-Nexus races. Megan was essentially assuming their old western border and then some, blocking off access to the cesspool that The Nexus’s territory had become while helping the few remaining shreds of The Nexus races that were in her assigned region.

That help had come far too late, and aside from three tiny clumps of systems that had weathered the storm with better than 50% losses, all the rest were slivers of population that had mostly degenerated into chaos and savagery. Some individuals had been plucked out of those areas and given refuge with the Paladin, but their planets were essentially lost and Megan didn’t have the resources to spend on saving what was left when there were intact planets out there that were in more need.

She hated sitting by and doing basically nothing, but the Paladin had to snowball to truly be effective, so she plucked a few remaining allies out of the fire while waiting to do more as the Paladin worlds were under a furious construction schedule.

Megan had small fleets backing up those three clusters of systems that held what had been minor members of The Nexus that had been abandoned early on. They were the Deok, Srct, and Banniwom, and they were just trying to hold on to what they had left. The Paladin military umbrella was invaluable to them, but they also were having trouble with internal production and undergoing rampant rationing to try and keep everyone alive, for these worlds were mostly overcrowded because of the evacuation of other worlds that had previously fallen.

Megan had communication relays out to the Deok and Banniwom, with two more links needed to get to the Srct, and she was remotely helping them restructure using nothing more than her wisdom. She didn’t have supplies to spare and they actually had enough already, they were just misusing them. She was helping to alleviate that problem, for all three races were eager to join Star Force and obeyed any requests she made of them.

She was glad she’d been able to incorporate them, but they weren’t going to be an asset in the region anytime soon. Just another salvage mission and a living testament to the failure of The Nexus.

Now Megan was assuming their responsibilities and the task that they had abandoned on herself and the Paladin. She had to succeed where they had failed, and not biting off more than she could chew was the key. Megan wanted to be fighting nonstop, but building is what was going to save the most people…though that meant a lot had to be lost right now. She hated that, but in a bad situation she had to play it the best way possible, and when you couldn’t save everyone, you had to make choices. Everyone she took under her wing she had to protect, for unlike The Nexus, Megan wasn’t going to abandon anyone.

That meant picking and choosing who to bring in and who not, and fortunately most worlds in the Paladin Zone didn’t even know Star Force was out here yet. That was a blessing for her sanity, for if she’d been getting requests for assistance nonstop and had to keep turning people down it would have driven her crazy.

So right now the Paladin were secretly building in uninhabited systems save for a handful here and there with low populations that Megan and Thrawn had chosen to take mercy on and annex immediately, turning their worlds into Paladin ones and keeping the survivors around, although dispossessing them, with a steady food supply and housing. That might seem a cheap price to pay for a planet, but to those who were starving and roaming devastated worlds trying to stay alive another day, it was unmitigated salvation.

Those small populations were now little more than hitchhikers on the Paladin train that was constructing cities at a rapid pace. Orbital defenses was nil right now, with Megan having to rely on the Paladin fleet for security, but if she chose to build anti-orbital batteries and planetary shields up front, that could cost her the more badly needed mines and shipyards. Even as the snowball rolled, she still didn’t have enough for every task and choices had to be made. The trailblazer was willing to gamble on the Paladin fleet being able to protect the growing worlds, so she’d put aside the hard defenses for construction much further into the future, and so far she hadn’t had reason to regret that choice.

But the threats were definitely out here, and more so beyond the old Nexus border. They hadn’t taken notice of Star Force yet, which was another reason why the Paladin were keeping a low profile, at least as far as Star Force norms went, and Megan was immensely grateful for the tireless work ethic of the Paladin. No other race in Star Force could have been building this fast, as far as startups went, and the number of Paladin requesting to be transferred back to Star Force territory so they could enter Axius and the civilian sector were 3 to date. Three Paladin out of some 19 trillion she had under her command out here.

That was damn impressive, and with that 19 trillion number growing quickly with new generations being ‘born’ into adulthood immediately and put to work within a few days’ time, she had the workforce she needed, but one that was also very dangerous. The idea of the Paladin going for maximum population was actually scary, for they could swarm over the galaxy if properly organized. Why Star Force hadn’t used them in that fashion was an ongoing debate topic in the civilian media, but the answer was pathetically simple…they weren’t going to grow them faster than they could produce new Archons to oversee them.

For the biggest asset of the Paladin was also their biggest problem. It was their genetic memory. They were very regimented and disciplined, which helped loads in an operation like this, but it also meant they were less likely to figure out the difference between right and wrong when it didn’t align with a code of conduct. The Paladin, even with all the Star Force memories woven into them, could go off the rails without the proper leadership, so without Archons to guide them, Paladin reproducing at maximum capacity was a dangerous thing.

But these were dangerous times, and Davis had unleashed them out here with only Megan to oversee them. She was confident that her presence would be enough over the long term, but if any Paladin was left to their own solutions she expected they would end up becoming brutal, for failure was not in their genetic vocabulary. Archons offered solutions the Paladin would not think up on their own, and no matter how many contingencies they wove into their genetic code, the galaxy would always throw them something new. That’s why the Paladin needed Archons, and right now Megan and Davis needed the Paladin to explode their population and do what they did best.

Megan had confidence in Thrawn, but that was due to his person experience, not his memories. Memories were useful, but they didn’t hold a candle to actual experience. The transformation Thrawn had gone through made him solid, and the same could be said of the other former Masterminds who had to learn what it meant to be Star Force rather than just inheriting that knowledge. They weren’t as good as Thrawn, but they were reliable and damn efficient. Problem was she didn’t have enough of them and she had no other Archons or Mavericks to help her.

So it was just Megan and the old school Masterminds running this quickly growing empire within an empire, and for construction matters that was fine. When the heavy combat came, she was going to have to be on the battlefield making the quick calls. Same with Thrawn and the other elite Viceroys. That meant a limited number of operations that could be conducted simultaneously. At least until the newer Viceroys picked up enough experience of their own.

It was going to be a challenge Megan had never faced before, fighting with green troops that had the memories of veterans. That gave a mirage of competence that evaporated when they had to deal with new things, and Megan wasn’t making that rookie mistake. Paladin needed experience same as everyone else, but when they didn’t get it they were vastly superior to other races.

Hopefully this operation wouldn’t devolve to that level, but one thing was for sure. Paladin didn’t surrender, and Paladin didn’t back down. Punch them in the face and they went for your throat. That was their natural instinct, and the alterations in their genetic memory hadn’t changed it. They weren’t vicious or violent in an aggressive way, but they did respond to attacks in that fashion.

Megan didn’t fear them. In fact she rather liked them. And as a warrior, Megan was more comfortable working with aggressive races than meek ones, for she was insanely aggressive when she chose to be and the Paladin couldn’t hold a candle to her in berserker mode.

But that was because she didn’t lose her mind when angry, she became focused. Most aggressive races were the opposite, and she could train individuals how to focus a lot easier than to teach a meek person to be aggressive. So she was happy with the Paladin and their potential while recognizing the inherent dangers if she wasn’t here to keep them on track.

And the more experience in the field they had, the more solid they would become and the more new memories could be isolated and incorporated into future generations.

Megan leaned back in her elegant command chair, in which she sat far too much. Before her were a wide array of holograms and a telepathic interface that she switched between with such ease that she didn’t even register the difference anymore. There were so many new colonies that needed planning, and she wasn’t going to let the Paladin design most of them. Even small tweaks here and there could have an effect on the snowball that was forming, and she was trying to squeeze out as much productivity as she could.

And in truth she wasn’t going building by building except for the very small startups. Instead she was doing zoning and allowing the local Viceroys to fill them in, saving her the effort while allowing her to put her personal touch on all the construction taking place. Eventually there would be too many worlds for that, for the plans for expansion in the territory she had been assigned were insane. Originally they had planned to take only uninhabited planets, but the devastation she was seeing out here had changed that.

Now she was planning on taking control of many that were dying. She wasn’t going to negotiate or even ask their permission. They were failing and most had lost more than 90% of their population. Megan was going to sweep up and save what was left, but she was also going to claim those more valuable worlds for the Paladin. If she didn’t they’d die out anyway, or mostly, and a handful of primitive survivors weren’t going to lay claim to a planet. Not in her book anyway.

But before she could start doing that she needed the foodstuffs and other supplies necessary to inundate these worlds, and her production was still a far cry from what it needed to be. Right now it was tied up with the population surge, for feeding the trillions of Paladin came first, and the more she had birthed the more supplies they would need.

But once Megan got ahead on the production curve she was going to start grabbing up the most valuable planets that didn’t have a functional civilization on them. When that happened the partial anonymity the Paladin had would disappear and the threats in the region would start taking shots at her forces, if only to feel them out. Her naval commanders were already spoiling for a fight, but the numbers weren’t to her liking yet. She knew a massive fight was coming from a lot of smaller threats, but Megan was not going to go into it half prepared with her forces spread across such a large region.

When the appropriate time came she was going to drop the hammer so hard no one would challenge her a decade later. But in that decade, all hell was going to break loose.

And that’s when the big players would take notice. There were four just beyond her new borders, beyond what had been The Nexus. How they would respond she did not know, but if they chose to get militarily involved this was going to get nasty.

That was why she was biding her time now and focusing on growth. Megan and Thrawn were not going to get reinforcements from the rest of Star Force. They had to grow whatever forces they needed out here, and it was critically important they didn’t move too fast.

But standing by and building while other people were in need was not something Megan would ever be comfortable with. It had to be done in order to save the most people down the road, but it was disgusting to see the updated scouting reports of the Paladin who were cataloging every world within their zone. They weren’t even close to finished yet, there were that many systems out here, estimated to be approximately 3.5 million in number, and with each new batch sent to her for review, she saw planet after planet that was wrecked or dying. They had become so dependent on The Nexus that its absence, even in small ways, had wrecked large tracts of this entire region.

But not all of it. Some systems had not interacted with The Nexus and some of them were still intact. Others had fallen when the predations had increased after The Nexus patrol fleets had disappeared. All in all there were pieces of civilization out there, though in some cases that term was stretched to its limits, but more often than not there was devastation where there had once been civilization.

It was too late for many worlds, but once Megan got the Paladin up to sufficient strength she was going to start saving what she could. Until then, she had to make do with the few exceptions the trailblazer had allowed and remind herself that without her and the Paladin they too would be lost. So she wasn’t being totally apathetic. She was sitting by, helping a few, but that was only a fraction of the many that needed help.

She hated this part of her mission. She hated this part of being an Archon. But someone had to face the ugliness of the galaxy in order to clean it up, and that was a duty she wasn’t going to shirk, no matter how distasteful it was.

9

June 11, 4878

Unnamed System

Stellar Orbit

The V’kit’no’sat scout ship exited one of thousands of jumps it had been making searching beyond the frontier looking for the Knights of Quenar, but it wasn’t alone. There were 6 Les’i’kron ships working together and arriving in sequence, so if the first vessel was destroyed it could warn the others and the possibility of at least one of them surviving and reporting back what they found would be worth the effort. Otherwise, sending a single scout out to look for advanced hostiles would more than likely just mean the death of the scout.

Normally the V’kit’no’sat did not operate in such a fashion, but the heavy ass kicking they’d gotten when they lost the Uriti had made them rethink their standard protocols. They needed to find the Knights of Quenar worlds, and if they did they didn’t expect to leave peaceably with that knowledge.

The V’kit’no’sat had been doing more than just looking. They’d been inquiring of their many contacts for word of the KoQ, and what they’d found was shocking. Many people knew of and feared the KoQ, but they were not a traditional empire. They were ghosts, moving about where and when they wanted, but no one knew where they came from. There would have been no information about them at all except that they kept in contact with the rest of the galaxy, ostensibly to look for information on the Uriti.

But at the same time they also operated as a police force for the region where the scout ships were now searching, knocking down threats in an area that the V’kit’no’sat were able to outline thanks to the stories of the locals. Where in those 300,000 star systems were they? Well, it was just a matter of looking through them all, assuming their facilities weren’t well hidden.

Sending 6 ships per scout group also allowed them to search systems 6 times as fast, but today that was not going to be necessary.

When the first Ti’mat exited its jump it didn’t last 30 seconds before cloaked vessels appeared around it and opened fire. Thankfully it wasn’t a smaller Kaeper, otherwise it would have been destroyed immediately, but the Ti’mat was able to hold up long enough to send a signal back up the jumpline warning the others before it was quickly cut to shreds by the swarming KoQ vessels.

The next Ti’mat in altered its jumpline, curving into a skid around the side of the star with the others doing likewise but not following the same exact path. One of them was destroyed when it happened to run through an asteroid field, but the other four survived long enough to get down to reasonable speed where their sensors would function and allowed them to avoid obstacles. They had their cloaking devices running, but soon two of them were intercepted and a running battle begun, with them sending out messages to the others across the system.

The last two dropped their cloaks, realizing they were useless, and engaged active scans as they flew evasive courses towards other jumppoints. As they did so they picked up passive scans of the nearest planets…where they saw a massive civilization utilizing Knights of Quenar technology. The worlds were so packed with it they had no natural landscapes, just seas of various shades of black glinting in the sunlight.

The Les’i’kron weren’t going to stay around and look, for they needed to get the location information back to the fleet, and the two intact ships did make it to jumppoints and left the system at partial power, for they didn’t have enough time to fully recharge their jump capacitors. One of the two under attack also made it out, but with damage, and all three flew at reduced speed to different systems…where the KoQ were waiting for them when they emerged.

Two of them were destroyed on entry, but the third never arrived. It was the damaged one, but it hadn’t malfunctioned and hit the star. Rather it had altered its slow course slightly so that it slingshotted around the star without slowing down. That didn’t allow much of a course correction, so the choice of destination stars further on was limited and the ability to accurately pull off such a maneuver was questionable, but it was a navigational trick the V’kit’no’sat had learned well navigating the core of the galaxy where jumplines were so short and the constant stopping hindered travel.

The Knights of Quenar had no such use for it out in the more sparse Rim, and they hadn’t expected the tactic. So the damaged Ti’mat coasted on for just under two weeks before it came close enough to a gravity well to stick a landing. It did not arrive on a direct jumpline, so it had to brake hard, pushing it sideways as it did so, then it pulled on the gravity of the star as it passed in order to latch on and swing around it until they finally came to a relative stop out in middle orbit.

Thankfully they hadn’t collided with anything, but they arrived in a system without the Knights of Quenar, though it was not uninhabited. There were three planets with a primitive race the Les’i’kron could not identify, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to stick around long enough for them to report to the KoQ where they were, but the ship was damaged and their speed was limited due to the destruction of one of their gravity drives. The rest had been repaired during the coast phase of their jump, but there wasn’t enough spare parts onboard to replace the one that had been 85% destroyed.

But V’kit’no’sat ships had multiple gravity drives, meaning the loss of one only slowed the ship by a fraction. It did not stop it, and the Ti’mat continued to bounce from system to system until it got back to the rendezvous point where the scout ships had been refueling. There was a large V’kit’no’sat fleet of cargo ships and warships, which the Ti’mat immediately transmitted its information to, warning them that if they were followed they may come under attack.

The V’kit’no’sat fleet immediately sent out courier ships to rally the kill fleet that was waiting on the V’kit’no’sat border while the rendezvous point held position so they wouldn’t abandon the other scouts who would not have enough fuel to get back to V’kit’no’sat territory if they left.

By the time the kill fleet arrived 4 months later no KoQ ships had shown themselves, with the long train of warships from virtually all the races in the V’kit’no’sat passing through with the leading elements jumping out before the bulk of the convoy even arrived in the system. The train of ships made their way all the way out to the target system but did not arrive in it. Rather they spread out around to the neighboring systems with a countdown clock, timing their final jumps so they all arrived in the target system simultaneously, coming in on multiple jumplines.

The leading elements were Kafcha, the largest ships the V’kit’no’sat had, so they could weather the initial attacks of ambushing ships, soaking up the damage and sparing those coming in behind them, but to their surprise no attack came. They entered the system from all directions unmolested and dispersed scout ships throughout the system to get a good feel for the battleground only to discover that the KoQ were gone.

There were no ships here, not that they could always detect them if they were, but none were visible and the planets that had been identified by the original Ti’mat showed no presence of any habitation…but they did show the scar marks of its removal. All of the planets were scraped clean of buildings, leaving the bedrock showing their footprints and the signs of mechanical removal.

It was all gone. To where the V’kit’no’sat had no idea, but the Knights of Quenar had just picked up and moved planets’ worth of infrastructure. Not even the V’kit’no’sat could do that, and it left the kill fleet with no target to hit and fruitless searches of the planets for anything useful…other than the debris of the V’kit’no’sat scout ships that had been left drifting in space where they had been destroyed.

“Moved?” Mak’to’ran asked Hamob, whose ship had come out to the Hadarak Zone to find him and was communicating via hologram. “Explain.”

“Their planetary structures were removed, leaving only sculpted bedrock behind. There was no debris to be found. Either they build their structures with the ability to fly, or they somehow removed them all and transported them outside the system before our fleet arrived.”

“All of it?” Mak’to’ran asked, having seen the initial scouting report months ago.

“All of it,” Hamob confirmed. “We are dealing with a very formidable opponent.”

“Yet one who runs,” Mak’to’ran said disapprovingly.

“They cannot match our might if they are forced to suffer attrition. Their evasion bespeaks wisdom rather than bravado.”

“Yet we still do not know how many they are.”

“I would suspect far less than us, but the problem remains. Itaru has no target, save for those that are already visible.”

“The truce will not be breached,” Mak’to’ran said firmly.

“Itaru may strike despite your order. You need to return. I cannot hold them back.”

The Era’tran growled. “My time is best spent here, making Hadarak kills. Are they so incompetent that I have to oversee them constantly?”

“They seek blood and dominance. They have no blood, and their dominance is challenged. It is not a matter of incompetence.”

“It is,” Mak’to’ran differed. “And I do not refer to the inability to locate the Knights of Quenar. Dominance requires patience at times, and this is one of them. If they cannot produce that patience, then they are incompetent.”

“That is something they need to hear from you.”

“Will that be enough?” Mak’to’ran asked, suspecting the answer.

“Perhaps not, but I know that my influence is not enough. There is already a call for volunteers for the first invasion wave against Star Force.”

Mak’to’ran flared his claws and raked the glowing talons through a nearby console in frustration, cutting it as easily as a lightsaber would.

“A useful application,” Hamob quipped.

“Have they learned nothing?”

“Their leader is absent. They forget the lessons learned in recent history.”

“The arrogant have resurged?”

“No. This is mere frustration. There is an enemy that they are not allowed to strike. This does not sit well with them.”

“Or you?”

“I am weighing the costs of multiple options.”

“The truce was agreed to. We will not renege.”

“Star Force was foolish to agree without leverage.”

“Are we to become liars?”

“Many already are,” Hamob said honestly. “The arrogant were not our only problem.”

“Do we have this problem with the Era’tran?”

“No. I have made sure of that. They are loyal to the mission, and to you. The problem is the other races, most notably the Oso’lon, but even the J’gar are wavering in light of our inability to find the Knights of Quenar.”

“May I travel on your vessel? I do not want to diminish the capabilities of this fleet.”

“Of course.”

“Then we will leave immediately.”

It took nearly 4 months to reach Itaru, for the Hadarak were sitting on the best routes through the Core and the V’kit’no’sat had to take the long way around through very short jumps, even considering the curved routes they availed themselves of when appropriate. When they arrived they came into a dense star system that had been fully repaired since the recent civil war, with a defense fleet larger than any elsewhere in the empire by a factor of 20.

It was overkill as far as he was concerned, but there was still a lot of distrust between the races and none of them wanted to be caught in a bad position here should another civil war break out. The losses from the recent one were still felt in terms of personnel, for a lot of the very old V’kit’no’sat had been lost. Some of those were beneficial losses, for most of the arrogant had been purged, but there was still a skills gap that left Itaru less the jewel it had once been, and it seemed those that lived here were trying to compensate with more ships.

Mak’to’ran went straight to the Elder Conclave and interrupted their ongoing proceedings as he angrily assumed the center pedestal and took control of the massive indoor chamber that held representatives from all the races in the empire.

“I will say this plainly, so even the dimwitted amongst you can understand. The truce will not be violated. We gave our word. We will honor our word. Any race that violates it will have to deal with me and the Era’tran. If you wish to start another civil war, then by all means attack Star Force before the truce expires. I will guarantee you get one, for I will cull any race that violates the agreement that the empire has made.”

The vocal response was muted compared to the telepathic crescendo that followed, but Mak’to’ran responded to it with his own emotions, letting them feel just how angry he was.

“I do not belong here. I belong fighting the Hadarak, yet it seems I cannot rely on you to do anything of merit. We have made a deal. It must be honored. Yet here I am, coming to Itaru to stop you from launching an invasion against my orders. Your incompetence disgusts me. For the first time in our history we have an effective weapon against the Hadarak, and you quibble about inconsequential matters. Star Force is not a threat to us. They wish to be left alone. We only suffer losses when we attack them, and we do so because they do not have our permission to exist.”

“I will not waste resources on them while we are fighting the Hadarak. I will not waste resources destroying them when they hold a vital key to our war against the Hadarak. Their Uriti are a threat to us, but even more so to the Hadarak. I have struck a deal with them once, I plan to do so again before the end of the truce. If they refuse, then they will be destroyed. But the knowledge they contain is too valuable to just throw away due to ego. The Knights of Quenar attacked us, and if we can identify their location we will avenge our losses, but Star Force did not attack us. Their allies did.”

“I have a good measure of how they think, and they are defensive. They hate us, but that hate does not manifest itself the same way ours does. They know they cannot defeat us, but they also know that if we fight them we do so on their worlds where they have the advantage. They will hurt us badly, and if we need to suffer that damage in order to achieve our goals, then so be it. But if it is not necessary, I will not allow you to waste our resources and lives to satiate your desire for false dominance.”

“I say false because we are not dominant. The Knights of Quenar are our equal, if not our superior, in skill and technology. We are superior in might, and the fact that they handed us such an egregious loss rankles you. I, on the other hand, respond by adapting to the threat rather than throwing a tantrum. And even if we did destroy Star Force, we still would not have destroyed the Knights of Quenar. They will still elude us. Destroying them is a priority for us, but it pales in comparison to the Hadarak. And if I can coopt Star Force into helping us destroy them, then I will take that route regardless of how much it offends your false sense of dominance. If we were dominant, Star Force never would have survived to this point.”

“You know this to be true, and now you want to rewrite history and throw away invaluable tools. The Chixzon were able to alter a captured Hadarak into a weapon of their own. Star Force has knowledge of the Chixzon, from sources we are not aware of. If we destroy Star Force we destroy that knowledge, for they will take it to their graves with them. I can promise you that, for spite is a trait we both share.”

“We have been fighting the Hadarak for millions of years, yet you only think of this century. My mind is far into the future, and Star Force is an asset that I must bring into the fold. How I will do that is not certain yet, but I will not waste the opportunity because you are shortsighted. If you wish to attack Star Force before the truce expires, you will have to fight me as well, for I will not tolerate this disobedience…even from the Oso’lon,” he said, looking directly at the long necks.

“I lead the V’kit’no’sat, not the Elder Council. If anyone wishes to change that, step forward now and face me.”

Mak’to’ran let that invitation hang in the air for minutes that felt like hours, and while there was a lot of bickering and complaining going on, no one, not even the Oso’lon, wanted to directly challenge him.

“Then this matter is settled. We honor the truce. If I cannot find a way to utilize Star Force prior to that, we destroy them when it expires. As for the Knights of Quenar, we will have to deal with them in another manner…”

10

February 3, 4882

Alamo System (Uriti Preserve)

Warden 8 Station

Riley-038 was training onboard his command ship when the priority summons from the Knights of Quenar came in. Normally he was not to be disturbed for diplomatic inquiries, but the KoQ didn’t mess around like the other races did and the fact that they were citing this as high priority was enough for his ship’s captain to interrupt the trailblazer during a swimming workout.

Riley had left immediately, heading over to the diplomatic station that had a special chamber where he could securely meet face to face with the KoQ without putting their facilities at risk. The technological capabilities of their ally were still not fully known, so it was standard protocol never to let them onboard except for a handful of special cargo bays such as this one.

There was a large force field separating him from the sole KoQ who stood waiting, with the Human’s hair still mildly wet and his clothing casual. No armor or weapons, but the KoQ knew that Archons had biological ones similar to what they possessed, and while cautious of each other neither really regarded their counterpart as a threat…not here at least.

“What is it?” Riley asked, stopping a meter from the invisible barrier denoted by a small ridge in the floor.

“A grave problem,” Ulusal said, one of the few KoQ that Riley had gotten to know by name. “We located another Uriti, but the V’kit’no’sat got to it before we did.”

Riley’s neutral expression depressed into a scowl. “They have one? Sedated or awake?”

“They kept it sedated, and we believe they were studying it. We attacked and took it from them.”

Riley whistled. “Oh, that is a problem.”

“This is not recent history. It occurred 24 of your years ago. If they saw our actions as a violation of your truce, they would have acted by now.”

The trailblazer frowned. “24 years? Why have you not brought the Uriti to us yet?”

“Because we no longer possess it. Our fleet that took it from the V’kit’no’sat reported via courier of the events that took place, but the fleet then disappeared and we had no knowledge of where they were or what happened to them until recently. A single survivor in a slow emergency ship eventually made his way back to us. It was not the V’kit’no’sat that destroyed them, as we had assumed, for they have come after us in our own territory as punishment for our boldness. We were attacked by an unknown race whose technology is the equal of our own. They were waiting in ambush along our convoy route, and none of our ships survived the attack or were allowed to flee.”

“How did your messenger survive?”

“Within the star where they dumped our ship debris. They did not know our emergency ship could survive within it. He played dead then limped his way across the stars to one of our remote operating bases with the sensor data that this race, I suspect, wanted to make sure did not survive. They now have the Uriti, sedated, for after the V’kit’no’sat awakened it in response to our assault we were able to resedate it, and the ambush occurred too quickly for us to release it again.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Riley said, slowing him down with a raised hand. “The Uriti was woken…wait, which one was it?”

“Bulmuthal.”

“The original?”

“Yes, and it was truly massive.”

“And the V’kit’no’sat woke it up in order to deny it to you?”

“They did. After we drove them out of the system so they could not interfere, we resedated it.”

“I thought you couldn’t do that without massive sacrifice.”

“There was a sacrifice, but not as massive as in past history. We have developed better methods of sedation, which we are not prepared to share.”

“Exactly how big of a fleet did you send?”

“Large enough.”

“And you can detect cloaked V’kit’no’sat ships?” Riley deduced, otherwise they could not ensure they were not still around to ‘interfere.’

“We can. They were not present when we resedated it. They do not know what happened to it. They only found an empty system when we left. The race that stole it from us used cloaking devices that we could not penetrate. This allowed them to ambush us quite effectively.”

“And you don’t know who it was?”

“We do not.”

“And they took the Uriti while still sedate?”

“We assume so. We have no data on a release, and our carrier vessel was absent when the survivor emerged from the star. We assume they seized it.”

“Show me this race.”

The Knight produced a hologram of the battle records, and despite his lack of familiarity with Humans he didn’t miss the facial flinch Riley made when he saw the ‘nest-like’ ships.

“You have encountered this race before?”

Riley stared directly into the dog-like face of the KoQ, his gaze imparting lethal intent. “Who else have you shown this to?”

“You are the first beyond the Knights of Quenar.”

“Make sure I am the last. This information cannot reach the public or the V’kit’no’sat. This race values their anonymity above all else. They will kill you if even a hint of it comes to their attention, and their spies are everywhere.”

“Who are they?”

“Someone I’m not supposed to tell you about,” Riley answered honestly. “I’m going to have to scrub the recordings of this conversation from the station computer, just in case they have a means of accessing it and seeing those holograms. I recommend you not keep them widely available to your own people. If they destroy a ship with that knowledge onboard and recover it, bad things will happen.”

“Bad things have already happened. Who is this race?”

“You are familiar with the Chixzon?”

“Of course.”

“They are their equivalent from the inner half of the galaxy, also thought to be dead, but not. They are rebuilding in secret, and the fact that they emerged to attack you and steal the Uriti changes a great many things…all for the worse.”

“We have not been able to find the Uriti. The lead they had is too great, and we have not been able to find any trace of this race, not even a rumor, though our efforts are only beginning. Tell us what you know, for we are already involved.”

Riley closed his eyes, telepathically interfacing with the station’s computer via a nodule in the ceiling and shutting down the active surveillance in the chamber. He also contacted the station security forces and ordered them to scrub the existing records for him, as well as telling them that the new blackout was intended and not a security breach.

When he opened his eyes he looked directly into the Knight’s pair, telepathically sharing with him images of what the Dragons looked like, along with images of their ships, confirming that they were the same. He couldn’t penetrate the Knight’s mind, but he could still transmit to him like anyone else.

“They are called the Zak’de’ron, and you must never let that word be spoken. They created the V’kit’no’sat, then were betrayed by them about a million years ago. They were always superior and uplifted the many races that are now V’kit’no’sat, but they didn’t share everything with them. The V’kit’no’sat believe they were destroyed, but a single Zak’de’ron survived and has been rebuilding their ranks for the past 2 millennia. They have told us they are not yet ready to assist us against the V’kit’no’sat, but their attack on you suggests they may be stronger than they have admitted.”

“You are their ally?”

“They wish us to believe so, but in truth we are not after a…recent incident that they are not aware of. They seek dominance, like the V’kit’no’sat, but they prefer to coopt many other races, and did so even before they created the V’kit’no’sat. They are very good friends so long as you do what they want, and the fact that they stole a Uriti from you that they knew was going to us sends a very clear message that they are not our allies. If they thought they’d killed you all, then they wanted to keep this knowledge from reaching us. Do you understand why you cannot allow them to learn of this?”

“You wish them to continue to believe you are working with them. What have you done for them, exactly?”

“We accidentally stumbled upon their sole survivor in stasis. We didn’t kill him, so he was grateful. We’ve had a few conversations over the years and they’ve shared some information, but that’s it. They want to remain dead to the galaxy, which is why their attack on you is surprising.”

“You say their power rivals the Chixzon?”

“Hard to compare without firm details, but yes, I believe so.”

“And yet they were defeated by the V’kit’no’sat.”

“They were ambushed by them. They trusted and were betrayed. I do not think they could have rebuilt so much in such a short period of time…unless they lied to us, which is possible.”

“Do they possess the knowledge of the Chixzon that you do?”

Riley bit his lip as he considered that, thinking of Kara’s memory theft. “We can’t rule it out entirely.”

“So they may be able to command it to do their bidding?”

“I hope not, but this doesn’t make sense. Something else is in play here.”

“We are still looking for the other Uriti, as I assume the V’kit’no’sat are. If we do recover another, we risk running into another ambush. Can you tell us anything about their technology?”

“Unfortunately not much. They’ve been able to sneak up on us without us detecting them. Gravity detection will give them away, so they can’t sneak up on the Hadarak or Uriti, but again that’s us taking their word for it. We’ve had almost no interaction with them. However, anything the V’kit’no’sat know, assume they know it. They’ve got hacks into their communication grid. If you find another Uriti that the V’kit’no’sat do not know about, you might be able to get it back to us before they realize it.”

“They have shared this knowledge with you?”

“Yeah, they did, while apologizing for not being able to militarily assist us when the truce ends. I think they’re going to let us and the V’kit’no’sat blast each other’s brains out, then hit them afterward. Supposedly they’re not rebuilt enough for that yet, but them taking you guys out may suggest otherwise. This is bad no matter how you look at it, and it will only get worse if they know we know, which is why you have to hide this information and that of your survivor. Bury it deep. Very deep.”

“We rarely share anything with outsiders. You are an exception because of your ability to control the Uriti, but these revelations disturb us greatly.”

“How many ships did you lose?”

“It will not affect our overall military ability by a significant factor,” Ulusal said, not giving any information that Star Force could use to size up their true strength. “It would have been wise of you to warn us of this threat.”

“I thought they were hiding out, not making clandestine raids…and for the record, we don’t fully trust you either. And if we weren’t helpful to your agenda, you’d probably be attacking us, so let’s not pretend we’re close friends.”

“We have no quarrel with you now, nor would we ever so long as you don’t misuse the Uriti. We have trusted you greatly by bestowing them into your care.”

“Because we are the only ones that can control them.”

“That may no longer be the case,” he pointed out. “But we are allies, though you do not approve of all of our methods.”

“That disapproval could lead to war, you know. We don’t tolerate bad guys, and if we knew more about what you actually did, you might fall into that category.”

“Your methods are effective, but you do not go far enough in some circumstances. That is why we know you will never be an enemy…and why we will never tell you everything that we do.”

“And that is why we will never be full allies.”

“So long as the mission is accomplished, that is acceptable to us.”

“And what mission is that? The destruction of the Uriti?”

“That would be one solution, but not the best one. After all the destruction they have ravaged on the galaxy, compensation is a fitting turn of fate. Under your care, they are accomplishing that. And because of your squeamishness, we know you will not go too far with them.”

“And you need to realize that you are in the wrong. Life is not so cheap as you make it, though I can understand how people can lose their way in the face of such carnage. You, however, have no excuse because you didn’t live through it, or are you far older than I assume?”

“I did not, but my people did, and we remember. This conversation is pointless, for we will never operate on the same protocols. We do have a new threat to face, and one who now possesses a Uriti and potentially the ability to use it.”

“If they do, it will not be soon. Hiding a Uriti strike is not easy, and I doubt they are ready to hit the V’kit’no’sat yet.”

“If that is their true agenda.”

“It is. We know enough of their history to be sure of that. There is pure hatred there.”

“Or would they use the V’kit’no’sat to their advantage?” Ulusal wondered. “If they are manipulators, it could be more advantageous than fighting a war with them.”

“The V’kit’no’sat despise and fear them. I do not think they could openly interact with them. The result would be catastrophic and the V’kit’no’sat would hunt them to extinction…again.”

“You obviously place some trust in us, or you would not be giving us this information.”

“I fear you accidentally revealing what you already have without understanding the repercussions that could come of it.”

“We will maintain the secrecy and continue our search for the remaining Uriti. These Zak’de’ron will not ambush us again so easily.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“A few, but nothing confirmed as of yet. And now we must also race the V’kit’no’sat, and perhaps these Zak’de’ron as well. It is possible they have more than one at this point.”

Riley cringed. “Damn, that’s not a pleasant thought. Maybe this is turning into a race for control.”

“It has been for some time now. We were just not aware of this other player. Lesser races are also looking, and we have claimed what they previously found.”

Riley glared at him, but Ulusal did not care.

“Our methods. Our results. We do not need your permission.”

“If we were in a position to do something about it we would, but you’re operating outside our territory. Do not misconstrue that as tolerance.”

“Noted.”

“What kind of losses have you suffered to the V’kit’no’sat?”

“None. They seek combat, we deny it to them.”

“They have not found any of your worlds?”

“They have. We abandoned them prior to their arrival, thus denying them combat.”

“That’s still a loss then.”

“You misunderstand. We moved our infrastructure off those worlds along with our population. We lost nothing.”

Riley raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Your infrastructure is mobile?”

“It is not,” Ulusal said, but that was all the information that Riley was going to get out of him on that front, though they continued to discuss the V’kit’no’sat and Zak’de’ron, along with the Knights of Quenar’s continuing efforts to find Protovic and inoculate them against become Chixzon someday.

After their clandestine conversation concluded Riley left the Preserve and headed directly to the Meinto System so he could inform Davis personally. This information was too sensitive to go through the comm grid, and the Director responded far worse to the information than the KoQ had.

It took Davis 3 months working with Riley and a few other trailblazers he summoned from nearby locations to come up with a course of action, then he sent a message through the now extended comm grid all the way to Earth where Morgan was stationed, telling her to arrange a meeting with the V’kit’no’sat, and Mak’to’ran in particular, citing they had matters concerning the Hadarak to discuss.

www.aerkijyr.com

Table of Contents

- Return to Earth

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

- Rift

- Map
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

- Excalibur

- Map
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

- Scorpion

- Map
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

- Baron

- Map 1
- Map 2
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10