Star Force: Phase 2 #11-20
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Age Range 2 Older Audience
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force: Summit Star Force: The Dinosaur War Star Force: Equity Star Force: Fracture Star Force: Forsaken Star Force: Instinct Star Force: Dominance Star Force: Essence Star Force: Dawn of the Apocalypse Star Force: Uriti Tamer
Publisher: Archon Lore
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Summit

1

December 19, 4882

Zafrena System (Hadarak Zone)

Dead Hadarak site

Mak’to’ran had returned to the Hadarak front, leaving a stable situation in Itaru for the moment, but it was the activity on the front that disturbed him the most. The V’kit’no’sat had monitoring stations set up around the perimeter of the core, supplemented by patrols, and detailed tracking data for the outer region of the Hadarak Zone was constantly being pumped through the Urrtren so fleets and planets could prepare well in advanced of an approaching Hadarak.

They moved so slow that entire populations could be moved out of their way in some cases, but in order to make the most of such spottings there had to be a quick exchange of information, and sending information over such great distances was not simple or quick, though compared to the movement of ships it was far superior using the Urrtren.

But it wasn’t just for the warnings delivered to individual systems that the detection net had been created. It was also to monitor Hadarak movements on a large scale, and since their 7 recent Hadarak kills he had begun to notice a change.

It wasn’t large, and he knew there was a serious reporting lag for the Hadarak. They only had 2 known methods of communication, and sending couriers was the faster of the two. None had gotten away during the 7 kills, including this last one, with the dead hulk of the Hadarak visible beyond Mak’to’ran’s ship as the V’kit’no’sat picked at it for research and harvesting purposes. The skin, especially, could be used to make Yeg’gor armor much more easily than pure synthesis, not to mention the raw amounts of corovon the Hadarak contained.

The Harthur was gone now, broken apart and waiting in transit mode further out in the system now that the Hadarak was fully dead. Its death scream had gone out before it finally died, sending a burst of telepathic information that would not transit to the nearest of systems for months, if not years. Another Hadarak or their minions could theoretically pick it up more than 50 years from now before the signal deteriorated, but he didn’t think any of the 7 dead Hadarak could have had their death screams noticed yet.

That, coupled with no couriers getting away, meant that he was either imagining the 8% increase in tier 3 Hadarak traffic as something more than normal fluctuations, or it was in response to some of the dead Hadarak not reporting in. And given that the new tier 3 sightings were appearing in the regions where the Harthur had made their kills, made him think this was more than coincidence.

Mak’to’ran had chosen 7 different regions around the galactic core to hunt the Hadarak for just this purpose. He was hoping to be able to provoke a reaction, now that he knew they were in fact patrolling. They might not be looking for V’kit’no’sat, but if Hadarak started to go missing with no information on who killed them, he suspected the Hadarak might respond to come looking for the mystery threat the Uriti had suggested the Hadarak were searching for.

And now it looked like he might have got their attention. It wasn’t a big response, but it suggested they were hyper aware of what was going on despite the lack of a real communications system…unless they had one that the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t discovered. He didn’t think that was likely, but he hadn’t ruled it out completely.

Mak’to’ran was studying the reports as they came in, being updated by couriers of their own since no relays were extended this far into the Hadarak Zone, though they were only a few hundred lightyears in. Before he got finished another courier arrived, and with this one came a priority message from Star Force requesting a personal meeting with him to discuss the Hadarak.

A date was added, some 7 months away, which would give him enough time to get there from his current position. He didn’t want to leave the front again, but if this involved the Hadarak it had to be something to do with the Uriti, and that was worth investigating as opposed to running back to Itaru to deal with more incompetents. So far Hamob hadn’t reported any further trouble, and to be blunt, if they did sent a fleet out against his orders, he’d rather be on site to deal with it personally.

He was very curious as to what Star Force had to say, and whether or not they were aware of the Harthur yet. This would be a good test of their intelligence operations within the empire, which was yet another reason why he was going to honor their request and go in person…

Mak’to’ran’s trip out to the destination system was an easy one. The timetable wasn’t tight, and he arrived a few days early in an uninhabited system four jumps away from Terraxis. That was where the Humans wanted to meet, and he came with a trio of Kafcha and a pair of Na’shor just to have enough firepower to discourage any bad behavior. All four of the ships in addition to his personal Kafcha came from the defense fleets at the nearby V’kit’no’sat colonies that were being developed just outside the boundaries of what Star Force called the ‘Devastation Zone.’

Those colonies would be useful when the truce came to an end, but right now they were being used as resupply bases for the numerous reconnaissance ships mapping the star systems around Star Force territory, many of which were not in any V’kit’no’sat database. And with the growing number of annexations further into the Rim, the V’kit’no’sat needed a better navigational database than relying on the public information Star Force put out.

Mak’to’ran waited patiently until the day came, then on cue a small fleet of Star Force warships emerged with a single command ship amongst them. The V’kit’no’sat were not hiding, with none of their vessels being equipped with cloaking devices, so they were easy to find sitting in an upper low orbit around the single star in the system.

The Star Force ships moved to their location then approached slowly, coming in far closer than communications range required, before a hologram of Morgan-063 appeared before him. He knew her image intimately, along with the other 99 of her kin who led Star Force. Mak’to’ran had studied them and their methods closely, which were almost identical save for several small variations, and had learned a great deal about Star Force by watching records of their fleet battles.

Morgan-063 was now stationed in Terraxis, but where most of the others were Mak’to’ran did not know. Her coming out to meet him had been expected, and it imparted something very important they wished to discuss.

“Mak’to’ran, I presume?” the Human asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “What concerning the Hadarak do you require my presence for?”

“I’m not discussing it here. I need you to come over to my ship, alone.”

“This is a secure transmission. No one else is monitoring…unless there is a breach in your systems.”

“Not good enough. I need to talk to you face to face. I have a cargo bay with all surveillance equipment disabled. It will just be you and me, and we have a lot to talk about that others should not know.”

“Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“I can’t discuss anything over the comm. We have to meet face to face, and I don’t trust you guys not to try and mind rape me if I came over to your ship. So you’re coming to mine.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“You’re a lot bigger than me,” Morgan said with a hint of a smile.

“Killing me would aid you, but it would also end the truce you are relying on,” Mak’to’ran pointed out. “If this is not worth my time, you will soon suffer for it personally, little one.”

“I’m not worried. Have your drop pod leave you. There can be no surveillance whatsoever. Including from your armor. Wear it if you like, but shut it off.”

“As you wish,” Mak’to’ran said, cutting the transmission. Either this was something vitally important or Morgan was just playing dominance games. If it was the latter, she would be leaving this meeting with injuries.

His crew weren’t so keen on the idea, but they obeyed and a drop pod flew him over to the command ship and dropped him off on the very large and very empty deck, then flew back out through the atmospheric containment shield. As soon as it left the hangar doors began to close behind him.

Mak’to’ran was wearing his armor in retracted mode, looking like jewelry but available to him at a moment’s notice if needed. If Star Force intended to chuck him out into space he could survive long enough to be picked up, but he doubted that was what they intended…though he couldn’t figure a guess at why this much secrecy was needed, but the one who held the answer to that question was standing in her blue/orange Archon armor near the far wall. She did not move until the hangar bay doors fully closed, then a small door beside her opened and another figure walked out.

It also wore Archon armor with the helmet retracted, same as Morgan, but the armor was pure black, which denoted a Striker-level Archon. They were junior, and not much of a threat to an experienced Zen’zat, but only the trailblazer was supposed to be here.

“You said it would only be the two of us, little liar,” Mak’to’ran declared loudly as he walked across the bay far quicker with his larger steps and met up with the pair on the other side.

“A necessary lie,” Morgan said, looking up at the big Era’tran’s head as both of them stopped walking before the Humans could get stepped on. “You guys are too untrustworthy. I couldn’t let the others know that he was here.”

Mak’to’ran looked down at the second Human, whom he did not recognize.

“And you are?”

“Guess I’m not that famous,” Davis said, glancing at Morgan. “I’m Director Sean Davis, leader of Star Force, needing to discuss something of significant importance with the leader of the V’kit’no’sat.”

Mak’to’ran huffed approvingly. “You finally emerge from hiding.”

“When necessary. Can I assume we’re not going to have to fight here?”

“I came here to talk, not to fight. However, if you have wasted my time…”

Davis raised a hand to stop him. “I have not, nor am I wasting mine.”

“What of the Hadarak do we need to discuss?”

“The official reason you are here is to discuss an intelligence sharing agreement. The Uriti have been inquiring about the status of the Hadarak. If you will give us access to recorded telepathic communications between Hadarak or between them and their minions, we will have the Uriti translate them and then share that intelligence with you. I assume you haven’t yet found a way to decipher their telepathy?”

Mak’to’ran’s eyes narrowed and his teeth showed slightly between his lips. “We have not, though we have recorded a great deal. Are you asking for all, or just recent intercepts?”

“Anything you can get us. Including their death screams.”

“Exposing the Uriti to them could be problematic,” Mak’to’ran warned.

“But you’d like to know their content regardless?”

“I would. Why are you convinced the Uriti will be able to decipher them into a form that you can understand?”

“We expect to lose some context, but any information is more than you currently possess.”

“A worthwhile exchange, which I accept. I also suggest you extend your relay network to the edge of your Devastation Zone. We will likewise extend our Urrtren and arrange a suitable system for signal exchange. If we get information that is time sensitive, I do not want to waste unnecessary days on couriers.”

“That is acceptable,” Davis agreed, with Morgan standing by as an observer and, if necessary, body guard, for this was the Director’s conversation…and she didn’t entirely agree with his decision.

“Now that we have that settled,” Mak’to’ran continued, “what is the unofficial reason I am here?”

Davis cracked a smile, then sighed. “New information has come to my attention that has changed the status quo. We have no good options, so I am here to pursue a bad one, based on my limited knowledge of you. Is the offer you made previously still available?”

“It is.”

“I would like to make a counter offer.”

“Speak it.”

“We hate you,” Davis said bluntly. “Her more than me, because she’s been on the front lines and seen your carnage personally. But I’ve watched as you’ve torn apart the systems I’ve worked long to build, and I’ve seen the death totals continuously rise. I hate you as well, but in making us an offer to allow us to live you broke with the death mark that was supposed to be irreversible. This tells me you’re not totally blood thirsty, but make no mistake, we are enemies.”

“We are unless you want to change that arrangement,” Mak’to’ran said evenly, sensing some capitulation in the Human.

“We will never accept your authority over us. We are at war, and will always be so, unless the V’kit’no’sat change their ways.”

“You will expire long before that occurs.”

“So we’re going to fight,” Davis said sternly. “But you’re not our only enemy, and we can choose to bump you down the priority list if we choose. Far down, in fact. Am I right in assuming you value the Hadarak as a higher priority than us?”

“They are the reason our empire exists.”

“And they are the reason why I am standing here now. As bad as you are, the V’kit’no’sat are doing the galaxy a service holding back the Hadarak. If that were not the case, I’d happily stand by and watch you destroyed first.”

Morgan raised her armored hand above her head. “I’m still voting for that option.”

“Destroyed by whom?” Mak’to’ran asked, dismissing the trailblazer’s insolence. “You are not referring to the Hadarak.”

“I am not,” Davis said, knowing this was the moment of truth. He exchanged a glance with Morgan, along with a brief telepathic conversation. She gave him the go ahead, having snuck a quick look into the Era’tran’s mind using her Orren before his formidable defenses slammed shut on the attempt, but it had been enough to ascertain his mood. He wasn’t blood thirsty. He was someone who had come to negotiate.

“You cannot share this with anyone,” Davis said with an icy lethalness to his voice that Mak’to’ran picked up on. “Your life will be in jeopardy if you do. That is why your crew cannot have the opportunity to overhear.”

“That is for me to decide.”

“I’m trusting that you are wise enough to keep your mouth shut,” Davis said, knowing that this part of his partial plan relied on the Era’tran doing just that. “We have information we are going to share concerning two massive threats to the galaxy that you are not aware of. Two threats that are going to wipe out the V’kit’no’sat…and potentially a lot of others.”

“What threats?” Mak’to’ran asked icily.

“We have knowledge from the Chixzon,” Davis began. “They dominated the non-Hadarak portion of the galaxy before the V’kit’no’sat existed. They were overcome by an alliance of enemies when the weakness in the Uriti was discovered. They did not fight with the Uriti as we do, they used them as tools of intimidation and, when necessary, destruction. When they lost that primary tool they did not have the strength to survive, and the hatred of them by the rest of the galaxy would ensure that they did not.”

“They devised a plan,” Davis continued, “to lay dormant, allow the galaxy to think they were destroyed and to forget they ever existed. Millions of years later they would come out of their stasis to a galaxy that did not know who or what they were, then begin again. The data we recovered did not give a specific time when this would happen, but it is coming. We have been looking in secret for their method of stasis…which I will not reveal to you…and have been eliminating all we can find. That will not be enough. They hid them across the galaxy in such a manner that not all of them could be destroyed. The Chixzon are returning at some point, and they will destroy the V’kit’no’sat, for you stand in the way of their galactic domination.”

Mak’to’ran was silent for a long moment, glancing at Morgan, then back to Davis.

“You awoke one of them?”

“I am not discussing what happened, but we obtained a complete set of their legacy data. I would like your help destroying the rest of their caches, but I know you’d try to gain the knowledge of how to control the Uriti from their information, and that I cannot allow.”

“Is stopping them from returning not more important than your ownership of the Uriti?”

“Giving you the ability to control them would be worse. We know the Chixzon will not try to use the Uriti again. It was their weakness before. They will seek out other means to dominate, and they will not fight you face to face. They will come at you sideways. Perhaps create a virus and infect your planets, never having to fire a shot to destroy you.”

“Kich’a’kat would rectify that problem.”

Davis swallowed hard, knowing that wasn’t true from Kara’s experience, but he wasn’t going to trust her continued existence to Mak’to’ran’s confidence.

“Not always. Our information suggests a level of biotechnology superior to the V’kit’no’sat, and we know they will not strike until they have found a way. Even when they sought to control the galaxy the first time, they rarely used their own fleets in combat other than to defend their worlds. They used intermediaries. They were manipulators and schemers. When they return, they will not fight you directly. They will find a weak spot and exploit it. I can guarantee it.”

“If you do not wish us to help you destroy them before they can return, why are you telling me this?”

“In order for them to obtain control of the galaxy, they must go through you…and us. We have a common enemy in the Chixzon, and if they take you down unprepared, it makes our survival even more tenuous.”

“You presume you will survive against us long enough to find that a problem.”

“I do.”

“If you have the full Chixzon knowledge, can you produce more Uriti?”

“It would require a Hadarak, and the specifics of their construction was not included in their database. It is dead research to them now. They will not repeat it.”

“If I supplied a living Hadarak to you, could you create another Uriti?”

Davis frowned, glancing at Morgan, before he slowly shook his head ‘no.’ “We do not have that capability.”

“Are you aware of how they captured one?”

“They damaged it to near death, then laid claim to it.”

“How did they lay claim to it?”

“We don’t know the specifics.”

Mak’to’ran growled, seemingly confident that the Humans were unaware of the Harthur.

“We now have the ability to capture and kill Hadarak more easily than in the past. If I could deliver one to you, could you use your Chixzon knowledge to figure out how they created the Uriti?”

“Theoretically yes. Why do you ask?”

“Because there are massive Hadarak at the core of the galaxy that we can barely scratch. We continue to seek a way to destroy them, and the Uriti are the best option we have discovered. Even if you remained in control of them, could you potentially breed an army?”

“Theoretically yes, but we would not do so,” Davis said, not lying but closely avoiding a project that Nefron was engaged in that was studying the possibility of spawning Uriti without using a Hadarak. It was just a curiosity now, but something Davis had wanted him to look into.

“And why not? You claim to care about defending others, and the threat of the Hadarak is second to none.”

“We would not do so because we will not enslave the Uriti, and we will not torture a Hadarak to force it to spawn. We do not know how the Chixzon did it, but the few suspicions we have are gruesome.”

“And you do not feel the means are inconsequential to the great gains they would yield?”

“We acknowledge the gains, but the means are unacceptable.”

“Such foolishness does not befit a splinter race that has survived so long against us.”

“It is not foolishness. You fail to see the grander scope.”

“Then explain it.”

Davis sighed, knowing this was going to be difficult, but at least Mak’to’ran was listening…

2

“We cannot,” Mak’to’ran said firmly some two hours into the discussion. “If we relinquish our dominance our enemies will multiply. We cannot waste our strength against them and ignore the Hadarak. We must keep them suppressed.”

“And you assume no one else would help fight the Hadarak?”

“Few are sufficiently advanced, and none would volunteer the sacrifices needed.”

“Why do you?”

“The Zak’de’ron created the V’kit’no’sat for this purpose. It is what we are born to do, and prior to that the Era’tran were victims of the Hadarak. There are no significant powers suffering from them now. No one has the motivation to wage this endless war save for us. Domination is the price the galaxy will pay for our protection.”

“Did you ever bother to ask?” Morgan quipped.

“Of course they didn’t,” Davis answered before Mak’to’ran could. “But I suspect he is mostly right. Why do you refuse to use unmanned vessels against the Hadarak? Others would probably assist if they didn’t have to shed blood. They might even be willing to give you supplies if you did the fighting. There are many potential options.”

“We have experimented with drone technology similar to your own. The signal delay is too tedious. Fighting the minion swarms requires quick alterations. When we used drones, our fleet combat diminished its already limited effectiveness. We lost more ships that way, so the practice was discontinued save for fixed emplacements in our border systems.”

“The Rit’ko’sor had more success. Have you incorporated their methods?”

“No. Theirs were equally inefficient. We must have minds on site to control the flow of combat. The Rit’ko’sor did not have enough population to fight in this manner, so they chose the inefficient one. Fortunately for them they were not seeking combat, but we must. If we do not, the Hadarak will spread.”

“When the V’kit’no’sat began, were they still spreading rimward, or had they stabilized?”

“We are uncertain, but they were encroaching on our territories, so they had to be driven back. We do not know if they would spread across the entire galaxy. There are differing opinions on an eventuality we cannot test. Did the Chixzon not combat them?”

“They preferred to avoid them, save for when they entered their territory, though that was rare. They had no intention of pushing them back, which was why they planned their galactic conquest for the Rim only. They were never going to fight the Hadarak.”

“And if they challenge us in the future, and succeed, they will make no attempt to hold the Hadarak to their current boundaries?”

“They will not waste their resources or allies doing so. I would expect they would establish a power base in the far rim, well away from the Hadarak, and not care what happened in the core. In fact, they might try to weaken you to the point where the Hadarak can finish you off, or vice versa. Wait for you to be damaged by combat with them, or us, and then move in to finish you…or send intermediaries to do it for them.”

“Why are you so certain they cannot take control of the Uriti from you?”

“Because we have established a relationship with them, and we can tug on the reigns same as the Chixzon. But the Chixzon viewed them as assets, not people. Our relationship will be the deciding factor.”

“I suspect that is a reason you do not want to use them as weapons.”

“They are our allies, and we will treat them as such.”

“If it denies the Chixzon from reacquiring them, then you are wise to do so. What of the other Uriti hidden in the galaxy?”

“We are not searching for them. The Knights of Quenar are better suited for such a task.”

Mak’to’ran stared at Davis closely, not saying anything for several seconds. He could not break into the Human’s mind past his Ikrid block…at least not without touching him…but he saw no flinch in his mannerisms or voice.

“Where is the Uriti you stole from us?”

The Human’s face altered considerably. Both of them did. And Mak’to’ran knew they were worried about that causing the V’kit’no’sat to break the truce.

“Before I answer that, I will state my counter offer,” Davis said, his jaw set firmly against the implications of what was about to happen. He still had an out if he wanted it, but Mak’to’ran was being too genuine. He wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity, no matter how bad it might turn out. “We are enemies, and I am not suggesting we will ever be anything beyond that. We can cooperate as far as the Hadarak are concerned, but beyond that we suggest this...you have kept to the inner half of the galaxy. Why?”

“To focus on the Hadarak threat. They are not in the Rim as far as we know.”

“But why not conquer it all to eliminate the threats to your dominance?”

“That has been a matter of debate for some time.”

“Why have you not thus far? The Rit’ko’sor rebellion did not hurt you that badly.”

“It did, for a time. Afterwards we saw no reason to expand. Preventing another rebellion took priority, and there are more worlds in our current domain than we could possibly use. We decided to wait for the threats to come to us rather than searching the vast expanse of the Rim for them.”

“You didn’t agree with that?”

“I am aware of the potential for problems. We were also under population restrictions, so expansion was pointless.”

“Why?”

“The former leaders of the V’kit’no’sat were more interested in maintaining what they had than pushing further into the core. I have rid the empire of that stagnation, and our population is growing considerably now, for we will need them to compensate for our losses against the Hadarak…and against you.”

“My offer is this. We are enemies, but we both have greater concerns. The Rim is a mess and we’re trying to clean it up. This is more important than picking a fight with you that we cannot win. You have too many systems with too deep of defenses. It will take us forever to conquer you, and we would prefer to wage the smaller battles in the Rim where we can help more people. Saving their lives comes first for us, taking you out is a lesser priority. Fighting the Hadarak is your primary objective, so why don’t we both attend to what is most important and ignore each other for the next million years or so?”

“You to the Rim and the V’kit’no’sat to the Core?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“Yes. We wouldn’t join you, but we would ignore you so long as you did not venture beyond your original border as of two millennia ago. And we both could prepare for the Chixzon threat.”

“I would greatly prefer to keep the Uriti in play, if you are accurate in that you can prevent the Chixzon from reclaiming control, but what you ask is not possible. I lead the V’kit’no’sat, but I do not control them. I cannot grant you such independence. The others would not allow it.”

“But you would, if it was up to you?”

“It is not, so the question is irrelevant, but yes I would.”

“Why?” Morgan asked. “You’ve been dead set on exterminating us up until now.”

“You have earned your survival.”

Both Humans exchanged glances, not having expected to hear that.

“Then are you and I truly enemies?” Davis asked.

“If you seek to conquer us one day, then most definitely yes.”

Davis raised a hand and grabbed the bridge of his nose, half covering his face as he thought. “Have you and I accidentally ended up on the wrong side?”

“Perhaps so, for I think you hold a desire to deal with the Hadarak threat. That is what true V’kit’no’sat live for. Had you been born within the empire, you would be a valuable Zen’zat.”

“I am far more useful in my current position,” Davis pointed out.

“Indeed you are. If not for the empire you’ve created, we would not have the Harthur. It was inspired by the vessel you used to destroy Dimu. You have also given us our first glimpse into the purpose of the Hadarak. You have accomplished more for the furtherance of our mission than most V’kit’no’sat have.”

“Then why be enemies? If our methods are proving superior, reconsider your own.”

“I have already, or I would not be here speaking with you. But what you fail to recognize is the combined will of the V’kit’no’sat. I lead them because I stepped away from it, became a rebel to do what was necessary. I have been labeled a traitor before, and I have seen what it looks like from the outside. The others have not. Our empire was designed to be led by the Zak’de’ron, and in their absence we hold to protocol rather than following true leadership. It is why we have not made gains against the Hadarak until recently. I am having difficulty dragging the V’kit’no’sat out of their complacency, which is one reason why I want your empire annexed under my personal control…not theirs. I want you as a counter balance. As competition to wake them up further. But I cannot shield you if you do not submit to my personal authority.”

“You eliminated any chance of that when you wiped out our worlds in what’s now the Devastation Zone. It stands as a reminder of why we will never join you.”

“Yet you let the Rit’ko’sor join you. Was it only because they had not participated in the destruction?”

“No. We also annexed a portion of the Li’vorkrachnika. I assume you know something of our history with them?”

“So you must maintain dominance?”

“We don’t employ your definition of that word.”

“Yet you do, though your methods differ.”

“No. There are many races without our borders that we do not control.”

“The same is true of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Nor do we destroy them when they grow to a certain level of strength.”

“Because your growth rate has exceeded theirs. You have begun to plateau now that your technology has caught up to ours in most cases.”

“That is not the reason, but it has been helpful.”

“So you would truly let a non-hostile grow to a strength where they could challenge you?”

“Yes.”

“That is stupidity if you can prevent it.”

“An old saying that has been misquoted often goes, ‘Never start a fight, but always finish one.’ To some that sounds like pacifism, but I have never thought so. When someone misbehaves within their own culture, that is starting a fight. One we will step in and wage on behalf of the victims. But if there is no fight started, if there are no victims, then we will not start a fight simply to prevent another power from arising. We prefer to see it as competition, and our response to competition is to grow stronger, not try to hobble the growth of the other.”

“You allow so many problems to arise using such methods.”

“Have we? Or is that just speculation on your part?”

“You would argue that true threats would violate your principles at some point, thus starting the fight on their own, and those that would not would never become enemies?”

“Close. We can never guarantee changes in the future, but bad guys behave like bad guys and identify themselves early, in most cases. Often they do not even know how to pretend to be good.”

“I do not know how to be your version of ‘good,’ for it seems to lack a clear mission, but your short history appears to testify otherwise. Though without the threat of the V’kit’no’sat binding you together, would you be so united? Are you truly stable, or bound by fear?”

“I will not speak of our allies, but Star Force is solid.”

“I wonder, though I doubt you will ever have the opportunity to find out. What happened to the Uriti you stole from us? It is not in your Preserve,” Mak’to’ran said, getting back to the earlier question that Davis had veered away from.

“I said there were two threats.”

Mak’to’ran tilted his head slightly. “You never received the Uriti from the Knights of Quenar?”

“No, we did not. We did not even know you had one, nor that they had attacked and took it from you. They don’t bother to tell us where they acquire them, or how, knowing that we would probably not approve. We are not in a position to stop them, so we don’t demand to know. The Uriti are safer with us than they are remaining in sedation. We don’t like how they are probably being acquired, but we cannot stop it.”

“You could refuse them.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “By the time they arrive with one, the damage is already done.”

“Yet you allow them to continue by accepting them. They do the necessary work you refuse to do.”

“Most of the Uriti in our region were given to us willingly. Their former caretakers did not want to continue to risk their territories to an accidental waking. If we knew where they were, we would acquire them by different means.”

“And if the owners refused?”

“We would wait and watch, but eventually we would obtain them. The Uriti take damage being sedated for so long. We would not allow that to continue, for the Uriti’s sake.”

“So you would fight to retrieve them as well?”

“If needed, but we wouldn’t use the same methods.”

“Interesting,” Mak’to’ran mewed. “What happened to the Uriti they stole from us?”

“It was stolen from them.”

“By…whom…?” the Era’tran growled.

Davis looked up at him, holding his stare for several long seconds. “The Zak’de’ron.”

Mak’to’ran flinched, a moment of confusion on his face, then his eyes widened as his mind began to put together the various clues. The Era’tran stumbled backward, taking a step away from the Humans as his mind raced and Davis could see the sheer terror in his movements as he tried to rectify what was going on.

“The Rit’ko’sor told us of your civil war and how you were looking for our sponsor,” Davis said as Mak’to’ran only paid half attention to him, lost in thought. “You believed it had to be the Oso’lon or the J’gar, but you ignored the third obvious alternative because you were so arrogant, and perhaps fearful, that you had failed to completely eliminate them. The Zak’de’ron hid a single ship from you, with one Zak’de’ron in stasis along with a cargo of eggs. We stumbled onto the ship accidentally and revived the Zak’de’ron without knowing who it was. It did not kill us, but rather rewarded our assistance with unlocking the planetary defense station database while taking a look at your recent history.”

Mak’to’ran didn’t say anything, so Davis continued.

“They have contacted us only a handful of times, and our war against you is our own doing. They just gave us a little nudge, happy to see you taking damage, until recently when they made contact with one of my elite Archons and stole her memories. They apologized profusely, citing it was necessary to determine our intention for the Rit’ko’sor, then they rescinded their death mark against those in our empire. They also gave us a new sensor that will be able to detect your ships and theirs upon jumppoint entry. They also gave us a rundown on how they thought you would invade us after the truce expired, as well as giving us complete data on how they upgraded the Rit’ko’sor and every one of V’kit’no’sat races, hinting that we could annex any of you that we wanted while making it clear they are going to wipe out every last one of you that we don’t take under our umbrella.”

Mak’to’ran’s stunned and quickly catching up mind reacted instinctively to that, his talons glowing red as he reflexively activated his Saroto’kanse’vam as he took another step backward.

“Yes,” Davis confirmed. “They are going to kill every last one of you, and have made it clear they cannot assist us when you invade after the truce. They’re not ready yet. They’ve only had a couple of millennia to start rebuilding, but they want to be allies of a sort regardless. We’ve kept their confidence to this point…then we hear from the Knights of Quenar that a single survivor came back to them from the fleet that had stolen the Uriti from you. He was left for dead in the wreck of a starship the Zak’de’ron had dragged and dumped into a star. A small survival ship inside was not destroyed, and he played dead long enough for them to leave, thinking they had eliminated all witnesses. It took years for him to return in his small-engined ship, but return he did, and the Knights of Quenar told us what happened.”

Davis held up his palm, generating a hologram of the battle records the KoQ had given him. He had his armor enlarge it to many times the size of his body so the Era’tran could clearly see.

“Those are not Zak’de’ron ships,” Mak’to’ran finally said, drawing curious glances from both Humans.

“That’s the same make of ship that we found the original one in,” Morgan admitted. “Perhaps a redesign to further hide them from your reconnaissance.”

Mak’to’ran stared at the battle footage for a long time, and Davis just let it play out. Eventually the Era’tran could see the truth. The ship designs were quite different from what the Zak’de’ron had fielded, but the technology was the same. The physical grapples to the KoQ ships, ripping them apart from the inside was telltale Zak’de’ron.

“Have you seen them in person?”

Davis reach out to Mak’to’ran’s mind, barely knocking on the door but making enough of a connection to transmit a weak burst of memory that Kara had given him, showing the Dragon onboard her ship, and Davis could sense the cold confirmation within Mak’to’ran.

“It is them,” he said aloud, hardly believing it, but the warrior within him wasn’t going to ignore a potential opponent, no matter how impossible their existence was. “Thought I do not know how. We were thorough in their destruction.”

“The galaxy is a big place,” Morgan offered. “Easy to hide in.”

“No. We took no chances. I was not privy to all our methods, but we had many. We know how easy it is to hide when one has a head start. We allowed them none.”

“How could you be sure you had gotten them all?” Davis asked.

“Something sinister that I was not told about. No record of it remains. You said only one survived?”

“That is what they told us, but it could be a lie. Their ability to attack the Knights of Quenar and steal the Uriti, let alone the boldness of it, suggests they are stronger than they let on.”

“A single attack is nothing compared to the war they will face against us.”

“They also said they can monitor your Urrtren, which is why you cannot tell anyone, nor make any recordings. They know everything that happens in your empire.”

Mak’to’ran took a third step back, still finding this hard to believe, but now sensing a more immediate threat. “They revealed this to you?”

“They took a great chance stealing our secrets, and have been very forthcoming with information in compensation.”

“The Uriti,” Mak’to’ran realized. “Did they take your knowledge of the Chixzon?”

“They know the source of it,” Davis admitted. “It is possible they will attain it the same way we did. And I highly doubt they stole the Uriti only to keep it sedated and away from us.”

Mak’to’ran spun around, walking quickly away from the Humans only to circle back around as he began to pace frantically as he thought, tactical situations flowing so fast through his Sav-enhanced mind that neither Human could have kept up. In fact he ignored them both for several minutes, just pacing around frightened…but that fear slowly turned to anger that he did not bother to shield from the Humans’ telepathy.

Davis just let him go, waiting as he paced to see what would become of this. He’d passed the point of no return. The secret was out now, and it was up to this Era’tran, a long time enemy, as to what he would do with it.

3

“What else do you know?” Mak’to’ran finally asked, stopping his pacing and facing the Humans again.

“They can monitor anything you send through the Urrtren,” Davis said plainly. “Which is why we had to talk to you in person, and why you can’t record anything.”

“They told you this?”

“Yes.”

“But they didn’t tell you about our Harthur?”

“They don’t give us updates. They were very forthcoming only on the one occasion, I believe, so we didn’t become angry about the theft of our secrets and rat them out to you guys.”

“Which you have done now. Why warn me?”

“Does it make any sense for us to both be wasting ships and personnel when a great threat lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to move against you?”

“Do you know where they are?”

“No. They were not that trusting of us. They didn’t even give us a means to communicate with them. They choose when we interact.”

Mak’to’ran paced again, this time only one circuit before turning back to Davis. “You were wise to bring this to me, for without a target we can do nothing. I am sure they have hidden themselves away so cleverly we could never find them all. Our purge was predicated on eliminating them entirely, which we apparently failed to do. Now that they’ve had time to build towards evasion, we have no hope of destroying them. They will hunt us to our destruction, no matter how long it takes.”

“That’s pretty much what they said to us.”

“So why leave their service?”

“We were never in their service, and another event that shall go nameless showed us their true nature. They are unaware of it happening, but we know the truth. If we do not serve them, they will kill us. They do not tolerate strength when it is not under their control. They taught you their methods well.”

Mak’to’ran growled, but there wasn’t a lot of power behind it, for he couldn’t truthfully disagree. That was exactly how the V’kit’no’sat regarded other powers in the galaxy.

“What is your suggestion, little Human?”

Davis sighed. “I don’t know. You are their greatest target, and greatest hurdle to reestablishing their own galactic dominance. If we stand by, play along while they kill you, we’ll be next if we don’t fully submit. They may not seem to be too concerned about our current independence, but they’re already taking small measures to curtail it. I can see the trend, and we will not allow it to creep in that direction. We will remain independent, and I do not think the Zak’de’ron truly want allies. They only want servants or corpses.”

“You come to me with no plan of action?”

“My plan of action is for us not to annihilate each other. Your worlds are strong, but without your fleets how long do you think it will be before the Zak’de’ron hit you? We will not die quickly or easily, and the war will drag out a long time. I cannot say how much strength they have rebuilt, but if they’re willing to take a Uriti from the Knights of Quenar, they are more bold than I had anticipated. I had assumed they would stay quiet and hide until they were ready to act against you. I was wrong.”

Mak’to’ran shook his head and took a step to the right…then froze and turned back, this time looking at Morgan. “What do you recommend…other than letting them kill us first?”

“You need to reform, impossible as that seems.”

“And then?”

“I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.”

“So you come with no plan,” he said, turning back to Davis. “You break your bond with the Zak’de’ron, endangering yourself in the short term, to warn me of the biggest threat to the V’kit’no’sat? You are acting as if you were my ally, not an enemy.”

“You have much evil in the V’kit’no’sat, but buried underneath it is a good purpose. I believe you can be salvaged. I’ve already seen it happen with the Rit’ko’sor that joined us. And their power has increased greatly as a result. If you truly value your mission of defeating the Hadarak, then you need all the power you can get, and the quick and easy path to results is not necessarily the most powerful over the long run.”

“I should disagree with you, but your continued existence forces me to consider the stupidity of your claims. We cannot fight the Zak’de’ron and the Hadarak simultaneously. The first time we had surprise on our side, and we still had to relinquish a lot of territory to the Hadarak. We cannot fight both, and if the Zak’de’ron have truly been planning this for 900,000 years, they will not attack before they have the advantage. If they have only been building for 2 millennia then they cannot challenge us yet, but the seizure of the Uriti is beyond worrisome. They are formidable enough on their own. If they manage to get even one Uriti to obey them, they will have a weapon we will be unable to stop.”

“We share the same nightmare. What would you suggest?”

“You continue to surprise me. You have no cards to play. You have weakened your position and betrayed a very strong ally, even if they aim to become your master. And what do you gain by it? You don’t expect us to rush to fight them, or you would not have brought me here in secret. You know we must keep this information from reaching them, so a war of distraction to keep yourselves alive is not your aim. I will not make the mistake of underestimating you again, for you look to be stupid. Rather you come to me from a position of equity, or co-codominance, and I will grant you that, for we are now both the targets of the Zak’de’ron, and there is parity in that. If there was a permanent truce between us, what then?”

“We would continue to grow stronger, you would continue to fight the Hadarak, and we would not provide the Zak’de’ron as easy of a target. That will not stop them, but it will delay whatever they have planned. Beyond that, you also have Sav, plus a much larger brain, so you tell me?”

“You have attained Sav, but was it earned or stolen?”

“Shared,” Davis answered shamelessly, “and we didn’t get our psionics from the Zak’de’ron. We earned them. Even the tier 4.”

“There are no tier 4,” Mak’to’ran said, suspecting otherwise as soon as he said the words.

“Morgan?”

“Behave yourself,” she said to the Era’tran as her armor began to disconnect from her body and she stepped out…then flew up into the air until she was at eye level with Mak’to’ran.

“Yen’mer,” Mak’to’ran said, wide eyed. Most of the avian V’kit’no’sat possessed it to aid their flight, but Zen’zat were not supposed to have it in their genome.

“The Zak’de’ron put more psionics into the Zen’zat genome than they told you. Your Zen’zat never discovered them, but we have.”

Morgan opened the slits on her hands and shot a beam of fire between them, containing it in place as she smiled at Mak’to’ran. “Not exactly a Dre’mo’don, but it comes in useful.”

“How many?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“We have found many that the V’kit’no’sat have not. A little information from the Zak’de’ron nudged us in that direction, but we had to earn all of them. Some of my people have been training to do just that and nothing else, and they have not been easy to find.”

“How many?” he repeated.

“There are 7 tier 4s that we have discovered so far, 8 tier 3s, 27 tier 2s, and the basic 7. And if you haven’t noticed us using it already, there is also a category for binary abilities that require 2 or more individuals working together. It’s called Pa’no’semak, and if I’m right you have never discovered it.”

The shocks kept coming, but the more the Human spoke the more past mysteries began to reveal themselves.

“We assumed you had fashioned new psionics, or reworked existing ones. It is forbidden for us, but since your heresy is so blatant we assumed you had created them all,” he said, then glanced at Morgan as she finally dropped to the ground and put her armor back on. “And we assumed your armor is what let you fly.”

“We have learned a lot,” Davis said, “because we are not bound by your rules and we are good at what we do. You claim dominance, yet the Zak’de’ron put powers right under your nose and easily accessible, but you never found them. You’ve kept your Zen’zat suppressed, just like you did the Rit’ko’sor, and because of that you never saw their potential. As strong as you are, you are not as strong as you should be. They are probably laughing at your assumed dominance…or maybe not, for you did kill almost all of them.”

“I’m still laughing,” Morgan added with a straight face. “On the inside, at least.”

“If I were not indebted to you for this information, I would teach you a lesson,” Mak’to’ran half snapped, but his anger drained quickly, for the Humans were right. If the Zak’de’ron had put these abilities into the Zen’zat coding, then their own Zen’zat might not have been enhanced as was thought. They had simply earned abilities that the rest of the Zen’zat had never realized they possessed the ascension triggers for, and that was truly humiliating to discover.

“If he wasn’t here, I’d welcome the challenge,” Morgan said, not making any aggressive movements and simply standing protectively beside Davis. “But we’re only here to talk.”

“And you are sure this hangar is secure?”

“Completely,” Morgan answered.

A quick ripple formed in front of Mak’to’ran and shot towards Morgan. To her credit she saw it coming, but she thought it was heading for Davis and made a sidestep to get in front of him. The trailblazer’s guess was wrong, and it slammed into her as she threw up a bioshield in front of the Director, knocking Morgan back like a rag doll and rolling across the floor for some 30 meters before she got her feet under her…all the while leaving Davis standing right where he had been.

“I am here to talk,” Mak’to’ran said, looking down at Davis, “but let’s not forget who holds the greater personal power.”

“Easy, Morgan,” Davis said in English as he felt her getting ready to hit him back. “That was just a love tap.”

She swiped a bit of blood from her nose as she used her Haemra to rapidly heal the break and cut off the flow, for Mak’to’ran’s Jumat blast had hit her with her helmet down and her bioshields over Davis.

“One hit, Sean.”

“One,” he said, then saw a ripple of energy form around her…only it didn’t fire off at Mak’to’ran. Rather it seemed to solidify and get thicker until the point where the spear-like shape shifted to become linked to her arm as she lifted it up.

“Catch,” she said, throwing it towards the Era’tran at a speed far faster than her arm could move. The semi-invisible missile he could not catch with his Lachka, and it hit him in the chest…or would have, if his shields hadn’t flashed up just in time. The spear hit and melted into them, penetrating completely as the remainder of the Jumat energy blew through and knocked him back a step.

“That’s our newest tier 4,” she said as Mak’to’ran looked startled. “It’s called Si’mosa, and is a very nice shield penetrator.”

Mak’to’ran wasn’t angry, rather he was impressed, but he swiped at her with his Lachka anyway, with the Human standing her ground and disintegrating it with a Rentar field.

“Shall I demonstrate these as well?” Mak’to’ran said, flashing his Saroto’kanse’vam into glowing red brilliance.

“Pretty,” Morgan commented, but she didn’t move. “Aren’t those illegal?”

“They were,” Mak’to’ran said, letting them burn for a few more seconds, then he deactivated his talons. “Until I made them legal. We’ve made a few alterations from the old code. The Zak’de’ron no longer rule the V’kit’no’sat, and I know the path of a heretic from personal experience. I do not begrudge you your psionics, but I do wonder how you maintain stability if they are not earned.”

“They are earned,” Davis said, feeling that the impromptu ‘arm wrestling’ was over, “but we have different standards for them. Unlike you, our younglings are not given psionics at birth. Individuals have to earn them.”

“And how did you earn your Sav?”

“I created an empire from scratch,” Davis said simply. “Something the V’kit’no’sat never did. You were fed everything from the Zak’de’ron, so I have a skillset you lack. A very rare skillset.”

“And what does your skillset say about the Zak’de’ron threat?”

“That you and I need to come to an understanding, or our odds of survival drop even further.”

“Be specific. What do you want?”

“You fought them before and won. Not as complete a victory as you thought, but close. You tell me.”

“We only beat them because we were more numerous and the fact that they did not see the betrayal coming. We did not let them gain an advantage, but if they are still alive and preparing to strike us…we will not win,” he said, feeling like a traitor for even saying that.

“I don’t favor our odds against them either. So what do we do?”

Mak’to’ran was silent for nearly a minute before he spoke.

“How sure are you that they do not know of our meeting?”

“They probably know of it through the Urrtren, which is why I am extending the offer of Hadarak intelligence translation. It’s useful to us, but makes for a good excuse for talking to you personally. Only a handful of my people know about this, and there are no computer records of it. You are the only security risk, and a big one at that.”

“The only advantage we have is that they do not know that we know. I will not squander it, but I do not know what we can do. They hold every advantage if they can choose the time and place of battle. We may have time, due to our current size and strength, but the more years that pass so will their strength, for they are not fighting the Hadarak and suffering those losses. They can fully prepare to fight us while we cannot,” Mak’to’ran said as he began to pace again, lost in thought.

So much for Era’tran superior intelligence, Morgan said to Davis telepathically.

Give him a break. He hasn’t had much time to process this. We’ve known they’ve existed for a long time.

I’m still not impressed.

Nice shot, by the way. How’s the nose?

Healing. He caught me off guard. I thought he was aiming for you.

You’re the one who insulted him.

Hard not to, he’s such a big target. What now?

We wait and see if the superior intelligence comes up with something. At the very least, he’s going to be hesitant to throw everything they’ve got at us. He’s going to be looking over his shoulder constantly now.

As we already are.

We had time. Now, if he leaks this, we won’t. We have so many weak spots the Dragons could hit. And I really don’t want to have to fight the Voku.

Neither do I, but we can’t warn Cal-com without the Zak’de’ron being informed. At least not until the V’kit’no’sat leak this out.

You assume they will?

50/50.

And what are we gaining from this?

Hopefully a frenemy, Davis said, watching Mak’to’ran pace. It’s a bad play, but the only one with the potential benefit of victory in the long run.

I still hate them.

And you should, unless they change…and I have a feeling that this one might.

Wanna put some credits on that?

Sure. If we die I don’t have to pay up.

Not that I can use credits for anything anyway. We’re both beyond rich, but the point holds. This is very risky.

I know, Morgan, I know. But if we wait this out it only gets worse in the long run. And the longer the V’kit’no’sat hold out, the more time we have to deal with all our threats.

Unless the Dragons come after us first.

If that happens, you get to become a dragonslayer.

I do like the title, but they’re likely to use their servants for most of the combat. And unless they develop drone technology, they’re not going to use their own ships for anything other than a beatdown. They don’t have the population to spare.

Unless they figure out a way to disrupt our comms.

Please don’t let that happen, Morgan pleaded.

It’s all physics. If they’ve found some corner of it we haven’t yet, there’s a threat. If they haven’t, we’re good. Care to place a wager on that?

You used to be a card shark, weren’t you? Morgan joked.

Yes, I was, Davis admitted, surprising her. But this isn’t a bluff. This is a laying out of our cards so he can see our hand. I’m trusting he’s smart enough to not do something stupid, and an escalated war would be incredibly stupid.

4

November 13, 4883

Jamtren System (Era’tran capitol)

Holloi

Hamob had been in Itaru when he’d received Mak’to’ran’s request for the elder Era’tran to return to Holloi so they could speak in person about the deal he’d made with Star Force concerning the Hadarak, but he knew there was more to it than that. No such talk was necessary, for the terms of the deal were straightforward, but it surprised Hamob when Mak’to’ran refused to meet him at his personal estate. Instead he insisted that Hamob come to a random location on the planet, far from any infrastructure and out in the Dennari Plains.

Mak’to’ran was waiting there when Hamob’s barge arrived and telepathically instructed the pilot to leave until called for. Hamob didn’t say anything, merely scanning the perimeter with his senses until the barge disappeared over the nearby ridgeline.

Why are we here? Hamob finally asked telepathically.

“You may speak freely. There is no one here but us. I have scanned the area thoroughly,” Mak’to’ran said, his voice sounding odd…with Hamob realizing that he was truly afraid of something.

“What is it?”

“We are in trouble, and I do not know what to do. I need your wisdom now more than ever.”

“This is not about the deal with Star Force?”

“The deal has been made, but it was merely a ploy for them to talk to me alone. They needed the cover, for the Urrtren is compromised. Everything transmitted on it unsecure.”

“Who has compromised it?”

Mak’to’ran could barely make eye contact with Hamob, and the elder knew something was seriously wrong.

“Who?” he repeated.

“According to the Humans, whom I do not doubt, we missed a single vessel in the purge. A vessel with one occupant and a cargo hold full of eggs put into stasis.”

Mak’to’ran didn’t say the name, rather looking at Hamob as the elder put the pieces together. Then his eyes went wide.

“The Zak’de’ron?”

“Yes. They are still alive and plotting to destroy us.”

Hamob didn’t seem too shocked, at least not as much as Mak’to’ran had been. “They were the ones who unlocked Terraxis?”

“Yes. Did you know?”

“I had my suspicions. I always felt our victory over them was…incomplete. Why have they not moved against us previously? How long were they in stasis?”

“The Humans stumbled onto their hidden ship two millennia ago, reviving the occupant without knowing what they were doing. Rather than kill them, the Zak’de’ron repaid their naivety by unlocking the planetary defense station and using it to get up to date with what had transpired during his slumber. I do not know if this is correct or subterfuge, for the Zak’de’ron may have lied to the Humans, but there was only one Zak’de’ron remaining. All others had previously been killed. We missed one ship, Hamob. One ship. Why were we so convinced we’d gotten them all?”

“I do not know, but my gut tells me we had intelligence of their positions. It would have to be something fiercely efficient, but if we got all their ships but one, then it proved extremely effective.”

“The vessel was not one of theirs,” Mak’to’ran continued. “They showed me what they look like. It is their technology, but the design has been changed. I did not recognize it at first. Could such a simple alteration fool our ancestors?”

“Unlikely, but there are a few remaining who could answer that question.”

“I am telling you this because I trust the fate of the V’kit’no’sat on your loyalty. If we know of the Zak’de’ron but they still think they are hidden, then it is a small advantage, and one I do not want to give away…”

“But you have no idea what to do to fight them?”

“Before we had them in the open. Now they are in shadow and will not reveal themselves until a time of their choosing…and they have the Uriti the Knights of Quenar stole from us. They attacked and stole it from them, unwittingly leaving a single survivor that reported back. They assume their theft has gone unnoticed.”

Hamob’s demeanor changed greatly. He might have subconsciously suspected there was a chance that the Zak’de’ron were still alive out there somewhere, even if just as an academic matter, but this completely floored him and Mak’to’ran finally saw the same fear in his eyes that was uncomfortably seething in him.

“It gets worse, my friend. The Chixzon are not destroyed either. The Humans would not be specific, for they fear us obtaining the ability to control the Hadarak, but the Chixzon are in some form of stasis and spread across the galaxy, waiting for some trigger to awaken them. I believe Star Force found one, and they admit they now have the full database of Chixzon knowledge, which is how they know of their plan. They are seeking out and destroying all they can find, but they claim they will never discover them all. And to make matters worse, the Zak’de’ron have mind raided an elite Human and stolen most of Star Force’s secrets, including the existence of the Chixzon. So they may very well have the ability to command the Uriti.”

Hamob was silent for a long moment, but the elder Era’tran quickly regained his composure and focused on the problem at hand. “Why did the Humans share this?”

“Because they recognize the threat to us both, and they value our mission against the Hadarak. I spoke with their leader, Director Davis, personally. The trailblazer Morgan-063 preferred to let us die and take their chances, but their leader did not. He does not know how to fight these two threats, but argued that a resumption of our war would be folly.”

“They want to ally with us against the Zak’de’ron and Chixzon?”

“They want the Rim and to leave us the Core. Then we fight separately without diminishing each other’s forces.”

“That is all they suggested? It is blunt pragmatism, but if they chose to betray the Zak’de’ron’s confidence I would have thought they would have a grander plan.”

“Perhaps they do. There was much about the Chixzon they were not sharing, but they offered their knowledge of the Zak’de’ron freely. They have met with them on a handful of occasions, and most recently they were granted a jumpline sensor that even we do not possess. In compensation for the mind raid. They wish to keep the Humans as their allies, but the Humans have seen through their ploy. They will only be treated well so long as they serve, and the Humans will not accept a master, so they know their own throats will be slit when it becomes advantageous for the Zak’de’ron to do so.”

“There is the wisdom I was expecting from them,” Hamob commented, pulsing outward with his Pefbar again, checking for security threats. They should have been having this conversation telepathically, for such things were virtually impossible to intercept unless the recorder was situated between the two Era’tran, but apparently Mak’to’ran didn’t wish to admit such inferiority. On Holloi, of all places, they should be safe. And if they couldn’t hold an open conversation in the wilderness on their most sacred world, then the Era’tran were already lost.

“I do not believe they could possibly be ready to strike after two millennia, but we have only their word that the ship that Star Force discovered was their sole survivor. They are out there, with sufficient strength to ambush and totally destroy the Knights of Quenar fleet that took the Uriti from us. That does not give me comfort that we have a great deal of time. How much of our infrastructure can we replace?”

“If you’re referring to the Era’tran, we’ve already quietly replaced 7%, but we don’t have equivalent systems designed yet for most of the rest, including the Urrtren.”

“We have to develop a secure line of communication. If they can monitor it, they can also shut it down on a whim.”

Hamob flinched, not having figured that out yet, but Mak’to’ran had had months to go over the possibilities.

“If they want to break us down before they attack, they can do it now,” he warned. “We have to established a secondary communications grid and guard it. Star Force said the Zak’de’ron have not been able to breach their systems remotely, and that they have not tried physical contact with their grid out of respect. Again, the Zak’de’ron could be lying, but even the mention that they would attempt to hack a grid using physical contact means anything we produce must be guarded or they will literally rebuild it in order to bypass our security, and their cloaking technology is superior to ours.”

“Did the Humans tell you that as well?” Hamob asked.

“They did. They cannot penetrate their stealth, even with the Neavi sensor technology that they stole from us.”

“How?” Hamob asked.

“From a wrecked scout ship. They have their own version, and it will not detect the Zak’de’ron ships. They claim a defense against it, but that defense also means the Zak’de’ron cannot use the sensor to track other ships.”

“Why have the Zak’de’ron confided so much information in Star Force? Why trust them at all?”

“I believe they are a useful tool against us…as well as a taunt. If we were able to conquer them and pull the information from their minds, it would be a way of letting us know the Zak’de’ron were still out there. If we didn’t conquer them, then they would know they found a trustworthy ally. They can monitor the Urrtren, so if they were ever found out they would know. That has not happened, and cannot happen now.”

“So they were testing the Humans, and pushed that test too far with the mind raid?”

“Yes, but something else happened that the Humans would not share. Something they say the Zak’de’ron are also unaware of. Something that has shown their true colors. Perhaps it has to do with the Chixzon knowledge. Maybe something they could understand about them that we cannot. I do not know, but they now hate the Zak’de’ron and know they are not in a position to fight them…but they are preparing for the Chixzon and have warned me that they might attempt a poison attack against us. One that the Kich’a’kat would not be able to heal.”

That also floored Hamob, and he was becoming all too familiar with the emotion he hadn’t experienced in over a million years.

“They will come at us sideways. That is what they said. They will not attack us strength against strength. They will use guile and intermediaries. Star Force fears such an attack and has been developing immunities for the biological weapons already created by the Chixzon, but they warn they could create new ones easily.”

“They did create the Hadarak,” Hamob agreed, which was a feat that V’kit’no’sat biology could not match.

“They also acknowledged that they could theoretically create new Uriti, but would not, for it would involve torture of a captured Hadarak. I do not think the Zak’de’ron would be so easily blunted.”

“Star Force can create new Uriti?” Hamob said, again floored.

“In theory, yes. The Chixzon knowledge did not give the method, but they have figured it out none the less.”

“If the Zak’de’ron also possess the knowledge of the Chixzon…then we are at risk of a biological attack from them as well.”

“They will show their face at some point. They will not be content to destroy us from the shadows. It will be different than the Chixzon.”

“You are right, I believe, but it does not mean they will not weaken us with it. I understand your panic now. Is there any other bad news you have for me?”

“The Zen’zat coding contains additional psionics that we are unaware of. The Humans did not fashion new ones. The Zak’de’ron put them in there for those who are worthy to discover. Apparently we have failed to measure up, yet Star Force has at least in one case for each. Then they share what they discover. There is a fourth tier and a linked set called Pa’no’semak that we never even suspected.”

Hamob lowered his head in shame. “We are truly the inferior, and if they have obtained Chixzon knowledge we are even more so.”

“What can we do, Hamob? I see no way to do more than delay our destruction, even if we abandoned the Hadarak front. And we definitely can’t fight the Zak’de’ron and the Hadarak at the same time.”

“Did the Humans have an estimated time for the Chixzon to return? They have been gone for millions of years, correct?”

“6 million since their defeat. They say it is growing close, but they do not know exactly. Perhaps another million years, if we are lucky.”

“And if we are not?”

“They could already be awakened now. Whatever mechanism used, it will not be the same for all across the galaxy.”

“Staggered release, in case one group fails to survive,” Hamob theorized. “It seems we were not the only ones who mistakenly believed we wiped out our foe, but six million years of stasis seems implausible.”

“I do not believe it is simple stasis, Hamob. But rather something more clever.”

“Granted. But if the Zak’de’ron have their knowledge, will they seek them out and destroy them before they can revive?”

“Only if we are lucky. Right now I can count on nothing as assured beyond the Zak’de’ron’s wrath.”

“This is not a threat the Era’tran alone can face. We must consult others.”

“We cannot breach security, Hamob. We can take no chances. The Elder Conclave cannot be informed or the Zak’de’ron will know instantly.”

“Not the Conclave, but there are other elders who we can trust. Not in all races, but in many. If we are going to find a way to survive, we need to work together.”

“Can you assemble them without suspicion?”

“I will use couriers so no record is on the Urrtren, and I will use genetic locks on the message orbs. I will summon those I trust, and we will seek a path forward. At this point, I have no answers for you, Mak’to’ran. I feel this is due payment for our collective arrogance and assumption of dominance where none truly existed, but I am at a loss at how to proceed. Have you not come up with any possibilities in the past months?”

“We cannot find them, so we cannot fight them. They did not reveal their location to the Humans, and we rely on the Urrtren too heavily. Without it, we are not an empire. We are widespread and easy targets that cannot be sufficiently defended against a threat of this magnitude. We must have our eyes to see and move, and the Zak’de’ron can blind us at will. I have no way to count this other than to build our own network anew, and that will take an enormous amount of time.”

“And will give away our knowledge of a problem.”

“We finally have a small means of defeating the Hadarak after all these years, and now we are faced with our destruction from two other threats we thought were long gone. It seems our efforts are being rewarded with plagues.”

“Our territory…” Hamob said, realizing another problem.

“Is too spread out,” Mak’to’ran finished, already having been down this logic path. “We can’t consolidate our strength. We either fight as an empire, or we die split apart. The Zak’de’ron sabotaged us from the very beginning.”

5

February 3, 4885

Attiov System (Unclaimed Territory)

3rd planet

Hamob was the last to land on the uninhabited planet, due to the location being almost opposite Holloi across the galactic core, but there were 34 drop pods waiting for him on the planet with their starship transports ostensibly cloaked somewhere in orbit. When he walked down the boarding ramp onto the light gravity of the hot and very dry world he saw that the others were waiting for him…one for each drop pod.

They were 34 elders from 34 different races. Ones that Hamob knew could be trusted on his life, and in this case, on the life of the empire. There were many others who should be here, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure about their intentions and he had scratched them off the list for even the slightest doubt, leaving these 34 peers of his who had come on nothing more than a cryptic message from him.

They trusted him as much as he trusted them, but none of them knew the importance of what he was about to tell them.

Mak’to’ran was not here. He didn’t need to be and his movements were the most well known in V’kit’no’sat territory, so having a clandestine meeting outside V’kit’no’sat territory made more sense if he was absent, and like Hamob, these other elders were used to moving around very low key and avoiding the public. Too many young minds were an irritation to them, so they kept to themselves and nudged their races one way or another from the shadows, leaving the day to day operations to lesser minds.

Is the planet secure? Hamob telepathically asked as he walked underneath a huge outcropping of rock that stood nearly 300 meters high. It was more than a half mile long, tapering down to a ravine with a series of caves in it, but all the V’kit’no’sat were outside underneath the overhang while their drop pods were landed around the perimeter and out in the open. No one should have been in the system to observe them, but the overhang added just a little more privacy from anyone passing by overhead.

“We are alone,” Yaquik confirmed, yet his armor was fully deployed save for his helmet. The others had theirs fully retracted into jewelry mode, but the Hjar’at was, as expected, the most on edge of them all where security matters were concerned. “What do you have for us?”

“Our deaths,” Hamob said bluntly. “The Zak’de’ron were not fully destroyed. At least one survived, and they are rebuilding with vengeance in mind.”

He could sense the shock evident the telepathic auras of the others, but none of them panicked, nor disbelieved him. They knew the gravity of what this entailed, and some had probably suspected as he had, that they’d been too lucky to find all the Zak’de’ron during the war. It was the timing, some 882,000 years later, that was so surprising.

“Star Force has contact with them, and they just confided in Mak’to’ran. They stumbled onto the Zak’de’ron approximately 2,000 years ago and released one from his stasis along with a large number of eggs. The Zak’de’ron did not kill them, but befriended them and unlocked the planetary defense station on Terraxis. Beyond that they did little, and Star Force’s victories have been their own, but the Zak’de’ron have been trying to exert increased influence to the point of stealing the memories of a highly placed official. Those memories contain information on the Chixzon, where Star Force obtained that knowledge, and the fact that the Chixzon are not dead either.”

“We have two superpowers that will be coming for our throats in due time. The Chixzon status is undetermined. Star Force would not comment much on it, fearing we might claim the knowledge they possess, but the Chixzon faked their deaths then hid in a stasis of their own long enough for the galaxy to forget them. When they return, they plan to start anew and we stand in their way. The Zak’de’ron threat is the nearer, but if they have obtained the knowledge of the Chixzon then we are in an even worse position. And we have been told that the Uriti we discovered, and that the Knights of Quenar took from us, was taken from them. It never arrived in Star Force territory, and much belated a single survivor crept back to tell the story of who took it from them.”

“The Zak’de’ron,” Ummva said, the Qua’cho’s expression deathly cold.

“Yes. Using ships unlike they previously possessed, but it was them. They slaughtered the Knights of Quenar and took the Uriti. Star Force was not supposed to know this, and they have come to the conclusion that the Zak’de’ron have no intention of being anything other than their master…and if not master, their executioner. They fear what is coming, from both the Zak’de’ron and later the Chixzon, but it is the Zak’de’ron that have prompted them to confide in us. They state we are still enemies, but they have no wish to weaken either of us to the point where the greater threats can step in and take advantage of the situation. They wish a full, permanent truce where we hold to our borders and leave the Rim to them as we both prepare for the nightmare to come.”

“There it is, my friends. Neither I nor Mak’to’ran have a course of action for us. I need your wisdom and experience, as well as your absolute secrecy. So long as we know of the Zak’de’ron and they are unaware of it, we have at least one advantage. Star Force told us that the Zak’de’ron have full control over the Urrtren, thus the couriers I sent to fetch you. I wish there were more, but you are the only ones I fully trust. What are we going to do about this fiasco?” Hamob said angrily. Angry at their previous failure to destroy the Zak’de’ron, along with their arrogance for assuming they’d gotten them all.

“So the Terraxis sponsor was not the J’gar,” Yaniel noted with shame.

“I had always suspected it was you,” a Kar’ka named Bennak said to the Oso’lon.

“Was the recent war the Zak’de’ron’s doing as well?” the Voro’nam Keesa asked.

“I do not know,” Hamob answered. “But the time line fits. If they have access to the Urrtren, they may well have engineered it.”

“Or pushed our own distrust,” Yaquik added. “We were at each other’s throats even before Terraxis.”

“They’ve been playing us for fools,” the Wass’mat said, being the largest of all those present here. Even slightly larger than the Oso’lon.

“No longer,” Hamob insisted. “We must find a way to survive. I do not believe we can kill them now. Not all of them. And I must now ask what was forbidden before. Do any of you know why we thought we had got them all the first time?”

“None of them know,” the tiny Ari’tat said. “But I do.”

Yaniel rotated his long neck down towards the meter-tall V’kit’no’sat. “You were not senior leadership at the time. How do you know?”

“Because Ari’tat like secrets. The more of them we can acquire the better, but we share amongst ourselves. I know how it was done, and why we assumed they were all dead, but you’re not going to like the answer.”

“Something vile?” Yaquik suspected.

“Yes. The leadership who arranged it were all killed during the war, but not all at the hands of the Zak’de’ron. The others were quietly executed when others found out what they had done. One of the executioners involved was an Ari’tat. He intercepted and destroyed a vessel carrying Neamri, and was supposed to not make record of it. He did not, but he passed the memory along. It is vague now, after so many years, but I possess it. It does not appear in any database, however.”

“Neamri executed?” Hamob asked, shocked. The J’gar had been one of the V’kit’no’sat’s greatest leaders.

“He and a small group of others developed mind rippers…and used them to steal the Zak’de’ron’s secrets. We knew where they had everything, where they would fall back to, what their true population was…everything. Though apparently they didn’t tear apart the right ones, or perhaps additional plans were formulated during the war. All their ships had a location tag, so the Zak’de’ron could identify others even when cloaked. The tag allows them to communicate too without giving themselves away. The tags were stolen, so we could track all of their ships. It was just a matter of setting up a detection grid. All the ships that fled to the rim were tabulated, and when we destroyed all on the list, we knew we had them all.”

“Mind rippers?” the Tev’nan Faer roared, his starburst-like armored spikes erupting in energy as his anger spilled over into his Saroto’kanse’vam, and the same was true for the Wass’mat and the Hjar’at.

“Yes,” the Ari’tat confirmed. “The technology was destroyed along with those who produced it.”

“Did the Zak’de’ron know?” Hamob asked.

Wenni shrugged his tiny shoulders. “Unknown. Even if not, they may have suspected. We knew everything.”

“Then why do we not also possess their technology?” a Fi’ti named Vono asked, being the only aquatic here, though he was actually a hybrid aquatic/avian that had flown from his dropship over to where he was uncomfortably perched on the ground where his shield were holding in a moist layer of atmosphere around his smooth, aquatic skin.

“We obtained massive amounts of data…but we also recovered massive amounts of their technology. We simply cannot understand it. The mind ripper took information. It cannot take understanding.”

Hamob kept silent as more questions were asked of what the Ari’tat knew. He listened, but his shame was consuming him. He had known killing the Zak’de’ron had been a miscalculation, but now that he knew how they had done it he was sickened by it. They didn’t deserve their victory, and had violated one of the most basic principles the V’kit’no’sat had been formed upon.

That being that strength reigns, and it was why only the Zen’zat had Ikrid blocks. All of the V’kit’no’sat races were required to have strong minds to keep others out, and if you forced your way into one it was a deep breach of protocol, but tolerated in some aspects because of the superiority it required.

But a mind ripper didn’t require strength. It was a wicked technology banned long ago, even for use against races outside the V’kit’no’sat. It slowly took apart a mind, replacing the biological components with mechanical ones and copying the data they contained, gradually tearing the individual apart piece by piece until nothing was left but a body with a machine mind left inside. It was a horrific way of torturing someone to death, for there was no way to defend against it. A mind ripper also was equipped with psionic inhibitors, so you didn’t even have a chance to use your Lachka to fight the Kich’a’kat tendrils inside you…not that anyone would have actually been able to win that war, but not even having a chance to fight back was abhorrent.

If the V’kit’no’sat had done that to the elite Zak’de’ron Wenni was saying had been mind ripped, then it explained how they knew so much and were able to ambush the Zak’de’ron so effectively, but knowing that their victory had been based on this abomination made Hamob ashamed to have been on the winning side.

Others were voicing the same thing, with the Ari’tat simply summing it all up by saying that was why they had been executed.

“What have we become?” the Bez named Gavi asked.

“The Zak’de’ron built the V’kit’no’sat,” Hamob answered. “We have not had a clear path forward since we betrayed them. We fight the Hadarak, but many do not truly know why. We were told to do so, and they obey, even though those who gave the order are long gone.”

“So we thought,” Yaniel added.

“Even if they offered reconciliation, which I doubt, would any of our races accept it? The Era’tran would not.”

“Why?” Gavi asked curiously.

“For the same reason Star Force betrayed them. They will be the master or they will be the executioner. There is no parity with them. They treat those that serve them well, but it is always servitude.”

“Do you remember the Chani?” Yaniel asked.

“No, I do not,” Hamob admitted.

“Does anyone?” the Oso’lon repeated.

“I do,” Yaquik finally answered. “It was removed from the database, but the Hjar’at along with the Oso’lon were the ones who destroyed them.”

“The Chani were a race that the joined the V’kit’no’sat…briefly,” Yaniel explained. “They did not do everything the Zak’de’ron wished them to do, and we were told they were trying to steal advancements without earning their keep. That was a lie. They contributed as much to the Hadarak front as any other, especially considering they were never fully advanced. They wanted to fight, and sacrificed many of their people before they were ready. The Zak’de’ron told them not to, but they did anyway. They did not want to sit and wait to build strength, but it was not that alone that doomed them. It was the idea that the Zak’de’ron were not fully in control, that their orders were merely suggestions.”

“The Zak’de’ron ordered them destroyed, and we did so,” Yaquik said, though he hadn’t been alive at the time. “I know of the story, but it was more than 4 million years ago, before many of the current races were included. It was one of the primary reasons the Hjar’at agreed to free ourselves from their servitude.”

“When was the first race annexed?” a Bav’tor named Charbij asked.

“It is hard to say, for there are no Brat’mar here to ask,” Yaniel answered. “They were the first I know of. The Oso’lon were the third. The Zak’de’ron did not reveal their interaction until after they founded the empire with us and the J’gar, but they were elevated first and brought in later. There’s not much information available from back then. I suspect a lot was altered or erased. My best guess is between 4 and 5 million years ago.”

“The Era’tran joined 3.2 million years ago,” Hamob said evenly as more of the dark past continued to surface. “But I have never heard of a race being eliminated, only culled.”

“I know of 3,” the Oso’lon answered. “Long ago. I think the Zak’de’ron got better picking their candidates, though they always kept some races in their personal servitude beyond the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Why did we not kill them as well?” Gavi asked.

“They were irrelevant,” Wenni said. “They were not harboring Zak’de’ron, so they did not matter. None were advanced to our level, and those beyond our borders were left alone. Those within were killed, in some cases, and ignored in others.”

“What else do you know?” Hamob asked.

“A lot from recent history, little from ancient times. As bad as the Zak’de’ron are for us, I am interested in this Chixzon threat. Does Star Force believe they will reclaim control of the Uriti?”

“They do not. They claim to have developed enough of a relationship with them that they would side with the Humans if given conflicting orders. They also say they will not try, for they feel the Uriti are a failed experiment. The Humans warn of biological weapons and other indirect methods of our destruction.”

“Does Star Force possess these weapons?”

“I do not know.”

“How did we not gather that when we conquered their homeworld?” a Zep’sha named Tio asked, looking almost identical to the Oso’lon, save for the length and angle of her head and tail, which were much longer and flatter.

“They have been very good at hiding their secrets,” Yaquik said with a growl. “And we have never captured one of their senior leadership.”

“Their Director spoke to Mak’to’ran personally,” Hamob added. “They are taking this matter very seriously. The question is, what are we to do about it?”

6

“We have no choice,” a Deo’mat named Jaxen demanded several hours later. “We cannot tell the others, and if they do not know they will never accept Star Force’s existence. They will demand they are destroyed, as they are now. They are barely obeying the truce as it is.”

Hamob looked at the Ankylosaurus, knowing he was probably right. “What would happen if we did? If we told the entire empire the Zak’de’ron were still alive. Worst case scenario?”

“They could shut down the Urrtren,” Keesa said gravely. “We have to assume they have that power and not just the ability to eavesdrop. If they completely shut it down, they wouldn’t need a large fleet to kill us. We’d be blind to what was happening, separated, and they could cut us down one region after another. The V’kit’no’sat cannot operate without the Urrtren. We rely on it too heavily.”

“Our territory is too spread out,” Hamob agreed. “They mandated that long ago, and our worlds are spread far and wide. Even if we organized regional clusters between races, the distances are still too vast for couriers. The Zak’de’ron could isolate and kill us at their will. What else?”

“We would hunt them to extinction…again,” Gavi added sarcastically, looking slightly down on Hamob from his greater height.

“We would try,” Yaquik added. “But we would fail. They are hiding now, and I do not know how to find them all. They would evade, and we could never eliminate them. We have no ability to end this. They will forever be hunting us.”

“Unless we’re destroyed,” a Ranto’non called Plaszo noted. “We are the easier to kill, for we are not hiding anything.”

“The Rit’ko’sor did,” Wenni pointed out. “Who knows what our races are hiding from each other now?”

“I will tell you now,” Hamob revealed, “that the Era’tran have been working for some time to find replacements for Zak’de’ron technology, with limited success. We recognized that we were not the masters of our own equipment, for we had simply copied what came before. We have a few small replacements, but we are still dependent on Zak’de’ron technology and software. And until we free ourselves of it, we have no idea how much real control they have over us.”

“Are our warships at risk of being compromised?” Yaquik asked worriedly.

“I do not know. I have studied every component and there appears to be no coding that would allow them to take control or interfere with them, but the fact that we can’t write our own coding to such a level does concern me.”

“How much of a loss would we take if we ripped out all those systems and built our own replacements?” Yaniel asked.

“Power would be the same, for the raw technology we understand, but the efficiency of targeting and navigation and other automated processes would decrease by more than 20%.”

“That is preferable to our guns turning against our own fleet,” Yaquik said angrily. “Why have you not mentioned this before?”

“Because I didn’t know the Zak’de’ron were still around to mess with it…and they never used such capabilities during the war, so I doubt such things exist. However, I’d like to be fully producing our own software.”

“They didn’t crash the Urrtren either,” a Tido’cor named Vokey pointed out. “One would think they would have then if they could.”

“How did we kill them if they could read everything we sent through the Urrtren back then?” Yaniel asked.

“Has the coding quietly changed since then?” an I’rar’et named Ollo asked dangerously.

“I have nothing to compare to,” Hamob said, not having thought of that possibility.

“If they’ve been active for the past two millennia, and have cloaking technology that we can’t track, they may be setting us up for a massive fall and taking their time to quietly do it. Maybe they didn’t need a failsafe in the Urrtren back then, but what’s to stop them from making one now?”

“They understand those systems far better than us,” Vono warned.

“They had no clue we would ever betray them,” Yaniel reminded the other elders. “Their ego could not comprehend the possibility that we could ever pull it off. That was one reason why they were taken off guard.”

“We also attacked simultaneously when we set up the blockades,” Hamob added. “There wasn’t a lot of useful information they could have gotten from the Urrtren anyway.”

“And we were using those back channels to communicate,” Yaquik noted. “I don’t think we ever stopped during the war. That could be why.”

“Everything sensitive went via courier then,” Keesa remembered. “But I do not believe we can fight a war like that now. Not when we don’t know where they are or how many ships they have.”

“No, we cannot,” Hamob agreed. “The only advantage we have is that they don’t know we are aware of their presence. Do we gain more by concealing that or revealing it?”

“We should tell everyone,” Yaquik said firmly. “Even if it does us no good. They deserve to know.”

“They have a Uriti now,” Yaniel argued. “If they can crash the Urrtren, and if they can control the Uriti, they can use it to crush systems before help could arrive, then flee before they get into too large of a fight. A Uriti means no long blockades and fleet engagements. Just a short, very lethal fight to break through planetary defenses, then easy bombardment of the surface. They will eradicate us, not conquer us. And if we have no Urrtren, there is little to stop them from cloaking a transport vessel and disappearing with the Uriti again. We are facing a nightmare situation if we lose communications.”

“One Uriti could destroy us all, given sufficient time and fleet backing,” Wenni said sadly. “The Harthur will not work against them.”

“And we can’t pool ships in every system,” Yaniel added. “Itaru would be safe, as would the other major systems, but the bulk of our territory could be assaulted quickly and efficiently before we even knew of the attack to send reinforcements.”

“Or they could attack, let us reinforce, then hit the system that the reinforcements left,” Yaquik warned. “We have to have a functioning Urrtren.”

“Which is why we have to keep this a secret until we can build another one,” Hamob said with finality.

“Agreed,” Yaniel said along with a chorus of telepathic pings gesturing the same.

“Won’t they realize what we’re doing?” Gavi wondered.

“I do not believe we could keep it secret for long,” Faer suggested.

“Upgrades,” Vono said, seeing the perfect subterfuge. “Incorporating the Neavi sensor. We add redundant ones to those systems that already have multiples, not discarding those that exist, as well as expanding out into currently empty systems to widen the grid. We have a Uriti on the loose now, so we need more vision. We don’t destroy or deactivate the existing ones, but we use our own software on the new ones. Hopefully Hamob has some functioning models by now?”

“They are less useful, but functional. The Era’tran have already built several units.”

“Speed?” Yaniel asked.

“Unchanged. It’s the data sifting that is lacking. If we only use them as transfers and let the current Urrtren do the sifting, I agree that we can quietly string together an emergency grid within the existing one. Civilian traffic would still be shut down, but basic communications would remain. Vono, you are beyond wise.”

“We use such relays in bad water, so it is not such a foreign concept to an aquatic.”

“Then our official reason for building them will be the Uriti?” Yaniel asked.

“And the Knights of Quenar,” Yaquik added. “Their cloaking technology is formidable, and has even defeated the Neavi sensor. We cannot allow other races to move freely through our territory unnoticed. The Knights of Quenar will be a wake up call, and even if we cannot track them, we need to track other developing races that are gaining cloaking technology. Once stung, the V’kit’no’sat have a history of hitting back, and this will be no different. We will shore up the Urrtren with added Neavi, and expand it as well. We must get a better grip on our domain, and these Neavi relays must have massive capability. Yet another reason why we won’t use full Urrtren systems.”

“Supplements and scouts, I like it,” Tweva, a Kret’net, declared.

“So we play for time,” Hamob finalized. “And that means not telling the others, unfortunately. What then do we do about the pressure to fully attack Star Force? It will be a costly war no matter how it plays out, and right now they are an ally against the Zak’de’ron with a fleet of Uriti. I would prefer not to waste that.”

“They are still a threat to us,” Yaquik reminded him. “A small one, but given time it will only grow larger.”

“That’s what we need,” Gavi argued. “The more powerful they become, the bigger a problem they are to the Zak’de’ron. One Uriti compared to the 74 that Star Force has. The Zak’de’ron cannot ignore that, no matter how much they hate us.”

“I doubt they care,” Yaniel said, siding with Yaquik. “The Uriti are of no use unless you have an identified system to smash, and we do not know where the Zak’de’ron systems are. Even if we did, I would expect them to flee. So long as they are the hunters the Uriti are not a threat to them. They only become a threat when the Zak’de’ron try to reclaim dominance and hold fixed territory. They will come for us first, not Star Force.”

“What are you saying, Yaniel?”

“I’m saying that we should use what time we have, get rid of Star Force now, then prepare for the Zak’de’ron. Two millennia is not enough time to build enough ships. Not on the number they need to reveal themselves to us. We have time and Star Force is our enemy. We need to eliminate them now, and steal the Uriti if we can. Not to mention whatever Chixzon knowledge they possess if we cannot find a source of our own.”

“Mak’to’ran will not agree to that.”

“He does not hold all decision making power,” the Oso’lon reminded Hamob. “The question before us is not what Mak’to’ran wants, but what is best for the V’kit’no’sat. We face our destruction, not just from the V’kit’no’sat, but from Star Force, the Knights of Quenar, the Chixzon…we have never had so many technologically powerful rivals all in contention simultaneously. The Zak’de’ron are the greatest threat, and even if it was them alone I would be fearful. We must eliminate one of these immediately. We cannot find the Knights of Quenar, nor do we know how large they are. The Zak’de’ron are hidden and the Chixzon might not have been revived yet. The choice before us is clear. If we wait, our opposition grows stronger on all fronts.”

“We are growing stronger as well now that the population limits have been eased,” Wenni pointed out. “Maintaining the least combat while we build is preferable. Star Force will gut our fleets, but they cannot take many of our worlds even if they tried. The defender has the advantage here, even with the Uriti.”

“So long as the Urrtren stands,” Yaquik reminded the little Ari’tat.

“All the more reason to wait while we build a grid the Zak’de’ron cannot take down with a single command.”

“It must be Star Force first,” the Lir’nen Aron agreed. “I do not like what it will cost us, but they are the only threat we know we can eliminate. Any secrets we can steal will be a bonus, but we must take them out.”

“How do we deal with their Uriti?” Gavi asked.

“We do not fight them. We only attack systems were they are not. If they arrive, we withdraw. We do not invade the surface any more than necessary to bring down shield generators. We obliterate from orbit and do not worry about the scraps. We hit fast and move on before the Uriti can come to us.”

“No,” Tweva said angrily, “we do the exact opposite.”

“Leaving them alive is too great a threat.”

“I agree with you on that, but your methods are wrong. We should avoid the Uriti, but we do not bombard. We do not eradicate. In fact, we remove their death mark entirely…and absorb them.”

Aron looked at the Kret’net oddly. “To what gain?”

“We preserve most of their people, and their subjugated races, and add their strength to our own. Mak’to’ran wants that, by their choice. If they refuse, we make them join by force.”

“They would not use their Uriti against captive populations,” Yaniel added thoughtfully. “We could take their worlds without worry of bombardment beyond shield generators. They would have to fight on the ground to retake them, and their civilians would be the living shield we need to forestall the wrath of the Uriti.”

“You would risk much on your assessment of what they would or would not do,” Vey said icily.

The Oso’lon looked down on the very flat and wide Ansot. “They maintain the loyalty of their servants via a strict code of behavior that they have not violated once during our destruction of their prime worlds.”

“We didn’t take their worlds then,” Wenni pointed out. “It is an unknowable situation.”

“I do not approve, but I concur,” Hamob interjected. “They will not kill their own people in order to get to us.”

“Exactly,” Yaniel pointed out. “We can take their smaller worlds before a Uriti can arrive, then if we hold them the Uriti can only blockade. They do not have the precision firepower to not kill specific targets. Star Force would have to mount a surface attack to remove us.”

“They could still claim orbit and their warfleet could do the pinpoint shooting,” Gavi noted.

“And we can bring our fleet down to the surface if that occurs,” Yaquik countered. “They will not shoot down our ships so they can fall and crush their own people. I am liking this strategy…plus it will make the arrogant left among us realize that we are not the superior here. We will treat Star Force as a worthy opponent, not vermin to be eradicated. And perhaps if we stop blasting every building they possess we will have more luck in plucking their secrets from them.”

“The Era’tran will not take part in this,” Hamob said angrily. “We have the Hadarak to fight as well, or have you forgotten?”

“I never forget,” Yaquik responded with a growl.

“We have to fight them while fighting Star Force, the Zak’de’ron, and everyone else that comes to join the cataclysm before us. Do we pull our fleets away and let the Hadarak spread or do we try to fight with less than our full forces against the Zak’de’ron?”

“All the more reason to eliminate Star Force quickly, before the Zak’de’ron are ready to hit us,” Yaniel argued.

“That doesn’t answer the question of what do we do when the Zak’de’ron do strike?”

“Or what we do about the Hadarak if we lose the Urrtren?” Wenni added.

Hamob saw the body language of almost everyone change, save for him. That painful thought had already occurred to him.

“We cannot hold the line without the Urrtren,” he said flatly. “If we are blinded, Hadarak will be able to get past our lines before we can identify them and rally a response. They won’t penetrate too far, but it will take more ships searching to maintain that. We will lose territory, at the minimum, even if we make the maximum effort.”

“We abandon our fight with the Hadarak,” Yaniel said softly, “or we end it permanently with our defeat. We cannot fight them and the Zak’de’ron simultaneously. We have no choice, as repugnant as it is. And the situation only becomes worse if we have to contend with Star Force and the Zak’de’ron simultaneously.”

“Do we? Or can we come to an arrangement with them?” Gavi pressed.

“Based on what? Even if we can, what do we tell the empire that will satisfy them?”

“We cannot fight a war based on a lie,” Hamob said firmly. “None of us should die for a lie.”

“Please tell me another solution, for I do not see one,” Yaniel requested.

“We ally with Star Force in some measure, even if it is just one of mutual exclusion, and we both prepare for what is coming. As for those needing to fight…I do not care.”

“That will not stop them.”

“The Era’tran will not go. Is your race so belligerent they cannot obey a stand-down order?”

“They must understand the order. Blind loyalty to Mak’to’ran is not as much of a virtue as you believe.”

“Will they not take your word for it?”

“They might, but I believe we should eliminate Star Force for a variety of reasons. This war against the Zak’de’ron is not going to be soon or quick, though I do worry about the Uriti in the short term. They are playing a long game, and if Star Force has both our technological knowledge and that of the Chixzon, I fear them growing too fast and too far. We cannot let another rival of such magnitude come to be. They have been allowed to grow so much already, and I fault Mak’to’ran for that. He should have sent more ships initially and crushed them before they could rise to this level.”

“If he had, we would not know about the Zak’de’ron now,” Yaquik argued.

“An accidental benefit.”

“We all underestimated Star Force,” Wenni admitted. “But we crushed their capitol and tore through the heart of their territory. No one suspected they could rebuild so fast or so repetitively. Nor did we know they possessed Chixzon knowledge, which probably aided them greatly. And we also did not know they could use the Uriti, for they did not for such a long time. Regardless, I do not blame Mak’to’ran. He saved us from destroying ourselves, and his focus is rightly on the Hadarak now. Star Force doesn’t want a fight. We should just leave them alone…let them have the Rim, all of it if they want, while we focus on the Hadarak and the Zak’de’ron. As you said, that is more than we can handle already.”

“If we do not destroy them now, we will regret it later. I can promise you that. They are not our ally. Not after all we have done to them.”

“Which is why we absorb them,” Tweva reiterated. “So we can gain something from this heresy as we stamp it out.”

“Agreed,” Bennak said with a nod of his long neck.

“You will need our full strength to destroy them,” Hamob warned. “And the Era’tran will not help.”

“We cannot risk another civil war over this,” Wenni said, vexed. “Or we will not need the Zak’de’ron. We will fall apart before they even strike us.”

“Can we beat Star Force without abandoning the Hadarak front?” Yaniel asked, glancing at Yaquik.

“I believe so.”

“Easily?”

“Fairly, but we will be vulnerable elsewhere should we be hit by the Knights of Quenar. We still do not know how many of them there are.”

“They ran from us,” Hamob reminded them. “I do not think they are looking for a fight. Only the remaining Uriti. And you will not defeat Star Force easily.”

“We are making the same mistake again,” Gavi pointed out.

“Which is why we do not hold back, except for the Hadarak front,” Yaniel insisted. “We send our full might…and if we do not have the Era’tran, we will be weakened. We must fight as one.”

“Perhaps we can,” Wenni said as inspiration hit him. “If the Era’tran do not want to fight Star Force, then trade us. Use your forces against the Hadarak so the Oso’lon can pull their fleets back. That way the number of ships we send against Star Force doesn’t change. The amount of ships on the Hadarak front doesn’t change. We just exchange assignments, and we avoid a civil war.”

“Yes,” an Uvbor called Neien said emphatically. “We do not want to waste our ships in the face of the Zak’de’ron threat, and I believe I could convince the others to take the place of another race on the Hadarak front. With more Harthur being built, our losses will go down dramatically…and if those races attacking Star Force fail, they will be the ones to take the losses.”

“And if they fail,” Gavi added, “then we give Star Force the Rim and waste no more time and resources on them. Call it a trial of worthiness.”

“You doubt our combined ability to destroy them?” Yaniel asked, almost as if it were treason the Bez was suggesting.

“If the races that do not fight them declare so prior to the invasion, we may gain Star Force’s assistance against the Hadarak, at the very least with the translation offer they made.”

“I would not count on that,” Hamob warned.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Gavi offered, “but if we tell them that we are removing the death mark, and that if they can survive this new invasion we will grant them autonomous status within the Rim we lose nothing, assuming Yaniel is right that they can be destroyed. If by some chance Star Force surprises us again, then we still have some diplomatic relationship with them. To be truthful I am concerned about the Uriti, and I do not want any Bez vessels fighting them unless absolutely necessary.”

“Our primary fight is with the Hadarak,” Keesa reminded them, “and they are not in the Rim. We do not need to be their either, unless we anticipate massive failure and the loss of all our territory. Let Star Force have it if they can earn it one more time. If not, we will preserve their people and incorporate them into the empire and they will operate on the Rim under Itaru’s direction. They have earned the removal of the death mark, in any case.”

“Can we at least agree on the removal of the death mark?” Hamob asked, not entirely liking where this was going.

They all exchanged glances, along with a few private telepathic comments between individuals, and it appeared the decision was unanimous.

“Alright then,” Yaniel stated. “We will have the death mark removed. The war will be one of subjugation. We will need as many resources after the fact as we can get to fight the Zak’de’ron, and if we can gain from this, Itaru can be convinced to remove the death mark without our explaining the threat of the Zak’de’ron.”

Hamob sighed. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was something. He had come here with no answers and no path forward. Now, at least, there was a path. Whether or not it was going to be beneficial was another question entirely.

For he too, like Gavi, was not convinced of what would happen when they eventually engaged the Uriti with Star Force warships in support…for there was no way to take their primary worlds without facing that eventuality, though that would be left to last, and Hamob would make sure of that wrinkle being included in whatever plans they formatted going forward.

7

December 12, 4885

Solar System (Star Force territory)

Earth

Morgan was busy in a planning meeting, working on the construction schedule for a year and a half in advance as Earth continued to be rebuilt into a battlefort. The population now was up to over 80 million, but those were all workers and fighters, without a single civilian present. She knew there was going to be a big fight here, but it was Earth and she wasn’t going to give it up again without exacting a hell of a price…though it was also a way to pull the V’kit’no’sat to a target of Star Force’s choosing where they could prepare for a massive strike without having to guess and pull ships away from the true targets.

Seeing as how this was by far the closest system to V’kit’no’sat territory, as well as Star Force’s original capitol, it literally begged to get hit first, so Morgan was continuing to lay out an industrial plan maximized for ground combat. She knew she was going to lose all the equipment on the surface and these tracts of land were going to become either craters to orbital bombardment or a battlefield for V’kit’no’sat troops trying to take down the shield generators and spare their warships additional losses.

If it was orbital bombardment it wouldn’t matter how she built them, but if there was to be a ground invasion it definitely did matter, so she was personally designing the layout for every square mile of Earth’s surface and she had to get it done well prior to construction, for the Kiritak, Bsidd, and assorted work crews were eating up her to-build list at a furious pace.

It was a surprise, however, when the V’kit’no’sat alarm sounded. Morgan linked her mind into the nearby node in the ceiling and got a data feed from sensors, finding a fleet was jumping into the system…or rather had, for there was a big delay in the feed from the warships she had in stellar orbit. No fighting had broken out, and they relayed the hyper-compressed message they’d picked up moments before the first ship arrived, declaring they were here to talk.

The message was repeated in normal compression once the first ship exited, and Morgan saw that the fleet only consisted of 12 ships in total, two of which were Kafcha, and all were Era’tran, easily identifiable by the tuning fork shape of their hulls. A few minutes later a follow up message was relayed to her, with Morgan already having moved over to the nearby control center and into a command nexus where she could get full data streams.

Mak’to’ran was in one of the Kafcha, and he wanted to talk…now.

Morgan waited while the drop pod crossed over to her new beastly command ship Gold Ranger, with her having flown out to the star rather than having the V’kit’no’sat come to Earth. All surveillance in the cargo bay had been deactivated and the crew cleared out, leaving her alone to talk to the Era’tran that came stomping down the boarding ramp into the Star Force vessel. He waited until it had left the bay before he spoke, but Morgan could already tell he was not happy.

“Davis is not here,” she told him.

“I did not expect him to be, so you will have to relay this conversation to him,” Mak’to’ran said, his voice not betraying the anger and shame his telepathic aura suggested. “The truce is about to be ended.”

Morgan frowned. “You’re breaking it?”

“Unfortunately yes. I do not have the power to stop the others without revealing the existence of the Zak’de’ron. Short of that, they are committed to destroying your autonomy if you will not willingly accept my command. I am here to ask you to reconsider, but I already know your answer.”

“We’re not joining you,” Morgan said flatly.

“And I do not blame you for that decision. We should be honoring the truce, but the others are lacking in honor. The few that were entrusted with knowledge of the Zak’de’ron have been emboldened to attack you now, before you can grow stronger, and eliminate the threat you pose before we have to fight the Zak’de’ron. You have 8 more years, then the truce will end. That is all I could force of them to wait.”

“I told Davis that telling you was a bad idea,” Morgan said, putting her hands on her armored hips.

“I am sorry,” Mak’to’ran said plainly. “I came here to explain exactly what is happening, for almost all of our empire does not know the full truth. The death mark on Humans has been lifted. It has been deemed that you have earned that much by your past efforts, so your worlds will not be obliterated through orbital bombardment. They will be conquered and your populations annexed into the V’kit’no’sat.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “So we join you willingly or by force?”

“That is what was decided. Also, we will not be engaging your Uriti. That would cost us too much. So we will strike where they are not, then use your captive populations as a shield against you using the Uriti for orbital bombardment.”

“Of course,” Morgan scoffed, but it was considerably better than everyone getting outright murdered. At least she’d have a chance to rescue them later. “Why are you telling me your battle plan?”

“It is not mine. I will not be fighting you, nor will the Era’tran. Of the 194 races in the V’kit’no’sat, there are 38 that have refused to take part in the invasion. Those 38, with myself included, agree to your proposal. We will keep to the Core, while we grant you the Rim to do with as you like. So long as you do not invade V’kit’no’sat territory, of any of the 194 races, we will ignore you. And I do not count the expansions as our territory. Our border prior to our invasion of Terraxis will be the boundaries. Anything beyond that is a fair target for you.”

“Having civil war issues again?”

“No. We have avoided that, though the divisions are there and growing. The 38 races not participating will take the place of the others on the Hadarak border, freeing them up to be used in the invasion, so you will still face the same number of vessels…the quality of which may have been lessened with our absence.”

“So you’re not really helping out any, are you?”

“If it were up to me no one would be attacking you. Every ship lost, on both our parts, only makes it easier for the Zak’de’ron to push their reclamation of the galaxy. For those of us that know the truth, we have agreed that we need time to upgrade the Urrtren to the point where the Zak’de’ron cannot shut it down on us. If they did so, it would destroy our ability to function as an empire, far beyond anything you can imagine. The Zak’de’ron mandated that our territory be spread out, with no clump of systems belonging to a single race. Because of that, if we lose communications, the Zak’de’ron could pick us apart with a fraction of the fleet necessary to fight us directly. And if they have a Uriti and the ability to command it, that blackout scenario becomes far worse. The others are playing for time, using the invasion of you as cover, amongst other things.”

“That is insane.”

“It holds some merit, but the losses are not worth it. The Era’tran will not suffer them, nor will the other 37 races. We at least will stay strong to oppose our true enemy, for our Harthur are diminishing fleet losses on the Hadarak border significantly and we will continue to produce more over time.”

“Are you supplying the invading fleets?”

“No. Our resources go to the Hadarak border and our own security. The others are on their own, but we have forced a promise from them. They will not destroy you, only conquer you, and if they fail to do the latter this one last time, the other races will be obligated to join us and grant you full authority in the Rim. One way or another, the war between Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat will end and we will focus on the Zak’de’ron.”

“That means you’ll be coming after us with everything you’ve got.”

“Indeed they will, but they will not have the 38 races with them. Even if an equal number of ships are present there are differences between the races that have an effect on combat. Those which you face will be slightly weaker due to the lack of diversity and Era’tran leadership. We are now one of the three leading races in the V’kit’no’sat along with the Oso’lon and J’gar, and the J’gar are one of the 38 not attacking you. They do not know of the Zak’de’ron, for there is not an individual in their ranks that I can completely trust, but they see the folly in wasting our forces against you when we have the Harthur and could be doing serious damage to the smaller Hadarak.”

“How firm is this dividing line? Could the J’gar or others change their mind?”

“No. I have made sure of that. None of the 38 can alter their choice now, though any of the others can relinquish their attacks on you if they find the task untenable. And that is a line that cannot be crossed without starting a civil war. The Era’tran will enforce it with our fleets if needed. We are breaking our truce now, but I cannot stop it. If there is to be another breach of honor, it will split the empire. All know this, so it will not happen. You will not have to face the J’gar or Era’tran, but you will have the Oso’lon…and the Hjar’at, which is in some ways worse.”

“I’ve noticed,” Morgan said, remembering the furious combat with them quite well. “So our translation agreement is off?”

“That is up to you. I have brought with me all the data we have collected. I will give it to you now. If you choose not to send us the translation, I will not fault you for that given our upcoming breach of the truce.”

“There better not be any code hidden in that data.”

“There is not, though your security measures seem adequate to filter out any such intrusion.”

“So what are the Era’tran now to us?”

“We are too busy with the Hadarak and future enemies to bother with you anymore. Stay away from us and we will do the same.”

“Well that’s something,” Morgan admitted. “So how do we beat the other races bad enough to force them to accept our independence?”

“We have an internal measurement that I will not share with you. If they do not meet it, they will pull back. It is a long term measurement, so do not think a furious defense in the short term will save you. They will not be attacking the Uriti, so this will be a long, grueling war. If you can somehow survive, the Era’tran will welcome you as an ally against the V’kit’no’sat. If you are annexed, I do not think you, Morgan-063, will live as a servant. You will die fighting, like the rest of your kin, and we will take possession of your less valuable population.”

“You can be sure of that,” she all but spat.

“Both I and our empire deserve your ire for the breach of the truce, as well as past actions, but what is done is done. I cannot stop what is to come, but I have tempered it as much as I can without inciting another civil war within the V’kit’no’sat. I fear the coming fighting will weaken us to the point where the Zak’de’ron can exploit the opportunity, but the others do not agree. I have learned to think differently, but they are still clinging to protocol. The V’kit’no’sat must adapt if we are to survive, and it may come to pass that the 38 races refusing to attack you will break off and form a new empire if the others are taken out in their weakness. The future is grim for us, and this upcoming war makes it even more grim. It seems Star Force is wiser than Itaru, and that only adds further to our shame, but things are the way they are and I cannot change them.”

“If you do not resupply the attacking races, we promise to not attack your Core territory. If you do, then we have nothing to lose by doing so, for the bulk of your ships will be tied up on the Hadarak front anyway.”

“The annexers must do so on their own strength, and they must not obliterate any world. Those are the rules that are avoiding a civil war, and if we should face another the empire will end before the Zak’de’ron can take overt action against us.”

“You suspect they’re already stoking the divisions?”

“I do. I think they were previously as well, if your timeline is accurate. They knew unlocking the planetary defense station would cast blame on either the J’gar or the Oso’lon, and I think they did it as much for that reason as to help you grow stronger to further hurt us. Had I not turned rebel they might have succeeded by now. We cannot risk it happening again. This invasion, under the current terms, is a bad solution, but anything else will tear us apart, for there are those who will not follow my leadership. If they did, we would be facing an entirely different future.”

“Even when your own asses are on the line, you guys can’t be smart. You just won’t relinquish control.”

“To our doom, I fear.”

“If this is your way of trying to apologize, you’re extremely bad at it.”

“I have thought about what you said before, about the V’kit’no’sat learning from the Zak’de’ron and emulating them. Sadly, I believe you are correct. Our concept of dominance has been corrupted, and I have been forced to reevaluate everything I have ever been taught. I cannot fix the empire, but within the Era’tran we are learning. I know we must now lead, in ways the other races do not yet comprehend, but there is much within our race that has to be altered to remove the taint of the Zak’de’ron. Star Force has shown a superiority to us, one that has made us angry rather than taking the opportunity to learn and advance ourselves. It is the way of the Zak’de’ron to strike down rivals. You, I believe, use rivals to drive your competitiveness to new heights.”

“If you eliminate your competition you get lazy,” Morgan added. “So I guess you have been paying attention.”

“Though I cannot make an official statement, I apologize for what I personally did leading the first invasion, and I apologize for the actions of the Era’tran since then. We are responsible for our actions, but in truth they have not entirely been of our own making. We have been influenced by others far too much, and going forward I am not going to make the same mistakes again. We hereby denounce the war against you, and end all hostilities on our part. If you still claim us as an enemy I understand. We have earned that status and we do not shirk from it.”

“I still hate you guys,” Morgan said flatly. “And I’m not going to forget all my friends you killed, but the past is the past and I can’t change it any more than you can. My focus is on the future. We may never be friends, but so long as you stop misbehaving we won’t have any reason to attack you, now or in the future. We have far too much to do, so we will also relinquish the state of war against the Era’tran, unofficially, so long as you stay on your side of the fence.”

“Agreed.”

“With one caveat,” the trailblazer added. “While we’re fighting your brothers, find a way to kick the crap out of the Zak’de’ron. We know they have subservient races already. The Voku are one of them, and you will not touch them, for they are our allies. That is not a pleasant situation we are going to face, but leave them to us. I suggest you try and identify the others, for they will not be hidden as the Zak’de’ron are.”

“The Voku serve the Zak’de’ron?”

“They did before you thought you destroyed them, and they stayed loyal through their absence. There are probably others spread across the galaxy as well.”

“In the Rim, perhaps, but we eliminated those in the Core.”

“They can always add new ones. I do not believe they will destroy you through just the strength of their own fleets.”

Mak’to’ran considered that for a long moment. “Thank you for trusting me with that fact. The Voku are in the Rim, therefore they are your responsibility and we will leave them to you up until they choose to attack us in the Core. If they come to your aid against the other races, we will not interfere.”

“And while we’re starting to get along,” Morgan added, having to clamp down on the uneasiness in her gut resulting from playing nice with this bastard, “let’s discuss these Harthur you’re building...”

8

March 23, 4886

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

“So that’s where we are,” Davis said as he sat at the head of a rectangular conference table inside his massive office with the 18 available trailblazers and all 8 Arch Dukes as Morgan finished explaining her lengthy conversation with Mak’to’ran. “We’ve got 8, maybe 7 years before they drop the hammer on us. How do you want to play this?”

“Told you so,” Rio-058 declared.

“Yes you did,” Davis acknowledged. “As did several others. In light of what has transpired, would you go back and withhold the information?”

“We needed the time to build,” he reiterated. “But we didn’t know they were on the verge of breaking the truce anyway. Could Mak’to’ran have held them back for the duration? I don’t know, but we’ve lost a number of years at least and if they can’t keep their mouths shut the Dragons are going to know we betrayed them. We’re not ready for this.”

“We were never ready,” Beck-061 noted. “Same old, same old.”

“The status of the V’kit’no’sat is not what I thought it was,” Taryn-047 said with her dark brown ponytail hanging over the front of her right shoulder as she sat in the high backed chair. “Our information, even our captured updates, is woefully inadequate. We’ve been making a number of wrong assumptions for some time now. I’d glad we’ve come to this, despite the ass kicking we’re about to get, because I think we can survive it…and if we do, they will grant us dominion over the Rim. Not just permission to exist here, but the entire Rim all the way around. This is a test of worthiness, and though I don’t like playing by other people’s rules, at least we have an end game now.”

“A lethal test,” Morgan pointed out.

“They’ve been out for our heads since the beginning,” Jason-025 scoffed. “That’s nothing new.”

“Them using our own people as shields against the Uriti is,” Rio reminded him.

“They have to take them first.”

“They will. We can’t put a Uriti on every front porch.”

“Then we have to keep them moving around,” Jack-020 suggested. “Give our systems a ‘hold out to’ window.”

“We have to avoid blockades and keep the main jumplanes free if we are going to maximize that tactic,” Arch Duke Hightower warned. “I would also suggest we not display the current location of all the Uriti. The threat of one potentially being nearby may discourage some attacks, or we could catch invading fleets off guard and do some significant damage if they’re fully engaged when one arrives.”

“We need to do some blockading of our own,” Wes-049 insisted. “We can’t let them choose targets then respond. We need to be outside our borders causing trouble for them and limiting the number of jumplines in. And by that, I mean mine fields. Lots of them.”

Davis narrowed his eyes slightly. “Elaborate.”

“There are too many easy routes, so we need to thin them out and force the V’kit’no’sat to choose to come through heavier defenses or even a Uriti. We declare the jumpline as closed, make sure everyone knows, and put warning beacons up on either end. If the V’kit’no’sat want to come through anyway, they’ll have to take the time to clear the mines first.”

“One sided?” Sara-012 asked.

“We don’t have time to do doubles, and we can always backfill them later once the war ramps up. I’m talking about getting as many roadblocks as we can that will allow us to slow or divert the V’kit’no’sat attack fleets, and they’re going to be huge convoys. We have to be able to position the Uriti where we want and when we want, but in order to do that we have to know where to put them. Scouts alone aren’t going to do the job, so we need to limit the jumplines the V’kit’no’sat have available.”

“They can curve their lines,” Morgan reminded him.

“But they can’t send huge convoys in curved jumplines with normal staggers. They’ll need bigger gaps for safety margins, and if we have even a small fleet at their arrival point we can do a lot of damage as they enter.”

“We can calculate arrival jumplines off curves as well,” Arch Duke Karthen pointed out. “It’ll be arrival points no one else uses, so we can also put mine fields there without any warning beacons.”

“We’re talking a lot of mines,” Rio said warily, “even if we isolate a handful of routes.”

“We pick the best ones to start with,” Wes answered, “then add to them over the decades that follow. It’s a lot cheaper way to take out ships than with drone production.”

“Assuming they ram them. If they go around all we gain is a delay and better positioning…which may be worth it. Still, it’s not a solution, merely a beneficial wrinkle.”

“I’ll take as many of those as you can come up with,” Davis said eagerly. “What else?”

“If they’re not going for the largest targets first,” Kent-076 said, “then they could hit our backwater and do a massive amount of damage. The Frontier Region can’t defend itself, and from what Morgan has said, the V’kit’no’sat are going to be using a very different playbook this time around. No more hard charging with the expectation they’re going to break us early and sweep up the pieces. I’d wager they’re going to be sneaky and adaptive, especially since it seems they’re only getting a single opportunity to do this.”

“How sure are we of that?” Hightower asked.

Morgan sighed. “There’s no way to tell, but taking Mak’to’ran at his word, this compromise is the only thing holding off another Civil War. They know they have to do something now before the Zak’de’ron make their move, and they’re split between letting us go and taking us out first. I don’t think the races that have agreed to our dominion of the Rim will have second thoughts if the others fail to take us out. If their empire stays together, I think the one shot holds. But we could see their empire split apart if the attackers don’t want to honor it. Mak’to’ran was in a state of barely controlled rage concerning the breach of the truce. He won’t tolerate any more word breaking, and he gave me his and the Era’tran’s guarantee that if we can survive this we will have a permanent truce. And I think he meant it.”

“But how far does his influence go?”

“Good question. I don’t know, but it seems like the V’kit’no’sat are harboring some major bad blood amongst themselves. I wish we knew more, but from the way he talked the Era’tran might be going it alone in the near future as a fallback plan, but he feels that would doom any chance they have against the Zak’de’ron. Keeping the empire together to prepare for them is the only reason he isn’t attacking Itaru himself.”

“They’re that divided?” Davis asked.

“I couldn’t sneak much of a peak into his mind, but that’s my gut feeling. The Zak’de’ron were the glue that held them together, and the fear of them may well be again, but the recent civil war showed how shallow their unity is, even if you factor in any poking and prodding the Zak’de’ron did in secret. I don’t like the bastards, but I think those staying out of this fight are genuine. They don’t want to mess with us anymore, and won’t, unless we encroach on their territory. I think they’ve given up on the idea of full control over the galaxy. There’s just too much damn space out there and the reason for their existence is in the Deep Core. Maybe if they were bored they might try to expand again, or go looking for a fight to pick, but right now their plate is full to overflowing.”

“So they’re not asking to be allies?” Arch Duke Dante asked.

“No. They just want us out of the way, aside from Mak’to’ran’s interest in the Uriti and future applications against the Hadarak, but right now I think the Hadarak front is being put in a holding pattern. The Zak’de’ron still being alive is scaring them shitless. That much I know for certain.”

“And their panic is driving most of them towards us,” Davis summarized. “They can’t fight the Zak’de’ron, so we’re the only visible target and the only way for them to do something to improve their situation.”

“But they’re not telling them why. Only their leadership knows?” Jason asked.

“A small fraction of their leadership,” Morgan amended.

“So why are the masses doing it?”

“To force us to submit. They don’t want us free and clear to do what we want in the Rim and potentially come back strong enough to hurt them later. Which we will, assuming we survive everything else coming our way.”

“Mak’to’ran is beginning to see the value of negotiation,” Davis added. “We are not out for their throats. Not like a conventional enemy. And he’s been outside the V’kit’no’sat before, branded a traitor, so he has a perspective the others do not. They are still unused to losing and believe in their doctrine of dominance. To fight the Zak’de’ron they are going to have to abandon that. I think Mak’to’ran is also using this invasion as a way to educate them. If we beat them this one last time, we earn our freedom and their egos are destroyed. In the aftermath he can rebuild the V’kit’no’sat how he likes and prepare them for the Zak’de’ron. That’s my read on it, anyway.”

“Terms accepted,” Ethan-014 said, pounding his right fist into his left hand. “Let’s end this so convincingly they never even think about invading us again.”

“I think you’re underestimating what is coming,” Rio said with a glare. “Which is basically their entire military minus what they have on the Hadarak front and a few patrol fleets. We’ve never dealt with that level of opposition before.”

“Which is why we need to ambush them on their way here,” Wes reiterated. “Not in their territory, but on the way through the Devastation Zone and the other stretches they have to cross. If we wait for them to pool their ships in a single system they’re going to have the advantage. We need to catch them coming out of their jumps, and not at the destination points. They’ll split up and arrive through multiples simultaneously, I can guarantee it if they’re not playing this dumb. We’ve seen it before in their history, and if they take us seriously this time, we have to hit them on the way in.”

“We also need a massive amount of surveillance,” Hightower added. “Far more scout ships than we’ve got deployed out there. We have to pull back from Nexus territory now if we’re going to reposition enough to make a difference.”

Davis cringed, but he knew what the Arch Duke said was true. They’d run out of time, and looking for new ways to help those suffering and dying out there would have to be put on hold. No more expansions, no more annexations except where minimal resources would allow. Everything had to be devoted to this upcoming invasion…meaning a lot of people were going to left hanging who needed help but were just on the other side of the territory line. Davis wouldn’t abandon anyone already in their care, but it sickened him to turn people away who were asking for help.

There was no choice though, for if Star Force fell to the V’kit’no’sat they’d leave all those other people out there to die anyway. Their only hope was Star Force surviving this war, and unfortunately that was going to take too long to shake out, and most of them were just going to be screwed.

“Expansion programs have to be suspended,” he said, making it official, “in almost all cases. We have to turn everything we’ve got to this and win it. And we win by surviving long enough that the V’kit’no’sat give up. They don’t have time for an unending war. They have to annex us quickly in order to prepare for the Zak’de’ron. So we don’t let them do that. We drag this out, whittle them down, even as we lose worlds. And those we lose, we retake when we have a chance, forcing them to defend territory rather than sterilize it and move on. We’ve played the stall and run game up until now, but this is different. We’ve had a chance to catch our breath. Not as much as we’d hoped, but enough to stabilize our territory and this time we have the Uriti willing and able to fight with us. That’s never happened before, so we’re not in the same situation. We’re playing aggressive defense this time.”

“So mines?” Wes asked.

“Mine the hell out of the approaches to our territory and anywhere within it you see an advantage to do so. Pull out every trick you’ve ever used and come up with some new ones. All trailblazers are going to be recalled with their current missions delegated to high ranking second gen. You too Rio. Training time is over. We need all of you out there.”

The top ranked Archon smiled. “Gladly.”

“We also need to have a chat with our allies and coordinate with them, as well as spread the word that this fight isn’t just about our survival, but the future of the galactic Rim. If we win, the V’kit’no’sat turn it over to us, and I think there are a lot of races near the border that would be willing to help fight if they saw us winning, for they know we’ll be much more benevolent landlords.”

“The Preema?” Jason asked.

“Doubtful, but possibly. I think they’re gonna sit and watch, but there are undoubtedly others on the other side of the galaxy as well. We need to spread the word of the terms of this war so they know what’s happening and what the stakes are.”

“Paul’s not here, so I’ll say what he would probably be thinking,” Sara said with no hint of a smile on her face, but rather a lethal intensity born of new hope. “Did we just become the leader of the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire?”

“I hope so,” Davis said earnestly. “If we can’t divide their attention, then we’re going to lose at least half our systems in the best case scenario…but if they’re getting hit in their own territory by other races, they’re gonna have to pull ships off to defend those systems, either from the invasion or the Hadarak front, and I can guess Mak’to’ran won’t let the Hadarak front be weakened. Also, if we arrange that only the territory of those races involved in the invasion are hit, and not those who are sitting it out, we can drive a further wedge between them…”

9

January 4, 4890

Khaterass System (Kiritak colony)

Mewsovex

Paul flew down to the glacier under his own power, landing in nothing but his Archon uniform in the frigid temperatures near the concealed entrance. He triggered the automated drill that cleared the ice and gave him access to the lift that he then took down into Kara’s fortress of solitude, but she wasn’t waiting for him below.

Once he was inside and beneath the psionic concealment layer he could sense her presence and made his way through the large facility to one of the training chambers, drawing a raised eyebrow from Paul as he saw her bouncing around from platform to platform in a zero g sphere with a multitude of drones hunting her. It was an evasion challenge, but one with little use at her level, begging the question what exactly was she working on.

He waited patiently until she finished, then pulsed a telepathic ping to get her attention, seeing her visibly flinch. Apparently she was so focused on her training she had no idea he was there, but as soon as she saw him a wide smile broke out on her face and she launched herself off one of the platforms until she passed through the zero g field and dropped to the floor…only to curve her trajectory and fly the last little bit of distance over to Paul where she landed in a sweaty mess with a Vorch’nas that now extended all the way up to her right elbow and extended past her wrist down to her knuckles.

“Hey, Paul, what’s up?”

“How are you doing?” he asked, not having gotten any updates because they couldn’t risk any messages that might be intercepted by Zak’de’ron surveillance of the Star Force relay network.

“Good and bad.”

“Start with the good.”

“I’m stronger than Rio now,” she said with a smirk. “A lot stronger. This baby has massive strength enhancements on a genetic level, and with each increase I get a boost. This is a level 7 Vorch’nas. I have to go through each and adjust. I tried to go straight to level 12 and it killed me…then I revived, woke up, and it was back to a level 1.”

“It killed you?” Paul asked slowly.

“Not fun,” Kara said with all seriousness. “Took several hours, but my body couldn’t handle the upgrades. They have to be made through adaptation, and that only occurs with a lot of training and experience, but I know what to do now and I’m gonna get it maxed out within another 10 or 15 years.”

Paul looked down at the now pure white jewel that looked like frozen ice on her arm that had been buffed into a glorious sheen.

“How much control do you have?”

Kara frowned. “That’s the bad part. I can block detection now. They can enter the system and send out a location ping, but it won’t respond. I’ve got it turned off. The problem is, if they get within close range they can send a control signal to it that I cannot block. They can’t use it to find me, but if they do and they get close I’m toast. There’s also a kill code they can send, and I’ll be dead within seconds. I can’t delete it. I can hide and evade, but if they find me they’re in control and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Manageable. Who was your last visitor?”

“You’re the first,” she said, her smile returning.

“So you don’t know?”

“About what?”

“They stole a Uriti from the Knights of Quenar.”

Kara’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”

“A single Knight survived and managed to get back with the news. They think they all died, but we know now, and so do the V’kit’no’sat. We told them.”

Kara’s face clenched up, but she said nothing, thinking hard. “What else is going on? You didn’t come here for a visit, because you’d be worried that someone could track you here.”

“I have ninja skills,” he reminded her, “but I need you to leave. The truce is going to be broken in a few years and all trailblazers are being recalled. I need you to take Megan’s place with the Paladin.”

“Will be? How do you know?”

“Because we have an understanding with Mak’to’ran now. The Era’tran and 37 other races have agreed to give us our freedom and dominion over the Rim while they prepare for the Zak’de’ron threat, though only a handful of their leaders know of it. Some of them decided the best move was to take us out first, then worry about the Zak’de’ron. Rather than fight a civil war over it, they agreed to split up. Mak’to’ran’s group will take the place of the others on the Hadarak front, freeing them up to hit us at full strength. If we survive, we earn our freedom and the Rim. If not, we’ll be conquered and absorbed. They’ve removed the death mark and intend to get as much out of our strength as possible, including the Uriti if they can…which they won’t.”

Kara’s jaw was still hanging, then she finally made herself close it. “I am so out of the loop.”

“I’m catching you up now. Mak’to’ran told us what’s coming, and we’ve got about 3 more years before they hit us. Megan has to come back, and I’d like you to as well, but combat against the V’kit’no’sat will probably reveal you to the Zak’de’ron. But they’re not with the Paladin, so I need you…”

“I’ll go,” she said before he could finish. “I know enough from the public grid where the Paladin are. The Zak’de’ron won’t have much out there, if anything, but I’ll need a different identity.”

“Already got it worked out. Officially you’re still with Ghostblade, but now you’re a Protovic Administrator named Mara Jade. All the files have been scrubbed so there’s no trail.”

“Mara Jade?”

“Only in the files. The Paladin will know who you are when you arrive and tell them, but back here there will be no trace.”

Kara nodded. “Alright, I’ll get up to speed. How are you guys playing the invasion?”

“All in. The V’kit’no’sat are going to hit us with everything they’ve got minus the Hadarak fleets and some light patrols. Mak’to’ran said they were not going for the Uriti, so we assume they’re avoiding the big systems and going to hit the small ones and work this in reverse. It’s possible they might end up fighting the Paladin early, but I doubt it. Megan and Thrawn don’t have much out there yet, and the V’kit’no’sat need to hurt us badly and quickly. Mak’to’ran said there’s a timetable they have to meet, though he wouldn’t say what. We got the impression it was fairly long, but they can’t fail this time or they’ll be forced to let us go. That means they have to take out the Paladin eventually.”

Kara bit her lip in a conflicted manner. “If you’ve got me labeled as a Protovic then I should be safe from tracking. What ship will I have?”

“You’ll be with the Paladin. I didn’t think you’d want a normal command ship as a giveaway.”

“I don’t. I can play Paladin even if we have to fight the V’kit’no’sat. I can hide and do this at the same time if there’s no trail out there.”

“There’s a group of Administrators from other races going to help with some of the annexed races that Morgan took under her wing. You’ll tag along and blend in.”

“Good. How soon?”

“A couple months.”

“And you?”

“Getting a new fleet, then it’s off to patrol the Perimeter Zone and break it in, which is now the Devastation Zone and everything else beyond our borders that the V’kit’no’sat will be coming through.”

“You going to hit them first?”

“We’re gonna do everything we can to drag this out, including a lot of mine laying.”

“Slip’n’slide?”

“Everything,” Paul reiterated. “If we don’t, we’re going to get run over.”

“Who’s not coming at us?”

“The Era’tran, J’gar, and Brat’mar are the only major races opting out. The other small ones are following their lead, but most don’t know about the Zak’de’ron. They just don’t want to go up against the Uriti. And the Rit’ko’sor don’t want to fight their kin.”

“I don’t blame them, but I’m surprised.”

“A lot of things are surprising lately. Especially the Zak’de’ron getting a Uriti, and perhaps more if they find them first. The Knights of Quenar are intent on not letting that happen.”

“They can’t be ready to fight. Not yet. It’s too soon…even if they have their own Chixzon now, thanks to me.”

“Yeah, that’s a big problem,” Paul admitted. “But there’s no undoing it.”

“Still happened,” she argued. “You did get rid of the sword, right?”

“Chucked it in a star.”

“Good. How do we stand on drones?”

“A lot more than we’re used to, but not enough. They’ve got an attrition edge on us, but they have to ship their reinforcements a long way. We’re going to ambush what we can, but this is going to get messy even if it goes well for us. I’m still not sure how we’re going to survive this.”

“I’ll do what I can, if you need me on the front lines. No point in hiding if the empire is going to fall and we’re all gonna die anyway. I assume they’re going to kill us, right?”

“Probably. We wouldn’t submit anyways.”

“So they want our civies?”

“Not sure, but one thing they want is living shields against the Uriti.”

Kara sighed. “Of course. They don’t really want us.”

“Mak’to’ran does, and I think he’s leveraging the others to attacking on his terms. Regardless, they shouldn’t be glassing any planets and moving on. They’ll have to take and hold them, which will make this a very different war…but we also can’t attack their current worlds or the races sitting it out will get involved.”

“So we fight on our turf to win the Rim?”

“Basically.”

“And they’ll honor that if we win?”

“If they don’t it’s gonna cause a civil war. Mak’to’ran was clear about that. And they’ve got bigger worries to deal with.”

“Still, their egos…”

“The Zak’de’ron scare the shit out of them. So expect a lot to change.”

“How are we going to deal with them if they find out we snitched on them?”

“I don’t know. But we got 38 races to sit because we shared. Same number of ships, in theory, but I think we’re slightly better off not having to fight the J’gar on waterworlds…not that we have that many.”

“What do you need me to do with the Paladin?”

“Own the place. No resources sent to us, just camp out, build, and kick local ass.”

“I can do that.”

“I know you can…if you haven’t lost your edge.”

“My edge?”

“How much naval training have you been doing?”

“Enough.”

“Where you at?”

“Goku 18…for naval. Commando is off the charts.”

“Cheater.”

“I know,” she said, chagrined. “Some things never change.”

“Let’s find out,” he said, taking a step backwards. “Unless you’re too tired?”

Kara took a half step back as well, dropping a couple inches into a combat stance. “I’m good.”

“Are you now?” Paul said sarcastically, pushing a Jumat blast at her then following up with a dive run while she braced against it…then the two were at it in close range, blocking, dodging, punching, and kicking at such high speeds it was hard to follow, but with their Pefbar and Sav they could think and perceive faster than they could move, making it feel like they were always in slow motion.

They went at it for more than half an hour…before Kara kicked it up a notch and methodically kicked his ass.

10

July 8, 4890

System 289456

Stellar Orbit

Kara and a batch of Administrators arrived in the uninhabited system, one of the many out here that didn’t even have a name, and transferred over from the Calavari Warship-class jumpship to a Paladin one, which was twice as large and carried 6 times as many drones. Neither side had opted to send an unarmed cargo ship, for these areas were rife with piracy and other lawlessness, but no one was going to be stupid enough or fast enough to catch either of these two ships, though the Paladin one was the slower of the pair considering it was fully loaded with drones.

The Calavari one was as well, but its design made it faster when fully loaded, while Thrawn had wanted to rely more on combat power insystem than speed when loaded. It was one of many variations on the same basic design that all Star Force factions used, and Kara noticed that this one had a new paint job. Normally Star Force ships were gray, white, black, or some combination thereof, but a rising trend had the more prominent factions painting their ships. Canderous had been the first, with their sedas always having been a dark green, but now the Paladin had taken on the blue that their bodies now bore…and a bright blue at that.

Kara transferred over via dropship, then walked out into a sea of what used to be lizards, but were now Paladin. Still, after so many battles, Kara’s first instinct was to be on guard and she hadn’t shook that habit yet, but with a light scan of their minds she confirmed they were friends and her bit of unease disappeared as a taller Paladin approached, this one a Viceroy.

He greeted the Administrators and sent them off with handlers while Kara stayed in the back of the hangar bay as the Calavari dropship left, heading back to its mothership that would be leaving the Paladin Zone and her behind, with Megan already having left a month ago on another ship if the time table hadn’t been altered.

“Archon,” the Viceroy greeted respectfully, despite the fact that Kara wore an Administrator’s uniform, so Megan must have told him before she left.

“Viceroy,” she said, looking up at his 8 foot height and round, muscular head. He outmassed her by at least triple, but even without her Vorch’nas she would have no trouble taking him down and both of them knew it.

“I am Brisco, and I will be your second, relaying orders on your behalf so they do not have to go out in your name. Thrawn has so arranged it that I have authority equal to his, meaning there will be no hindrance to your efforts as we hide your presence.”

“You were born Paladin?”

“I was. Thrawn elevated my status in order to accommodate you. What are your orders?”

“I need information, as recent as possible, to get a feel for what’s going on out here.”

Brisco nodded. “We should go to Vanaat then. It is a nexus for our limited relay grid and closest to our current position.”

“Set course then. I may be new here, but I do not have time to waste. Star Force will come under V’kit’no’sat attack within a few years, and there is a possibility they may even strike the Paladin Zone.”

That came as a shock to the Viceroy…along with the others in the hangar bay that overheard their conversation.

“What of the truce?” he asked, apparently not having been told more than that she was coming to replace the trailblazer.

“Things have changed, and it is about to be violated. We expect them to avoid the Uriti and hit us where we are weak, which may mean they send some ships out here. Even if they don’t, we are not going to assist the others. Our orders are to strengthen the Paladin Zone as much as possible, and if we are attacked, we will receive no support. We’re on our own either way.”

“We are not as weak as you believe, but we are spread out. If the V’kit’no’sat attack in even light numbers, we will have a problem.”

“I doubt we will be a primary target, and if we can draw off ships from the rest of the empire, so much the better. It’s going to get ugly regardless, but if we’re not hit we have to spend our anonymity wisely.”

“But not on sending them additional drones?”

“No. We reinforce ourselves…so if the others have to run, they have a place to run to.”

“I understand,” Brisco said, feeling the importance in those few words to their fullest. “We expect to lose?”

“We will lose systems, but we will be fighting the full power of the V’kit’no’sat minus what they have on the Hadarak front. However, we will not be fighting all the races. 38 have agreed to our terms and have bequeathed us the Rim. The others have not, but the 38 have replaced their fleets on the Hadarak front so we will still be hit with full force…however, if we can hold off long enough, the V’kit’no’sat will leave. This is to be a test, and if we fail, we will be absorbed into their empire. They will not be eradicating our population, but probably our warriors.”

“How long must we survive?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s more a matter of whether we are conquerable or not, and we have to hold our little corner of it.”

“Or die trying.”

“That’s why we build drones,” Kara said with a smirk. “Get the ship moving, then I’ll bring you up to speed on everything else that is going on.”

When Megan got back to the prime territories it felt weird. She’s spent so much time in the Paladin Zone that it was strange to see such developed worlds with so many different races. It was a familiar weird, but it underscored just how much effort she’d put into so few years building up the Paladin and doing the vital, if disgusting, work out in the aftermath of The Nexus’s bull shit failure. It still angered her to this day, but back here, where everything was shiny and new…well, it just felt wrong leaving the people who needed her, but it wouldn’t take long before all this shininess was going to end up turning into rubble.

Which was why she needed to be here.

It took a few more weeks to get to the Raptor homeworld of Turok, which was where the other 99 trailblazers were gathered as they were waiting and planning for what was coming their way. A few of them had already been out to the border areas where the mines were being laid, but they’d all cycled back here so they could brainstorm together without suffering through communications lags of days, if not weeks.

Megan was the last to get here, but the system was already packed with ships. Apparently some of the trailblazers had brought their fleets with them, and at the moment it looked like the Axalon System was the most heavily defended within Star Force, almost comically so.

She knew it wasn’t going to stay that way, and after a few months, or maybe a year at most, they’d be spreading out to implement whatever battle plan they were working on now, but this was going to be a small respite, at least, before the heavy fighting started. Work in the Frontier Region would have to wait, for the resources being spend there on new projects had all been canceled while existing ones were continued. Those extra resources were being routed into drone and mine production, leaving the trailblazers without a lot to do, fighting wise, at the moment.

Megan found the others in a special facility that had been built for the occasion, giving them their own command center on the planet with personal quarters adjacent to each other. They had the place entirely to themselves, making it feel like they were back in basic training again as soon as Megan walked into the place with her personal duffle slung over her shoulder.

Half of the others were busy training in the Sanctum that had been built into the place, while the others were in a massive planning center with holographic maps floating everywhere with smaller tables with two or three trailblazers each working on this or that.

“You’ve been busy,” Megan commented, dropping her duffle on the ground and walking in amongst the others.

“You’re late,” Jason commented, waving her over to a table where a quartet of 2s were working.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing at the regional map they had before them, but it was focused beyond the Devastation Zone on the anti-spinward side. “Where we at?”

“Planning some surprises,” Paul answered, “but we’re screwed. There are too many ways to get to us and we have no firm border. They can hit where they like, so we’re guessing how they’ll approach. Feel free to chime in.”

“What’s this BS about them not hitting our strongest worlds?”

“We think they’re finally taking us seriously,” Ivan said. “They’re not going to smoke us, they’re going to take our worlds and hold them…”

“Using our own people as shields against Uriti bombardment,” Kip finished.

“Mak’to’ran pretty much said it’s a game,” Jason continued. “If we win, we get to own the Rim while they worry about the Zak’de’ron threat. If we lose, we’re absorbed and they add what strength they can from us.”

“Over my rotting corpse,” Megan declared.

“They’re sending their full strength,” Paul warned. “We’re in a mess here.”

“Then let’s start digging our way out. Show me what you’ve got so far…”

Tranxen flew through the interior of the Zak’de’ron hive, bypassing a few others as they coordinated telepathically so they didn’t run into each other while moving at high speeds, for while they could fly slow they preferred not to, especially when confined to the mobile city and not able to truly stretch their wings in a planetary atmosphere.

Tranxen eventually landed on one of the floating islands connected to the others via long strands that the land dwelling servant races traveled on, but there were few here due to the location. It was Zeno’dor’s personal residence, and only a few highly placed servants were allowed in the spherical construct that Tranxen landed on in an equatorial gap several times his height.

He walked from that large, broad, overhung platform into a series of internal hallways where a few Bo’ja were roaming about and moving out of his way quickly. There were a few other Zak’de’ron here as well, but when he got to Zeno’dor he was alone on an upper terrace laying on an interface pad that allowed him to connect directly to the hive’s information systems without using his telepathy.

“We have recovered the Orange strain,” he reported. “We followed the Knights of Quenar and were able to recover 3 individuals before they were inoculated. They are here now, in stasis.”

“Progress then,” Zeno’dor noted.

“Not enough,” Tranxen warned, curling his tail around his legs as he sat on a nearby cushioned pedestal. “We have two of the eight strains, and every new colony of Protovic that we find has already been inoculated. We were lucky to track them to this one.”

“Luck or not, we now have it, and that is all that matters.”

“I do not believe we will be able to find all the others. Not in time.”

“The Chixzon spread them across the galaxy in such a fashion that they clearly expected to lose most of them. There will be pockets the Knights of Quenar have not found yet. We must identify them first, not rely on following them there.”

“We don’t have the scouts for that. Not unless we have some idea of where to look.”

“No dispersion pattern has yet been identified.”

“Then we must have more help.”

“We cannot. If we give search parameters to our servant races, it will identify them to the V’kit’no’sat or Star Force and their allies. We cannot risk that.”

“Then I fear we will fail to gather all 8 strands. What progress has been made with Bulmuthal?”

“Minimal. It will be centuries before we are able to fully awaken the beast. We need the control mechanism.”

“I do not see how we get it. The Knights of Quenar have had too large a head start on us. All visible populations have been inoculated, and there isn’t a trace of the original coding left. The Star Force Chixzon did his work well.”

“Yet you have a found another. I am not seeking guarantees, Tranxen. I am looking for results. There are others out there, and we must pursue them regardless of the outcome.”

“And we will, but I fear we will not be able to find all 8. At most we will find duplicates. We know where there is a complete set. We may need to claim it.”

“No,” Zeno’dor said firmly. “We cannot. They have hidden Nefron well. The most we could hope for is a tissue sample, but even that is too risky. We must maintain our relationship with Star Force. We risked much with our previous seizure. An assault on their Chixzon would turn them against us.”

“They may soon be destroyed. Are we not going to act before we lose the opportunity?”

“If it comes to that we will, but Nefron’s location is a closely guarded secret. They do not have that information in their pubic databases, nor the secure ones we’ve tapped. We only get location brushes on occasion.”

“Then I fear we are at an impasse.”

“Patience, young one. I understand your eagerness, but such powers that we are contending with are long term affairs. We have time. There is no cause to panic.”

“Every year that passes the Knights of Quenar find and inoculate more Protovic. Time is not on our side in that endeavor. We need more eyes. There are too many systems to search, especially with the majority of them in the Rim where we do not have full charts.”

“Neither do the Knights of Quenar. You have a race to contest. Do so wisely and we may still prevail.”

“As you wish, but I do not see the likelihood of success that you do.”

“We do not require the Chixzon knowledge. It is an asset of great importance, but not a necessity. We will be able to influence the Uriti in time, but the Chixzon control mechanism is greatly preferred. Regardless, we are proceeding even if we cannot ever control the Uriti.”

“I still do not understand why we cannot alter the Uriti.”

“Nor do I, but there is a mechanism in place to restore any altered genetic coding. With the Chixzon knowledge we may be able to bypass it.”

“Why did we not have any knowledge of this threat from the distant past? The coding is too advanced to have been done by anything less than a peer.”

“Our superior, in fact…at least in this small regard. We still have little knowledge of the far Rim, and what we have now we did not have previously. I am not surprised we did not encounter them, for they did not contest the Hadarak. They chose to avoid them.”

“And conscript their strength. Even we cannot do that.”

“Not yet,” Zeno’dor added, though the young Zak’de’ron was not incorrect. “We will have to if we are ever able to conquer the inner Core. Which makes your search all the more important.”

“Are you hoping the V’kit’no’sat will acquire the knowledge during their invasion?”

“I doubt we would be so fortunate, but it is possible.”

“Why will you not try and steal it from them? I do not understand your reasoning.”

“When they discovered me they did not understand what we were. I could have killed them then, but did not. They revived me, and in some small way I owe them a debt for that. I made a miscalculation and the uninhabited planet we were on did not remain uninhabited. Foes built directly above us, and they would not have spared me had they found us first. Star Force did, and I have been able to maneuver them into a useful tool against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You think they can prevail against them?”

“No, they are about to die. Had they not used the Uriti they would have persisted, but they grew too bold. They will wound the V’kit’no’sat so badly that the cracks in their alliance will widen. We will not be ready to destroy them, but it will delay their growth and reconciliation around the Harthur that Mak’to’ran has created. We cannot let them become a united force. We must preserve the cracks until we are ready to pounce. Then we will break them apart and turn their strength against each other, but when we do we must be able to step into the void and corral the Hadarak, and our servant races are far from ready.”

“Star Force is. Why not annex them?”

“I had hoped to, in some fashion, but they pushed too hard. The V’kit’no’sat will not let them continue to exist. They have sealed their fate.”

“All the more reason not to let the Chixzon’s secrets die with them.”

“You underestimate their security. Such a thing is not as simple as you think. They are on the level of the V’kit’no’sat now, and we do not have full access to their version of an Urrtren. We must be coy, else we tip our hand.”

“I fear an opportunity missed, in light of my inability to procure the necessary strands.”

“If one presents itself, I promise we will not miss it.”

“That is enough for me,” Tranxen said deferently. “Do you think Star Force will honor their agreement with the Era’tran faction and not strike their worlds with the Uriti?”

“Of course. They will only fight defensively. Vengeance would require others to hurt the V’kit’no’sat, but Star Force’s survival is dependent on holding their own territory. That is where they will place their full effort. Assaulting a handful of systems, even if they completely destroyed them, is irrelevant in the long term. They will not act emotionally. They will be savvy and stay out of V’kit’no’sat territory, seeking to claim the Rim for themselves. They do not realize it is a ploy to keep the V’kit’no’sat unified, for there is no chance for their survival other than to flee.”

“Will they?”

“Some will to their deep Rim worlds, but only after they fail to defend their territory. They will not run out of fear, only as a last resort.”

“Should we help them do so?”

“No. If they lose what they currently hold, they will not be a power worth our interest out on the Rim…though if it comes to that, we will try to pluck what secrets we can from the survivors. Even if they rebuilt out there, they cannot do so to sufficient strength to threaten the V’kit’no’sat before we are capable of doing so ourselves. Their usefulness will be coming to an end when the invasion conquers and absorbs their strength.”

“What will the V’kit’no’sat gain from them?”

“I am unsure,” Zeno’dor admitted. “But it will not be much. Star Force’s alliance of races will not accept V’kit’no’sat rule as easily as they assume…and what little strength the Humans have drawn from them will disappear. The V’kit’no’sat do not understand this, so they will gain nothing of equal value to what they will lose…unless they are fortunate enough to recover the Chixzon data.”

“Or our existence?”

“We have looked for any trace of it in their civilization, and they have hidden it beyond our view. The V’kit’no’sat will not find it, and if they do, we can use it to further destabilize them.”

“Was that your intention all along?”

“It was a possibility I considered, though I am pleased it has not come to pass. Though wild, Star Force is loyal to their allies. Unfortunately we will not be able to fight simultaneously with them. I would much prefer if we could.”

“Why? Other than their obvious strength with the Uriti?”

“It would be a fitting demise for the V’kit’no’sat…and they are already expressing interest in fighting the Hadarak, though in their own way. It is a threat far from their borders, yet they respond to it for what it is. I wish we could save them, but we cannot. A lost opportunity that will not hinder us.”

“Did you truly come that close to dying?”

“I did. Stasis left me so weak even a small force could have killed me, and had I not been properly revived, I doubt I could have even attacked before I was overcome.”

“Where did you err?”

“I did not erect perimeter sensors. I assumed such things would be more of a detriment than an asset, but I assumed wrong.”

“And that still pains you?”

“That I was so reckless? Yes it does. I was entrusted with our legacy and I nearly blundered it. I will not make the same mistake again, and moving to seize Nefron would be such a mistake. Unless he makes himself vulnerable, we will not attempt to retrieve him or a genetic sample.”

“Understood.”

“Keep searching for the strains. They are our best chance of obtaining a complete set of Chixzon knowledge. I would also like to meet this enemy face to face, and Nefron is no longer fully Chixzon.”

“Do you believe they will resurface on their own?”

“After we obtain a complete set, we will assist the Knights of Quenar in making sure that they do not.”

www.aerkijyr.com

The Dinosaur War

1

March 28, 4894

Vbora System (Oso’lon border colony)

Chadara

Niom was waiting onboard his Na’shor battleship as more Oso’lon vessels arrived at the rendezvous point nearest to Star Force territory. It was still going to take 28 long jumps to get to the warfront, utilizing one black hole route that the V’kit’no’sat had already secured, and better than two months to get there, but Niom’s fleet hadn’t left yet. Others had, many in fact, but Virokor’s campaign strategy didn’t involve bringing in everyone at once. The Hjar’at’s plan was a coy one, much more indirect than Niom was comfortable with, but even he agreed something had to change from past failures and Yaniel had deferred to Virokor’s leadership, giving up the prime command position that would have been Mak’to’ran’s had the Era’tran not elected to join the warden faction.

Niom understood the significance of the Harthur and how Mak’to’ran didn’t want to waste time on Star Force when the V’kit’no’sat had their first real advantage over the Hadarak, but Niom agreed with Yaniel and the rest of the Oso’lon. Star Force was too dangerous and continuing to grow, and their ability to control the Uriti gave them an advantage that the V’kit’no’sat could not match, nor could the Harthur, for the Uriti would simply blast them apart with their long ranged weaponry that the Hadarak lacked.

So with Mak’to’ran taking no part in the invasion, all aspects of it were left to the ‘crusaders.’ Niom didn’t care for that title, but it had spread throughout the Urrtren and, like it or not, it had stuck. It suggested desperation to him, and thus not a fitting description, but the agreement between races stated that if Star Force could not be conquered in what was going to be their final attempt, a truce would be brokered and a definitive border established…with the rogue faction being given domain over the Rim while the V’kit’no’sat focused their full power on the Hadarak.

The Oso’lon couldn’t let that happen. If set free, Star Force would grow to become a rival in time. They were too hard to kill, too organized, too smart…and they’d seek vengeance eventually. Mak’to’ran seemed to think otherwise, and while he couldn’t call the leader of the V’kit’no’sat a coward, he felt he was being too timid. Others did as well, and this invasion campaign was going to be a test of his leadership. If the Oso’lon and others succeeded in what Mak’to’ran said would be a very costly and wasteful war, and they did so convincingly, Mak’to’ran’s rule would be revoked. That wasn’t official, but it was the general assessment of most crusaders. He was making the call that this would be devastating and the invading races would be so weakened it would jeopardize the Hadarak border…thus he and the Era’tran were not coming.

On the flip side, if he was right, it would only strengthen his leadership and weaken Itaru further. Niom didn’t want to see that happen, for the V’kit’no’sat were not supposed to have a ruler. They were a consortium of equals, and many had only tolerated Mak’to’ran’s position due to the fact that he’d saved the empire from crumbling in what would have been a fatal civil war for the V’kit’no’sat.

But Itaru wasn’t following him on this call, and they’d amicably come to the arrangement of wardens and crusaders. They were quietly splitting apart their economies now, as much as feasible, to send resources to either the Hadarak front or the Star Force front. Whoever prevailed would gain leadership in the aftermath when the empire was reunited against the Hadarak once again, though hopefully with Star Force forcibly annexed and obeying Itaru’s commands, not to mention helping to replace all the ships that were going to be lost with the labor of their industrious servant races.

But even Niom knew this was not going to be a fast war, even in the most beneficial of outcomes, so Virokor’s piecemeal advance wasn’t too controversial. Niom just hated waiting in line while others got into the fight ahead of him.

The reason he was waiting was because it was taking time to get Oso’lon ships from across the galaxy to the rendezvous point. Three other Oso’lon fleets had already left, under other commanders, and they contained most of their heavy Kafcha and Na’shor. Niom’s Na’shor was only one of 168 that he had scheduled for his fleet, of which 32 were still missing. The rest of his 5938 ship fleet was comprised of smaller vessels, but all Oso’lon. Virokor had decided that the V’kit’no’sat were not going to wage war with mixed fleets, but rather by race. The Oso’lon were assigned an invasion corridor, along with the other races, almost in a race to see who could get to the heart of Star Force territory first.

But the Uriti were a wild card here, and they, unlike planets, could move. Virokor’s orders were to NOT fight them, or they’d lose so many ships in the combat that they could end up losing the war. They had to destroy Star Force’s industrial base first, then take the Uriti last when the Star Force support fleets could be thinned and the Uriti isolated. Only then could they kill them, and trying to do so in mixed combat against Star Force drone fleets and the Uriti at the same time was suicide.

Unless they overwhelmed them…but Virokor had stated flatly that was not to be attempted. Any commander that did so would be executed, and Niom wasn’t going to disobey that order. If Virokor wanted to play this cautious and preserve as much of the crusader fleet as possible, then so be it. In the long run it didn’t matter how long this took, so long as it got done right this time.

Niom had spent a lot of time down on one of the three planets in the system, but he was waiting for the rest of his ships onboard his flagship now, impatient to get going. A month and a half later when the rest of them finally arrived, he set out ahead of other Oso’lon fleets still forming up and towards the warfront where little information was making its way back across the desolate regions separating the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force borders. Urrtren tendrils that had been snaked out towards the front to keep the rest of the empire informed had already been taken down, how exactly was a little dubious, but word had reached him that Star Force had attacked and destroyed them and no more construction projects were going to be enacted until the front lines could be hardened enough to protect them.

Because of that Niom was on the command deck for each jump, slightly concerned about ambushes enroute, but he had scout ships out in advance days ahead leaving information packets and transmitters like bread crumbs on multiple routes, letting him choose when he arrived which way to go and making the transition through the mass of stars less predictable. Each fleet was moving on different courses for the same reason, making running into an ambush extremely unlikely.

Yet that’s exactly what Niom ran into after the 17th jump. His Na’shor began picking up the warnings only two minutes before arrival from the ships ahead in the convoy that were transmitting back up the jumpline. The signals were weaker the farther away you got, leaving only a short heads up that there were Star Force warships waiting at the jumppoint.

Niom didn’t have to give any orders, the automatic protocols for such things were well established and set to activate immediately, given how little time there was to react. Niom could override or alter them if needed, but as he looked at the tidbits of information coming in and how the approaching convoy was going to spread slightly wider and decelerate harder, he saw nothing to change…then when his ship hit the brakes and began the deceleration slide coming into the system there was a glitch. Not much of one, but for a moment the ship’s gravity drives lost their push against the star then regained it…but that threw off their arrival point and brought them in closer to the star than expected.

It took a few seconds for the messed up sensor images to straighten themselves out, then he saw it. The debris field of damaged or destroyed ships that were drifting in closer to the star along with the rest of the convoy, for they couldn’t come to a dead stop without having ships behind them slamming into their aft. And that stream of ships was gauntleted by Star Force drone swarms that were firing nonstop into the kill zone across more than 30,000 miles…but they weren’t moving in to engage their middle and close range weapons.

In fact the central zone of that conduit seemed to be safe from their weaponry and only when ships veered off were they engaged…but then he saw it, sitting in near the star far away and throwing energy up the center of the conduit around the jumpline.

It was a Seinac Lancer, and their drift speed was taking them right towards it…and then the horror hit him when his ship’s engines suddenly went out, bracketed in IDF fields, leaving his Na’shor drifting towards the monster weapon.

But those drones couldn’t be transmitting IDF fields across such a long distance. They suffered from the same range deficiencies that the Harthur did. That meant there had to be…

Then he saw one, when another Oso’lon ship rammed it. There were stealthed objects inside the corridor outlined by the drones. The Domjo had its shields pierced and a chunk of its hull went missing, but Niom saw the ship maneuver, meaning the IDF in that area had disappeared.

“Find the IDF emitters and destroy them. They are sensor stealthed,” he ordered aloud while sending the commands through the telepathic inputs at the same time. “Shift shields forward, 90%,” he said, seeing a few Oso’lon ships spread out along the jumpline arrive on the other side of the drones, with portions of the enemy craft peeling off to pursue, but most of his ships were entering inside the kill zone, unable to brake enough to avoid it or swing wide…with several ships colliding with drones as they tried to do so, taking out both vessels given the high speeds involved and a net loss for the V’kit’no’sat, for the Star Force drones were far smaller.

What had happened to his scout ships? How had Star Force amassed an ambush of this size without one of them having reported back? The IDF mine field had to take an enormous amount of time to set up, or had Star Force developed some new technology to extend the range of IDFs?

Niom had no answers. What he had was a lot of ships sitting helpless as the Seinac Lancer tore into them and a number of others that had found gaps in the field and were moving to the flanks to engage the drones. The more ships he had coming in the better odds he would have, but they had to get these damn IDF mines swept away…except they couldn’t see them.

“Reset dispersion on all applicable weapons to detection mode. Fire in all directions, including at our own ships. No blind spots. Find those mines!”

Both his Na’shor and the other ships nearby that still had comms complied, shutting down their weapons that they were currently using, in some cases, to shoot drones on the flanks. That left them more helpless, but some 18 seconds later they began firing again and blanketing huge swaths of space with low levels of energy. Not enough to damage them, but hopefully enough to cause a blip on the sensors.

Niom watched as his Na’shor continued to drift in closer to the star and the grinder that was eating up his ships as no new signals were detected. Not a single one.

“Pulse fire,” he ordered desperately. The weapons ceased firing again, having to reset, then instead of blanket fields they began to send out stronger spurts in specific directions. They were strategic, working through the overall field, and hopefully…

There. He saw a small blip show up, far from his ship, but another Na’shor was within range and reactivated one of its Ardents, firing on the area and missing. Without the active sensors it was guess work, but with another pulse passing over the same area and helping to fix the position, another 4 shots finally landed one that tore off a chunk of the stealth shielding and made it visible to conventional sensors.

Niom saw that IDF mine blown to bits shortly thereafter, with an area on his revised tactical board showing a gap in the IDF field…but one where no ships were, yet, but one was coming in that direction.

With a thought he opened a comm to that ship, ordering it to hold inside that empty area and keep away from the Seinac Lancer and try to moor any nearby ships to help slow their speed, and as more mines were found and eliminated he reiterated the same to other ships as more and more of the convoy continued to come into the jumpline in a wide stagger, with about half of the ships now veering wide enough to avoid the ambush entirely, but he could also see more Star Force ships beyond the ambush point, and they were chasing the escaping ships en mass. He figured some of his ships would survive, but many wouldn’t until he got enough into the system to group up and begin taking down targets in tandem.

Right now everything was spread, and the first burst from the Seinac Lancer hit his ship. It wasn’t as powerful as a Tar’vem’jic, thankfully, but it fired continuously and at far greater range. It was pulling energy from the star akin to a stellar mining platform, and launching it in a gel-like state that kept it from fanning out like an Ardent beam would at great range. That made it hard to hit distant targets, but if you did the packets of energy would hit at full force.

And a 38 mile long and 8 mile wide Na’shor, unable to move, wasn’t too hard a target to hit at extreme range. Fortunately the diamond-shaped ships had entered point on, for they normally flew flat side forward. Traveling at interstellar speeds meant even collision with sand-sized particles was dangerous, so with the almost needle-shaped Oso’lon hulls being put on end, the surface area diminished greatly and that was the only reason why most of the Seinac Lancer pulses were missing wide, but the golden energy was still coming like a fire house. Increased and decreasing in volume, but it was being shot out continuous as the beam wavered back and forth trying to sweep across the Oso’lon ship at more than one million miles.

The beam left his ship shortly thereafter, with Niom realizing it hadn’t been shooting specifically at the Na’shor, but at group of ships much closer in. The gunner had probably tried to wing his ship while transiting between targets, meaning that his flagship wasn’t the focus yet…and he’d already lost 28% of his shields.

Another mine nearby was discovered and destroyed, but the gap created wasn’t close enough…until a smaller Dak’bri further ahead in its own little zone of engine capability shot a mooring beam out at extreme range and pushed for all it was worth against his flagship, giving it some drift momentum to the right that might just cause it to cross into the field.

Niom watched as his Na’shor passed by the Dak’bri at the closest point, then the mooring beam was out of range and his ship was left drifting again, but on a path that was going to be close. He kept an eye on the carnage occurring ahead and the ships fighting in the clear with the drone swarms as the Na’shor briefly crossed the edge of the zone and his engines pushed hard to negated the drift…but not completely succeeding as it only got a few seconds of grip. It slowed the drift further into the system, but didn’t stop it completely.

He saw two more ships move past him, for they were drifting faster than his, and one of them used a mooring beam to push his ship further away, adding momentum to itself, but they were trying to save the flagship and Niom at all costs as the Seinac lancer swept another swath nearby that veered into his ship two more brief times, taking the shields down under 50% as it blasted apart ships much closer to the star.

Then he saw it. A group of Oso’lon ships that had gotten free and were flanking the drone conduit. They weren’t engaging, nor were they going after the Lancer, for it was too heavily guarded at the base of the conduit, but the 17 Oso’lon ships turned and accelerated up the conduit from below, at what was relatively slow speed, and the drones attacked them heavily until they passed into the mine field, hitting one by accident, but the 17 ships were now drifting the opposite direction and pushing with mooring beams against any other Oso’lon ship they could get close enough to, slowing themselves and redirecting the others.

That was dangerous as hell, and not long after the maneuver started to pay off he saw a collision. It wasn’t a full one, and the mooring beams helped avoid the worst of it, but two Domjo hit and tore out the hulls of one another as they were going in opposite directions. Parts of the ships flew off in all directions, but the rest that remained were still functional…save their existing gravity drives couldn’t find much gravity to push on.

Behind him the situation was getting better as more mines were found and destroyed, but the first section of the convoy was in horrible condition. If Niom had been at the front of the line he would have been dead already, but when the field suddenly went down along the edges near the Lancer he saw the drone walls collapse inwards. The Lancer itself fired a few more times then shut down, with Niom seeing its flower petal-like design begin to collapse into transport mode, but what was coming was in some ways worse. For with the conduit now being free to maneuver in, along the edges at least, the wave of drones was moving into firing range on the trapped ships.

Niom watched behind him as his fleet began to get a hold on the upper jumpline point, now with very few mines messing with it and the smaller field further out in the system having been knocked out as well, meaning the hard braking was now in effect and no reinforcements were coming this far in against their will. With every few seconds that passed more ships were coming into the system and his fleet was building, but he was still losing a lot, at a rapid pace, as the conduit walls shrunk with Star Force deactivating the mines when and where they wanted.

Before long that wave of drones got to Niom’s flagship, then the slugging match began in earnest.

2

March 29, 4894

Reenshamat System

Entry jumppoint

Niom had spent more than half a day inside his personal armor, breathing recycled air as he survived within the wreck that had been his flagship along with 18 other Oso’lon survivors and some 328 Zen’zat. The rest of his crew were dead, either from the fight or the collision with another wrecked ship that had occurred 2 hours ago. It was a Star Force one, cut in half but with enough mass to smash what had been the refuge of those wounded. With the last habitable compartment on his Na’shor destroyed, those caught without armor were killed in the vacuum of space and a few others were crushed to death before that by the collision.

But now relief had finally come in the form of a single drop pod. Niom entered first along with half the Oso’lon and all the Zen’zat. The others would have to wait, for the pod was not large enough to fit them all, and his surviving fleet was busy picking up survivors from across the system, for the battle had spread out once the V’kit’no’sat had secured the jumppoint. Niom had not commanded the latter stages, for his ship was destroyed early on, and he did not know the current status of his fleet other than a brief update via comm. The system was theirs. Star Force had fled. But the Oso’lon fleet had taken heavy casualties.

As soon as Niom was on the drop pod he linked into the fleet systems and got a tactical hologram depicting the damage and current positions of all ships…or ship fragments. The Seinac Lancer had escaped, and there were no more Star Force contacts in the system, though there were thousands of ships around the third planet belonging to the natives. They weren’t moving out to interfere, and they were so primitive that even if they did they couldn’t do any damage, but he was glad they were rightfully minding their own business and the planet had already been scanned for any trace of Star Force assets, coming up clean.

The drop pod diverted from its original course as soon as Niom’s presence was determined, taking him away from the Ti’mat it had come from and instead docked with the nearest undamaged Na’shor left in the fleet which now became his flagship. After that the drop pod went back to collect the other Oso’lon left behind, and Niom arranged for them to be brought here as well, for several of the survivors were from his command staff.

The ship’s commander met him in the hangar bay, with the orange/pink spots down his neck/back/tail denoting his membership in the Trugati Herd. It was one of lower status, with few ship captains originating from it, but at this point Niom did not care. A Na’shor was a Na’shor, and all were built exactly the same. If this Oso’lon was not qualified for his post, he would not be here, and more than likely he deserved the position, otherwise his lineage would have disqualified him for even the slightest inadequacy.

“Niom, I am grateful that you survived. My ship welcomes you onboard. I am Kachi, captain of this Na’shor, and it is an honor having you onboard.”

“There is no honor this day, Kachi,” Niom said gravely as he walked off and past the other Oso’lon, with the quadruped captain falling into step beside him. “We have been made fools of. Have any of our scout ships been located?”

“None. No debris either. They simply are not here, but there are two buoys registering the path ahead as clear.”

“There should be at least two vessels here waiting for us,” he growled. “If the patrol commander neglected her duty, I will execute her myself. Which jumpline did Star Force retreat on?”

“Several. The Seinac Lancer went to Sevarti.”

“Where is that?” Niom asked, not recognizing the name of the system. He’d made himself aware of most of them along the conduit of systems his fleet would be jumping through, but virtually all of these systems were uninhabited or barely inhabited, and unknowns as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned.

“It is back the way we came at an angle spinwards and up. Their other ships exited in all directions.”

“They scattered?”

“We chased many, but the scattering appears intentional and not forced by our pursuit. They did not engage in anything less than mismatches, though some of our ships became incensed and fought the mismatches anyway. We have many disabled or destroyed across the system because of this.”

“What is the final count?”

“936 ships destroyed. 428 damaged and unable to maintain fleet speed. Another 128 significantly damaged but with full engine power. Were we aware that they had a Seinac Lancer?”

“Not that I was informed of, but Yaniel insisted that we not underestimate them. It appears his warning was apt.”

“I see no fault on our part, save for perhaps the scouts.”

“Fault or no, the damage is done. I am not interested in laying blame, Kachi. I am interested in victory. How many ships did Star Force lose?”

“Tonnage comparison gives them a 5 to 1 kill rate,” the ship’s captain said, offering the more useful ‘tonnage’ measurement, for Star Force drones were so much smaller that comparing them ship to ship against the V’kit’no’sat fleet was virtually useless.

“That is all?” Niom asked, fearing it would be higher.

“The Seinac Lancer did not have optimal position. We were spared greater losses because of it. Your order to proceed at 85% speed saved us much damage.”

Niom huffed through his two large nostrils. Though he had wanted to arrive at the war front as soon as possible, he had heeded Yaniel’s many warnings concerning Star Force’s penchant for using IDF fields to tamper with incoming jumplines. With enough prep work you could see an entire fleet ramming a star from such sabotage, but proceeding at less than optimal speed gave you additional leverage with your deceleration jump. No sabotage effort could scale across the entire jumpline, meaning only pieces of it would be without gravitational resistance…but if you were coming in at max speed you needed every bit of that distance to decelerate, and missing a single second could end up putting your arrival point within the outer layers of the star.

Niom had insisted on a comfortable margin to prevent this possibility, though he had no idea it would be useful in keeping his ships further away from the trap of the Seinac Lancer. And yet, it hadn’t been enough to escape it entirely.

“It is still a loss,” he reminded the captain as they made their way out of the hangar and into one of the long, tall corridors that the Oso’lon had stretching nearly the entire length of the elongated diamond-shaped ship. Other smaller corridors were for the Zen’zat to move through, but the Oso’lon were so huge the interior design was predicated off of only a few large passages that had doorway connections to nearly every chamber on the ship.

Given their size, the Oso’lon were able to cover ground quickly, but with the 38 mile length of the Na’shor even running was not fast enough for intra-ship movement in times of crisis, so there was a Satu field running along the top of the chamber. Niom and Kachi both walked into the nearest boarding platform and felt the energy fields lift them up to the invisible suspended track that they then walked out on, gradually being accelerated as they stepped from the outer areas to the innermost one.

They were carried quickly over the heads of those below, making the Zen’zat look like little insects as they scurried about carrying out various ship tasks, many of which required the Oso’lon to telekinetically manage if not for the tiny hands of their servants. They made the ships work more efficiently, but the Oso’lon didn’t actually need them. Still, every ship in the fleet had an army of them underfoot and this vessel was no exception.

“What do you want done with the damaged vessels?” Kachi asked.

“We are not moving from this system until our scouts report back. I have to know what happened to them, or another ambush could be awaiting us ahead.”

“Shall we send out more now?”

“Yes. But we will not proceed until the others return…or we determine what happened to them. Until then, we continue recovery operations.”

“Our delay may hurt forward operations.”

“It is unavoidable. We cannot allow ourselves to be whittled down with ambushes such as this. If we do not attack with sufficient strength, their planetary defenses will eviscerate us.”

“As you wish. I will have already made arrangements for you and whatever staff you wish to bring onboard. This Na’shor is fully operation and awaits your orders.”

“Convert it to fleet control immediately, then begin debris collections. We cannot let the locals here have it, nor can we allow Star Force to harvest resources from it in our wake.”

“Disposal or tow?”

“We cannot go back, nor can I risk sending a small flotilla. We must dispose of what we cannot take onboard.”

“A suggestion.”

“Speak.”

“Given the amount of ships that are still to come, perhaps we should secure this system and every other one between our territory and theirs. That way they cannot arrange any more ambushes and all future ship movements, to or from the warfront, will be secure. As it is, we cannot risk cargo shipments if our patrols are compromised.”

Niom looked over at the other small head rising above the massive bodies of the Oso’lon. “Though it pains me to avoid direct combat, I believe you are correct. Securing a route of transit will prevent needless losses such as this.”

“Moving battle stations might also be warranted.”

“No,” Niom said firmly. “We cannot permanently hold this route, or we become predictable. We must occasionally shift, and moving fixed stations is too tedious. We will keep a third of our fleet here for recovery operations, the rest will be split up and sent to secure systems behind us. Once a link is established, we will tow the wreckage back to Vbora. Even if the other attack fleets choose to proceed by different routes, we will maintain this one so cargo fleets will not require escorts. It will be tedious, but I fear you are correct in that it is now necessary,” he said as they began walking to the edge of the Satu and slowing their transit as they approached the off ramp near the command deck.

“The more ships Star Force loses, the less times they will be able to repeat this ambush,” Kachi added. “Once we fully engage them in their territory, they will not be able to spare enough to hurt us.”

“Unless they feel they can do more damage out here than in direct combat,” Niom added as he floated down to ground level, then began walking into an offshoot from the main corridor that led to the command deck. “Disperse scouts to the adjoining 20 systems. I want to know what is around us now…”

Over the next two years Niom did his duty, sacrificing his fleet to hold the 27 links in the travel chain that led from Star Force territory back to the closest Oso’lon border colony. The black hole link was already guarded, due to its significance, and Niom’s forces filled in the rest of the gaps to secure a route free of ambush. Both Oso’lon fleets and those from 6 other races elected to use the route, while the others traveled from their own border colonies and suffered similar ambushes.

Information on them was limited, but with Niom running couriers regularly between systems, a primitive Urrtren link was established between the comm grid and the invading forces. It was slow, but with Niom sitting and waiting impatiently he had all the time in the galaxy to monitor what was going on elsewhere.

And what he saw he did not like. 29 other fleets had been ambushed, 14 with a Seinac Lancer. One with two of them that had cost the Lir’nen nearly an entire fleet of 9,000 ships before Star Force was driven away. The other ambushes were ship only, but the report Niom was reading now was far different. Multiple assaults had been launched on worlds all along the Star Force border, spread out intentionally so not to let the Uriti gather in one region to easily reinforce systems. 18 systems had been invaded and abandoned once Uriti showed up to defend them, while another 39 were under assault with no Uriti showing as of yet.

It was hard fighting to take down those systems, and not all were succeeding for the V’kit’no’sat were not coming in with overwhelming force. Instead they were hitting multiple systems and making Star Force choose where to defend with the Uriti. A single system with overwhelming force could be countered, but split that massive fleet up into 10 smaller fleets and you’d get 7 or 8 systems conquered before the Uriti could be moved around to drive off the invaders. And once there were troops on the ground in good control, the Uriti would only be enough to defend orbit and the real work of the ground troops would come into play holding those gains.

But even as more and more V’kit’no’sat fleets arrived and began to open up additional invasions in more systems, Star Force had managed to smuggle a Uriti beyond their borders and hid it within a star while a Pas’cha fleet passed by. Nearly a third of it had exited the far side of the system, leaving it strung out in a long line curving around the star when Star Force ships emerged from hiding within a nebula and engaged them. Not knowing of the Uriti the Pas’cha had fought back, gradually increasing their numbers since the incoming jumppoint had not been attacked and new ships were arriving safely, but when the battle had swelled to the point the V’kit’no’sat were winning, the Uriti known as Bahamut suddenly appeared beneath them, coming up from the star while the enemy ships began to emit IDF fields and pin the V’kit’no’sat in place.

The end result was the loss of more than 7,000 ships, with the leading third of the convoy not even knowing there was an attack on the rear until they suddenly stopped arriving in the next system further on, save for a scattering of survivors who came with the news of the Uriti ambush.

Once again, Star Force was able to circumvent the V’kit’no’sat patrol fleets, and Niom still did not know how. No breaches on his secure chain of systems had occurred, which he was grateful for, but up and down the intermediate territories V’kit’no’sat scouts were going missing or failing to report in. He believed Star Force was jumping the gaps in some cases where surveillance temporarily lagged, but there was something more going on…which was why two more races had elected to send ships down the Oso’lon conduit rather than risk traversing on their own.

But even when they arrived they were not safe, for moving across the border was hazardous. Star Force was not waiting for the V’kit’no’sat to get to them, and everywhere they could ambush a jumppoint they would, with Virokor ordering most of their fleets to break up into smaller groups and travel by different jumplines. That made those groups easier to ambush, but more ships would end up arriving at their intended destination because Star Force couldn’t block all the routes and they had become too damn good at guessing where they would go.

Reconnaissance was a losing gambit now, for Star Force had somehow managed to get the upper hand on them, so Virokor was switching to defensive maneuvers even as they launched offensive assaults. Niom hated to see that, but he was glad Virokor was adapting faster than he expected. They’d all been told to view Star Force as equals in this war, and already their skill and unpredictability was proving that warning to be true.

This was going to be a hard war to fight, but in the end there could only be one outcome.

The question was, who would survive to see it? Niom intended to, but he also did not want to survive by sitting and watching over unimportant systems. Fortunately for him, a year later he would receive his orders to transition to the front while fleets from other races replaced the Oso’lon on their secure route.

Eventually he arrived with more than 20,000 ships, having received command of two more Oso’lon fleets in the interim, but he had to break them apart past the last staging area per Virokor’s orders. He gave each of the sub-commanders a different route to travel by, but their arrival point would be the same…a moderately strong Bsidd system known as Braum that boasted the most redundant planetary shield generators in the Hov Region, though the defensive weaponry did not match…at least as far as their information said. At this point, Niom wasn’t expecting a guarantee on anything.

He’d find out one way or another in the coming weeks, for when all of his fleets arrived simultaneously from multiple jumppoints, they’d find what Star Force had waiting for them…if they didn’t get ambushed enroute first.

3

February 9, 4897

Defran System (Rim Region)

Rufio

Saavaa was on the ground of the enemy-held planet, trudging through rain forest and water up to his stubby ankles. The hexped Octo’mar had been on the surface for 5 weeks, fighting a combination of H’kar and Clan McClane troops as the two V’kit’no’sat races pushed towards the nearest shield generators to their landing zone. Unlike most of the attack fleets that were comprised of single races, Virokor had allowed some to pair up, and the Octo’mar’s longtime ally the Serni’jar had agreed to make all their invasion forces co-ops.

Both races were similar in size. The Serni’jar had 4 hefty legs and an armored, boxy head. The Octo’mar had two additional legs and a longer neck, but nowhere near as long as that of the Oso’lon. They also had two tails that helped them become decent swimmers on the surface, but they were not aquatic. Both races were land dwellers, and both were slow and heavy. They carried extra armor because of that, for they were not expecting to move fast, and right now Saavaa had a huge hole in his.

He’d stopped the armor from thinning elsewhere and had simply shifted the hole to his belly where it would be extremely hard to shoot, for his legs supported his torso only a meter off the ground. It looked like Octo’mar crawled rather than walked, though that was just a visual illusion. Saavaa’s hips were actually at the top of his back, so his leg length and torso length were nearly the same.

That kept the armor under his belly usually unscathed save for explosives in the ground, but Star Force hadn’t been known to use them very often…and when they had, they’d mined whole fields where their own people were nowhere near. Here, in the jungle, there was a fight going on to keep the V’kit’no’sat from the boundary wall that made up the outer perimeter defense of the shield generator. It was one of hundreds on the planet, but this one was located in an uninhabited region, making it the perfect battlefield for Star Force, who didn’t like fighting amongst their civilians.

Back behind him and his fellow Octo’mar, who were having to push over trees occasionally to get room to move through the jungle, there were huge synthetic mountains made up of grounded Octo’mar and Serni’jar warships. They’d come all the way to ground once they’d punched a hole in the shield generators, and a costly hole at that. They’d lost nearly a third of their fleet in the orbital combat and simultaneously facing down the planetary defenses, but they had their entry vector now and were continuing to push the offensive while bypassing the rest of the intact anti-orbital guns. It was a narrow approach window, but already a small convoy of supply ships had arrived to deliver additional ground troops and prefab structures, giving them a decent base at the LZ even if the warships were not there.

And those warships were providing their own anti-orbital guns, though more than half their weaponry didn’t reach up through the atmosphere too well. Still, it kept the few drones Star Force had left from bombarding Saavaa and the others as they attempted to take another shield generator. Four had already gone down, but only one had been captured relatively intact. It wasn’t operational yet, for the V’kit’no’sat were having to make repairs, but soon it would be back in operation and able to add considerable protection to the ground troops.

He didn’t think this one would be allowed to be taken intact, for the assault was not a surprise one and Star Force would have plenty of time to rig up a self-destruct, but if the Octo’mar and Serni’jar couldn’t take it, they were at least going to deny it to Star Force and open up more of the planet to orbital attacks…unless a Uriti showed up. If that happened the warships would have to flee and the ground troops would have to scatter and mix with the Star Force populations so they couldn’t be targeted from orbit. They would not be relinquishing the planet, however, for the longer they kept a Uriti pinned in one location the better it would be for other assaults. There were only 74 Uriti, and while he and the others had orders not to engage them navally, they were going to dare them to shoot their own people to remove the ground troops on the invaded planets.

No Uriti had showed up here yet, and Saavaa and the other Octo’mar were making decent progress towards the shield generator when a shadow crossed over them. He turned and looked up, for whatever it was causing the shadow was too far above for his Pefbar to pick up. At first he thought the massive object in orbit was a Uriti, but none of the warships were moving. He took a moment and zoomed in with his armor’s vision amplifiers, for there was no warning being broadcast to the troops on the ground. When he did get a good view he saw it was in fact not a Uriti, but a large warship of a type he was unfamiliar with…but it was getting closer.

Soon the grounded warships began to open fire, sending hundreds of Ardent and Var’ko beams up through the thick atmosphere to the ship overhead, but Saavaa couldn’t watch anymore. Star Force mechs were approaching, including one of their big ones. It was a hexped and outsized even the Serni’jar Ultra that fighting further to the east, but with this mech came smaller, faster ones that Saavaa was going to have to deal with.

They fired through the jungle, not caring about the trees, and hit Saavaa on his forward shields. They held, but when the Octo’mar returned fire more than half his shots missed, irritating him greatly. V’kit’no’sat accuracy when firing from their armor was usually 97% or better at this range, for they had auto tracking programs built into the weapons. Shooting something as small as Zen’zat was different, dropping down to a pathetic 82%, but against opponents of similar size to Saavaa, missing was rare.

The trouble was, he was standing almost still while the mechs were moving about with many trees in between them. Somehow they were picking their firing lines better than he was, and whenever he shot at the mechs a lot of his Dre’mo’don orbs hit tree trunks or even just thick branches, diminishing their damage even when they did hit the mechs. That also left a lot of flying debris falling amongst the trees that would have interfered with normal sensors, but not the V’kit’no’sat’s…which made it even more infuriating that he was missing with so many shots.

The large mech further back didn’t try firing through the trees, rather it lobbed an energy orb up and over them, with it falling on top of another Octo’mar to Saavaa’s right. The Star Force perversion of a Uit streamer punched through his already weakened shields and morphed around his armor partway to the ground before the explosion came. Two Octo’mar beside him were knocked down, and Saavaa was thrown into a thick tree that kept him upright…though the tree didn’t fare as well. The Octo’mar that had been hit survived, though with most of his armor on the top side gone. The blast hadn’t made it through to his skin, but Saavaa could see the armor thinning elsewhere and moving in ripples to strengthen the weak spot.

He and the others knew they couldn’t take that pounding, so they started running forward and shooting trees out of the way. They had to get up to the big mech and attack it from the underside, ignoring the smaller mechs if need be. And the more trees they knocked down, the better the firing lines for the troops behind him would get, and there were five waves of Octo’mar following up behind…

Suddenly he got hit from the rear. It wasn’t a large hit, but rather a shockwave traveling through the atmosphere. He turned and looked, seeing the huge cone-shaped ship sitting in low orbit with a few crackles of orange energy around it and one of the grounded Kafcha being the epicenter of a growing mushroom cloud of debris that hadn’t yet reached its apex to start falling back to ground.

“What ship is that?” the Octo’mar two down in the assault line asked, with Saavaa and the others all worried. There was no way they could survive even a glancing shot from that weapon.

“Doesn’t matter,” Saavaa said aloud and telepathically so all those nearby would hear even if their comms were damaged. “If we’re near Star Force troops they won’t target us. So press forward, now, before they catch us out,” he said as a secondary blast wave knocked a few more trees down, but didn’t dislodge any of the V’kit’no’sat or the mechs.

495 lightyears away…

Peevaw dove away from a Star Force aerial fighter, dropping so fast that the gravity drives on the enemy vessel couldn’t keep up. Having wings helped in a number of occasions, and this was one, for the friction helped brake him in addition to his own gravity drives in his armor, which were heavy due to the fact that he was flying a K’lak’tal combat suit built for space combat. He couldn’t maneuver as quickly as he liked, but he was still more agile than the enemy craft…though not by much.

The I’rar’et didn’t care about the Star Force flyer. Not right now anyway, for others were dealing with them. His job was to target the mechs, which the heavier firepower that the K’lak’tal carried turned out to be well suited for. When this invasion began they weren’t using them, but some innovative I’rar’et had tried it and found it worked well. Now every I’rar’et invasion fleet was using them as bombers against the mech ground forces while lighter armed I’rar’et were acting as skirmishers against the small aerial enemy.

However, there were larger versions roaming out there with increased firepower, mostly in the form of missiles that could down him quickly. Right now there were none in this engagement, leaving him free to carefully strafe a group of two legged mechs engaging Zen’zat in armored vehicles. Without coopting with another race, the I’rar’et had to use the Zen’zat heavy attack craft, otherwise the mechs would turn their weapons to the skies and shoot down too many of them. This way they had to split their firepower, but several K’lak’tal had already been shot down.

Peevaw was luckier than them, getting to hit the rear of two of the mechs and blast through their shields with enough residual firepower to create puffs of vaporized armor just before he streaked past at low altitude, firing on another mech further up when he got hit from behind. His own shields held long enough for him to veer off and around an ice pillar, taking him out of view as he passed over two friendly Zen’zat hover tanks.

They let him pass, then fired up at the enemy aerial craft behind him, though it had been one of the mechs that managed the hit. The Zen’zat returned the favor, winging one of the three aerial craft before six I’rar’et caught up to them from the flanks and downed one of the Star Force flyers. The other two split, leaving Peevaw alone as he lazily circled around between ice pillars, staying out of view as much as he could before lining up another attack run…for he couldn’t hold position and slug it out with anything larger than infantry. And unfortunately Star Force hadn’t deployed any of theirs this far out from the city.

The city’s defenses were keeping the I’rar’et away, for they had heavy anti-air batteries that he would be stupid to challenge. The Zen’zat had to get up close and knock them out…and when they did, the I’rar’et would come in and obliterate everything from the air.

Right now Star Force was doing a good job of keeping the Zen’zat away from the city and knocking down a fair number of I’rar’et, though most were recoverable because the Zen’zat were pushing forward, albeit slowly. There was a line of downed mechs and Zen’zat craft reaching all the way back to the landing zone where the I’rar’et had been hit hard trying to get troops on the ground, but they’d had little choice.

They could put the troops down at the shield perimeter, which only covered a third of the small planet, or they could push in under it and get them closer. They’d chosen the latter, for if they’d started further out it would have been to Star Force’s advantage…though there were two smoking hulks of Zen’zat orbital transports, both bigger than a drop pod, that lay on the ice far behind them testifying to how strong the Star Force mech contingent here was.

The I’rar’et had gotten their troops out and the other transports safely away, but those two were going to be a loss, especially since some aerial fighters had backdoored the advancing army and pounded the grounded transports so they wouldn’t be recoverable.

But that didn’t matter. It was an investment that was getting them closer to the city where the nearest shield generator stood at the center, and with a few more mechs taken down the Zen’zat were going to be able to push up against the static defenses. That would hurt, but there was no way around it save for orbital bombardment, and the fleet that had been sent to take this system wasn’t large enough for that. There were only 328 ships, but that was more than enough to overwhelm Star Force’s defenses, for this was an inconsequential system amongst many others being hit. If the enemy brought a large defense fleet here, they’d have to pull them from more valuable worlds…and the same went for a Uriti. Odds are that wouldn’t happen, meaning what the I’rar’et had to fight was right in front of them.

It was doable, but they were going to have to pay a price for this world. And then they were going to have to garrison it, keeping as many of the locals alive as possible. That was a huge change for Peevaw, who’d been one of the few in this invasion that had fought Star Force before. Back then they’d just bombarded everything from orbit once the shield generators were down then sent in ground troops to mop up what was left.

But not now. They had to take every bit of territory on the ground the hard way, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t kill the enemy. Anyone who shot at them was fair game, and any that got in the way of the combat or were located near high valued targets were also considered collateral damage, but the rest were an objective to capture and any of the Star Force warriors were a highly valued bonus, though it didn’t look like surrender was on their minds right now.

Peevaw wasn’t taking this attack lightly, nor were the other I’rar’et. Even though they had an advantage, he didn’t expect Star Force to give an inch willingly. The V’kit’no’sat were going to have to take all the systems in their path, paying the necessary price in equipment and personnel to do it. Hopefully what they captured would help reimburse them somewhat for the losses of material, in the long run, but right now there wasn’t anything but destruction on Peevaw’s mind as he zigzagged through ice pillars and came out behind a larger group of mechs.

There was no Star Force aerial cover at the moment, so he unloaded into one of the backwards-legged mechs and knocked it to the ground, though he wasn’t sure if that was from damage or the limited explosive jarring of his Nioa warheads. The compacted energy orbs released a hell of a kick on impact, but it was amplified with the vaporization of hull armor and there was an instantaneous cloud formed as the mech fell over.

Rather than veering hard left and almost turning about, he tried to zip across to the far side of the wide canyon to the cover of more jutting ice formations, but he never made it. Some of the mechs reacted too fast and his K’lak’tal took several hits. He felt a burn on his left flank, but that’s not what dropped him to the ground. Rather the gravity drives within the suit suddenly went offline and his desperate wing flaps were not enough to lift both him and the bulky suit, resulting in him crashing into the snow and plowing a furrow all the way up to one of the ice pillars but still within easy targeting of the mechs.

He didn’t have to wait long, for the following shots pounded him mercilessly until he felt the burns on his flesh and he blacked out…only to revive a short time later thanks to the Kich’a’kat inside the suit. The burning was replaced by the icy cold of the planet’s atmosphere, but he didn’t dare move. The mechs had refrained from blasting his armor to pieces, so if he held still maybe they’d wouldn’t notice he was still alive.

If the Zen’zat didn’t push up to his position soon, the Kich’a’kat was going to have to repair his exposed back over and over again as the cold damaged it. That wasn’t something he wanted to endure, but if it kept him alive long enough to be rescued, then so be it. He’d gotten too arrogant and tried to shoot a gap he couldn’t make, and Peevaw very much wanted to live through his mistake…even if it was only because of the mercy Star Force had extended to him, for they probably knew V’kit’no’sat armor had regenerators, yet they’d left his body intact enough to be repaired.

If he made it out of this he’d make sure to find one of their warriors and extend the favor in return, for he hated the idea of being in the enemy’s debt.

No. He’d return it 3 times over. That should be enough to compensate for his stupidity. He never should have underestimated the reaction times of these mechs…or the inability to fly the K’lak’tal in gravity under his own power.

That was a downside that someone had apparently never bothered to bring up, for these K’lak’tal suits were damn heavy and built for space…and if you lost gravity drives out there you just floated until pickup.

4

May 23, 4897

Braum System (Star Force territory)

Winage

Niom stood in the command deck onboard his Na’shor flagship looking down on the large planet below and the fleet of enemy drones clustered in 9 different groups nearby. Some of them were system defense models and larger than their standard versions, but all of them were smaller than a Ti’mat and shaped like elongated Brat’mar vessels, sharing the same coin shape. They were not a major problem, for Niom’s fleet outmassed theirs 9 to 1, though it should have been 11 to 1.

Two of his fleet groups had not arrived along with the others. He’d split them up into 18 separate groups ordered to jump into the system on 18 different jumplines simultaneously. Two had failed to make it, and another had been ambushed enroute with only two thirds of their ships arriving, but most of his fleet groups had entered the system uncontested.

However, the system defenders had not heavily engaged his ships at the entry jumppoints. They were staying close to the planets and refusing to get into a fight outside the range of the surface batteries. Niom had taunted them twice, but both times they would not take the bait and never moved further than the outer limits where the Ardent beams lost cohesion. Had they been firing a true beam the range would have been much farther, and whatever spreading occurred would still deliver full power to ships as large as a Na’shor, which were hard to miss.

The problem with range in the V’kit’no’sat/Star Force weaponry was the fact that their weapons were not true beams. They were various forms of exotic energy bound together into packets. Some were very loose, others very compact, but all had range limitations. When that bonding expired the energy inside literally ‘puffed’ into scattered chaos. Even a Tar’vem’jic had its limits, though its bonding power was the strongest yet created. Without it, the power levels of ranged weapons would drop so low they wouldn’t do more than tickle the advanced shield generators both sides now possessed.

However, one weapon that Star Force used and the V’kit’no’sat did not was a mass launcher. It was hard to aim at distance, but against an unmoving target it had no range limitation and the larger the target the easier it was to hit…and V’kit’no’sat ships were huge in comparison to Star Force’s. A few of the synthetic rocks had already been flung up at his fleet where it sat some 480,000 miles above the planet, with the V’kit’no’sat dampening shields catching them. However, if they’d been involved in heavy battle, they wouldn’t have enough power for those shields to be continually hit and recharged.

Niom thought Star Force was doing it just to rattle the V’kit’no’sat, until one hit and was stopped by another Na’shor not too far away from his flagship…then once it was caught in the collapsible energy field of the dampening shields and its momentum totally cancelled out it exploded, taking a tiny chunk of the Na’shor with it. Its regular shields had caught some of the blast prior to them collapsing, but Niom had never seen Star Force use a weapon variant such as this.

“Evasive maneuvers! Set shields to redirect, not stop, the objects. Realign the fleet to allow clear passage.”

A few moments later a comm line opened and a hologram of another Oso’lon appeared.

“What are we waiting for Niom? The other ships are probably not coming. We have what we have. Either attack or withdraw from the system. The longer we wait, the more time Star Force has to bring in reinforcements.”

Niom growled, wanting to flick his long neck in a gesture of disrespect, but his fellow Oso’lon commander was correct. There was no point in waiting unless the Star Force fleet could be drawn out into combat away from the planet, and it was apparent they were not going to be so easily tricked into fighting at a disadvantage.

“Very well. If they will not come to us, then we are forced to go to them.”

“I would prefer another route, but the situation is what it is.”

“Prepare for fleet orders. We must hit them hard and fast.”

“We will be ready,” the other Oso’lon promised, cutting the comm as another slew of projectiles came up from the planet towards the fleet. Some of them missed as the ships moved, but a few were not quick enough and had to deflect…with one of the somewhat unpredictable deflections hitting another ship. That ship half caught the object, but not before it hit its conventional shields at partial speed, sapping their strength by more than 40%, though it did not explode.

A quick scan of it determined it was a solid projectile meant for mass-only damage, meaning Star Force was firing the exploding versions along with the others, and so far ranged sensors were not able to pick up the difference between the two.

As he monitored that ongoing situation he was mentally coordinating with his staff to set up the attack pattern. It took a few minutes, then the leading edge of his fleet broke into three groups snaking off like tendrils down towards the planet. They approached close to the same location, but began firing on 3 different shield generator locations as the planetary defenses opened fire with a horde of Ardent beams lighting up the closest Oso’lon ships…which immediately retreated, putting other ships between them and the planet to share the damage before a single ship could be destroyed.

The Star Force fleet responded immediately, collapsing on those three tendrils of ships that quickly moved to engage them and stopped firing on the planet. As they did so Niom brought the bulk of his fleet in between the trio of fleet groups and began assaulting another shield generator, and only that one, while the other ships acted as skirmishers keeping the drones away from the actual point on the planet where the Oso’lon were seeking to penetrate the shields and land their troops.

Niom watched the shield levels barely dip as his fleet unleashed their Var’ko and Ardents at range, then added their medium range weaponry as they came down to just above the atmosphere, circling back up like river currents as soon as they took hull damage to get in the rear of the formation and then rotate around into firing position again minutes later. He could see the ground batteries trying to pick on individual ships, and in some cases succeeded in doing extreme damage, but none lost maneuvering capability and other ships were moving out to impose themselves between the damaged vessels and the planetary defenses as planned.

But it was going to take time to punch a hole through these robust shields, and once the damaged ships began cycling back into firing position he was going to start losing some of them. That couldn’t be helped if he wanted to assault this planet, not to mention the other 4 in the system just as heavily defended, but he had to obtain a foothold on Winage before a Uriti arrived. If the shields weren’t down, or he didn’t have a sizeable contingent of troops on the ground, the Oso’lon would have to retreat and give up whatever gains they’d made. They couldn’t, and wouldn’t, engage a Uriti. That meant time was probably not on their side for two had been confirmed to be within a handful of jumps from this system, though where they were at the moment was unknown, for the reports were 4 weeks old at the freshest.

Niom kept his own ship in the rotation until it took hull damage, then he regretfully pulled it towards the back and kept it there. He couldn’t afford to be lost, but others were as the first ships began to take serious damage…meaning crew being killed internally even if the ship was still functional. The first full ship loss occurred on the third rotation, and from there the number of ships cycling began to slowly diminish. He had over 17,000 for this assault, but he was going to lose a good chunk of those because of the denseness of the shield generators in this system, and if he was going to assault the other planets he’d have to wait until he got more fleet reinforcements.

He’d known that coming in, but he’d hoped he could lure the Star Force fleet away and deal with them separately, for now a lot of his ships were busy fighting them and keeping them away from the assault column in the center of his current fleet formation. If they were able to sneak through and pinpoint target the damaged ships, they might be able to completely annihilate his fleet.

But that wasn’t going to happen. His skirmisher fleets were doing their job, and even when the planetary guns hit his ships, the mass of the V’kit’no’sat vessels was their greatest advantage. Add in their shields that had to be penetrated first and they were hard to kill, but the more time they spent firing on a single spot in the shields the more damage they had to eat, and the depletion rate was agonizingly slow as Niom watched the strength of the shield at the assault point grow weaker and weaker.

When they are about a third of the way through he saw a group of drones break off and try to backdoor his formation and get at the troop transports safely in the rear. He didn’t like pulling more ships off the attack cycle, but Niom had no choice. Those transports were heavily defended, but they didn’t have the firepower to fight back. If he ordered them to flee they would be safe, but he needed them in close to run down through the soon to be gap in the shields and Star Force knew it. He had to send ships to protect them, which would diminish his attack column’s endurance while not diminishing the firepower of the rotating ships, for they were not all spreading out to attack simultaneously.

He monitored the transports and the smaller battle breaking out there as another of the projectiles from the surface slammed into a Dak’bri in his fleet and got through. Either they didn’t have dampener shields up, or couldn’t spare the power from their convention shields. The projectile disappeared inside the hull and didn’t come out the other side, but the damage reports from that vessel flashed into view and Niom could see that it was nearly a lethal hit. The ship limped back out of the line slowly, but the planetary gunners didn’t ignore it. They focused several Ardents on it before other vessels could get in place to block for it, and the Dak’bri saw several minor explosions on the hull…not fireballs, but from the vaporization of hull armor and interior decks along with the decompression of living areas.

Niom ground his teeth together angrily as the Dak’bri lost engine power and began to drift back down towards the planet. He almost wanted to let it hit the shields and make them switch to dampeners to catch it, but there were still crew alive onboard and he’d been ordered to keep his people intact as much as he could. This was going to be a long war, and impatience was an enemy that could not be played with, so he ordered nearby vessels to attach mooring beams and pull it out of the planet’s gravity well while other blockers now got into place.

More of the projectiles were being flung up sporadically, most of which hit their targets, a few of which exploded once inside. Those ships were lost almost immediately, and Niom hated having to be so confined in low orbit. He was giving them such easy targets, and his fleet couldn’t properly block them while running their conventional shields at such a high regeneration rate. They could have both up at the same time, but there was only so much reactor power to go around, and their weaponry and engines were soaking up a good amount of it.

However, the toll being exacted on the shield was adding up, and four hours into the assault the first hole opened. It wasn’t long lived, but several shots got through it and hit the shield generator. They didn’t penetrate, for the generator had a secondary shield covering itself, but the recharge rate on the planetary shields only filled in the gap momentarily, with more shots hitting and breaking through again, over and over, allowing a small amount of firepower to hit the surface.

Niom was watching closely, knowing the moment was near, when more shields started popping up around the location. It took a moment to identify their source, and it was coming from large mechs that had arrived at the location earlier while the local population had been evacuated. The shields they produced were small, but there were more than 60 of them down there combining to give the primary generator a third shield.

That would delay the fall of the primary by at least another minute, and in that timespan the planetary defense guns would do more damage to his fleet. Star Force was going to stretch out their damage advantage as much as they could, for once that primary generator went down the closest anti-orbital batteries would be the immediate targets. They had their own secondary shields, but they wouldn’t hold up for more than a few salvos against the combined firepower of his fleet.

Others with firing lines yet protected under other shield generators would still be immune, but all he needed was one primary shield generator down to land his troops, even if they overlapped a bit. One route down to the surface was enough, and even now as the moment approached he began bringing his transports closer to prepare for the run down to the surface.

The moment came some 16 minutes later when the secondary shield over the generator went down. The weak third shield wouldn’t last long, so Niom orders his transports forward with blocking vessels to soak up some of the firepower from the planetary guns.

When those transports got almost all the way to the front lines the other ships parted to let them through as the mechs lay smoking on the ground along with the now gutted shield generator marking the epicenter of the 73 mile wide hole in the planetary shield.

“Now,” he said, almost to himself as the fleet acted on its own timing. Warships pushed down into the atmosphere alongside the transports until they got too low on the horizon to be targeted by the big guns that were even now being taken down by the fleet in orbit…but other smaller batteries opened up and began to chip away at the descending ships. He saw one transport get hit hard by combination fire and drop to the surface in a controlled crash, crushing several buildings underneath it but telemetry reported that aside from injuries there were no fatalities in the crew…until a nearby battery rotated around and began pounding the ship in one of its hangar bays.

Niom ordered it targeted and destroyed, but not before 18 signatures within the ship disappeared, two of which were Oso’lon.

More smaller batteries were being taken out as they identified themselves, for most were hidden prior to opening up. Star Force didn’t want him to know how many weapons they had, and that tactic was costing him some minor losses, but as the rest of his transports all got down to the lower atmosphere he ordered his ships to pull back…then countermanded the order as the Star Force drones tried to run down to the surface and attack the transports.

Niom felt the pit in his stomach drop out. There were too many drones left to ignore, and that meant keeping his fleet above the atmosphere to battle them or let them get to ground and do an insane amount of damage. He had to fight and contain them up here, even as a few went wide to try and evade and come around from odd approaches…which drew pursuing ships into range of other anti-orbital guns further around the curve of the planet.

Star Force was going to make the V’kit’no’sat fight over the planet until all the drones were gone, meaning his fleet had to continue to take egregious losses until by the lessening number of anti-orbital guns. He couldn’t withdraw out of range now, or he’d sacrifice his ground troops.

He was stuck, but if that was the price they had to pay, then so be it. This planet was going to be theirs, and soon even a Uriti arriving would not matter. Unless they finally found the grit to fire on their own people to remove the Oso’lon.

Niom didn’t think they had it in them, but it was still a nagging worry in the back of his mind. Virokor’s entire battle plan was based on the assumption they wouldn’t. Give the long history Star Force had with the V’kit’no’sat obliterating their planets, it was a safe bet that if they could have made that leap they would have done so long, long ago…but there was still that small possibility that could not be completely ignored.

Still, they had yet to demonstrate such an ability, and if his troops had enough time they were going to dig in so hard no orbital bombardment could remove them. The fate of this planet would be decided on the surface…so long as Star Force didn’t bring in another fleet of drones capable of defeating the grounded warships. Zen’zat could disappear amongst the Star Force infrastructure, but Oso’lon were too large. They needed the warship backup until they built or captured planetary shield generators.

Several small models were already being sent down, but the big ones wouldn’t be shipped in until the surface was truly secure. They weren’t even in the system yet, for a Uriti could easily take those out. This invasion would have to progress much further before they devoted the resources for that kind of a hold, because there was no reason to waste such resources if a trip by a Uriti could scratch them off the surface within seconds.

Niom needed prisoners to pack around such sites, and until he had them his grounded warships were going to be the only anti-orbital defense he had available. It should be enough, so long as no reinforcements arrived, and with so many other systems being hit, he figured Star Force didn’t have much to spare…though with the importance of this system, he wasn’t going to be surprised if something did show up, and soon.

5

July 2, 4897

Hefo System (Bozse Region)

Nautilus

There, Vax thought to himself as she saw the first breach in the planetary shields. It won’t be long now.

Which was good, for the Garas’tox fleet was losing a fair number of ships and Vax didn’t like taking any losses, but this system was far less defended than many others in Star Force territory. The shield generators were solid, she couldn’t fault them there, but the number of defense ships was lacking. She almost assumed it was a bias against water worlds, but there were also two less populated land dominated planets in the system that were less shielded than this one.

It must have been a priority issue, but to the aquatic Garas’tox, leaving one of the most deep water planets in Star Force territory without a robust defense fleet was offensive in the extreme. The V’kit’no’sat had always had an aerial bias during the reign of the Zak’de’ron…which few remembered these days…and since then there had been a heavy land bias. Against the Hadarak in space it didn’t matter. A warship was a warship. But when it came to allotting planetary defense stations, the V’kit’no’sat aquatics worlds had always been shortchanged.

The Garas’tox worlds were heavily defended with other weapons of local production, but anything involving Yeg’gor or Tar’vem’jic had to be rationed and Itaru did the rationing. Vax was sad to see what looked like a similar bias within Star Force.

She shook off the notion, shivering down her spine and wiggling in the water-filled command deck that had little bubbles of air here and there for the Zen’zat to work in. They at least understood the value of water worlds, and their illegitimate spawn seemed to as well, for the world Vax’s fleet was assaulting wasn’t just populated by aquatics, but by a large number of land dwellers also. They built cities above and below the surface, whereas the V’kit’no’sat usually spurned such construction. There were so many worlds to choose from in their domain they could get picky about where they put down colonies, whereas it looked like Star Force was making due with whatever they had available.

Or perhaps not. The design of this planet lacked the sophistication of a Garas’tox world, but there was an elegance to the structures. Most could not be seen from orbit, though sensors gave at least silhouettes of most below water. There was a curious sediment in the oceans that blocked full scans, but Vax could see the approximate layout that she was about to invade and the Garas’tox almost approved, save for the diminutive size of most of the buildings. It would require Zen’zat to go in and do most of the fighting, which was distasteful, but the Garas’tox would rule the open water as usual…once they got down there.

Sporadic holes in the planetary shield weren’t going to be enough, and it was looking like the secondary shields around the generators were much more durable than expected. The one they were targeting already had taken several heavy shots and was still holding, but it would fall eventually. Star Force didn’t have enough drones here to stop them, and the planetary weapons, while a nuisance, couldn’t mass enough firepower to cut away at her own. Vax’s fleet was going to break through with less than 6% ship losses, but those numbers scared her.

Not for this assault. The planet, then the two dry worlds would be hers soon enough. It was the loss of ships that bothered her, for Star Force had so many planets. She might lose more taking the dry worlds, then the next system invasion the Garas’tox would lose more, and more, and more…even if they avoided the Uriti at all times. Star Force has so many planets with heavy shield generators and defensive batteries that the Garas’tox were going to be blooded to the extreme to see this conquest through. Vax worried that Mak’to’ran had been right, but she also worried what Star Force would become if they let them have their freedom. The V’kit’no’sat needed to annex or destroy them now, but the cost to do it was going to be very heavy, for her fleet had to sit and take damage while they drained the shield generators, and without a Mach’nel there was no other way to go about doing it.

And she hadn’t been gifted with one. Her place in the Garas’tox was too low, and the three Mach’nel that her race possessed were elsewhere, but all had been sent to this war in order to diminish ship losses as much as possible. The problem was, if Star Force knew where they were going to attack they could bring a Uriti in and crush the Mach’nel. So far that hadn’t happened, and Vax expected it wouldn’t unless someone lost their nerve and fought out of spite. Virokor had given strict orders to retreat and not allow that matchup, or any other, to occur with the Uriti if there was the option of withdrawal. Vax knew that didn’t sit well with many commanders, but they would obey. At least the Garas’tox would, though she couldn’t say for sure about all the others. There might be a fool or two among them.

“Deploy,” she ordered when the targeted shield generator finally disappeared in a debris ridden explosion that rained down smoking meteors into the surrounding ocean. The shield generator had been built on top of an artificial island that extended up more than two miles to reach the atmosphere, for generating shields through water reduced their efficiency by 28% in standard water. The Garas’tox had built their own above water as well, but they kept a secondary shield system below. It would create a weak planetary shield within the water, allowing the upper levels of the ocean to absorb a lot of the energy weapons.

The problem with that was it gave the air dwellers access to their world, but if they had to bunker down and hold off against an assault fleet, pulling that shield lower and lower in the water would increase the combined strength of field and water mass, making it harder to knock out the lower shield generators, though not impossible. And combined with shield conduits allowing subsurface weapons access to the air and them not having to suffer vaporization losses passing through the water, it made the aquatics’ worlds the most resilient against orbital bombardment.

Which was why it was stupid for the V’kit’no’sat not to further reinforce them with ample planetary defense stations. The J’gar had proved how powerful that tactic could be, for they’d used their ration of the superior technology to heavily reinforce a handful of worlds in such a manner, then spread out the other planetary defense stations more sporadically, though each world got at least one.

Why Star Force hadn’t done so here, at least with their lesser technology, was something Vax didn’t understand. The waters were so deep here that this world was valuable even by V’kit’no’sat standards…yet here she was, about to take it with a fleet far smaller than should have been required.

The Garas’tox commander watched as her troop transports flew down towards the planet with their O-shaped hulls that were stretched out a bit and reinforced fore and aft. All their ships were so designed, and in space it didn’t make much sense to the non-aquatic races, for the more mass you had in one position the easier it was to defend that mass. That hadn’t stopped some of the other races from building wilder designs, but for the Garas’tox the open space in the center of their ships was critical for landing operations, as Star Force would soon see.

Vax didn’t take her warships down. Not yet. They were still shooting at targets exposed by the single shield generator that had fallen and they also needed to draw fire away from the troop transports. If that meant taking hull damage then so be it, for those transports were much smaller and far more valuable. Star Force apparently agreed, for every battery within rage changed their firing trajectories and targeted those ships, with several being hit despite their escorts blocking for them.

Vax’s long neck snaked back and forth in an irritated gesture similar to what the Oso’lon and other long necks did, whether they were on land, in air, or under water. It was one commonality they all had, and Vax was pissed at her miscalculation. If she’d known Star Force would totally ignore her ships now pounding towards a second shield generator as a distraction, she would have sent them all down together to further shield the transports. As it was happening, the extreme range planetary guns were getting free shots at her ships despite them not being able to target the transports around the curve of the planet.

“All ships,” she said audibly, with her voice echoing through the water-filled chamber with a gravitas land dwellers could never match. “Descend immediately. Get below their firing arcs.”

The view from the holograms of the outside environment suddenly shifted, with the horizon of the planet drifting upwards as her Kafcha-class warship and her 4,294 ship fleet began to descend. They couldn’t all fit through the 102 mile wide hold in the planetary shield simultaneously, but the lower they got to the planet the more of the distant guns wouldn’t be able to target them.

Vax followed up with more specific telepathic orders to certain command deck crewmembers, instructing the 38 Kafcha she had remaining…for one had already been destroyed…to descend last in line. They could take more pounding than the smaller ships, and she’d rather repair a damaged Kafcha than have to replace a destroyed Domjo. Damaged ships had crew remaining alive. Destroyed ones did not. And experienced crew were far harder to replace than warships.

Despite the bottleneck, her fleet moved smoothly and efficiently through the gap in the shields, braking hard and spreading out laterally when they got underneath them before they gently touched the water all the while being hit with missiles and other shorter range weapon systems. It was harassment that they had to suffer through, and damage was taken, but no warships were destroyed. Two already damaged transports went down, crashing into the water rather than landing, but Vax knew most of their passengers would survive the impacts.

That was a big advantage over ‘landing’ on land. Even the term was biased towards the land dwellers, and the hard ground was much less forgiving than the water, which was why when her transports and warships touched down they sank in part way then held station, disgorging underwater weapons, setting up defense perimeters, and essentially creating a vast, interconnecting underwater city within hours as transport tubes reached out gently link ship to ship, though that was more of a formality than any structural necessity. Swimming was swimming, in tube or not, and by the time Vax’s lightly damaged Kafcha touched down, the Garas’tox had their foothold amply secured.

The transports had fully unloaded before her ship touched down, spurting out schools of the large Garas’tox with much slower ‘minnows’ of Zen’zat tasked with support operations. Neither were met unchallenged though, for this Axius world had a large array of aquatics warships waiting for them…though they wisely did not approach the Garas’tox warships. Rather they waited until the Garas’tox troops swam out to meet them in what would be a fair fight.

Vax knew not to underestimate the Star Force aquatics ships, for they were the equivalent of the mechs the land dwellers fought. They allowed the puny Zen’zat offshoots to combat the larger races, and underwater was no different. However, their support troops had a speed advantage on her Zen’zat, and as she watched combat breaking out their Elarioni and Suvo were quickly flanking the main engagement and going after her Zen’zat.

Vax deployed some Garas’tox guard units to the flanks, bringing them out from the warships, but the Elarioni and Suvo were too fast and could pick and choose when to engage the Garas’tox. Normally they’d have another servant race with them, known as the Chavco, which were even faster than the Elarioni, but the J’gar who controlled the Chavco and set their assignments with the other aquatics races had redirected them to Warden assignments only, meaning Vax was going to have to work with no fast moving support troops.

She did not like that, but it wasn’t going to stop her from crushing this Axius force. It would just take more time, for they could run as much as they liked, but one by one their cities and defense forts would fall and eventually all those on the planet would submit to the Garas’tox or be forced to flee further into the vastness of the oceans and try to survive on what pittance they could find out there…or go feral and start eating the less advanced sea creatures. Either way, Nautilus would belong to the Garas’tox and Vax hoped they’d be able to keep it, for the initial intelligence reports had been accurate, now confirmed by the landed warships that were sampling the water and scanning the seafloor.

This wasn’t the best waterworld in the galaxy, but it was definitely top tier and well suited to the Garas’tox even more so than the J’gar who preferred slightly warmer water. And with the oceans blocking some orbital attacks, it was questionable whether or not a Uriti could be used to remove them. Vax had no doubt that a Uriti used properly could devastate a water world, for simply boring a hole down into the crust and releasing a magma plume would begin to heat up and vaporize the water, but from an orbital bombardment point alone, the oceans acted like a rechargeable shield of their own, and most of the Star Force cities were sitting on the seafloor.

That didn’t make her feel safe, but with Star Force’s reluctance to commit to friendly fire casualties in order to target the V’kit’no’sat, Vax hoped they wouldn’t bother committing a Uriti here and save its precious time for the land dwellers that had nowhere to hide from its attacks. For if the Garas’tox could establish a permanent base here, they could use it as a point of stable resupply and branch out to other assaults, providing a badly needed forward base. As it was, numerous fleet groups were going missing as they transited across the stars beyond Star Force territory. What or how Star Force was managing to ambush and destroy them with was unknown and becoming alarming, for some fleet groups were never heard from again, and the likelihood of destroying every single ship out of 200 or more vessels was implausible, though not impossible.

Vax was becoming convinced that Star Force had some new weapon or tactic that the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t discovered, and with the Uriti able to show up and hammer any location they wanted, the V’kit’no’sat could not put down the necessary infrastructure on any captured world without losing it in a matter of minutes. That meant long supply lines and rendezvous points between Star Force territory and the furthest edge of V’kit’no’sat territory, and Star Force was doing so much damage as they were moving back and forth that some races had begun annexing the intermittent systems and garrisoning them with entire fleets just to make sure their supply routes were not ambushed.

That meant a whole lot of ships being tied up doing nothing, effectively neutralized by the threat of attack Star Force was using to strike fear into the V’kit’no’sat. If Vax could take and hold this world in a way that did not allow a Uriti to uproot them, they’d either have a true forward base to work out of or they’d tie up a huge Star Force fleet in orbit blockading them. Perhaps even a Uriti with it, which would then spare other invasion thrusts so they could operate more freely.

Either way, it was the deep water on this world that was such a huge advantage, with some depths being more than 260 miles deep, that made her wonder if Star Force was completely clueless to the defensive potential…or rather they simply didn’t care and needed to protect more industrialized worlds to keep their drone fleets continually restocked as the V’kit’no’sat tore through the tiny ships with ease.

Their swarming capability was their threat, and in order to maintain that they had to keep replacing the losses. Perhaps this system wasn’t key to doing that, or perhaps Star Force was just stupid. Or maybe the Uriti had a way of reaching deep down into the waters from orbit. Vax didn’t rule out that possibility, but the only way to find out was to wait and see how they responded.

Right now though, there was a large war to be fought in the water, person to person, or in this case, person to mech. Her troops would win out in the end, but she expected a moderately hard fight. Star Force hadn’t reinforced this planet nearly as much as they should have, but they hadn’t left it underdefended either. This was going to be hazardous, but once the Garas’tox broke them in open water the assaults on their fortresses would move quickly. If they’d pulled back and played defense it would have been more difficult, but they were even now coming out to confront the Garas’tox in open water.

And that was their second biggest mistake…and it was going to allow her invasion fleet to take this world even faster than she’d initially speculated. And hopefully with a few planetary defenses left intact if they could capture them quickly enough.

Perhaps that was what Star Force was doing. Fighting the Garas’tox here and now, in the open, so the rest of the planet would have time to prepare sabotage measures so they could not seize any of the truly valuable infrastructure. Vax wished she could ignore them and go after those locations, but she couldn’t with the Axius aquatics forces approaching from all sides and effectively blockading them. She’d have to break their forces first, then disperse squads across the planet.

And personally, Vax preferred it that way. No hiding and running. Fight the battle for the planet up front and get it over with, one way or another.

If that was what they were thinking or something else she didn’t know, though she’d have plenty of time to ask them about it later when the Axius troops were prisoners. She’d already given orders to disable rather than destroy their opposition whenever possible. While taking civilians alive was a necessity, taking warriors was a privilege now that the death marks had been lifted and this was a war of conquest.

Some would die. Many might die. But not all would. This was going to be her world unless she was forced from it, and the more hostages she kept around her ships and captured cities, the less likely Star Force would be to try and blast them from orbit. That tactic was working elsewhere already, with Star Force mounting a few counter invasions on ground to try and take back a handful of key worlds…at least long enough to evacuate the survivors while a Uriti or a massive fleet took possession of space.

Hopefully Star Force would ignore the value of this world and let her establish her stronghold down in the ocean where the land dwellers were uncomfortable going…and right now the smallest of the Uriti was far away, with her keeping an eye on its location whenever intelligence made its way to her fleet, for that Uriti was the one that concerned her the most. Star Force had used it to attack the planetary defense station on Terraxis from below ground, and she knew it could be used to do the same thing here, or even just deployed into the water to bully her own ships and troops out of the way.

That was a small possibility, and hopefully this system would get lost in the mass of assaults, but if it didn’t she had an evac plan, as all commanders were required to keep at the ready. Star Force couldn’t evict them from all worlds, and even if Vax’s fleet was driven from this one they’d be back to retake it as soon as the intervening forces left.

Star Force had too many worlds to defend and too few ships and Uriti to do it. So long as the V’kit’no’sat kept moving around and avoiding direct contact, there was no way Star Force could stop them from chewing apart their empire bit by bit. It could be a long war. A very long war. But it was one with a certain outcome so long as everyone stuck to the plan. It wasn’t the traditional way for the V’kit’no’sat to fight, but it was already proving effective and would continue to do so…until someone slipped up.

That someone wasn’t going to be her, but she was really hoping this system would be overlooked. For this planet truly was a jewel in the rough so far out from the Core…and the Garas’tox really wanted to keep it.

6

July 24, 4897

Star Guardian System (Rim Region)

Havoc

Junarri was a Dasc, one of the smallest races in the V’kit’no’sat similar to the Ari’tat, though slightly larger with an armored stripe from the back of its head all the way down to its tail tip. Small nubs appeared all over the armor, some sharpened, some dull, but when Dasc…known to old Earth as ‘Scutellosaurus’…wrapped their tail around to touch their face, their armor acted as a firm support for their wheel-shaped body. They had the option of rolling like the Rammus did, though they rarely used it. Mostly they hopped around like a kangaroo, looking like a tiny Rit’ko’sor, but within the V’kit’no’sat they were far less respected.

In fact they were one of the lowest races in stature and territory. 93% of their worlds were shared ones, and the primary reason the Zak’de’ron had recruited them was for their judgement. They were wiser than most races, which made up somewhat for their lack of physical or psionic power. They did not have Sav, nor any other special psionic, only the base Ikrid, Lachka, and Pefbar that all V’kit’no’sat races had.

Junarri stood only a meter tall at the hip, though he stretched out more than 3 meters in length. That made him one of the larger ones, for his race did not possess Ultras. What they did have was an uncanny knack for evaluation, making them some of the best researchers, scouts, and all around troubleshooters in the empire…but when strength was valued most of all, many forgot the power in such attributes and deemed the Dasc as an undeserving member.

The Ari’tat were less disrespected, for they got involved in the politics of the empire far more effectively. They were also good traders, and while the Dasc maintained elite marks there, they didn’t have the territory needed to facilitate enough trade to have an empire-wide impact.

So the Dasc networked out with the few allies and neighbors they had, doing their part to help the overall empire mostly through research and battle against the Hadarak. Their fleet of starburst-shaped warships didn’t rely on their physical size, and in fact the smaller the crew was, the more machinery you could pack into the mandated hull volumes. For that reason their ships were among the most powerful per mass, but they only built the smaller models.

They had no Kafcha, nor did they have any Na’shor. Their largest ships were Dak’bri battlecruisers, and to the diminutive Dasc they were unnecessarily large vessels. Most of the Dasc fleet was made up of Ti’mat and Wur’ki, and they’d wisely chosen to make hundreds of such vessels for what it would have cost to produce a single Kafcha.

Furthermore, they built reinforced command decks within their vessels to increase the likelihood of recovering crew from destroyed warships. They didn’t like losing what little population they had, for wisdom was not something one was hatched with. It was accumulated over time, whereas muscle strength came much more quickly. Thus the Dasc had to keep their crews alive in order for them to grow more experienced, and against the Hadarak they’d even developed an escape pod system that could throw the command deck module out of the ship like a slingshot and away from the minion hordes before the Hadarak arrived to crush it.

That didn’t stop them from taking losses, for it was the larger vessels that worked better in combat against the Hadarak, and they did obligingly create a single Mach’nel for such purposes, but the wise Dasc leaders knew that their contribution to the empire would not occur in mimicking the other races, but rather in finding their own niche…and that niche was in the mass production of small warships.

A Kafcha could only be in a single system at a time, but the same material built into 206 Ti’mat could be in 206 systems at a time…and with such a large domain to patrol, the V’kit’no’sat needed eyes as many places as they could.

That was equally true now, and after much debate the Dasc had agreed to join the Crusaders and assist with the invasion…for any planets taken and held by them would be retained by them, and this was an opportunity to grab a lot of territory that even the growing planet allotments coming out of Itaru these days could not match.

Virokor had not assigned them an invasion corridor, but rather gave them the freedom to roam and hit targets of their choosing…after other races were forced to abandon them. It was carrion work and a deliberate slight, but the Hjar’at campaign commander had not meant it as such. He too was wise, and knew that the Dasc and their Zen’zat would not be enough to counter the heavy Star Force ground troops. It wasn’t their strength, but sending them to disrupt Star Force by retaking worlds and shoring them up again required a great deal of wisdom, and Virokor wanted Star Force distracted as much as possible, unable to focus their Uriti-centered strike power on a limited number of targets.

The Les’i’kron had already assaulted this system, breaking through two of the 5 inhabited planets before the Uriti known as Nami had showed up. The Les’i’kron had fled, per was standing orders, but left their ground troops behind. Star Force had finally sent their main fleet away along with the Uriti to another location, leaving behind enough ships to replace the system defenses and maintain orbital control, bombarding the Les’i’kron whenever they were able to get clear shots, though the huge flyers had a significant foothold that was being chipped away at and already diminished in size down to 38 square miles. It was located up in the mountains where the mechs had a harder time finding the footing to fight properly, with the flyers having no difficulty whatsoever, hence giving them an advantage.

The Les’i’kron hated snow, but that’s where they were stuck now. Junarri didn’t know if they’d been stupid in estimating the resistance they’d face or if this group of ground troops was being sacrificed as a distraction to keep the fleet in orbit penned here and not reinforcing others, but the Dasc commander had decided that this soon to be carrion planet was going to be his first target. The other planet had already completely been retaken by Star Force, and if he could save a few Les’i’kron here he would, but the Dasc would be taking possession of this world, not the survivors.

He’d been sitting in a cloaked Wur’ki for weeks studying the situation from afar, having sent another ship back to gather his fleet. He preferred being the scout to sending others out, letting him evaluate a situation in real time rather than having to rely on reports, and right now the jumpline from the far off Haerbip System was breaking out with activity. It was a seldom used route due to its distance, and Star Force didn’t have even a single ship waiting in defense of it like they did on the shortest 7 and most heavily used jumplanes.

However, they responded instantly as the Dasc fleet began to enter in a tightly packed formation. The defenders raced to intercept, with many coming across half the system and getting to the jumppoint very late, but they had decent numbers of drones there before half the Dasc fleet arrived, leaving a messy battle before the numbers scaled for the attackers and the remaining drones retreated to the cover of the planetary defenses.

While they were playing at the jumppoint, Junarri took his cloaked Wur’ki and two nearby twin vessels and raced down to the surface of Havoc through the existing gaps in the planetary shield that was only 21% deployed over areas Star Force controlled. The rest of the massive facilities hadn’t been rebuilt, nor had the smaller defensive weapons that would have caused trouble for the Dasc ships. As it was, they made it near to the Les’i’kron holdout point without a shot being fired at them until they came into range of the mech armies surrounding the last refuge of the V’kit’no’sat troops.

Junarri stopped over the outer edge of the mechs, then had all three ships hold position and engage them. He had the mass advantage, and soon the Star Force mechs began to retreat from the planetary foothold…at least as far as necessary to get out of the warships’ range. The Dasc pursued them and made many kills before some of the Star Force drones made their way back to the planet to provide cover.

Junarri then let the surviving mechs go and tucked his three ships down in between the mountains as much as he could, sheltering the troops and hostages below them while calling Star Force out. If they wanted to kill the warships the debris would fall and crush those beneath them, and he knew Star Force wanted to protect and recover their captured people.

He’d guessed right, for their drones pulled back to strategic positions on the planet while covering for the mechs withdrawal back to the areas covered by intact shield generators as the Dasc fleet finally made its way to orbit and into bombardment range of anything not protected.

Junarri ordered them to open up on targets he tagged, refusing to slaughter the local population but not leaving them with key assets or defenses. If he was about to capture these people they would not be living in their own facilities for longer than necessary…and if another Star Force fleet arrived to drive the Dasc out, he didn’t want to leave behind intact structures that could be reused by the enemy.

Junarri deployed some of the Zen’zat from his fleet down to the Les’i’kron encampment to assist with defense and repairs while he stayed onboard ship overseeing the second invasion of the planet up until the senior-most surviving Les’i’kron contacted him via hologram, for aside from in a cargo bay the larger race wouldn’t fit inside the Dasc ships.

“Your assistance is much appreciated, Dasc,” the large, scaly dragon said with equal amounts of gratefulness and scorn.

“We are not here to assist,” Junarri said evenly. “We are here to claim the planet. Rescuing you was a bonus.”

The Les’i’kron huffed irreverently. “This is our invasion corridor. You have no dominion here.”

“You were days away from being wiped out, after which we would have jurisdiction under Virokor’s orders. Would you prefer we withdrawal and wait those few days until you are destroyed, or act now and save valuable troops for the empire? Either way, the Dasc will now take control of this world for as long as we can hold it.”

“Such impudence,” the Les’i’kron all but spat.

“You are welcome. If you wish to stay and assist you may. If not, we will arrange transport to the nearest Les’i’kron fleet or outpost. The choice is yours.”

“So long as we exist, we possess the planet,” the Les’i’kron argued. “You are in violation.”

“Do you truly wish us to leave? For I am not assaulting this world only to hand it over to the Les’i’kron.”

“Yes. Take the other damaged world. You may benefit from our efforts there, bottom feeder, but this world is ours until we draw our last breath.”

“As you wish,” Junarri said, sending a telepathic order for all his Zen’zat to return to the ships, which was then repeated out through comm channels by his command deck crew. “You are on your own here. I apologize for delaying your deaths,” he added sarcastically.

Before the hologram could turn off a bolt of plasma shot across the image, hitting the Les’i’kron and deflecting off its thick scales. He turned to face his attacker, but was knocked out of view by another Les’i’kron bodily ramming into and tackling him out of frame. A third Les’i’kron appeared and looked directly at Junarri.

“We apologize for his arrogance. Do not leave. We will assist you in taking this world for the V’kit’no’sat. Possession will be yours for as long as you can hold it. He may have a death wish, but we do not. He is no longer in command.”

“I am, as of now,” Junarri said firmly.

“Accepted,” the Les’i’kron said as sounds of further combat were obvious. Apparently the former acting commander wasn’t taking his demotion well. “We must hurry before Star Force can reinforce again. We must kill their mechs.”

“They are already withdrawing beneath their remaining shield generators.”

“Then that is where we must press.”

“Patience, Les’i’kron. We will deal with them, but in our way. What is your supply situation?” the Dasc asked as one final crash was heard out of view, then silence.

“Limited. Several of us are without armor.”

“I will send generic replacements. You’ll have to configure them for integration. We do not have your file specs.”

“Thank you. We can handle that with what we have left.”

“How many prisoners do you have?”

“We have over 3,000 Humans, 58,000 Calavari, and 23,000 Kiritak. All are workers. None of their warriors were captured. We are having trouble feeding them given our limited supplies.”

“I will take possession of them and see to their confinement. I have cargo vessels nearby that will be summoned once we have sufficient control of the planet. The prefab structures for confinement can be set up within days. Until then we will work with whatever you are using.”

“We have a few prefabs, but mostly we’re using converted local buildings. What we need is a shield generator.”

“We have several to deploy.”

“Where you do need us, Commander?”

“Rest for now. We will take all available territory immediately, then push for what the enemy controls later. It is then that we will make use of your skills.”

“We appreciate the rescue, Dasc. Ignore the comments by Farschu. He was eldest, so command fell to him after our losses, but he was not hatched for command. The rest of us submit to yours until we can rejoin a Les’i’kron unit.”

“I am coming down to view the status of the encampment personally. Turn over as much of the defense as you can to my Zen’zat, then rest. You will be needed later, and I want you recovered.”

“We will have to fly across the planet unless you can alter your drop pods to accommodate us.”

“We have that capability built in for such occasions. I will not waste your strength on unnecessary travel. Rest now. We will not begin the heavy fighting without you.”

“I will hold you to that,” the Les’i’kron said, eager to get back on the offensive. “The planet is yours. May you hold it longer than we did.”

“That is up to their Uriti movements,” Junarri noted. “We will see how much they value it when other fresh worlds are coming under assault, but their decisions will determine the landscape of the war, not ours. We will attain victory through persistence, not brute force.”

“I am forced to agree. I will meet you on the ground, if that is acceptable?”

“It is, so long as you do not step on me,” Junarri said, half joking.

“I have no quarrel with the Dasc, nor do the others. Farschu is simply an arrogant fool.”

“Make sure he does not step on us.”

“He will have an escort at all times until we enter battle again. When that happens, his ire will be placed on the enemy where it belongs.”

“If any of my Dasc or Zen’zat are inappropriately harmed, I will execute those responsible.”

The Les’i’kron shoot its long neck in a dismissive gesture. “You need not fear. We are grateful for your arrival and we will make sure he does not bring further dishonor upon us.”

“I will see you momentarily then.”

The Les’i’kron huffed approvingly then ended the hologram, leaving Junarri with a pleased, but still wary mental state. The Les’i’kron were amongst the most difficult race for the Dasc to deal with, but it seemed that battle had burnt away most of their typical animosity. How long that would last he did not know, but he was glad to have them available to use in combat. Compared to the Zen’zat, they were far superior in skill, if not in temperament.

Junarri left the command deck and went down to the hangar in his Wur’ki, donning his armor before stepping onboard and being wrapped up in a cocoon of material that made him look like he was twice as large and standing on a floating pedestal. In reality it was the Dasc version of a personal speeder, though more heavily armored than those used by the Ari’tat and other small races who, unfortunately, viewed the survivability of their own populations as unimportant. Their reproductive rates were not much different than that of the Dasc, but their wisdom was lacking and they wasted many people in exchange for quick results and fast builds.

The Dasc speeders cost more to produce, but the extra expense was worth it if the technology ‘overload’ saved a single individual 5,000 years old. The Ari’tat did not understand that, but the Dasc did. They would die for the mission if necessary, but not casually. And that reluctance to dive in head first was one of the many reasons the Dasc were disliked amongst the empire.

But today at least he’d gained a few Les’i’kron friends. Hopefully they obeyed his combat orders so he could keep them alive and fighting well into the future. If not, they’d probably charge the mech lines in a ‘win or die’ fashion.

If that happened, he wouldn’t have to deal with their disobedience for long. Star Force was too dangerous of an opponent to recklessly attack, and the many dead Les’i’kron corpses spread across this planet were a gruesome testament to that fact.

7

March 13, 4898

Braum System (Star Force territory)

Winage

Niom cringed when he saw the massive transport enter the system behind an already huge Star Force fleet. He hadn’t gotten much damage done to it on entry, for he didn’t have enough ships to blockade the system in an effective manner and the jumpline they’d entered on wasn’t one of the regularly used ones. They’d made a few good exchanges once his patrol ships arrived, but the Oso’lon vessels hadn’t been able to kill any of the jumpships, only the drones. Soon thereafter they had to pull back before they were overwhelmed, for the rest of Niom’s ships weren’t rushing out to join them.

He knew he was going to lose the planet. Niom just hoped he’d done enough on the ground to prepare for the counter invasion, and right now he was evacuating all non-combat personnel to his fleet and getting every crate of supplies he had onboard his warships down there, for the ground troops were going to have to operate on their own until this fleet decided to leave.

The Oso’lon were not leaving the system, however. Normally they would and go and hit somewhere else, but Niom was staying. Not at the planet, but they were going to flee to the outer reaches and make Star Force follow them away from Winage. If they did, that would buy more time for his ground troops to dig in. If they didn’t, he’d sit and wait and watch what occurred, forcing Star Force to stay in the system with their Uriti and not move on to other locations. If the Uriti was going to hit him here, he was going to make sure it was tied up as long as he could so other invasion forces would have more time to press their gains.

Niom didn’t know which Uriti it was until the transport opened up, but his second stomach seemed to shrink to the size of a pebble along with the first when the jaws of the craft finally opened and the flat disc of Sivir appeared. Its circular edge looked sharp, though that was only due to the sizes involved. It was 94 miles wide and colored a deep orange, looking like a sliver of a star, for it wasn’t just colored orange, but it was bioluminescent and glowed that color.

Niom knew Sivir was capable of massive orbital bombardment, but it was one of the sloppier ones based on his information. It had only been involved in one fight against the V’kit’no’sat prior to this crusade, back in the Uriti Preserve, and it was one of the hardest targets for a fleet to attack. It was literally a fleet killer, more so than the others. It could wipe out his entire fleet alone, even without Star Force backup, and Niom knew he had to get moving before the engine-neutralizing Star Force drones got to his ships and pinned them in place. If he could get moving the Uriti would never catch them, which was why he was going to stay in the system, but if he got caught fighting the drones and was pinned down…well, there was no way he could allow that to happen.

The Oso’lon commander gave a final deadline for the drop pods. Any not making it would be left behind and have to take their chances with the ground forces. His patrol ships were already enroute from the jumppoint, staying ahead of the first wave of drones that were small enough to destroy, but Niom knew it was a trap. If they turned and engaged they’d get caught soon thereafter, so they were racing back to rejoin the 12,218 ships he had left.

Niom began sending off groups now, for so many ships didn’t jump out of the same planetary jumppoint in a heartbeat and maneuvering farther out in the system without nearby gravity wells was problematic with such a large fleet. He needed smaller sub-groups to operate independently, and there was no need to make all of them wait for the last drop pods, so he began sending them out as he watched Sivir begin moving on its own and slowly transitioning around the star to the jumppoint to Winage.

Niom hated leaving after paying such a heavy price to break through the planet’s defenses, and that was why he wasn’t leaving entirely. His ground troops knew their role, and he wasn’t overly concerned about them. What he was concerned with was Star Force reclaiming the planet and rebuilding some of the shield generators to give them full coverage again. If that happened, the assault would have been next to useless aside from the more than one million drones he’d killed.

That number sounded like a lot, but they were so small it was deceiving. And to add insult to injury, all but a handful of their controlling jumpships were sitting safely in orbit around the other planets in this system. Most were totally empty, but they could be reloaded in other systems or even this one if they waited long enough for local shipyards to replace them. Niom hadn’t gone after those shipyards because they had been moved to such low orbits that they were now protected by the planetary guns.

He’d managed to destroy all those around Winage, so they’d lost that production at least, but the others were still cranking out replacements. Not enough to even make a dent at the million they’d lost, but if Niom couldn’t hold this planet and be a continual thorn in Star Force’s side in this system, they’d return to regular order at about 80% capacity, making this attack a failure. The Oso’lon could not suffer this level of losses without being able to take systems, so he had to make this attack work somehow. He’d been given additional ships because of this system’s heavy shield generators, but he’d gotten no forewarning about Sivir arriving and Niom was wondering whether Virokor really had a handle on the warfront or not.

Niom’s orders had come directly from him, not Yaniel, who was located on the V’kit’no’sat border until they could secure territory here that he could move into. He was commanding all the Oso’lon ships, but Virokor was the invasion leader and Yaniel was letting him handle many of the assignments.

Had this entire assault been wasted? Or was it part of a larger plan? Niom didn’t know, and was now having serious doubts, but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was what he was going to do about it, and if he could get the Uriti to sit here doing nothing then that would be a victory…and if it left, he could bring his fleet back in and retake the planet. If he left the enemy could secure the system, but so long as his fleet was here he was going to put pressure on them, for the Uriti couldn’t move fast enough to engage them if the Oso’lon didn’t choose to be engaged. Getting caught and pinned was the only threat, for against the Star Force drone fleet it looked like Niom would still have an advantage, though they hadn’t all arrived yet.

The fleets escorting the Uriti were large, but not overly huge, as they were designed to fight with and protect Star Force’s largest assets, not press the attack on their own. If they wanted to come out and fight him, he’d oblige, but the moment the Uriti moved he would disengage. It was the enemy’s ultimate weapon and he couldn’t get forced into a fight against it. Especially not this one.

So Niom watched and waited as the last of the cargo and crews were exchanged with the surface, then his ship departed with one of the last fleet groups, slowly jumping away from the planet and further out into the system where they would slow to a creep off the weaker stellar gravity then sit, watching the planet they now mostly controlled get attacked by the Star Force reinforcements and hoping that the Uriti didn’t find a vulnerable target that it could hit from orbit…and the same went with the Star Force drones.

Niom left a few reconnaissance probes behind so he could monitor what was happening, and either Star Force couldn’t detect them or didn’t care, for he got a good look as the reinforcement fleet flew into orbit and began to take damage from the few small planetary guns the V’kit’no’sat had brought with them and networked with the grounded warships. They’d managed to only capture 2 of the Star Force shield generators, giving them a small umbrella over different sites in addition to the smaller ones elsewhere that were of V’kit’no’sat manufacture. The rest of the planet was open to attack, save for the piece that still held Star Force troops underneath the last pieces of the planetary shield.

When the drones attacked they suffered some losses, but they soon retreated up to a higher orbit out of range. Niom didn’t expect that was because of the firepower issue. His ground defenses were heavily outgunned. But there were obvious prison camps placed near all the planetary guns and shield generators. He’d made sure to put them in plain sight, and they were mostly full with Bsidd occupants.

Then he saw the Uriti come down to the planet. It went so far as to kiss the upper atmosphere as it shrugged off hits by the planetary guns…then they stopped firing. Probably because they didn’t want to make it angry, knowing it had the power to wipe them out and the chance that it might react without orders if they managed to sting it enough.

It drifted slightly, moving over one of the captured shield generators, then it began to descend. Niom watched in horror as it looked like it was going to crush his troops and the prisoners alike, but it stopped just short of the surface, pressing into and breaking through the defense shield with its huge mass. The shield held for a few minutes, but it couldn’t hold out against that much raw power. Niom didn’t know if it was sending a charge into it or not, but the glow from the Uriti seemed to increase slightly.

Then Niom watched from V’kit’no’sat monitors on the planet, relayed through the probes, as the Uriti descended further and touched the top of the shield generator. It seemed to rest there, almost as if the puny tower was holding up its mass, but the emitters must have been damaged enough by the small contact, for the Uriti went down no further. If it had it would have broken off parts of the tower that would have fallen on the prison camps below.

Niom was impressed by the accuracy of the collision. That was a maneuver that would have been tricky for a warship, let alone a biological of that size. Perhaps its gravity drives were more sensitive than artificial ones…but that seemed absurd given the precision of the V’kit’no’sat drives. Regardless, it had just pancaked the top few floors and rendered the shield generator inoperable without collapsing it on those beneath.

“Order the other garrison to move prisoners to the top of the structure immediately. Make sure they’re visible on top or we’ll lose that one too,” he told his bridge crew, though it would take time for the message to travel across the system due to the distance lag.

He continued to watch the Uriti hold its position, drifting upward ever so slightly to expose a few meters on top when a few clusters of drones shot down towards the planet directly over top the Uriti, using its bulk as cover against the V’kit’no’sat weaponry. When they got near, the Star Force version of drop pods emerged from within the drones, which had been enclosing them inside a block formation. Those drones skimmed the surface of the Uriti and dipped underneath the edge, exchanging fire with the surface guns as the dropships zipped around behind them, heading for the shield generator.

Some of the drones went with them, acting as blockers and coming down so close to the surface that the firing arcs of the guns were almost completely filled with the black armored hull of the drone. That freed up the dropships to race towards the shield generator over top the prisons and garrisons and everything else the V’kit’no’sat had deployed around their most valuable asset…which was likewise so valuable that there were no defenses set up directly around it, for the Oso’lon were banking on the fact that the shield generator itself wouldn’t be hit from above and the Star Force troops would have to fight through multiple defensive lines to get to it.

But not now that the shield was down, for the dropships went straight to the top and slid under the expanding gap between Uriti and crushed roof, dropping off a few elite teams of infantry as a mass of larger transports began descending from orbit and pooling above the Uriti. Niom knew they would soon find a spot nearby on the planet to land, then they’d disperse their mechs and engage the defenders directly.

He saw no aerial craft in play, and with the shield now down there was no need for them when Star Force could use their drones for close in support. His other shield generator had to get prisoners in place so the Uriti could not do this there. If they could hold that location then they’d have a chance of holding the planet, but this shield generator position was now compromised and his troops were going to get slaughtered by the drones if they didn’t scatter now.

The ground commander at that location was Nerudi, and Niom knew that he knew the situation better than he did, so he didn’t issue any orders. Many of his troops were going to die because of that unexpected Uriti maneuver, but some could still get away if they moved now.

As if in telepathic connection, he saw the Nerudi did just that. Drop pods on the ground began rocketing off laterally with Zen’zat aerial craft moving up to engage the drones that tried to interfere. That was a big mismatch, but if they could just buy the drop pods some time…

Niom watched as more drones moved underneath the Uriti, only to begin massive air to ground fire. It wasn’t specific, but a blanket attack the kinds of which he assumed Star Force would never use. They were targeting buildings along with the openings between them and Niom didn’t understand what was happening until he saw they were also shooting the prisons.

Then he understood. Those weren’t damaging weapons, but rather very large stun guns. They looked similar to Dre’mo’don orbs, but the lack of explosions was telling. It seemed they were just going to stun everything that moved, then pick their Bsidd out of the unconscious bodies later.

It was a good tactic, because it meant the Oso’lon couldn’t hide behind the captives, but hitting the buildings was tricky. If they overloaded the stun levels they could kill the Bsidd, and the buildings would soak up a lot of it. Plus, the Oso’lon were so large they wouldn’t be rendered unconscious at levels suited for Bsidd. It would make them groggy though, and have to beat through their shields first, but it was a decent tactic for countering the living shield philosophy…which was encouraging, for it indicated that Star Force did in fact want to recover their people. And that meant the Uriti wouldn’t fire on the planet and wipe them all out within minutes.

Eventually he saw prisoners beginning to cluster at the top of the other shield generator, meaning they should be able to hold that location against the Uriti if they brought the shield down low enough that it just skimmed the top of the generator. But his troops under assault now were soon to be overwhelmed by the ground troops that were following the drones down. At the moment they were shrugging off the stun blasts and repositioning, but once the mechs got deployed that movement advantage was going to disappear.

And all Niom could do was watch. If he brought his fleet back in to the planet the Uriti would be there to stop them, and he couldn’t engage it, not even for a short distraction. The losses would be much too costly.

His ground troops were on their own, and right now he’d learned a lesson that needed to be shared with other V’kit’no’sat invasion fleets. Niom wrote up a message packet, included the sensor data, then gave it to a Kaeper in his fleet and sent the courier off to spread the word. Shield generators, captured or otherwise, had to have prisoners on the top of them. Otherwise Sivir, and perhaps the other Uriti, would simply come down and gently crush them.

A costly lesson, but if he got the word spread quick enough, it might be worth it in the long term, for this war was looking like it would a millennia-long campaign…at the minimum, unless they could find a weakness in the Uriti, which he highly doubted. Their only weak point had been discovered long ago, and with escorting fleets there was no way to sedate them. All Star Force would have to do is shoot them with their own weapons and that would counter the sedative effect.

So unless they could catch a Uriti without a fleet, Niom saw no way to neutralize this threat. They were going to have to fight around them and chip off systems where they could, with a lot of retreating in the mix until they wore down the Star Force industrial machine enough that they couldn’t replace their drone fleets. Then, and only then, could they attempt to take on the Uriti.

And that was one fight that Niom truly was not looking forward to.

8

April 1, 4898

Skeeter System (Rim Region)

Yolf

The Uvbor fleet had entered the system under heavy assault by the Protovic defenders, but they’d suffered the necessary losses to establish a foothold and got the bulk of their fleet through the jumppoint. After that it was a matter of engaging the defenders where they could, then pounding through the planetary shields and establishing another foothold on the surface of the jungle world.

The entire planet was covered in vegetation, with even the poles remaining above freezing and the equator sporting some of the largest trees Tanu had ever seen. The ‘hadrosaurs’ were a mix of quadruped and bipeds, with their rear legs being larger, but they spent as much of their time on their front legs as they did standing.

Right now Tanu was standing, observing a slew of holograms from his command deck as his forces continued to march across the planet with little real resistance. The Protovic world was not heavily defended…at least not compared to the size of the invasion force the Uvbor had brought. It was overkill, but necessary to get through the planetary shields with the minimum loss of ships. Now that they were on the ground the planet would be theirs. It was just a matter of time.

And it was the only planet in the system that was inhabited. That meant that the Protovic had nowhere to run to, so they’d either die fighting or surrender, giving Tanu plenty of hostages to hold off a Uriti if and when one came around. He doubted that one would, given the small stature of this system, and the V’kit’no’sat as a whole needed worlds taken to be used as staging bases. Tanu intended to provide the Uvbor and Virokor with one, and the more time he had to work with after full conquest of the planet, the more difficult it would be for a Uriti strike force to remove them.

Tanu spent his time onboard his Na’shor, monitoring the progress of the invasion rather than taking part in it. His ship had fought in the space battle, but there was no point in him going down to the planet yet. His physical skills were better than most other Uvbor, but the battles were so one-sided that he wasn’t needed. He’d been assigned this system to conquer, and his skills were more needed in organization and leadership rather than in making kills…or captures, in this case. The number of Protovic prisoners were already over a million, though their containment was a bit tricky. Most of them had telepathy, along with some other weak psionics, meaning the guards had to stay alert.

Tanu didn’t mind that. If an Uvbor’s mind was so weak to be tricked by one of these Protovic, they deserved whatever happened to them. Uvbor were superior to Protovic, so no psionic dampeners were going to be used on them. It would be an admission of weakness if it was, plus Tanu didn’t want to waste the resources on the impudent little bipeds.

The Uvbor commander was casually monitoring the various feeds from across the planet when he got warnings from the patrols in near the star. Warships were coming in from the Narui jumpline, one that he had only a few ships near. He wasn’t going to be able to get his fleet there in time to block them, so he recalled his patrols and allowed the Star Force fleet to enter unopposed as data on the ships began to amass.

They were Star Force ships, but the variances between racial designs were so small it was hard to determine at range, but when the jumpships began disgorging blocky S-shaped drones Tanu felt a deep hatred welling up inside him.

Those were the traitorous Rit’ko’sor, now called ‘Raptors,’ and the Uvbor were going to hit them hard right now. With a mental command, Tanu began pulling his fleet away from the planet intent on meeting the Raptors near the star, and perhaps before the last of them arrived, depending on how many there were. This was an enemy that could not be ignored, and his disgust at the heresy that was Star Force was nothing compared to the rage he and the other V’kit’no’sat felt for the Raptors.

More and more Raptor ships emerged and held their position around the jumpline as the Uvbor approached, then a massive ship came through and Tanu’s rage soured with a steady dose of fear. The Raptors had brought the Mach’nel they’d stolen from the Rit’ko’sor during their split with this fleet, and Tanu had nothing to counter it aside from numbers.

And with every additional ship that came through, it was becoming painfully clear he wasn’t going to be able to win this battle.

Riona-111 sat on the command deck of the Mach’nel, named Moshari, as her crew of Raptors operated the massive craft. She didn’t need to stand, for the command nexus on this ship had been fashioned into the architecture and had her in a seated position with a semi-circle of machinery behind her. The Raptor pits had the crew sitting on wide pads or bicycle-like seats that allowed for their tails to hang off the back. All were mentally linked into the ship’s systems and the command deck was eerily silent as the Uvbor ships attacked the Raptor fleet.

The Archon was surprised at the ferocity. The V’kit’no’sat had to know they were outmatched, but they were engaging full on anyway. At least they weren’t stupid enough to shoot the Mach’nel itself and were exclusively targeting the drones and trying to get at the jumpships, but were having no luck catching them during evasive maneuvers. And with the Mach’nel fully outfitted to control the drones, there were no small lag interruptions in the combat when a control ship had to make a microjump away. The drones were programmed to fight on their own if necessary, but with Moshari just sitting there in the middle of them the Uvbor didn’t even have that slight advantage.

Riona didn’t have to do much, letting the crew handle most of the fighting unless she saw an opening in the enemy or a weakness in the Raptor ranks. She’d fought with this crew so much against the Ziviri that they knew each other well by now, but this fight was a personal one for the Raptors and she was comfortable taking a back seat unless needed and letting them start to settle the score.

The Uvbor were going to lose, but they didn’t seem to care. They were standing right in front of the Mach’nel as it picked them apart so they could take on the Raptor drones. In theory if they took all of them out they could then focus on the Mach’nel, but they didn’t have the numbers for that. She sensed they really wanted to get to the jumpships so they could kill the Raptors, but short of that they were going to kill their drones and do as much damage as possible rather than running and preserving their fleet.

This was a perfect example of a weakness in the V’kit’no’sat. Being a gritty fighter was one thing, but getting yourself killed out of pure rage was stupid. The Uvbor fleet could not win this fight, and if they were going to deliver Riona an easy win then she’d take it, but it disgusted her. The V’kit’no’sat were supposed to be so advanced and dominant, but right now they were attacking like spoiled brats who couldn’t handle not getting their way.

Unless they knew something she didn’t. Riona wasn’t assuming there wasn’t another card in play here, but so far she didn’t see anything that could tip the scales and the Uvbor were losing ships at an alarming rate. The damage to her drones was significant, but the drones had the ability to fly around behind the Mach’nel for cover and she was losing less of them because of the availability of that tactic.

Her Raptors were using it constantly, and not losing their heads like the Uvbor, though she could feel them seething. She didn’t even have to try and access their minds. They were emitting low level telepathic signals unconsciously. It’s what Star Force referred to as ‘telepathic bleed.’ If you weren’t paying attention you could tip your hand to what you were feeling, and right now her Raptors were out for blood.

But they were doing so professionally. They weren’t making mistakes out of emotion and were obeying every order she gave, including those to break off small attacks on certain ships. The Raptors were not feral, but they were totally committed and Riona could sense the satisfaction they got as they tore apart the enemy ships that refused to run away.

And they never did. Riona was amazed when the enemy fleet was down to only a dozen vessels and they refused to surrender or run. When the last four were left she ordered them disabled and boarded, then left the Mach’nel along with her best strike force in dropships to go onboard the enemy flagship…which she’d carefully let live to the end. Now it couldn’t run if it wanted to. Its weaponry was all destroyed, with the hull bathed with stun blasts around the entry points.

It was time to go onboard and take some prisoners while a chunk of her fleet moved off and headed towards the planet to assist the Protovic in the ongoing ground war that they were losing badly.

Riona dove through the tunnel that led to the interior of the Uvbor ship, choosing to drill through a random section than land in their hangar bays where they’d expect boarders. She flew a few meters before dropping to her feet gracefully on the other side in her orange/blue Goku armor as several Raptors ran through and dropped to the ground with soft thuds. They were fully armored in Star Force style fixed plates rather than the tiny nodules of the V’kit’no’sat armor that looked like sand.

Those would allow holes to fill in by thinning other areas, but the Star Force hard plates would soak up more weaponsfire. You just had to make sure they didn’t shoot you in the same spot over and over again.

The Raptors had adjusted to the change amicably, with the silver/white armor mimicking their likewise white bodies. The faceplate was over the top of their helmet, unlike Riona’s that was in front. Both were opaque, relying on holograms to allow them to see through. Otherwise it would have to be made of weaker material, but they’d kept the same design motif on the exterior so you couldn’t tell which helmet was full protection and which was less.

All boarding teams were armed with heavy stun weapons, enough to weaken shields and get through to the armor that, in the case of the V’kit’no’sat, had not been designed to soak up stun energy. That had been on purpose, so the V’kit’no’sat could capture each other in disciplinary actions rather than being forced to nearly kill one to subdue them.

Most of the V’kit’no’sat had not bothered to update their armor, allowing Star Force to disable them without having to blow through the armor itself. The stun energy would just soak through, unlike Star Force armor that was tailor made to soak it up, though deliver enough and Riona would still go down. She wasn’t worried about that, for she doubted she’d take a single stun weapon hit. These Uvbor would be using all lethal weapons.

The Archon ran out through the dark room they’d entered, then opened a door into a lit corridor with a few Zen’zat passing by. Neither side had noticed the other, which meant there were dampeners in the walls to prevent psionic detection. That was odd, but as soon as she walked out in the hall she could sense them and them her, with Riona running after the pair to her left in a blur of motion.

Two Raptors went the other way, with the next three following her up and gaining on her slightly before she reached the Zen’zat…who wisely backtracked around a corner. Riona couldn’t sense them, meaning the wall in between was blocking, so she decided to hit the far wall and bounce off it rather than try a normal turn.

When she flew into view a hail of small arms fire washed by her, with a few hitting her shields, then she caught her feet on the wall and pushed back, launching herself at an angle into six Zen’zat and the two Uvbor behind them that were firing down over top of their heads.

Riona shot herself into one of the Zen’zat, then let loose a Jumat blast to keep him from locking her up in a grapple hold as she dove underneath the nearest Uvbor…where she released her Ubven and froze everyone in place temporarily as she pushed through her own field and got behind the larger two V’kit’no’sat as her Raptors turned the corner and she shot them a quick telepathic update so they didn’t run into the edge of the field.

They obeyed immediately, stopping and firing into the field with their stun weapons as the two Uvbor began to wiggle in place as they damaged the field. A few seconds later part of it collapsed early, but Riona was pouring stun energy into the shields of the Uvbor and took them down along with the Raptor’s weaponsfire before the Ubven field totally collapsed.

She had to dance after that to keep from getting tail whipped, but with the head start and more Raptors coming around the corner the fight was short lived, though she took a stun blast to the helmet from a Raptor who missed his Zen’zat target.

“Apologies, Archon,” Nimkli said as the Zen’zat dropped to the ground next to the Uvbor that Riona was now standing on top of, pumping additional stun shots into his body to make sure he stayed down.

“I miss every now and then too,” she added, thumbing down the hall. “Get going. I’ll handle these.”

The Raptors leapt over the fallen V’kit’no’sat with ease and enthusiasm, knowing that each capture was a victory in and of itself…and that the Archon wanted them all alive. No ‘accidents’ were permitted, nor would they try something like that. The Raptors were extremely loyal to Star Force, and she’d seen nothing to change that fact now that they were getting their claws into their former brethren…metaphorically speaking.

Riona reached into her pack and pulled out a small device, setting it onto the armor of one of the Uvbor. Without a hole in the armor she wouldn’t be able to deactivate it, meaning it would be almost impossible to get the unconscious prisoner out of it. Either you blasted in and hacked their mind via touch to get them to deactivate it themselves, or you hacked the armor itself, which this little gismo was in the process of doing.

About 20 seconds later the armor across the biped/quadruped began to melt and retract back down into the jewelry that draped over the spine of the Uvbor. Riona had to pushed to get the heavy torso up off the ground enough to pull it off, then she had a handful of long chords connecting large jewels in her hand and tossed it off to the side as she picked up her armor hacker and moved to the next one…after firing a couple more stun blasts into the exposed skin of the first Uvbor, just to be sure.

9

July 2, 4898

Detention System (Dagran Region)

Planet 7

Tanu woke, feeling his body stiff as if he had been unconscious for a long time, but something else was wrong. He briefly looked around at the chamber he was in, recognizing the clean and rigid Star Force architecture immediately, but when he tried to reach out with his mind his Pefbar registered the wall and the psionic dampening in it…but nothing else would work.

His Lachka wasn’t there, nor his Ikrid. Even his Rensiek was not responding. His mind was so numb he didn’t even notice the attachment to his head for more than a minute, then his fury grew as he realized he was a prisoner and Star Force had implanted something into his skull.

“It’s a brain box,” a voice said in V’kit’no’sat as a hologram of a Human appeared in front of Tanu, only much larger than usual. It stood slightly taller than the Uvbor and wore the uniform of a Monarch. “Don’t try to dislodge it. We’ve placed countermeasures to insure you can’t even if you beat your head against the wall.”

“Where am I?” Tanu demanded.

“A prison system. We built it before you attacked and are bringing some of you here. Mainly the higher ranked ones, but we don’t have very many yet. You’re the first fleet commander I’ve got.”

Tanu blinked multiple times, trying to work around the numbness in his mind to find the interface points Star Force was using to raid his mind for information.

“There is no technological connection,” the Monarch assured him. “We searched your mind directly while you were unconscious. We already know what we want.”

“Then why keep me here?”

“Because we don’t like slaughtering all of you. We detest it, actually. But you’re not giving us many options to fight, and mercy is a luxury of the dominant. Be thankful that we were dominant in the engagement that led to your capture.”

“You are not.”

“Were you just being stupid then? I saw the battle records. You had no chance of victory against the Mach’nel. Was killing a few thousand drones worth your lives?”

“We destroyed far more than that.”

“Less than a million,” the Monarch specified, “thus it’s measured in thousands. Why didn’t you flee like the other fleets?”

“We didn’t come to flee. We came to fight.”

“Then you are a poor fleet commander. I might even have to send you back in shame. I’m not sure if I want you here with the capable warriors we’ve captured.”

Tanu stood up and walked around the small chamber that was barely 4 times his length head to tail tip. He leaned forward and smacked his head against the wall, feeling the artificial head casing impact, then it sent a jab of pain into his head.

“I said not to do that. The mechanism can fix itself and it’s bonded to your skull, so you’re not going to dislodge it.”

Tanu smacked his head against the wall three more times, biting his teeth together against the induced pain and enduring it before he stopped in futility and looked back at the hologram.

“Why are you speaking to me?”

“I thought you could use the company. You’re not going to have access to any of the other prisoners, and my job is to look after you all. So this is me making greetings.”

“Greetings received,” Tanu said angrily. “Now be gone.”

“As you wish,” the Monarch said amicably, with his hologram disappearing shortly thereafter.

Tanu growled in frustration, but refrained from hitting his head again. He twisted his neck to the side and reached up with his front leg/arm to scratch at the brain box. Nothing happened until he applied more pressure, then the jab of pain returned. He couldn’t see it with his Pefbar. There was a null zone around it. But at the rear of his cage was a mirror and he spun around to look at it, seeing his shackles for the first time.

It was close fitting, barely rising above his skin level, but it covered most of his head and was firmly attached to his skull, blocking all his psionics except Pefbar.

Tanu looked around, trying to come to grips with what had happened. He remembered being shot with the stun weapons, but he hadn’t expected to wake up in another star system. There was no such prison facility in the Skeeter System, unless the Monarch was lying and this was a small, specially built facility just for him, but the soreness in his body suggested a long time spent unconscious, so he didn’t doubt the length of journey that had taken him here…wherever here was. The Detention System didn’t proc his memory, so it was either a new designation or one that hadn’t been significant enough for him to remember.

Tanu scratched at his brain box again, inciting the pain and finding it a little too intense to play with. He wanted to beat the thing until it broke, but if it was based on V’kit’no’sat technology it would not be easy to do so and would probably render him unconscious before he could succeed.

The Uvbor stood up on his rear legs as high as he could, unable to touch the ceiling, and tilted his head back and yelled in frustration. The yell transitioned into a roar that left him drained when he finished, dropping back to all fours and walking in a circle as he tried to figure out what to do. He kept pacing for nearly half an hour before a small node appeared in the center of one of the walls.

It got his attention instantly, for his Ikrid returned in a limited fashion, allowing him to connect to it, and it alone. Tanu felt the structured database it linked to, finding a teaching program, food schedule, training schedule, mental challenge system, a dozen other items he had no idea what they were, for they were locked but visible, and a battlemap link where he could watch the progress of the war. That map gave him the location of his prison world. The Detention System was in the Dagran Region, well away from the border, and it was unlikely that the V’kit’no’sat would get here any time soon…but he could see they were making gains. In fact, he had more information on the V’kit’no’sat warfront now than he had when he was free.

They must have been piping in the feeds from their comm grid…an advantage the V’kit’no’sat did not share with no Urrtren links this far away from their territory. Nor did they have the ability to hack the Star Force relays and turn them to their own uses, meaning no one was going to be able to locate him here.

Tanu knew he was in a bad situation. There was no escape, even if he managed to get outside the prison. Without a ship he couldn’t go anywhere, and the odds of him being able to die in battle were limited. He had no wish to die, but the idea of being a prisoner of the Humans was detestable. He wasn’t going to get used to it any time soon, but he’d gotten himself into this mess. The Monarch was right. He’d pressed the attack knowing the Uvbor fleet couldn’t win, but he hadn’t cared…nor had the others. The Raptors had to be killed, and if he couldn’t get to them directly then he would break their ships first.

But that hadn’t been enough, and now he was regretting not fleeing and coming back to hit them under better circumstances. He couldn’t fight the traitors in here, and that helplessness coupled with his failure burnt him up. Over the next few days he’d go through fits of rage, beating his head against the wall and enduring the pain trying to knock the device loose or even just return his psionics to him for a brief moment…but he only succeed in overloading himself to the point where the brain box knocked him out. Then he’d wake on the floor sometime later and start all over again.

It took more than a week before he took advantage of the training option and was allowed out of his cage. He didn’t want to cooperate with the enemy at all, but the stagnation was gnawing on him and the ability to run around an obstacle course was too inviting. He needed to do something, and watching the slowly updating battlemap was not enough.

When he finished more than an hour of running and jumping, Tanu returned to his cell feeling better physically but broken inside. He was cooperating and he hated it, but he had few options other than sitting and letting his strength slip away. If he was ever going to have a chance to get back into the fight, or even just kill one Human before they finally killed him, he was going to need his physical skills…for right now that was all the infuriating brain box allowed him. He couldn’t even eat with his Lachka, though he’d found a promise to restore that function if he completed a long series of tasks set out by his captors.

He wasn’t so far gone to comply with that, and his workouts would be of his own making, but given time that would change and the solitude would wear on him. Eventually he’d be digging through the entire database Star Force provided him just to fight off the boredom, but first he had to get past his pride, and the victories the V’kit’no’sat were racking up helped to sustain it further…though most were temporary ones as the Uriti moved back and forth across the warfront evicting the new tenants from their captured worlds…and Tanu could see where each and every one of them was and how effective they were at blunting the V’kit’no’sat advances.

But damage was being done, and if that continued Star Force would eventually fall…but not before he spent decades, if not centuries, in this prison. And Tanu had to deal with that in whatever way he could, even if it meant cooperating with the enemy in completing their challenges in exchange for limited bits of freedom.

10

July 19, 4899

Vardivor System (Coreward of Star Force border)

Stellar Orbit

Virokor stood amongst the other Hjar’at military leadership inside Chodro, one of their 4 Mach’nel along with Irrin, Jor’wek, and Breenko, which were also both here. The Hjar’at had brought all here to this system only a few jumps away from the border to lock down a headquarters. Not on any planet, but simply a huge fleet location in stellar orbit with courier ships jumping in and out constantly to keep Virokor up to date on what was happening across the warfront. If Star Force wanted to bring a Uriti here to evict them, they were going to have to suffer the damage from 4 Tar’vem’jic plus a full third of the entire Hjar’at fleet that numbered better than 600,000 attack vessels spread across the galaxy that were all gradually making their way here.

The other two thirds were split up into smaller attack groups and actively engaged in a variety of positions along the line or still in transit. They were 6 years into the resumed war and less than a quarter of the V’kit’no’sat combined fleet had arrived. That was partly due to distances involved, but also part of Virokor’s plan. They needed to poke and adapt to how Star Force responded rather than just trying to amass overwhelming numbers and blast through them.

If Virokor did that he knew Star Force would bring in their Uriti and make them pay for it. Could he destroy them? Maybe. But the costs would be so high that it would still be a defeat even if they captured every single Star Force world. He’d given strict orders for combat against the Uriti to be avoided in all situations, though he’d neglected to mention combat against a Mach’nel. An Uvbor commander named Tanu had failed in his mission when he’d chosen to engage the traitorous Rit’ko’sor’s Mach’nel and had been wiped out in the assault. They hadn’t saved the planetary invasion in the process, and even now the ‘Raptors’ were removing them with great efficiency.

Such a waste, and Tanu wasn’t the only one. Other commanders were avoiding the Uriti as ordered, but they were making other stupid mistakes out of ego. They just could not come to treat Star Force as equals, and whenever they found themselves in a situation that challenged their dominance they tore into it with admirable ferocity, but Star Force was using that weakness to make exchanges in their advantage and chip away at Virokor’s invasion fleet.

The 2 million year old Hjar’at knew they could not give away free wins, no matter how small, for this war was going to be one of attrition as much as conquest. Virokor hadn’t commanded a fleet in more than 300,000 years, but given the importance of this crusade for the future of the empire he’d agreed to take it on, coming out of the seclusion most of the older and wiser leaders within the V’kit’no’sat preferred to operate out of. This was not an operation that could be trusted to less experienced, but still wise individuals. Star Force was too savvy an opponent, and the V’kit’no’sat were going to need every advantage they possessed if they were going to bring them to heel without bleeding the empire dry in the process.

If Virokor had to flee from this position he would, but so far it had not been challenged and his staff of Hjar’at commanders were monitoring the incoming reports along with him, waiting until he decided to give them deployment orders while the Oso’lon opted to take the lead and the brunt of the initial attacks…due to the Hjar’at’s proclivity to strike at anything that moved.

There was a slight in that comment, but also some truth. The Hjar’at would obey Virokor’s orders…he had no doubt of that…but if they encountered a situation that he had not detailed they would respond with crushing blows rather than sitting back and analyzing the situation. Star Force had already laid so many traps he knew his race was vulnerable without the proper leadership, so he was glad to let others spring the traps while his people learned from their mistakes.

Many races were eager for combat and taking worlds, but so far Star Force was not letting them keep them. The Uriti fleets were making their rounds and delivering ground troop reinforcements after blasting everything they could from orbit. The V’kit’no’sat were learning quickly how to place prisoners in proper positions to prevent that, but some of the assaults were coming before the invaders could obtain prisoners. As it was, he only had 26 worlds that were somewhat stable and building additional defenses, though the V’kit’no’sat had already hit more than 400 systems in the 6 years they’d been engaged.

That number would be increasing far faster when the other three quarters of the combined fleet arrived, but Virokor needed to know where to place them. Keeping some of the Uriti in the Preserve was critical, so he had I’rar’et and Wi’jass battlegroups harassing them there and destroying any targets that were left undefended. If that kept even one additional Uriti away from the border then it was worth it, and he’d devoted half the Wi’jass’s total amount of ships to that operation.

They were a small race in assets, but as large in body as the Hjar’at. They were also more cautious, which was why he’d tasked them to work in conjunction with the avians…who were always ready to evade when necessary. The I’rar’et were also much greater in stature, so the attack on the Preserve would be given a higher profile even though Virokor didn’t care if they killed any ships, let alone took worlds. They were there to distract, and so far it looked like at least 4 Uriti were still operating in the Preserve.

That left 70 on the front, some of which had not been seen yet. Virokor did not know what Star Force was playing at there, but they were intercepting most of the thrusts into their territory with about 60% of them. He was worried about the others hitting V’kit’no’sat territory, but if that happened the 38 races sitting this out would get involved, and while that wouldn’t mean more ships, it would unite the empire and piss off Mak’to’ran. He had said this invasion was a mistake and that more could be achieved by negotiation with Star Force than by conquest. Virokor understood the Uriti angle in that, for he had no hopes of finding a way to take control of them, but this heretical sect had to be put down before it got any stronger.

The death mark had been removed, which altered the dynamic and made many V’kit’no’sat mad that they were being given a pass, but Virokor was glad for the change. These Humans had earned that much respect via their past defiance and skill at surviving, and if they could be absorbed they would add strength to the V’kit’no’sat. Virokor wasn’t sure how that would manifest, for he had no doubt the Uriti and most of Star Force’s secrets would be destroyed before he could possess them, but a race that had caused them so much trouble obviously had worth and he intended to make sure the V’kit’no’sat obtained some gains out of this massive screw-up.

“Braum is holding, but not by much,” Eroset said as he walked up on top of Virokor’s pedestal in the center of the massive chamber at the heart of the Mach’nel. “They have one captured shield generator with prisoner walls that is keeping Star Force back, but the ground fighting is intense. If we cannot get reinforcements to them they will eventually succumb to attrition.”

“Has the Uriti left?”

“It has, but a relief fleet took its place and Niom has not been able to reclaim control of orbit. His fleet is not in jeopardy, for the Kvash are not chasing him. They are securing vital positions within the system and reinforcing the ground invasion. Niom has smuggled down what few crews he could spare, but over the course of time he expects the planet will be reclaimed if we cannot reinforce them.”

“Where is Sivir now?”

“We tracked it through 4 systems before we lost it.”

“Define ‘lost.’”

“Our scout ships did not return.”

Virokor growled, but it wasn’t directed at Eroset. “How are they eliminating our scouts? Detection alone is not enough to prevent them from fleeing. Are our captains growing so stupid to engage their counterparts? I find that inconceivable.”

“I could assume some were, given the actions of our fleets to date, but there are too many. Star Force must have a new method of interception.”

“I concur, and we need to identify it. If not, we are going to be blinded because we will not know which messages to resend. We need an Urrtren addition established.”

“There is only one way to do so, and Itaru will not permit the expense,” Eroset noted.

“Incorrect. They will not permit the shame. But if they will not give me what I need, then I will built it here myself.”

“How? We do not have a single world that can be converted to industrial production without becoming a target of the Uriti.”

“Not yet. But we will with enough prisoners captured and enough shield generators constructed. Until then I will cope with the problem, but it cannot be allowed to persist indefinitely. If it does, Star Force will win,” he said, drawing a host of surprised looks from the Hjar’at around him.

Virokor took notice, then telepathically surveyed the chamber, getting everyone’s attention before simulcasting in voice and Ikrid his following statement.

“We cannot assume victory is inevitable. The enemy has a comm network. We do not. If they can see where we are and adjust, they have a powerful advantage. If we cannot do the same they will continually outmaneuver us. They are not so weak that we can overcome them with numbers. Not with their Uriti. We are in grave danger of losing if we cannot establish links to our far flung fleets. They may not be spread across the galaxy, but if courier ships cannot get through they might as well be. We must be able to see what is occurring, otherwise our side of the war will become a free for all…and if Star Force maintains cohesion in such an environment we will lose. I can promise you that.”

“I will not allow that to happen,” Virokor continued. “We must establish an Urrtren here. Not to link back to the empire. That is secondary. We must be able to communicate between systems we have claimed, and we cannot do that until we built Urrtren links. Those links will be vulnerable to the Uriti or to boarding, so we cannot defend them with prisoners. We must make them mobile, so they can flee when challenged. We have no such designs…not of sufficient size. And that is because we have always assumed dominance. Only the Hadarak would destroy our relays, we thought, but that is no longer the case. Star Force will if we build them, so we must be able to move them.”

“Itaru should be producing them for us, but they are not…and their stupidity is the reason I am here. We must earn this victory. It will not earn itself, nor will pride or arrogance produce it. Until we have those links, we cannot fully engage. Right now our scout ships are falling into traps, and we cannot secure every system they must pass through without confining our assaults to a small region. If we did, the Uriti would gather and we would not be able to make any gains. We must spread out, and we must maintain communication. If we cannot, we will lose.”

“So find out how Star Force is stopping our couriers. Until we can build on a dozen systems, we cannot construct an Urrtren. And in order to win a dozen systems, we must push them back, give them more targets to counterattack to buy time to consolidate our holdings. Only then can we truly begin this invasion, and we cannot do it if we cannot see what we are fighting! If that does not induce fear in you, then you are unfit to fight this war. Arrange for your transit back to a safe world, for I do not want you here. My people must pay Star Force respect and be wary of what they are capable of. If you do not, you will doom us all. We must have vision of the battlefield. If we are blind, we will lose. Come to grips with this or leave. I do not have time to be training hatchlings.”

Virokor signaled them to get back to work with a telepathic ping, then he settled back into his reclined position, thumping his tail on the mat a few times out of frustration.

“This is why I must be here. Too many of you remember only the times of easy victories. Our dominance is not a right, it is something we must earn continuously. And when we are the inferior, we must recognize that fact and strive to regain dominance…not deny our lesser status and die fighting in denial.”

“Well spoken,” Eroset said, acknowledging the error in his own mindset. “How do we combat this in the short term?”

“Whatever is striking at our scouts is only doing so when they are in small numbers. Star Force has other, larger traps set, but the odds of one ship getting away with the knowledge of them is too great. Whatever is pursuing our scouts is being very cagey. We must lure them into a trap, but how to do so escapes me. There must be a mismatch, and I do not know how to generate one that will still elicit a strike.”

“If we group the ships together and no strike occurs, we secure our communications until mobile Urrtren relays can be produced.”

“If we do so, the number of courier trips diminish. Logistically, losing some ships is preferable to reducing the number of transits.”

“Then I do not know how to counter this.”

“Neither do I. We may have to suffer the inefficiency until we can establish an Urrtren, and doing so will incur substantial losses that I had hoped to avoid.”

“What if we wait until more scout ships arrive?”

“If I had known we would face this I would have brought more to the forefront, but it is too late. We are already engaged. If we pull back now we lose most of our few victories and Star Force can rebuild part of their defensive infrastructure. We are now committed. There can be no delay. Pressure must be continuously applied.”

“Then we suffer the losses?”

“If necessary. Do not accept that is necessary. Find me an answer. Someone, somewhere, somehow. Find me an answer,” Virokor repeated softly, but the importance in his words was heavy.

“We will not stop until we do,” Eroset promised, briefly flashing his Saroto’kanse’vam as an indication of his sincerity before spinning around and walking down off Virokor’s platform.

The combined fleet commander turned his attention back to the campaign map and the few tidbits of new information filtering in as raw packets were being analyzed by his people and uploaded as soon as they were collated and confirmed.

Why can’t I figure out what they’re doing? Their technology is stolen from us. Have they surpassed our own research or is this Chixzon in origin? he asked himself quietly, not knowing which of those two possibilities was more disturbing.

4,219 lightyears away…

“This is insane,” the Sarquori Ambassador said, looking at the most recent battlemap update on the holographic map that filled half the chamber.

“It is the V’kit’no’sat,” the Chashtik stated simply, with both races using Star Force translation devices, along with the other 93 Ambassadors in the room representing powerful races located in the Rim all the way round the galaxy. They’d come here to observe the war, with Star Force giving them full access to the information grid that provided locations, ship counts, planet losses, and even visible battle records if they deigned to pay that close attention…albeit from a safe location in the Arbiter System, all the way back in the Seon Region.

“You really believe we can contend with that?” another Ambassador asked.

“Better to do it now, with Star Force occupying most of their attention, than wait for them to invade our territory with impunity later,” the Zeeross Ambassador declared.

“After their losses here, they may not have any appetite for further expansion,” the Haf Ambassador stated. “We could be inviting destruction where there would be none.”

“Then why are you here?” the Zeeross asked.

“Because we are vulnerable,” the Haf admitted. “And we need information about the threat.”

“V’kit’no’sat ships continue to arrive in increasing numbers,” another Ambassador pointed out. “We may not have even seen the bulk of their fleet.”

“Their losses are staggering,” the Chashtik noted. “And they haven’t even engaged the Uriti yet. I do not think they care so long as they are victorious.”

“And you want to fight that?” the Sarquori asked.

“Yes, I do,” the Zeeross said firmly. “Before it comes for us.”

“If Star Force wins control of the Rim, they can shield us,” another Ambassador noted. “We help them, they help us. That’s how alliances work.”

“Assuming the V’kit’no’sat honor their word,” the Yioj reminded them. “If they do not, Star Force cannot shield us on the other side of the galaxy. They only hold dominion over a small region. We risk exposing ourselves to backlash even if Star Force survives.”

“And the V’kit’no’sat risk backlash if they do not honor their word,” the Zeeross argued. “Star Force has agreed not to attack their territory with the Uriti, contingent on this deal. If the V’kit’no’sat strike us after dominion of the Rim goes to Star Force, Star Force will be free to strike them with the Uriti.”

“He is right,” the Dqwet said from near the floor, for it was only 2 feet tall, though nearly just as wide. “This is our chance. The question is when should we strike?”

“Not yet,” the Knight of Quenar said from the back of the room.

All heads turned towards him, for he rarely spoke. Always present, always listening, but rarely speaking unless someone spoke to him first.

“You are already engaged, are you not?” another Ambassador asked.

“We were before the invasion, and we continue to fight now. But you should not. Not yet. It is too soon.”

“Why do you believe so?” the Zeeross asked.

“Because most of the V’kit’no’sat fleet is not here yet.”

That left the room silent for a moment, for the true size of the V’kit’no’sat empire was still a mystery for these races.

“How much more is there?”

“More than double what they have now. The question is how low they will leave their defensive fleets. I believe they are waiting to see how much resistance Star Force produces. Already you can see their reinforcements rates are skyrocketing. After 6 years, I have no doubt they have gotten the message that this invasion will take everything they possess to be successful. They must hit us with everything they have. If they do, they can prevail at great cost. But if you also fight, they will be overwhelmed and must choose between pressing their attack or defending their borders. They will choose the latter, and that will give domain of the Rim to Star Force.”

“If they honor their word,” the Yioj reiterated.

“If they do not, their empire will split apart. Mak’to’ran is barely tolerating this invasion as it is, and there are very specific parameters that must be met. If he is pushed any further, he will rebel once again and the V’kit’no’sat will fracture. Even if they do not war against one another, such a fractured mass will be unlikely to try to expand into the Rim. And if their ire is so great that they come after you, you will not have to fight their entire empire.”

“We cannot survive even a small part of it,” the Numnu Ambassador admitted.

“There is risk, which is why you should wait,” the Knight of Quenar reiterated. “Wait until they are all here. If you act now, they can divert to counter you. Once they are engaged here, they will have to leave conquered planets vulnerable and Star Force will exploit that weakness. I urge you to wait, then attack in synchronicity. That will provide the most cover for you against backlash, for they will not be able to mount their forces against a single opponent. They will have a noose around their empire slowly contracting, and they will have to abandon the invasion of Star Force to survive it.”

“We will die in the attempt,” another Ambassador suggested.

“Perhaps,” the Lovipe agreed. “But it is better to die in a battle that might be won, than to fight knowing you have no chance of victory. We stand ready to assist Star Force when the time is right, and will accept their limited leadership of the Rim.”

“How soon?” another Ambassador asked.

“You will know when the flow of new ships diminishes greatly. While it is escalating, you must wait.”

“Why are you not waiting?”

The Knight of Quenar smiled in a decidedly unfriendly gesture. “The V’kit’no’sat have already struck our territory, but they failed for reasons I will not go into. We are wraiths, working best in the shadows, which is why we are already involved. You will fight in the open, and must choose your timing carefully.”

“Is that why we are not seeing records of your ships in combat?” the Dqwet asked.

“Star Force does not have sensor recordings because we are fighting the V’kit’no’sat independently. Many of their ships are not arriving in the war zone because we are destroying them before they can arrive.”

“How many?” another Ambassador asked.

“Enough to matter. We know where we can hit them, but also know where we cannot. We are doing maximum damage from stealth. But our territory is no longer a valid target for the V’kit’no’sat, so we cannot distract them. We cannot hit their worlds while our fleet is engaged here. Our priority is in protecting and securing the Uriti, so we cannot leave Star Force territory. Our place for this war is here. Yours is around the galactic swirl. When the time is right, unleash havoc and the Knights of Quenar will guarantee that Star Force secures their victory. If you die in the process, your deaths will not be in vain. V’kit’no’sat dominance over the galaxy will end. Star Force is the means for us to achieve it.”

“They will maintain dominance over half of it,” the Anseno Ambassador pointed out.

“And that is the half that is plagued by the Hadarak. Let them possess it and keep the Hadarak contained to the inner core while we fortify the Rim. The longer the Uriti survive, the larger and more powerful they will grow. The V’kit’no’sat know they must destroy Star Force now or it will scale beyond their control. Mak’to’ran wishes to ally with them, to some extent, rather than bleeding their empire in the effort of annexing them. We can make sure he is proven correct, then let him continue to lead the V’kit’no’sat in their crusade against the Hadarak. The V’kit’no’sat can be useful if their focus is on the Core and away from the Rim. Star Force has negotiated well and has produced an opportunity that we need to invest in, for we will all benefit greatly from it if it comes to pass.”

“Do not the Knights of Quenar want the Uriti destroyed?” the Vboc Ambassador asked.

“It would eliminate the threat, but so long as they can provide a beneficial counterbalance for all the destruction they have incurred in the past, we wish to gain as much from their continued existence as possible. But we will make sure they do not survive to fall into the control of others. No one will possess them except Star Force. Not even us. We will make sure of that.”

“Why do you trust Star Force more than yourselves?”

“We are wraiths. To use the Uriti would be to abandon our strengths. As for Star Force, they are a unique philosophy that has no corruption or hypocrisy. They believe what they claim and will fight to the death before veering from it. They seek to protect the Uriti for the Uriti’s sake, and because of that they have been able to establish a relationship with them. That is something that we cannot do, nor would we try, but so long as they have that relationship we will help them exploit it for the benefit of the galaxy. If we could choose for the Uriti to vanish from existence we would, but they are here whether we like it or not, and Star Force has been able to safe the threat they pose. It could arise again, and if it does we will intervene, but unless it does, Star Force will continue to possess the Uriti on behalf of us all…and they will use them to defend the Rim against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“What makes you think they’re that trustworthy?”

“We have tested them. They are what they say they are. You must determine for yourself whether you can trust them or not, but I advise you to study carefully and find the truth. You all will benefit from their leadership and the protection of their agreement with the V’kit’no’sat, so I advise you to help them win this test of their strength. Without you they may not survive. And where will you be then? The time is not yet right, but it is soon coming. You need to have your decision made within the decade.”

“What will you do if Star Force loses?” the Sarquori asked.

“We intend to make sure they do not,” the Knight of Quenar said icily. “They are the key to the future of the galaxy, and without them you will see far worse powers arise than the V’kit’no’sat. I can assure you of that.”

www.aerkijyr.com

Equity

1

May 3, 4907

Knillo System (Ziviri Region)

Baskerno

Jyra Hemman was hanging onto consciousness just enough to feel every painful jab in her back as the Bsidd carried her, and with more than 10 legs in use there were a lot of little bumps with each ‘step’ that was taken. She didn’t know if two large steps per Human or Calavari stride would have been worse, but right now the Arc Commando was being tortured as she was carried clear of the battlefield where Jyra had been hit by a strafing Kat’vo while fighting Zen’zat. The Dre’mo’don had hit her shieldless armor and punched straight through, burning away flesh and ribs but thankfully not going too deep.

That said, she was barely keeping it together as her armor oozed out healing gel to combat the injury, but the exposed area was the size of her fist, leaving the center uncovered and hardening only due to the small addition made to Commando armor during the lull between V’kit’no’sat wars. Sadly it wasn’t a full blown regenerator. There just wasn’t enough room in the armor to put one without taking away additional shield generators or other systems, but they’d managed to miniaturize and incorporate a system that would trigger the body to seal off injuries faster than normal to avoid excessive blood loss.

Without it he would already have passed out and died from lack of blood, though he wasn’t far from it now. Each step the Bsidd took cracked the scab over the wound, causing it to seep more blood before hardening again, stoked on by the limited regenerator technology built into the gel layer of the armor.

Jyra wasn’t paying any attention to her battlemap, which was still functioning, and was just trying to make it through the next few seconds when the Bsidd finally put her down. The thud hurt worse when she touched the ground, but then her body stopped moving and she was so grateful for the lesser pain that a few tears finally made their way out of her eyes as Jyra’s body stopped clenching up in total survival mode.

“Stay put, Arc Commando,” the Bsidd said in perfect English but with the telltale accent produced by differently structured vocal chords. “We are beyond the fighting, but there are others that need rescued. There will be a guard left to cover you. Just stay down and stay alive.”

Before Jyra could say anything the Bsidd was gone, though she caught a glimpse of his 18 appendages and tall stature. He was a Beta-variant, meaning he was a veteran from long ago, for Star Force no longer reproduced Betas, but she was very grateful that this one had stuck around in the military for so many years. There were many of his kind left in the empire, but they were now the ‘old’ designs that had been deemed outdated and replace by the new trifecta. Aside from the queens that were hardly ever seen, there was a large bodied Bsidd warrior, a medium bodied tech, and a small bodied pilot…known as Tridas, Sordas, and Zendas.

Most of the Bsidd stationed on Baskerno were Sordas, helping to rebuild/alter Ziviri infrastructure to Star Force standards. There were a few military units assigned to security, but most of the planet was the responsibility of Clan Saiyan, which Jyra was part of. They were here to both defend the planet and keep the Ziviri in line, but there weren’t enough of them to stop the V’kit’no’sat and there weren’t any reinforcements nearby to assist them.

The Ziviri Region was separate from the bulk of Star Force territory, with a gap between it and the rest of the empire connected by a handful of systems. Not one planet in the region was well defended, for they hadn’t had time to build them up, and the shield generators that had protected this dry planet all the way around were overwhelmed by the 349 Kat’vo ships that had arrived two months ago and immediately began bombarding the planet.

The Kvash had tried to hold them off, but they only had 18 ships. They’d added their firepower to the limited planetary defenses when the time came, then fled when they were targeted, hoping to draw the V’kit’no’sat into range of additional weapons, but they just couldn’t do enough damage. They’d lost 5 of their ships, and right now the other 13 were elsewhere in the system, staying alive and making nuisances of themselves whenever an opportunity arose.

The Kat’vo seemed to be ignoring them and focusing on the surface invasion. They didn’t have many troops to deploy, but this was a minor planet in a minor system and everyone else was fighting for the more important worlds, leaving this planet to a much smaller battle for possession.

Jyra had hoped the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t bother with the Ziviri, given how far away from the main battlefront this region was, but in recent years the V’kit’no’sat had begun hitting everywhere around the perimeter of Star Force territory. They were even coming in from the Rim and hitting the lightly defended Frontier Region, though roaming Star Force fleets were hammering those convoys hard as they made the long trek around to get into position, but there were so many V’kit’no’sat fleets and races involved that Star Force was being overwhelmed. Where they were fighting they were holding their own, but there were so many invasion fleets that some were getting in free hits, such as here.

It wasn’t completely free, but the ground forces had been in retreat the entire time. Jyra had known it was a matter of buying time and hoping someone would get to them with help eventually. That was the plan for the entire war. Planets were meant to do damage, stall, and wait for the trailblazers and their big, Uriti-centered fleets to arrive and kick the V’kit’no’sat out. Trouble was, they were all in Star Force territory, not this small annex beyond the normal border, and the Kat’vo had apparently been assigned the Ziviri Region as their exclusive invasion zone, for they hadn’t shown up anywhere else.

The avian race wasn’t the strongest amongst the V’kit’no’sat, and in fact they were almost bottom of the barrel within that empire, but when judged against anyone else in the galaxy the Kat’vo were a dominant and powerful race, made only more so with the addition of the Zen’zat that could conduct a conventional ground war with the Kat’vo providing the aerial support.

Jyra stretched out her legs, immediately regretting the movement as her wound cracked open again, but the adjustment allowed her to lay flat on the ground with her helmeted face looking up at the sky…which at the moment was a piece of Ziviri architecture. It wasn’t a new one made with Star Force design influence, but rather something that existed prior to the Star Force war of conquest.

The Arc Commando finally toggled her battlemap, thankful for the ability to do so mentally without any more physical movement as the gel layer in Jyra’s armor continued to seep out and numb the area, but it still wasn’t getting more than halfway to the center, for too much had been lost already and the armor was designed to not drain it all out one spot, holding more in others for when those parts took penetrating damage.

On her battlemap she checked the local area first, seeing several dozen Star Force icons nearby in what was a half destroyed building that rose some 8 stories tall. An entire wall was missing, and Jyra realized this was a small village that had been evacuated during the Star Force invasion and never repaired. It was a ghost town some 29 miles from where she’d been injured…and Jyra had no idea she’d been carried that far.

Apparently others had been as well, with nearly all of them being Clan Saiyan mechwarriors. They’d probably been pulled out of dead mechs, but how were they being picked up if the V’kit’no’sat were steadily pushing forward?

Jyra expanded the battlemap out further, then realized that there was no more fighting. The Star Force line had completely collapsed and the V’kit’no’sat were pushing forward so fast they were gaining ground with next to no resistance as they headed for the remaining strongholds that Star Force still possessed.

“Ouch,” she heard a voice say beside her, then the image of a female Human appeared between her head and the dark ceiling. “Did you get shot by a mech?”

“Kat’vo,” Jyra said as she tapped on the Arc Commando’s helmet, indicating that she needed to release it. She did, mentally triggering the mechanism and hearing a pop…then the female mechwarrior pulled it off and set it down beside Jyra as some sort of soft padding was set underneath her head. “Caught me with my shields down.”

“That must be one of their new belly cannons. They chipped the hell out of my mech before a siege tank finished me off. Are you numb yet?”

“Not…even close,” she grimaced.

“Then this is going to hurt. Hang on,” she said, with Jyra feeling her wound being probed. The pain shot through her head and she went groggy until a cool sensation began to eat into the pain. Her vision returned sometime later, with a hand swinging back and forth over her face.

“Still here,” she mumbled.

“Good. I’ve got a healing patch on you. Hold still and let it work. No one is nearby, so I think we’re safe for a while.”

“What happened?”

“You don’t know?” she asked with a sneer. “The Ziviri turned on us. They started throwing themselves against our mechs and the Zen’zat overran us. They just handed them the planet.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know if it was planned or just spite, but there’s word that the Star Force-friendly Ziviri were being killed too. Any that stood with us were targeted, and there wasn’t enough to stop the collapse. The Bsidd pulled me out when the V’kit’no’sat were gaining so much ground they just ignored my broken mech. Same with some of the others here.”

“Supplies?”

“We pulled in a hidden cache. Now I know why we’re required to hide them even on little worlds like this one. That’s where your healing patch came from. The Archons think of everything.”

“Do we have any of them left?”

“Not here. You’re the best we’ve got…and you look like shit.”

“That good?” she said groggily, but that bit of humor took what little bravery she had left.

“I’ve got you covered here, so feel free to pass out and let the patch do its work. We’re in survival mode now. We can’t fight the Viks and the Ziviri at the same time. This planet is lost. So heal up while we can. Once the last battleforts fall they’ll be back to pick off the rest of us. We have to be ghosts by then.”

“Thanks,” Jyra said, closing her eyes as the pain numbing effect continued to gobble up her wound in mind’s eye and the massive fatigue underriding it began to assert itself. The Arc Commando’s mind began to slip into distortion and she let herself go, glad to be free of the pain as she finally passed out.

“Come on, come on!” Jyra heard a tiny voice shouting along with a tapping on her forehead.

She blinked several times, trying to figure out where she was and having the pain in her back suddenly remind her of what had happened as the tiny armored suit covering her face moved down and stood on her chest as she tilted her head up.

“We’re pulling out,” the Irondel mechwarrior said. “The Zen’zat are coming for us.”

“Shit,” Jyra said, sitting up and half dumping the 8 inch tall ‘chipmunk’ off her chest as her back sent a shot of pain into her, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. The healing patch was probably numbing most of it up, meaning she had no idea how damaged she still was, but moving was going to do a lot less harm than getting shot again.

The Arc Commando found her helmet lying beside her and put it on, suddenly realizing that the battlemap around her was clear and everyone else was already gone.

“Where is everyone else?” she asked, rolling over onto her knees gently and finding that her back was holding together just enough to allow her to stand. She took it slow, but she finally got all the way up onto her feet as the Irondel grabbed and held up as best it could her assault rifle that had been lying on the ground beside her.

“Trying to pull the Zen’zat off our trail. You can’t keep up with them, so we either fight or try to evade. So far it’s working,” he said as she grabbed the barrel of her rifle and lifted it up to the rack at the top of her back that was still intact and clipped it on. “But they’re getting closer and we have to put some more distance between us and their Pefbar or we’re toast.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Someone had to wake you, and you needed as many minutes as you could get.”

“How long was I out?” she asked, wincing as she took an experimental step.

“16 hours. I’m sorry it wasn’t longer.”

“I can walk. You can navigate.”

“Deal,” the mechwarrior said, dropping to all fours as he ran a couple of meters towards her then jumped on her leg. Using the grip pads in his armor he climbed all the way up her body until he got to her right shoulder, then he sat there and latched on with Jyra reconfiguring her shields to cover him.

While the Irondel could cover decent distance on his own, it required constant running to match a Human’s walk and sprinting to equal even the slower running speeds, meaning Irondel couldn’t keep up with most of the other races, so they typically hitched rides in situations like this.

“Head north,” he said, sending her a more precise heading via her battlemap as Jyra focused on just staying erect and not faceplanting. Her back was so damaged she didn’t have the muscle strength for many corrections and the powered setting in her armor was carrying most of her weight, and the Irondel’s, but she still had to minimize torso movement as much as possible and she was having to learn on the go what she could and could not do with several stumbles and near falls as she grit her teeth against the surges of pain every time she made a mistake.

“Do we have a rendezvous point?” Jyra asked.

“No. We’re just trying to stay away from the Zen’zat.”

“Peachy. My supply pack got blasted.”

“I know. The others will come back if they can.”

“Thanks for sticking around.”

“You can repay the debt by finding a way to walk faster. A hover tank is drifting our way.”

“How far?” she asked, not able to take her eyes off her footing to look at her own battlemap for more than a fleeting glance, and even that was destabilizing her.

“6 miles. They’re going to cross within 2 if they hold course. We’re out of direct line of sight, but this area is going to be exposed in about 20 seconds.”

“How far do I need to get?”

“That wall ahead.”

“Damn it,” she said, doing the mental math and knowing she was going to come up short. “Hang on.”

Jyra put a little hop into her step, feeling her back almost cut in two, but another shuffle step followed and within a few seconds she was slog jogging across the sandy ground. She was actually managing it ok until a trip root passed under her and she had to hop extra to clear the half buried piece of debris. When she did, that was too much for her back to take and she felt something snap. Her armor locked her torso in place, thanks to the emergency protocol she’d enacted when she’d managed to stand up. That left her pitching forward but not bending at the waist more than a partial curve, though it was enough to send her off balance towards a faceplant.

Jyra responded by running hard, pumping her legs and putting as much forward momentum as she could to keep her torso in the air. It worked and she turned into a partially prone missile that got her to the nearby wall before her fall completed and both she and the Irondel went for a tumble with him disengaging and jumping off before he could be smashed by her tumbling body.

“Stay down,” he warned. “We’re out of view.”

Jyra didn’t respond. The pain was bad, but the healing patch was still fighting it and hiding a chunk of the damage that she’d just done from mind’s eyes, yet the Arc Commando knew it was serious.

The Irondel continued to watch the battlemap, with a feed coming in from one of the Kvash ships in orbit that allowed him to see the Zen’zat and not the other way around. Star Force armor was built to hide from most sensor scans, and right now the Kat’vo ships were not directly overhead. That meant the Zen’zat needed to spot them with their own equipment, and so long as these bulky Ziviri walls were between them and the sensors the extra mass would be enough to shield them.

Jyra waited a long time on the ground in her ball of bent arms and legs just trying to hold still and not make the pain any worse before the mechwarrior appeared in her faceplate with a tiny hand pointing towards her with a ‘thumbs up’ gesture.

“They missed us. I think they’re heading towards the nearest Ziviri town. The ones chasing the others are far to the west now.”

“Good. Because I broke my back again. I don’t think I can walk.”

“Can you crawl?”

“Why?”

“There are no Kat’vo patrols nearby, but if one happens over top of us we’re exposed.”

“Let me know if one is coming, then I’ll try. Until then, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Go camo then,” he suggested.

Jyra grit her teeth and moved her right leg, twisting slightly as she began to unfurl from the ball she was in. The Arc Commando made it halfway before she felt something else give in her back, but oddly it seemed to improve the pain a bit, making her wonder if something hadn’t been dislocated. With that bit of relief she unfurled herself the rest of the way until she was lying face down on the sandy ground.

“You need your armor breach away from the sky.”

“Ugh,” she groaned, realizing he was right. With obvious difficulty the Human rotated around until she flopped on her back, then remained completely still. A few moments later her dull white armor changed color to mimic the dark brown/orange sand around her and shielding her from being detected by casual glances. Even her faceplate now appeared opaque, but that wasn’t going to be enough to fool a Pefbar scan, though the Zen’zat and Kat’vo had to get pretty close to pull one of those. “What’s your name?”

“Is your HUD damaged?”

“I turned it off. You’re the navigator, remember?”

“My name is Danngi. I’m part of the mech division assigned to the Kvash fleet. We were sent in to help you defend the planet. We failed miserably.”

“Nice to meet you Danngi. I’m going to pass out now…”

“Sleep, Human. I will watch over you,” he said, not receiving any response. He shifted his own armor into camo mode, which had it changing shades of color as he scurried up the wall to a better vantage point where he could use his own eyes and passive sensors to see what was nearby. His tiny silhouette was hard to spot, and the further the others got away the less data the Kvash warship in high orbit had to relay to him. Its own sensors were extremely limited that far away, but it could still relay information.

He couldn’t risk a comm message, and the secure battlemap links were out of range, but the others were transmitting so he could see where the enemy was as they led them off, though soon that would disappear and he’d have nothing to work with except very basic orbital scans…assuming the Kvash ship could remain in position, and there was no guarantee of that.

It was up to him to guard the Human. And without her, he was going to have a very hard time covering ground, though at the moment he was technically the faster. She needed time to heal, and that dive had seemed to make things worse, but if the Zen’zat didn’t know they were here and continued to chase the others then they had time…just no supplies aside from the survival pack Danngi carried. He’d taken it out of the mech’s cockpit after it had been destroyed, but it would do the Human no good. There was enough food to keep him going for weeks, maybe a month, but given her huge size, there was no way its contents could fill her stomach for more than a day, and maybe far less than that.

No, they both had to get to an outpost, whether it be Star Force or Ziviri, and get some help…and if the Ziviri had really betrayed them, that was going to be exponentially harder, for they were effectively on an enemy-held planet now…but one with Star Force resources scattered all over it. And it was those resources they had to find and use to get the Arc Commando back into fighting shape. For without her, Danngi didn’t think he’d be getting off this planet. Star Force most likely didn’t have the resources to retake it from both the V’kit’no’sat and the Ziviri, which meant he’d have to make himself invisible and scrounge supplies when and where he could.

That or send a signal to the ships in orbit for pickup…except his armor was so tiny his transmitter didn’t have that kind of range. The Human’s did, which meant she was his potential ticket out of here…and above that she was an Arc Commando, and Star Force didn’t have as many of those to spare as they did mechwarriors. She was worth protecting, but in truth, Danngi would have stayed behind to help any of his fellow warriors. This one just happened to be extra valuable…and extra lethal, which was going to be a big help if they were discovered.

Well, if she could heal up. Until then, they were going to have to hope their luck held out, for an Irondel in a mech was a fearsome opponent. But there were no Irondel commandos, due to their small size. Even their infantry used mini-mechs, and without that augmentation he could do next to nothing other than keep an eye out while the Human rested.

So that was what he was going to do, picking a spot on the broken rooftop of the abandoned building and blending in as much as possible as he saw the dust trail from the hovertank moving further off across the dry landscape.

2

It took 18 hours before Jyra could walk again, and most of the healing patch, to enable a slow wobble, but she and Danngi were on the move across a mix of rocky outcroppings and wide open plains. Fortunately there were so few V’kit’no’sat on the planet and those that were here were preoccupied with pushing hard into the last Star Force strongholds, leaving the Arc Commando and mechwarrior safe in their anonymity.

That said, the Irondel was still watching what pieces of the battlemap were visible to him as he rode on the Human’s shoulder, knowing that she couldn’t move very fast and that if something was heading their way they needed to see it coming well ahead of arrival, though at the moment there was nowhere to go, for they were in the middle of a sandy wash basin between two high ridgelines miles ahead and behind them.

“Stop,” he told her, feeling the Human rock underneath his locked feet as she swayed to an awkward pause. “Open.”

Her helmet cracked a bit, exposing her face but not the rest of her head. Danngi crawled over her helmet and reached a small container into her mouth where he dumped the small amount of water he’d pulled out of the atmosphere via his personal vaporator. It was one of the many survival items in his pack, but for a Human it amounted to barely a few drops of water.

He poured it behind her lip then scurried back over to his normal riding spot on her shoulder, resetting the vaporator and letting it begin to collect more water molecules from the dry air. Jyra closed her helmet again, keeping her body moisture contained where it could be recycled into drinking water. She was getting much more from that than Ganngi’s additions, but her body used more water than it sweated out, so she needed additional supplies and few water droplets would help extend her range before she collapsed for good.

Her body was screaming for food and ambrosia, but she had neither. Her pack had been destroyed when the Kat’vo shot her and the supplies the others had found had gone with them, for she wasn’t able to carry anything. She could barely move her own body as it was, and the Arc Commando was just holding on at this point, knowing that without rescue or resupply she was toast.

But one thing she did know was the location of all the hidden caches on the planet…including the ultra secret ones that only Archons and Arc Commandos knew of. There was one of those 112 miles to the northeast of their current position and it was their best play, though she didn’t know if she could make it there or not.

Fortunately that wasn’t going to be necessary, for they got a friendly ping on the battlemap. There was no source, just a rendezvous coordinate right underneath her feet.

“Stop here,” Danngi said, not sure how much attention she was paying, or how groggy she was.

The Human rocked to a stop again, then slowly spun around.

“I can’t see anything either,” the Irondel said. “Nothing on the battlemap.”

“Stealth…unit,” she said, her mouth dry and fumbling the words.

Danngi looked around, trying to spot any distortion in the hot air, though it was hard with little shimmers all over the place from the heat displacement. A few moments later he felt a wave of wind hit him, then the underside of a skeet appeared in a weird techno hologram detailing where it was, though the actual hull was still invisible…but he could see the edge of it where there was a slight wrinkle in the horizon beyond.

The Arc Commando didn’t say anything, nor were there any transmissions that Danngi received. She just reached up to the underside and held on…then kicked her legs up with a shout of pain loud enough for the Irondel to hear, but her feet stuck and she clung to the underside of the skeet, locked onto it the same way Danngi’s armor was locked onto her shoulder plates.

A wave of disruption washed over him, then suddenly he could see the dark hull and nothing else. There was no light at all, even when he turned his head to look behind/down. Just blackness, which he guessed was the inside of the cloaking field. All light that hit it was absorbed and the energy transmitted to the far side where it was reproduced again, leaving nothing to actually hit the craft itself.

He felt the acceleration, for the IDF did not extend beyond the craft to where they clung, but it wasn’t enough to peel them off. He’d thought it could be extended, but it would probably interfere with the cloaking shield and not getting shot down was more important than their comfort. Whoever the pilot was flew slow enough to not risk breaking their physical locks, and after a minute or so rotated over so they were on the top of the craft and gravity was helping keep them on rather than trying to pull them off.

After that they just waited for more than two hours, then they felt the deceleration that preceded the dropping of the cloaking field. The skeet was still upside down, but it rotated over and placed the pair of survivors less than a meter from the paved surface of a Star Force spaceport as the sounds of explosions rumbled in the distance.

Danngi disconnected and dropped to the ground, running out of the way as Jyra followed, though she collapsed into a heap and did not move. The Irondel was about to call for a medic, but one was already nearby and moved to the Human as the skeet disappeared from view followed by a gust of wind that meant it had probably accelerated off to pick up more survivors.

The medic rolled Jyra over and Ganngi heard her groan, but she didn’t fight the movement…then the medic tore off the expended healing patch and placed a regenerator into the open spot in her armor. He saw it melt down into her skin and stick there, then a little more than a minute later it pulled back out and fell to the ground with the medic catching it before it hit.

“Food, now,” the medic said to Jyra as she stood up, her movements no longer hindered. “You can’t fully heal without the necessary parts. Eat up, because we don’t have an intact medical station left.”

“What’s our status?” she asked, not arguing but not moving off either.

“Pulling out as soon as we can. Most of the Ziviri are working with the V’kit’no’sat. Only the baby rocks are safe. The large ones that appeared loyal were dismissed, because we can’t trust any of them. They’re out amongst the population doing whatever.”

“Won’t they be killed?” she asked.

“We’re going to pick them up if we have room, but we can’t risk another backstab. Several of the ‘safe’ ones were just waiting for an opportunity to hurt us. If there are loyal ones left, they said they understood. If we come back to pick them up, I doubt the traitors will show.”

“Where’s our evac ships?”

“The Kvash are working on it. I don’t know more than that.”

“Thanks,” Jyra said, walking off slowly as Danngi let her go. He didn’t need to stay with her anymore. What he did need was a mech, so he ran off across the huge landing pad and got to one of the little building outcroppings and went inside. From there he made his way to the nearest mechbay, finding it empty save for a pair of damaged madcats.

“Tech,” Ganngi said, amplifying his voice via his suit to get the Kiritas’s attention. “Are those mechs claimed?”

“Salvage flown it. The mechwarriors either escaped or were captured. They were not found with their war machines.”

“I’m claiming one. Convert it to Irondel cockpit if you have the spare parts.”

“You are a mechwarrior?”

“What gave it away?” he asked sarcastically, given that he was still in mechwarrior survival armor.

“Good,” the tech said. “We need the extra room. We don’t have enough madcat parts to fit, but with a smaller cockpit we can get a thor power generator in there.

“Whatever, just get me back into the fight.”

“Two hours, at most.”

“Done,” Ganngi said, running off knowing he needed to get cleaned up, a short nap, and some food. After that he was going back out there and doing some damage. If he was going to die on this pathetic planet, it was going to be in a mech. Not getting stepped on by a Zen’zat…”

“Hey,” a Protovic from Clan Saiyan said to Jyra as he came into the base cafeteria. She was the only person there and had a plate full of food and three canisters of water, one of which was already empty, as she chewed with a ferocity that was usually only seen in Archons.

Mouth full, she responded with a telepathic ‘hi’ ping and kept eating as the Protovic walked up to and sat down opposite her, but he wasn’t here to eat.

“Baerden is down. Probably dead, maybe captured. We have no Archons left. That leaves you in command.”

“Sh….i….t,” she cursed through a full mouth.

“We’ve got an hour before they hit the outer wall, at most, and some of their warships are sneaking closer. As soon as the shield generator goes down they’re going to pound us. I don’t see how we can evac.”

Jyra swallowed, clearing her throat. “What about the other bases?”

“Not much better shape, but they’ll hold longer than us.”

“Can we evac any of them?”

“We could if it was just the V’kit’no’sat, but the Ziviri are assaulting two of them all on their own, plus some Kat’vo air cover, but it’s pretty thin. The Ziviri are throwing bodies at the defenses and we’re mowing them down, but more keep coming. They’re either stupid or incensed, and they’re handing the planet to the Viks.”

Jyra slammed her fist down on the table so hard that thump made her two water canisters bounce slightly and knocked over the third. When her hand came up there was even a shallow depression in the synthetic tabletop.

“We have to scrounge what we can. Set up a kill zone. They have to get the shield generator or we’ll take down at least one of their warships. We need to bait them in and unload on them. If they don’t take it we can hold.”

“I don’t see how.”

“We can handle the Ziviri if the Viks go away. They have limited numbers and they’re trying to preserve them. They’re not going to get bold unless they think they can take the shield generator down. If they do that, it’s game over.”

“Mines?”

“We don’t have time to place anything. We’ll have to launch them.”

“Alright. I’ll see what we can rig up. Where do you want to set this trap?”

Jyra flipped her chin in his direction as she bit another roll and devoured half of it within four seconds.

The Protovic produced a holographic map of the base from the bracelet he wore on his left wrist. The Arc Commando pointed to a spot between the shield generator that covered a diameter of over 600 miles and the outer defense wall that outlined the base.

“Done.”

“And pull in as many assets as you can from the other bases.”

“We can’t get them all.”

“Get what we can.”

“That means they’ll fall even quicker.”

“If they fall and all die, we gain nothing. The shield must hold. Smuggle out what you can.”

“I hate fighting like this,” the Protovic said in disgust.

“So do I, but this is the situation we’re in. We fight sloppy or we surrender. And I’m not trusting my life to the V’kit’no’sat or the Ziviri.”

“Agreed. What about our warships?”

“They can’t do much without getting their asses blasted out of space. If they see an opening they’ll take it. Other than that, there’s nothing for me to tell them to do that they don’t already know about.”

“Are we in an Alamo scenario?”

“I would like to say no, but we’re getting closer to it. So long as the V’kit’no’sat don’t get reinforcements we have a chance if we can whittle them down. Defender advantage.”

“Not sure how much we can stretch it, but we’ll do what we can.”

“I’ll be there shortly. I gotta eat then hit the regenerator again to fix my back.”

“I won’t delay you then. Gobble fast,” the Protovic said, getting up.

Jyra picked up one of the water containers and gestured with it to him as she continued to chew food and then washed it down with another couple gulps, then she went to work on a plate of noodles using her telekinesis to rapid fire them into her mouth. Anything within her body the regenerator could use for raw materials, so all she had to do was get it inside her. Didn’t matter if her stomach was so full it looked like she was pregnant, for it would even out magically within a few minutes.

It wasn’t the preferred way to do it, but without a mass of biomatter for a medical station to use, this was the best way to cheat to the system…and she needed to be back as close to full strength as she could get if this really was going to be their last stand.

3

May 6, 4907

Knillo System (Ziviri Region)

Baskerno

Jyra ran across the base, dodging back and forth between buildings and bits of debris as the Zen’zat army pushed towards the foot of the shield generator. Star Force had delayed them as long as they could, but they were now inside the perimeter and peppering the secondary shield covering the generator itself with firepower…but not enough to get through. She still had 18 mechs in the field, some barely limping around, leaving the rest of this fight to the infantry. Fortunately they were only fighting against Zen’zat and not something bigger, like Oso’lon. If they had been, they’d have lost the base long ago.

But they were still losing it, and it was the last position on the planet that was holding. What few survivors there were from the other bases had been evacuated here or into one Kvash ship that had dared to make a run to ground. Apparently the Kat’vo hadn’t expected the run underneath the planetary shields and they’d pounded the crap out of the Zen’zat army attacking the base, but they’d taken damage and were currently still hovering under the shield further to the northwest.

Jyra wanted to bring the ship over here, but it wasn’t a true warship. It was a jumpship with some weaponry on it, but it was meant as a drone carrier and all its drones were now gone, sacrificed to get it to ground. If it made a run for space now it would probably not make it with the atmospheric limitations, but it had at least been able to transport the survivors from the other bases here, taking pot shots the entire time.

As it was, it had to stand off before it got nibbled to death and the Kat’vo had to decide whether to pursue it across ground or ignore it and focus their full attention on the one remaining base. They’d chosen the latter, and right now the Kvash warship was recharging its shields and making what repairs it could, though most of its weaponry had been plucked from it already by well-aimed V’kit’no’sat attacks.

She could see it off in the distance and had been using it for some long range fire support, but this close in to the buildings it didn’t have the line of sight needed, so it was mostly just sitting there waiting for her to call. If the generator was about to go down it would move in and take whatever damage was required, but the longer she let it sit there the more repair work could be done.

Jyra had no troops with her. They were all fighting in other positions as she was working her way around in a long flanking maneuver. Arc Commandos were good in hand to hand fighting, but that wasn’t why they were chosen. They were meant to be quiet assassins, ghosts that moved about hitting where the enemy least expected it. As one of her trainers had told her, they were 007, not Goku, and right now she was hoping that guile would do more damage than face to face combat.

Her body had fully healed up from her back injury, but she was tired and had a lot of new weak tissue replacing what had been lost. So she was at ‘full’ strength, but that full strength was not what it used to be, plus she was partially exhausted from the fighting over the past two days. Right now though, none of that mattered. She had a pack full of explosives on her back, a rifle in her right hand, and a stealth suite worked into her armor that made her even harder to see. She was a shimmer in visible light and absorbing everything else that hit her. That was a problem if there was a building behind her that should show up because her shadow created a bit of a void, but it was much better than the enemy getting a direct sensor ping off her.

Jyra eased up alongside one broken building, then put her fingertips on it and began to climb, clinging to the material like spiderman until she got to the top and poked her head over. She had no battlemap access, for her stealth field interfered with it, and her armor’s sensors were powered down so not to give her away. She had her Pefbar, but it only reached out to about 22 meters. That wasn’t much, but it was enough to watch her back. However, she needed to navigate, and to do that she had to see what was ahead.

So she stuck her invisible head out just enough to get an eye line on the Zen’zat army. They didn’t use mechs, but rather large vehicles that floated over the ground and could transform into buildings when they decided to settle in. When they did that, the power to the shield generators increased, but right now the 6 she saw nearest here were still moving…or rather drifting, meaning they intended to advance further. Several large buildings were blocking them from firing on the shield generator, and on the backside of those buildings she saw dozens of Kat’vo roosted there. They were clinging to the walls like bats, staying out of the Star Force fire and waiting for moments of opportunity to strike from the air.

Jyra still had 4 skeets and 1 gunship operational, which she had kept in reserve to cover the area around the shield generator. It looked like both aerial supports were holding off and letting the ground troops fight this out, for she could hear the firepower of the mechs and turrets clashing with more of the Zen’zat vehicles. Some were smaller than a dropship while others were as big as the turtle mechs…of which she had none left. They’d been targeted earlier, leaving only the smaller, more agile mechs in play.

Jyra planned out her next set of maneuvers then dropped back to the ground, using her anti-grav to cushion her landing. It wasn’t powerful enough to fly her more than a few seconds, but that was all she needed to give her a far greater range of movement.

The Arc Commando crept in closer, moving in a zigzag pattern until she spotted a group of Zen’zat ahead. She knew she couldn’t let herself get within Pefbar range of them or they’d see her easily through the stealth field, so she had to go a different direction. It took her far longer than she’d hoped, but she came out in the rear of the enemy army and crept through the open area behind them up to the rear of one of the floating war machines.

Its shields were up, she could feel them with her Pefbar when she got close and there was a faint shimmer to let the infantry know exactly where their boundary was. And it wasn’t skin tight either. Rather it was erected a meter and a half beyond the armored hull.

If it had its shields down, or even a gap underneath it, she could have attacked it directly, but her explosives wouldn’t do much good now, and the other 8 she could see from her current position also probably had their shields up…save for a damaged one that was parked up against a far building. It had a big gaping hole in the side that had partially made its way into the interior…

That was her sweet spot, but it was going to take a while to get to it without being spotted. Right now all she had to do was wait, for she’d left timestamped orders, knowing she’d be out of communication…and if she broke her stealth and used her comm, she doubted she’d survive a minute, for the Zen’zat could trace it and the Kat’vo could swoop down on her position far faster than her ancestors could move.

Most of the fighting she’d done in the past had been against Zen’zat supporting other races. This was one of the few times where she had to fight them directly. They were being directed by the Kat’vo, but the aerial race was more accurately supporting the Zen’zat in a tactical sense. It didn’t seem fair that her own blood was fighting against itself, and she often wondered what had possessed the Zen’zat left behind on Earth so long ago to break the rules and reproduce, for there hadn’t been a single turncoat in this invasion. Not a single Zen’zat that had even tried to switch sides. They were dedicated to the V’kit’no’sat, and the Arc Commando truly wondered if any of these Zen’zat, if left behind, would have second thoughts or follow the V’kit’no’sat code to their deaths.

Jyra pondered that until the Zen’zat war machines started moving, in response to something she couldn’t see but could hear. It wasn’t loud, but the air disturbance of a starship moving at pedestrian speed through the atmosphere always produced a rumble, and she could hear the Kvash coming into the engagement. She waited for another 40 seconds before making her move, ensuring that their attention was fully on their target and the warship before she ran across the open areas between buildings towards the one damaged floating tank that was taking up a rear position, but still intending to fight with the others and add damage to the huge warship now visible in the sky to Jyra’s left.

The infantry moved too, repositioning and making Jyra go evasive twice to avoid their Pefbar bubbles, but eventually she got to the rear of the floating vehicle and was happy to see no shields up on the underside. There was one on top, but the damage must have knocked out a generator or an emitter, so the crew was putting all their defensive power to the most obvious angles of attack and covering the breach in their hull….leaving the intact underside armor uncovered.

Jyra ducked down and scurried her way through the 1.5 meter gap as she dug into her pack. The little mines were stealthed when she pulled them out, then appeared when they touched the underside. If the crew were watching they could probably see them with her Pefbar, but she hadn’t sensed their fields…meaning they probably didn’t have them up and were using the vehicle’s sensors and targeting data. The infantry around them was supposed to provide backup screening against this type of attack, but right now, in the rear of the formation, it was extremely lax.

Jyra planted three devices on the hull then took a knee, letting the vehicle drift over her until her head was clear, then she ran off to the side and found some cover as she waited for the countdown timers to end. The three explosives synced with themselves, for concussion wouldn’t set them off and one blowing before the others would just disable them. But linked together they detonated in unison, with the blast wave being strong enough to knock her to the ground and even interfere with her stealth for a moment, but she was running and invisible again before anyone noticed…with the underside of the vehicle billowing smoke through the cracks in the dirt as it smashed down to the ground unable to move.

“Got ya, you bastard. Now who’s next?” she asked herself as she heard a large strike from one of the Kvash’s main batteries hit nearby. Pieces of broken building were dislodged and dropped all around her, but it hadn’t hit the structure. Rather it had hit another of the Zen’zat tanks, and if it hadn’t finished it then Jyra would once she could get to it.

She had to keep looking with her eyes constantly, and as she did a rotation around to look behind her she saw that the Kat’vo were gone, no longer on their protective perch. Her eyes glanced to the sky and she saw flocks of them, more than had been here, shooting at the warship in a swarm of little dark spots that were going untargeted. Apparently there weren’t many, or perhaps any, point defense batteries still working, and the big guns would be a waste on the small targets, so the Kat’vo were essentially getting free shots.

Jyra couldn’t watch more than a glance or two. She had to keep moving and repositioning, for the Zen’zat were still advancing and she had to take down as many heavy vehicles as she could. For if it came down to hand to hand with the infantry, they weren’t going to be able to disable the shield generator from the outside. They’d have to fight inside the structure, and her Knight teams could take them in those confines…not to mention the mass of workers waiting there with spare weapons around outlined kill zones.

No, the main threat was from bombardment on the exterior, and each tank she could kill or finish off meant one more heavy gun that wasn’t going to do damage.

8 hours later…

Jyra put a rifle shot, one of the few she had left, into the Zen’zat on the ground, making sure he didn’t get back up again. Over the course of the war with the V’kit’no’sat, the Zen’zat had gone from having no regenerators in their armor to having a small one that could revive them from modest injuries, but the hole she’d just blown in its chest was beyond its ability to heal, meaning he or she was now unrecoverable.

The Arc Commando limped on, having had to take down 4 Zen’zat herself in the last 10 minutes. Fortunately 3 of them had been wounded before she got to them, with her catching them from behind as they retreated. One of them had full armor, but weak shields, and she’d had a handful with him. His larger size made grappling untenable, so it was just a matter of shooting and evading, with his armor having more volume due to his 7 foot height. That meant more goodies in it, and with the ability for it to reform over damaged spots meant she had to put a lot of firepower into him to finally take him down.

He was the one she’d just shot an extra time to be sure, and her own armor was covered in melted craters…but they’d held up better than his because he couldn’t land shots in exactly the same place. Jyra had lost 16% of her emitters, meaning her shields could not recover to full strength, but right now they were recharging and giving her just a hint of a shield as she moved on through the wreckage of the dead Zen’zat tanks.

Some were still partially operational, now working as buildings with a few small turrets that she had to be careful of, but none were mobile. She had 2 mechs left in good order, and they were moving around to take out those heavier guns, but the threat to the shield generator was gone. Now only infantry saboteurs had to be guarded against, and that wasn’t going to be a problem with so many people stuffed inside. Too many, for their limited supplies, but there should be stuff in the outer buildings that was salvageable.

Off to the west the Kvash starship was on the ground, and in it, for the triangular hull had dug deeply in the dirt when it finally crashed. It had saved the shield generator by soaking up all that damage, but it was not spaceworthy by a long shot. Some of the interior would be, but Jyra didn’t know how much. She was still comm silent and prowling the battlefield looking for targets to stab in the back, but her explosives were long gone and her ammunition was about out. It was time for her to get back before she was caught weaponless, and against the Zen’zat her tier 1 psionics didn’t count.

She continued to snoop around until she caught sight of a group of Clan Saiyan troops, then she shot them a battlemap blip a moment before her stealth went down so they wouldn’t shoot the disturbance. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but with what they’d just survived she expected them to be jumpy. So many people had been killed that, at this point, shooting the first non-battlemap signal that moved made a lot of sense even if you weren’t half crazy from all the carnage.

“Jyra,” a Bsidd said, scurrying up to her. His armor was still intact, which wasn’t surprising considering he carried extra shield generators within the gaps between body stalks, “you survived.”

“Affirmative,” she agreed, walking up and putting a hand on one of his appendages. “But just barely hanging on. I’m almost out of ammo.”

“We’ve got a store left,” he said, taking the liberty to make a request through the battlemap. “It’ll be here shortly. Can you still fight?”

“Yeah. What have we got left?” she asked as she studied the battlemap with half her attention.

“More than they have. We wiped out their entire army save for some infantry. Do you want them run down or let them retreat?”

“Pick off the easy ones. No air cover left?”

“All down long ago.”

“Let the others go and consolidate our perimeter. We need to salvage supplies and get what production we can back. I see nothing’s changed in orbit.”

“You’ve been dark this entire time?”

“I had to.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“My body…is trash. I didn’t have time to acclimate the new tissue. Feels like I’m about to snap.”

“You need out?”

“Don’t have that luxury,” she said as a small blur appeared from the direction of the shield generator that towered over them, but was actually more than 2 miles away. The blur had a battlemap signal, and Jyra recognized it as a Rammus rolling its way like a wheel at high speed across the debris field. When he got near them he slowed, then unfurled and ran on his tiny legs until he fully decelerated, then he popped open the cargo canisters he carried on either hip.

Jyra reached inside and pulled out ammo clips for her rifle along with a couple of food cubes and a tiny pouch of water.

“Watch my back a moment,” she asked the Bsidd as she peeled back half her helmet on mental command enough to expose her face. She was beat red and slick with sweat, but the Bsidd didn’t have long to look as she downed the biofuel and sealed back up. “I need a new pistol,” she told the Rammus, tossing her own damaged one on the ground.

“Ok,” he said, sealing up the pouches then turning around and running a few steps to get momentum before beginning his body spin that would accelerate him far faster over distance.

“That’s not blast damage,” the Bsidd said, looking at the cracked pistol.

“No. I had to use it as a club earlier,” she said, showing him her knuckles and the cracked armor on them. “I ran out of long punches.”

“You were well chosen for your rank, Human. What do you need of me?”

“Priority goes to our wounded. If any are salvageable, get them. Then we need to go after the prisoners before the Kat’vo put them onto their ships or move them beyond the shield dome.”

“An attack?”

“I don’t feel like it, but we have to hurry and recover as many as we can.”

“I agree. I will organize the search for survivors. Rest here while you assemble a strike team,” the Bsidd said, scurrying off before Jyra could object.

She took a long sigh, knowing better than to let herself actually rest or her body would start to shut down the emergency overrides that were keeping her going. She had to stay on the move, so she began to walk the way the Rammus had gone while she made some contacts via comm and got some information about where the prisoners were and how many guards were on them…

4

May 18, 4907

Knillo System (Ziviri Region)

Baskerno

Jyra sat in the command center next to the shield generator when she got word of reinforcements coming into the system…and they were Star Force, not V’kit’no’sat. It wasn’t much, only 14 Bsidd Warship-class jumpships and 2 troop transports, but it was a welcome sight on the sensors as the ring of Ziviri around the base continued to grow by the day.

They were attacking regularly, though they didn’t have much in the way of weapons. They were simply using their bulk to try and rush past what little defensive lines Jyra had left. So far the base was barely holding and keeping the shield generator intact while the V’kit’no’sat sat in orbit watching and waiting for when it fell. Their ground troops were nowhere near here, having taking up residence some 1200 miles away in another fallen Star Force base. Jyra had everyone left gathered here, including the prisoners they’d rescued shortly after the V’kit’no’sat attack on the shield generator had failed.

There were others still out there and out of reach, but now that the Bsidd had arrived she hoped that would be enough to reclaim the others before they were killed or moved to orbit.

Naval command was not hers, for she wasn’t an Archon, and the Bsidd and Kvash linked up on their own and began to approach the planet before contacting the ground base and filling her in on their plans.

“We do not have enough firepower to defeat the Kat’vo fleet,” the Kvash commander said, “but they can no longer keep us from getting to ground. We can evac you or reinforce your position. What do you prefer?”

“We can’t hold the planet with the Ziviri turning against us. We have 3,000 baby Ziviri and a couple hundred adults that are still loyal. We can’t leave them behind, but our first priority is the prisoners. I need the Bsidd troops to take them back as soon as possible.”

“If I am reading the battlemap correctly,” the Bsidd commander commented, “most of the prisoner sites are beyond the shield perimeter. Our troops would be vulnerable to orbital bombardment if we land there.”

“Which makes it tricky, but not undoable. You have to come down directly on top of them so the warships can’t pick you out from their own troops.”

“That is extremely risky,” the Bsidd warned.

“It’s that or leave our people behind. Give me a few hours and I’ll lead the assault myself.”

“You look like you’ve got your hands full with the traitors…no, we will handle this. I’m also sending down two stars of mechs to reinforce you. Do you need infantry?”

“Infantry don’t do much good against the Ziviri. We need the mechs.”

“Done.”

“We can reconfigure our mech bays for Ziviri life support,” the Kvash stated. “It will take time, but we can accommodate some of them if you can send the appropriate foodstuffs.”

“Our hangar bays can handle the remainder, though it will be a tight pack,” the Bsidd echoed. “At least we don’t have to fit your mechs.”

“A small silver lining,” Jyra agreed. “But I’d ditch them anyway in exchange for our people. I don’t know if any prisoners have been transferred to the warships. It wouldn’t make any strategic sense, but I can’t rule it out. If they have been we can’t rescue them, and we need to strike before those on the surface can be moved to orbit.”

“How many Kat’vo are still in play?” the Bsidd asked.

“Unknown. We killed most of those in combat, but how many more they have in reserve is guesswork. Expect at least moderate aerial resistance.”

“I’ve got enough squadrons to put them down. It’s the warships that I’m concerned about.”

“We have to get dirty,” the Kvash said, referencing something that Jyra wasn’t clear about.

“I know,” the Bsidd agreed. “But there’s no other way with your limited drones.”

“Explain,” the Arc Commando insisted.

“We have to use our warships for combat,” the Bsidd said gravely.

Jyra swallowed hard, knowing that the jumpships typically did not fight and habitually stayed away from weapons range while remotely controlling the drones. “Will that work?”

“Our heaviest weapons are on the jumpships,” the Bsidd sternly pointed out. “And even if we just soak up hits it will prolong our drones’ viability. If we don’t, too many warships will be able to cover the surface. If they choose to anyway, we could actually win this battle.”

“You’re our only ride out,” Jyra noted. “Or is there more help on the way?”

“We can get some cargo ships here, but warships are thin. With your comm relay down we’ll have to send a courier. If we’re going to recover the prisoners, we cannot wait.”

“If you send your troops here after the assaults we can hold against the Ziviri until we can get a cargo fleet here. I’m not worried about that. But if the V’kit’no’sat show up with reinforcements we can’t hold at all.”

“I can send one of my ships to summon an evacuation fleet,” the Kvash offered, “after the fighting is over.”

“I think that’s our best bet,” Jyra said, waiting for the Bsidd to respond.

“If we can fit everyone onboard the ships here, we leave immediately. If we can’t, we gamble and wait for a cargo fleet. It will depend on the damage we take.”

“I can live with that.”

“Agreed,” the Kvash echoed.

“Stay where you are, Human. We will handle this. Kvash, let us go now before they have time to think.”

“You have fleet command,” the Kvash relinquished verbally, though it was within the battlemap that the transfer actually took place.

“Kick some ass,” Jyra said before the link cut out and the fleets began to merge together enroute to the Kat’vo blockade in orbit around, but not over her current position on the planet, for she still had a few planetary guns operational. “Help’s on the way guys,” she said, whispering to the captured troops that could not hear her. “Hang on a little longer.”

Sar’fen woke when he heard/felt the first series of rumbles through the ground into the holding cell where he and some of the other Clan Saiyan prisoners were held. It wasn’t something Star Force had built, but rather a V’kit’no’sat designed structure that had been erected from a pre-fab kit. The Scionate knew the walls were not very thick, nor was the roof and floor, but there was a shield sitting just inside their perimeter that made it impossible to touch them.

Even beneath him there was a small gap between the floor material and the shield that he laid on, not allowing them to damage the structure and potentially escape…and when they had managed to beat their way through the limited power shield the entire bay holding some 17 prisoners, but made to hold several hundred, would be bathed with stun blasts, knocking everyone out.

It made for an effective prison in the short term, but the Commandos were already figuring out ways to beat it, for there wasn’t a single guard inside. How many there were outside was unknown, and no Archon had been permitted to live, otherwise they might have been able to see through the walls.

Everyone had already been mind raided, for outside their armor they had no defense against such invasion. Fortunately there had been no beatings or dismemberments, though a couple of Calavari had broken arms that were not given treatment after they’d resisted some of their handlers that brought them here. Sar’fen figured it was both punishment and a warning, letting them know that they needed to sit still and be good prisoners or they’d return as much trouble as was given to them.

But right now his mind wasn’t on the past, but the present. He didn’t know where he was, for he’d arrived here unconscious, but something was going on outside, and close too. He and the other prisoners listened for several minutes before a mind reached into his, warning him to get away from a particular wall. It wasn’t the one that held the door, and he tried to warn whoever it was about the stun weapons, but apparently they weren’t listening to his thoughts, for a moment later that wall blew out as soon as a couple of Humans nearby moved away.

As soon as it did the stun guns opened up, and as agreed beforehand the prisoners clustered together and tried to shield each other with their bodies, hoping that someone in the middle would stay conscious. Sar’fen wasn’t that person, but as he felt stun energy soaking into him he didn’t completely black out. Instead he was very loopy as he heard other weapons firing nearby, and they weren’t stun guns.

Soon he was being physically peeled off the pile by Bsidd appendages and dragged across several meters where he was dumped on the now shieldless ground. He stayed there for a while, trying to get his vision to clear, until a Bsidd came over him and injected him with a destunning serum. His head cleared within a few seconds and he saw more than a dozen Bsidd in their purple armor along with one that was identical except that it was clad in black and red armor…indicating that Bsidd was a Maverick.

“Dropships are outside. V’kit’no’sat fleet is overhead,” one of the Bsidd Commandos yelled. “Move now or we get blasted into oblivion!”

The Scionate didn’t argue the point, jumping up on wobbly legs and running for the exit as the Bsidd went with him and the other Clan Saiyan prisoners. When he passed through the gap in the wall he saw several additional prison chambers spaced around a yard that had V’kit’no’sat structures with smoking defense turrets behind them. He also saw several Spider-class mechs that had 8 legs on moveable joints that gave them a lot of maneuvering options. They had less than their Bsidd pilots did, though some of the mechs were standard Neos that resembled a Human frame without a head.

Sar’fen knew Bsidd used both, but most mechwarriors in their race preferred the additional legs, and he was glad to see anything with heavy armor and weapons that was Star Force made…but he wasn’t going to stare, for he had a dropship ahead of him that he needed to get to, and without armor of his own he was a sitting duck for even a small arms shot to kill him.

He decided to sprint ahead of the others, using his four legs and long stride to outpace them and get to the dropship first, though there were already some Bsidd inside without armor, and he guessed they were former prisoners as well. He scooted in amongst them, making room for the others as the dropship was quickly filled and sealed, then it lifted off taking them somewhere, but Sar’fen didn’t care where as long as it was away from here and eventually back into the fight.

Danngi sat on the edge of a low roof along with fourteen other Irondel, watching the dropships arrive with the rescued prisoners as 10 Bsidd mechs patrolled the perimeter and shot any Ziviri that got too close…and not with stun weapons. They looked to be pissed, and Danngi understood why, for the Ziviri were out for blood and would advance at any time they thought they had enough numbers to push their way in and get at the remaining Star Force troops.

There were piles of Ziviri bodies, some dead, some still alive, around the perimeter, but the undamaged ones didn’t seem to care about their fallen. They were waiting…no, lurking around the base waiting for a weakness as more and more arrived from across the planet. There were tens of thousands of them out there now looking like rock statues as they waited motionlessly aside from when they attacked with bare hands that could break through weak walls on their own.

Unfortunately Danngi and the other Irondel could not help. Their mechs had been destroyed, and without them they were useless. They’d be evacuated back up to their Kvash motherships, but there they’d just sit and wait until they got to a Star Force depot and received new mechs. Until then they were just in the way, so they’d decided to sit up here and watch while staying away from the large feet that could squash them with a single misplaced step.

The Kvash moved so slowly they were easy to move around, but onboard their ships they didn’t intermingle because their natural atmosphere was so hot the Irondel couldn’t survive in it. Instead the Irondel had their own section onboard the Kvash ships, but they were so small they didn’t take up much room. Thus they’d been the perfect match to give the Kvash mechwarriors and aerial pilots that could fit inside their Star Destroyer-class warships that were meant to be a one-stop shop for warfare.

The Kvash had other models that had their own mechwarriors and pilots, but the Irondel worked so well with them that they’d been paired up for longer than Danngi had been alive. The Irondel race hadn’t joined Star Force. They still had their own planets and military, but it was small and ineffective compared to what Star Force had. Danngi had been born into Axius along with a lot of other Irondel, all descended from others who had joined the empire as individuals. Because of that the Irondel did not have their own faction, and were used to supplement the Kvash in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

The Ollafan served the same purpose with the Kvash in an aquatics sense, though none were onboard the ships in orbit. The Kvash had Star Squasher-class vessels for aquatics assaults, so Danngi had never met them, but there were even fewer Ollofan in Star Force than Irondel, because their race was destroyed by the lizards with only a few survivors making their way into Star Force.

Both the Ollofan and the Irondel were tasked with big rolls in support of a full-fledged faction within Star Force, but right now Danngi just felt helpless, and so did the others. They’d all survived because of the survival pods within their mechs and their small size, but without their mechs they couldn’t do crap.

Another Irondel walked up beside him and sat down, with Danngi recognizing him as Seepla, one of the Kvash’s aerial pilots that had lost his ride as well.

“You know, we make a better target all sitting together.”

“At least we’ll take the shot meant for someone else,” Danngi said with a grim sarcasm.

“The Humans and Protovic can’t do much against the Ziviri either without mechs.”

“They can fire rifles.”

“So can we.”

All the mechwarriors down the line and turned to look at the idiot.

“Okay, okay,” Seepla said, raising his tiny hands in surrender. “A thousand of us couldn’t bring down one of them with ours. I’m just saying we’re not the only ones dispossessed.”

Danngi was about to say something, then a warning signaled inside all their helmets, for they were wearing their survival armor with battlemap links…and it said they were evacuating and needed to get to the spaceport.

“Let’s go,” he said, looking on the battlemap to see who else was nearby as the pack of Irondel scurried off the ledge and headed across the roof. Two levels down he saw there was a Scionate, so he contacted him on the comm and asked for a ride.

He received a waypoint in response, then they met the large quadruped on the floor below them. It stopped and held still as the little chipmunk-like Irondel jumped up on its armor and climbed up to its more or less flat back. They all got up there together and latched on in three rows looking like they were on a rollercoaster, then the Scionate took off at an easy run through the base and got them to the spaceport far faster and safer than had they gone on foot themselves.

The Scionate ran them all the way up inside the nearest dropship and made sure none of the Bsidd in it stepped on them. He slid up beside a stack of crates and let them hop off, then he didn’t stick around, instead running back out of the ship and off to what looked like the battle lines around the base that were surging with activity now that it was abundantly clear that Star Force was pulling out and the Ziviri wouldn’t have another chance to kill any of them.

“Bunch of ingrates. We ought to bombard the base when we leave,” another Irondel mechwarrior commented as they all watched what was going on around them via battlemap as their dropship lifted off.

“They won’t leave the shield generator up,” another said. “The V’kit’no’sat or the Ziviri could use it.”

“We’re not safe yet,” Danngi countered, seeing the alarmingly high number of Vik ships still in orbit and very few Star Force drones left alongside the Bsidd warships that they were not heading to. The larger vessels were shooting back and forth at range with the Kat’vo ships, but neither seemed to want to close to short weapons range, and many on both sides had marks of hull damage to testify to the slugging match that had previously taken place.

In fact, one of the Bsidd warships was not taking part in the fight, rather limping off behind towards the Kvash ships that were taking onboard the first waves of dropships. Danngi didn’t know where they’d fit them all, for they couldn’t stand the Kvash air, but that wasn’t his problem. The Irondel levels were built for their tiny size and the other races couldn’t fit in them, so he wasn’t going to be cramped once he got back…though he saw he wasn’t heading for the same ship he’d been assigned to.

“They got one,” another Irondel said, referencing the nearly dead Bsidd jumpship. “It’ll never leave the system.”

“At least they’re not trying to stop us from leaving,” the pilot pointed out. “Maybe they want the planet more than our deaths.”

“That would be a change,” Danngi commented as they continued to fly, then just before they got to the Kvash hangar bay he saw the shield generator go down. He backtracked the battlemap records and saw that one of the Kvash ships had dropped down into the upper atmosphere and fired on it, with the shield going down just before that happened.

So it had been intentional, not an enemy attack, and as he checked he saw no more battlemap signatures on the surface. They were all in dropships headed up to orbit.

“We shot it?” another Irondel said aghast. “What a waste. We protected that damn thing for so long…”

“Yeah, I know. But if we come back I’d rather not have to shoot through it,” Danngi said as he saw the Kvash warship shooting other targets on the surface, but not the hordes of Ziviri. He almost wished they would, but that wasn’t Star Force’s style. They may have betrayed them, but they were no threat now and as much as he wanted to shoot the arrogant bastards, he was just as glad to be heading away from the planet to some other place where he could get a new mech.

5

June 22, 4907

Sanisten System (Ziviri Region Capitol)

Balboa

Jyra’s evacuation fleet had traveled to the nearest Star Force-held Ziviri planet, with their Bsidd ships being peeled off and reassigned while the Kvash continued as escorts for the survivors that were transferred to cargo ships and sent to the Sanisten System, which was the command and control center for the Ziviri Region. It was the most well fortified, though not the original Ziviri capitol. Rather it was where Star Force chose to place its regional capitol and where it had located most of the loyal Ziviri so they could grow and develop amongst likeminded individuals rather than have the constant drain of dissenters slowing them down.

Jyra and the Clan Saiyan survivors had expected to be put back into the field, with their recall to the capitol being a curious call until the Arc Commando was summoned to the planetary command center and personally debriefed by Duke Yani. From him she’d learned that the comm grid relay link back to the rest of the Star Force empire had been broken in the Sopva System, which laid outside the Ziviri Region but not far from the border spinward. The Kat’vo had destroyed the relay and the status of the system was unknown, but there was no longer any information flow coming to and from the region.

They were cut off, blind to what was happening elsewhere in the war, though this wasn’t unexpected. Duke Yani and Archon Victoria-243 had expected that to happen eventually, though the amount the Ziviri Region was being targeted was a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t strategically important for the assault of the major Star Force systems and they’d figured there was a chance the V’kit’no’sat would ignore them entirely, but no such luck. They were hitting the smaller systems, the weaker ones, the far flung ones, trying to draw out Star Force’s fleets and Uriti in a chasing game.

But there were no Uriti in the Ziviri Region. Nor was there much infrastructure. The Ziviri were a mostly unwilling annex and one still in the early stages of conversion, but the Kat’vo were here hitting them hard and now Star Force had to deal with not one, but multiple Ziviri uprisings.

The Knillo System wasn’t the first, but it was one happening more or less at the same time as four other invasions of Ziviri systems. It also appeared to not be accidental, for Zen’zat messengers had been discovered in the Hvwen System and their capture and interrogation had confirmed that the Kat’vo were actively recruiting their help with the promise of inclusion in the V’kit’no’sat Empire afterward.

That last part Jyra hadn’t even contemplated. She knew the V’kit’no’sat had a number of servant races beyond the Zen’zat, but them taking on the Ziviri just struck her as odd. She wasn’t sure if it was desperation or choice of race, though their size certainly fit with V’kit’no’sat standards, but typically slave races added something unique to the empire. It wasn’t until the Duke explained the full potential of the Ziviri genetic memories did she understand. If they could program one Ziviri exactly as they liked, whether through medical alteration or training, that one could reproduce an army of the same mindset, insuring their loyalty and predictability.

That was the working theory at least, and a good number of the Ziviri were buying their offer. Precautions were being made in all other Ziviri systems, but this tactic had caught several off guard already and the V’kit’no’sat were now in sole possession of three systems with dozens more under siege.

The Duke said he was talking to her because they needed everyone with telepathy they had to go out to the worlds not yet taken and help to figure out which populations would be susceptible to the V’kit’no’sat offer when made, for they were sure to repeat the tactic elsewhere. Jyra was being reassigned to surveillance duty, and those worlds deemed vulnerable would start to be evacuated even before they were attacked.

Star Force was at a disadvantage as it was, but there was no way they could hold what they had with the Ziviri turning on them too, so the plan was to pick a handful of worlds and pull all the loyal Ziviri to them, along with all the other Star Force personnel on the other worlds. Once they did that they might have a chance of holding out, for they weren’t expecting any reinforcements from the rest of the empire.

To put it bluntly, they were in a bind. Balboa was stable with decently strong shield generators across the entire planet and a loyal population, but it was a mostly empty world. They did have Bsidd and some Kiritak that could reproduce rapidly if needed, but building planetary infrastructure took time and they’d been relying on the Ziviri to operate, if not produce, the bulk of the region’s logistical production.

“It looks like we’re screwed,” Jyra said to Phobotsi, a fellow Protovic Commando in Clan Saiyan that was sitting on a bench in the equipment room as Jyra was packing a duffle with various types of equipment…including a telepathic booster, for Ziviri were hard to read even when making physical contact.

“Then we at least make them pay for it.”

“I can’t stand these ingrates,” she said, half throwing a canister into her open bag. “We play nice, keep most of them alive, then help them rebuild and they turn on us the first chance they get.”

“What did you expect? They were hostile before…”

Jyra sighed. “I expected some of them to see the light. I guess that was just wishful thinking on my part.”

“Some have.”

“Less than 1% on Baskerno, and those that stayed loyal were killed by the others. They don’t even care to spare their own race.”

“Genetic memories can be a bitch,” the Protovic told her, not knowing the irony of that statement, for most of the Protovic were unaware of the time bomb that had been in their own genetic code before Star Force had quietly washed it away.

“Yeah, but there comes a point where you have to make a choice. I expected more of them to choose us after we showed them what we really were and they had enough data to counteract any propaganda.”

“Apparently they did make their choice. I just wish I could help you.”

“Not your fault they’re dense to everything but a deep Ikrid scan.”

“I’m surprised the V’kit’no’sat would tolerate that.”

“They gave the Zen’zat blocks, so why would that be so bad?” Jyra countered as he continued to pack what looked like far more equipment than she should need.

“Zen’zat are elite slaves used as intermediaries between the member races. The other slaves are not. How do they expect to control them?”

“The old fashioned way, I suppose. Just kill any that don’t do as they’re told.”

“You think this is also a play for the Rim after they get done with us?”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” the Protovic argued. “It looks like they need help to beat us, and that should hurt their ego.”

“Having to hit and run hurts their ego, but that’s preferable to getting obliterated by the Uriti,” Jyra said as she finished and sealed up her duffle before swinging it over her armored shoulder. “Make sure this planet is here when I get back.”

“Make sure you get back,” he said, accepting her handshake.

“That’s the plan. Seriously though, if we lose this system I think we’re sunk.”

“They’ll have to fight against these Ziviri to do it.”

“That doesn’t leave me inspired.”

“Nice to know you’re not going to get backstabbed though.”

“Point,” she said, heading for the door with the Protovic in tow. “Though don’t put it completely out of mind. Especially for the converts. They could always shift.”

“Not a chance. They’ve seen the holos of Ziviri killing Ziviri, and they’re pissed. Any of those traitors set foot here and the loyals will finish them off for us.”

“They won’t be the ones coming,” Jyra said as she moved into the hallway and threw the Protovic a short, two fingered salute, then headed to the spaceport and from there left the planet.

10,478 lightyears away…

Kara-317 stood on her hands upside down in a wobbly handstand as her feet wavered over top of her, near to tipping. Her muscles tightened and realigned for more than the thousandth time as she fought the gravity inside the training chamber. It was set at 22g, more than any Human could survive, but Archons weren’t quite Human anymore and she also had additional upgrades from her Vorch’nas, but she wasn’t using its IDF field to cheat. She was fighting the gravity with nothing but muscle and grit, with her hands being pressed into the semi-soft floor nearly half an inch from the compression.

The clock in front of her, also inverted, showed her only at 3 minutes and 29 seconds, but that was in fact a new record for both her and Star Force at the 22g mark. In fact, no other Archon had ever logged a mark above 16g. At least, nothing more than a few seconds, and it took at least 20 seconds to make the scoreboard. Anything less was deemed a failure.

Kara didn’t have much left in her. Her muscles weren’t overly tired, but the stress was more than they could handle. She made it another 5 seconds before her feet tipped backwards and she couldn’t fully correct. Her body went through several contortions trying to readjust but she knew she’d lost it long before her back came slamming down on the floor. The normal short fall was amplified by the heavy gravity and hit her like a punch to the gut by Paul, and had it not been for her Mebvat psionic, her bones would have broken with the hit, she had no doubt.

But this wasn’t the first time she’d hit the ground. Far from it. Kara rolled over onto her side and forced herself up into a crouch on one knee to rest her arms, though they were being dragged down to the floor as if pulled by magnets.

She barely felt it, having gotten used to the heavy gravity, but her arms simply were not as strong as her legs and unable to support her weight, which well surpassed a ton with the gravity set so high.

Kara would have mouthed off if she could, but the gravity worked on her jaw muscles as well, making it hard to talk. In fact, it worked every muscle in her body, which was why she liked these training sessions. They were short but very intense, and having been in the chamber for less than 5 minutes and barely moving, she was already sweating considerably.

The Archon forced herself to stand, feeling wobbly again but able to handle it with the superior strength of her legs. She walked a few laps around the basketball court-sized circular chamber, then she’d had enough, having to call ‘uncle’ and mentally reset the gravity in the chamber to a measly 5g.

Kara’s body ached with relief as the weight seemed to disappear, despite the fact that the chamber still had gravity 5 times normal, which was Earth standard. It always had been since Star Force’s inception, but right now this felt ‘normal’ for Kara. She gave herself another 30 seconds to recover, then began running laps and punching at various floating orbs that didn’t seem to feel the gravity at all.

That wasn’t true, for they were affected just the same, but they had gravity drives that kept them afloat no matter what the pull of gravity was and they always felt light when she hit them, for her arms were having to fight the gravity more than the mass of the targets…and even more so now, for her arms were protesting mightily after the 22g handstand she’d made them endure.

But Kara fought through it and got in a ‘light’ 5g workout before turning the gravity back to normal and shutting down the chamber, for no one else used it but her. Other Star Force races handled gravity differently, but none could naturally deal with 22g. The Bsidd were the best, but even they would crumple here. Others like the Kvash might not physically be squashed, but they couldn’t move much at all, becoming little statues while the Dvapp would just become a pool of sandy playdoh unable to hold much of a shape.

In fact, if they were spread out too far they’d die, so they had to be extra careful in gravity chambers, though the Star Force Dvapp used them often at lower settings. Kara didn’t know if the independent Dvapp race did or not, but then again they weren’t all that keen on training and relied mostly on their natural abilities rather than acquired ones.

Kara’s ability to survive here was an acquired one, and she intended to get all the way up to 25g before she started to fan out her training and get better at maintaining the higher gravities rather than pushing her short term tolerance further. But today she was done…here at least. The rest of the day would be normal gravity training, but after a nap. Heavy gravity always drained her in an odd way, and if she didn’t let her body process the microdamage immediately her other workouts would suffer for it.

She sensed the Paladin mind outside the door before she opened it, then saw Viceroy Brisco waiting for her.

“Trouble?” she asked rather than invading his mind to find the answer, but his mood told her something was wrong.

“It’s finally happened. Two V’kit’no’sat races have invaded our coreward border. We are under assault.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Up until now in the war the Paladin had continued to expand and had been sending back shipments of standard drones to assist in the replenishment of the existing fleets, but with all the low priority targets the V’kit’no’sat had been hitting, including some in the Frontier Region as the enemy hit them at their weakest point, she’d expected them to show up on the Paladin’s turf eventually.

“Which races?”

“The Zep’sha and the Tim’ka, and they’re working with combined fleets.”

Kara growled, knowing this wasn’t good, and the Viceroy huffed his agreement. The Zep’sha were cousins of the Oso’lon, formerly known as ‘Diplodocus’ in old Earth history. Their necks and tails were a bit closer to snakes while the Pas’cha had higher arching necks than even the Oso’lon. All three were damn near identical, but the Zep’sha and the Pas’cha were essentially the Oso’lon’s personally annexed races and had both the stature and firepower that position allowed. They were not top tier races, but both were strong second tier and now one of them had been sent to fight the Paladin.

The other race, the Tim’ka, was a mid level aquatic formerly known as the ‘Nothosaurus’. They could live on land, so technically they were amphibian, but they spent most of their time in the water and did not participate in land combat. They used Zen’zat for that, but if they were pairing with the Zep’sha they wouldn’t have to worry about it…and the Zep’sha wouldn’t have to worry about assaulting water worlds. Together they made for a very formidable duo, and Kara wondered why the Paladin had attracted such a heavy hand.

“Looks like we’re not getting off easy.”

“It would seem not,” the Paladin agreed. “We will carry our weight in this conflict after all.”

“Yes we will. Let’s get going. Thrawn is going to need all the help he can get.”

“Your flagship has been put on notice. I was merely waiting for you to finish your workout.”

Kara patting him on his scaly shoulder, for most of the Paladin uniforms did not have sleeves, and the pair headed for a waiting dropship that took them up to the monstrous jumpship that Kara would be organizing this war from, now that the V’kit’no’sat had finally arrived. Thrawn was already deployed closer to the coreward border and would be there before she was, and both would be bringing huge fleets with them.

If the V’kit’no’sat thought they’d be able to sweep up a massive amount of territory and pressure the main portion of Star Force from the spinward side, they were going to be deeply disappointed.

6

July 2, 4907

Gahjo System (Yev Region)

Siotol

Arch Duke Karthen had led the Bsidd since trailblazer Larissa-048 had annexed their race into Star Force. He’d had sporadic contact with her over the years, for she had never stopped keeping an eye on the Bsidd, but unless there was something new involved she left the running of the faction up to the Arch Duke. When they’d decided to create new Bsidd variants she’d been heavily involved, but as for the growth of Star Force’s largest faction, that was mostly Karthen’s doing.

Every region in Star Force territory other than the Paladin Zone had a strong Bsidd presence, either in the form of shared systems or exclusive ones, but the Yev Region was dominated by the insect-like race and Karthen had the job of maintaining the border. It didn’t connect to the Devastation Zone, rather it was bracketed by systems that were neither Star Force nor those purged by the V’kit’no’sat, but being inhabited by other races didn’t prevent the V’kit’no’sat from crossing through them to hit the Yev Region.

They hadn’t previously, content to go for the closest systems and hammer away until they fell, then move on to the next closest ones. Now they were employing a totally different tactic…hitting where Star Force was weak across the entire border, and even backdooring around the perimeter to come in through the rimward section of the Frontier Zone. Fortunately there weren’t large amounts of enemy troops doing that, but there were enough that they were taking systems and forcing some of the roaming fleets to be dispersed to the rear rather than reinforcing the main lines.

So far the V’kit’no’sat were not skipping over too many systems and plunging into the interior. That would have been stupid, for the ganking potential of nearby Star Force systems would be too great. There would be too many avenues for reinforcements to arrive and cut them off, so the V’kit’no’sat were keeping open space behind them, more or less, so their reinforcements could flow somewhat unhindered. The trailblazers were not letting them move freely, constantly ambushing their relief fleets as they arrived and hitting them while they moved laterally back and forth across the border, but if the V’kit’no’sat dove past the front and hit the interior systems their movement potential would be blunted by the system defense fleets that could easily pop over a system or two to assist.

Karthen didn’t know where most of the trailblazers were, for they were roaming around wherever their instincts told them to go, but he did know that the Yev Region was the only one under assault where the V’kit’no’sat did not have a firm fixed base of operations. So far the Bsidd, along with numerous Clans plus Axius and Beacon troops, had prevented any permanent holds. When the Uriti came knocking they punted all temporarily taken systems back into the Star Force category, but the same was not so elsewhere.

The V’kit’no’sat had taken many systems and secured them with a combination of ground troops and prisoners. The prisoners prevented direct Uriti attacks and the ground troops kept Star Force from reclaiming them, as they were doing in many systems. But those systems that were now firmly held by the V’kit’no’sat were being used as staging bases and the trailblazers couldn’t keep their Uriti sitting there in blockade mode or many other systems would fall in their absence.

Karthen was intent on not letting the V’kit’no’sat get a foothold in the Yev Region, and he had two Uriti of his own assigned to non-trailblazers and tasked with guarding a sub-region each. They would not travel beyond it, rather be the guard dogs patrolling the most important systems that were pouring out replacement drones and other necessary equipment at a rapid pace. The other Uriti were out and about roaming  the front lines, and so far the two Uriti Karthen had under his command had not seen combat because the V’kit’no’sat had not pushed far enough into the region to draw them out.

Ross-059 and Clark-066 were out on the border now fighting a combination of Sarofan, Vid’sen, Qua’cho, and Sli’nar with Bsidd fleets escorting the Uriti and numerous others defending key systems or roaming the front systems so the V’kit’no’sat couldn’t predict where they were or how many ships they had to bring to the fight. That unpredictability was helping the war effort in all regions, but there were so many V’kit’no’sat fleets that Star Force couldn’t keep up and systems were permanently falling…and when that happened the V’kit’no’sat got stronger and were able to throw up supply bases that Star Force couldn’t touch without killing their own people, which wasn’t an option.

Karthen had hoped to keep the V’kit’no’sat out of the Yev Region as he played ‘whack a mole’ without giving them any permanent roots, but a fifth race had recently showed up and started kicking the crap out of his fleets. Apparently the V’kit’no’sat realized they’d not assigned enough heavy hitters to the Yev Region, so now a portion of the Hjar’at fleet was in Karthen’s backyard and he was seeing constant reports of how ruthlessly efficient they were. Even their warships were better than the rest, if only in how they organized their fleet formations, but on the ground they were incredibly hard to stop.

Mech combat was dicey, because the Hjar’at would simply charge the mechs, activate their Saroto’kanse’vam, then do a battle roll the equivalent of a somersault right into the target mech and shred it on contact. They’d also tear up the dirt or rock beneath them, but it didn’t matter. They could pretty much one hit kill the smaller mechs, and their Zen’zat support troops were far better than those the other races assaulting the Yev Region were using.

They still couldn’t do anything to counter the Uriti, so at least Star Force had that advantage, but the Bsidd didn’t have anything to really oppose the Hjar’at on the ground other than numbers…and it seemed the Hjar’at were bringing so many of their own into play that the Arch Duke was certain it was intentional so he couldn’t mass resistance against them.

With the trailblazers continuing to make hits on the border and beyond it, Karthen could tell that even with the Hjar’at now involved this was going to be a very gradual war of attrition, meaning he had time to figure out some counter to the Hjar’at…but at the moment he couldn’t see anything, and if it was easy, someone else would have thought of it by now.

But the Bsidd were his responsibility and Larissa was busy fighting, so it was up to him. He had to find a way to make the Bsidd at least less vulnerable against the Hjar’at.

As far as infantry went, the Bsidd couldn’t stand toe to toe with the larger Hjar’at who had enough psionic weaponry that they could fight mechs even without wearing armor. There were 27 different Bsidd variants he had the potential of producing from the Queens’ eggs, but none of them could do anything against the Hjar’at. Even if he had a super large Bsidd crafted, they wouldn’t be any better than a mech.

Karthen had been trying to refine the Bsidd to less variants, with the 3 currently being hatched used for all applications. The Tridas were the infantry, mostly, though there were many other variants that qualified as Commandos. Karthen did not allow actual castes to form in the Bsidd, and anyone who wanted a job and could pass the qualifications were included, even if their body hadn’t been specifically designed for the task. However, 99.999% of the new infantry were made up of Tridas, and the same was true of the Zendas. They were designed small in body to fit into cockpits of mechs and aerial craft without taking up too much space.

They weren’t designed as small as Irondel or Urik’kadel, but they did have different joints that allowed them to comfortably crunch down into an even smaller mass than a Human, thus allowing their craft to hold more machinery in lieu of a larger cockpit. When a Tridas became a mechwarrior there were modifications to the mechs made, and they were already designed to be modular to accommodate different pilots, including Humans and other races if needed, but the current Bsidd mechs were created primarily for the use of the Zendas.

The Sordas looked the most like the original Alphas, and were a medium-sized variant with a pair of appendages that broke apart into what looked similar to fingers. They allowed the Sordas to handle tech work that required fine adjustments, making them physically more suited to the work, though mechanical add-ons allowed other variants to handle the micro-adjustments.

Those three variants were the core of the Bsidd reproduction queues now, though Karthen had the option of ordering up any of the other 24 variants if he saw a need. Queens were always necessary, and didn’t count as a variant, but a few of them did enter combat in various rolls. That was by choice, but Karthen always made sure they had enough safely tucked away from combat to supply the necessary eggs en mass.

It was those Queens that had allowed the Bsidd to reproduce so fast and to become the dominant race in the empire, population wise at least. Humans were still the controlling faction because they had the most Monarchs and the Archons, but there were enough other races working their way up in Karthen’s wake and within the Maverick ranks to almost make that a moot point. Karthen didn’t lead because he was a Human, but because he was more experienced. Humans started Star Force, so it was a small group of Humans who had the most experience and that would never change…unless he and the others were killed.

That wouldn’t be happening to Karthen, for as a Monarch he had to stay away from the fighting and handle the logistics work that would otherwise tie up the Archons. They needed to be free to take risks and fight while he handled the support work. That was the role of a Monarch, but Karthen did not want to be too far away from the front, because the more distance involved meant more lag time in reports. He needed to stay in the loop, but couldn’t risk himself getting killed or captured. He knew far too much to allow himself to be captured, so he especially had to stay away from the enemy.

He had time to think, long and hard, while others responded to attacks. He knew his Bsidd could fight the Zen’zat more or less equally in terms of infantry, and while there could be a new variant made to handle them better, it was the Hjar’at that were the main threat.

So that meant either strategy or technology upgrades. The Archons handled the strategy, so Karthen needed to supply them with something new to use. Something that…

The Arch Duke stopped his whirl of holograms over his ‘throne’ chair as a thought occurred to him. Maybe he needed to do something stupid, logistically speaking. His mind was constantly wrapped up on production numbers and efficiency of material use, but maybe it would be necessary to waste some resources on inefficient weapons.

No, not weapons…walls.

A hologram materialized before him, with his mind making adjustments far faster than keyboard input would ever allow. The biggest threat of the Hjar’at was their Saroto’kanse’vam, both in the form of physical contact and the energy discharges they could throw out like targeted lightning. The blades themselves cut like lightsabers, allowing them to destroy mechs and the shields protecting them at rapid speed.

However, their recharge was not so rapid, meaning that the charge the Saroto’kanse’vam held had to be replenished if totally used up. Usually the Hjar’at he’d seen could kill a Neo with less than a full charge, but some had to deactivate their blades for short periods of time before they reignited them.

He thought about outfitting a small number of mechs with higher grade armor, but even if he put Yeg’gor on a few it wouldn’t be wide-scale enough to matter. So the key wasn’t going to be higher grade armor, but more mass.

The mechs couldn’t carry it, for it would slow them down and turn them into little more than turrets. But if he had walls built, mobile walls that could fly and drop in wherever needed and just soak up damage, then his Bsidd troops could line up more shots from range.

Karthen cringed as he began to get a feel for how much material was going to be involved to get the wall segments to fly and eat up Hjar’at energy when they did strike them. They couldn’t just go ‘puff’ like a snowball, they had to stand up to a lot of pounding…

The Arch Duke had another flash of insight, changing the wall to a pyramid-like staircase that would allow the mechs to walk up and over them without having to jump. He added another expensive component the equivalent of Jumat or Lachka in that it was an energy field that physically moved objects. If programmed appropriately, the wall would allow the mechs to cross over, shoot, then withdraw, but if a Hjar’at tried to climb over it then the energy field would knock them back the other way while the mechs kept shooting them.

That, he knew, would be the difference maker. Delay the time it took for the Hjar’at to get to the mechs and allow them to rack up more shots. He had to give his Bsidd a way to avoid most of the quick kills.

But there would be cost. And it would come in the production of other things, such as mechs or naval drones, but if Karthen didn’t find a way to slow down the surface conquest rate of the Hjar’at the rest wouldn’t matter. They’d establish foothold planets shielded by prisoners, and if the Bsidd couldn’t hold them to begin with they’d have little chance of invading and taking them back.

It was going to be a huge waste of resources, but if it altered the course of battle it might be worth it in the long run. There was no way to know for sure, but Karthen had to do something. If he didn’t, the Yev Region was going to have a big chunk bitten out of it within a few decades and that was going to make the trailblazers’ job exponentially harder. They had to deny the V’kit’no’sat footholds as long as possible, and if making some flying brick walls helped to do that, then so be it.

They might be ugly, cumbersome, and inelegant, but so long as they stopped those damn battle rolls he didn’t care. His Bsidd needed an advantage, and if it meant building artificial terrain, then that’s what it was going to take.

Karthen spent another half hour working on the designs then sent them off to his engineers for finishing work. Within 4 hours the final blueprints were done and by the end of the day the first factory began to produce the Bsidd ‘speed bumps.’

7

December 8, 4907

Ichyson System (Yev Region)

Hammat

Ichomo stood in the cockpit of his Spider-class mech, held stationary by an IDF field that kept his body still no matter how the machine moved. Even if it got knocked over his body wouldn’t feel it, but his mind would, for it was linked to the machine as if it was his body, with his real one a hazy afterimage in the back of his mind.

Ichomo was walking his mech across a flat plane along with 4 stars of identical mechs, 20 in all, as they moved to reinforce a battle already taking place between other Bsidd mechs and several columns of Hjar’at. He fired his 4 Bra’hems from hard points on the body of his mech and not the moving legs, sending the green beams out to hit two of the Hjar’at from the flanks. It was a long range shot coming over more than 3 miles, but for the mech’s targeting systems it was an easy hit. With no terrain to hide behind it was virtually impossible to miss, which was why both the mechs and Hjar’at carried energy shields.

His Bra’hem hits were totally absorbed, weakening the shields but not penetrating them, and when the mechs beside him joined in and tried to target 3 specific Hjar’at, the V’kit’no’sat ranks altered suddenly. Different Hjar’at moved into the firing lines to take the shots while the ones with weakened shields rotated to the other side as those front in line began sprinting ahead and firing green Dre’mo’don orbs ahead at the already embattled mechs. Halfway there they flashed their clear Saroto’kanse’vam to life with the back spines glowing blue with a ferocious light.

Ichomo put some shots into them as his mech continued to cover ground at a rapid pace, but the spiders were nowhere near as fast as the biped madcats and ravens that were approaching from behind and gaining ground rapidly. They were from Clan Saber, but they were 2 miles further behind and wouldn’t get to the battle before the Bsidd reinforcements did…all the while the skies were full of aerial craft, with the V’kit’no’sat versions being manned exclusively by Zen’zat. They’d kept the landing craft further away, making the mechs walk/run the last part over ground, and it was allowing the Hjar’at to rip apart the leading elements of the engagement force.

The Bsidd watched as the sprinting Hjar’at stabbed their necks towards the ground right before coming into contact with the mechs, forcing them to do a somersault forward and into the other spiders. Fortunately half of them missed, for the spiders jumped sideways and lost a leg or two, but those that were caught in the body were gutted and the Hjar’at were tangled up in the mess as their energized blades tried to burn through the material. They thrashed, throwing molten armor and interior components around as short lived lava blurps, but eventually they freed themselves of the wrecked mess and got their footing again before looking for other targets.

Ichomo selected one and fired on it before it could get back to its feet, sending four small glowing missiles across the miles of grassland. He set the missiles to shoot high so he wouldn’t hit the mech underneath in case the pilot was still alive, then mentally guided them as they readjusted to hit the Hjar’at on the top side.

The Bsidd coughed a rough laugh when he saw them catch the Hjar’at with its shields down, for the Saroto’kanse’vam could not operate with them up. The rest of the large body was covered, but holes were included for the spines when they were active, then the shields expanded back up to cover them when they were not. The spider’s missiles had caught the Hjar’at in the transition, with the glow gone but the shields not yet extended to cover them.

He saw two of the spines blown completely of the Hjar’at, flying into the air as short lived projectiles before they fell to the ground and caught the grass on fire from the residual heat. There were fires all over the place as the grass couldn’t handle the weapon misses and hot metal, making little smoke plumes that marked the location of the roaming battlefield that now extended more than 20 miles to the northwest. The Bsidd had been fighting a continual retreat trying to spread the Hjar’at out as they lead them back to the artificial terrain to the west, with the smoke marking their progress for all to see.

Ichomo flinched when he saw the Hjar’at he had maimed turn and run in his direction along with a dozen others, accelerating up to a higher speed than the spiders could manage, but with both sides running at each other it wasn’t going to take long for them to get to melee range.

Ichomo got a signal to hold position, which he did along with the other spiders as they dug in, literally, with their legs burrowing into the ground slightly as they set themselves and shifted shields forward while charging up their bloon launchers. It took time, but right now they had some as the Hjar’at fired at them across the gap, but the shots couldn’t get through their reinforced shields.

On the battlemap he got launch icons from the Clan madcats coming up from behind them, and a moment later smoky streaks passed over his mech like a fast moving bank of clouds, then they tipped down and landed all around the Hjar’at, though many were shot down first by the point defense weapons on the enemy armor.

Fortunately his sensors still worked through the smoke and fire, and when his bloon launcher was fully charged he sent the purple orb into one of the Hjar’at indicated by his star leader. He didn’t worry about the rest of the targets, trusting in the organizational power of Star Force, and saw his bloon half hit as the Hjar’at dodged the slower moving energy ball. It melted the armor where it hit, then the rest passed on by and spread out, landing and setting a couple of acres of grass on fire along with an explosion of dirt thrown up by the blast.

The Hjar’at who dodged his bloon ironically got hit face on by another, and Ichomo saw its head emerge from the explosion with most of its helmet armor gone and its grey/green skin black from burning. The armor then began to alter and flow forward, recovering its damaged head as it angrily charged forward along with the others. Three of the Hjar’at went down and did not immediately get back up, but the others eventually made it to the spiders despite being in bad shape.

Five of them dove into the Bsidd mechs, glowing spines hitting first and destroying their shields but only scratching their armor, for the enhanced shields had blunted most of their movement. The mech to Ichomo’s left took two of its legs and pressed them forward, throwing the Hjar’at backwards to where it landed on its feet. As it did so Ichomo ran to the side and fired at it with his Bra’hem just before he punched out with two of his legs.

He knocked it aside a few steps, but the Hjar’at didn’t fall over. Instead it got its footing and spun in place, bringing its tail around and landing the four tooth-like spines on the end into Ichomo’s mech body where they stuck, then suddenly his spider was thrown to the side before the tail dislodged. The mechwarrior felt his machine roll over the ground as one of the legs no longer functioned, but the other 7 did and he got his mech back up and fired when he could as the Hjar’at was ravaging the other spider.

The mech did not survive the engagement, but neither did the Hjar’at. Ichomo was able to get too many free shots off as the enemy seemed obsessed with tearing apart the other Bsidd mech. Eventually the Hjar’at took a heavy shot to its ribs that got through the now paper-thin armor and it went down hard. Ichomo fired over and over again into it, making sure it couldn’t regenerate and rejoin the fight. By the time he finished, the other Hjar’at were also down…along with most of the spiders. Only two others were still operational, and there wasn’t much difference ahead where the other Hjar’at were winning over the Bsidd.

The Clan mechs sprinted past Ichomo to join the others as he saw another wave of Hjar’at approaching a few miles away along with a lot of Zen’zat vehicles. It was the main body of the assault, and while they’d managed to string out the forward elements, this group had maintained cohesion and was going to run over them in a few minutes if he didn’t get out of here.

Ichomo pinged the downed mechs finding that at least two mechwarriors were still alive. He signaled to them to bail out and rendezvous with him, with his mech suddenly growing a belly pouch that the two now mech-less Bsidd climbed into. He searched the other nearby wreckage, finding one more badly wounded Bsidd that had no comm, but with the help of his two passengers they got the third onboard and began running the now 7-legged spider as fast as he could while altering his status on the battlemap to indicate that he was now a rescue vehicle.

The Hjar’at were coming faster than he could move, but he saw that he was going to make it to the artificial terrain before them. The turrets placed alongside the speed bumps were already firing across the distance and giving cover to the other retreating mechs as a few intact Hjar’at were trying to run them down before they could get there, but most had to turn back as the turrets’ firepower was too great for them to sustain.

Ichomo walked his mech up and over the stair-like mound then did the same for two more before he got passed the primary battle line as more mechs were taking position on the ridges, or just behind. He kept his mech moving, knowing he had to evacuate the other mechwarriors he was carrying, but he was able to watch via the battlemap when the Hjar’at finally got to the artificial terrain.

The first wave of sprinters were hit hard with weaponsfire as those behind covered for them, forcing the Bsidd and Clan mechs to take a lot of shield hits in order to fire on the Hjar’at. Most of them didn’t need to, able to hide behind the speed bumps for the most part, but they were up top and visible as a taunt, for the Hjar’at didn’t know what the speed bumps actually were.

The sprinters headed for the sitting duck mechs with their spines ablaze in destructive energy, but when they got to the edge the mechs retreated backwards over the top, still firing, then the Hjar’at hit dampening fields that their Saroto’kanse’vam did nothing to weaken. Those fields restricted their movement and essentially stopped them in place as the mechs poured firepower into them.

A few managed to push through and over the top edge, the rest were killed before they could get to battle roll range. Those that came over the top were hit with the ‘bumpers’ that acted like Jumat and popped them up off the ground or knocked them back the way they’d come. None of them were able to land more than a tail swipe, for their momentum was gone and their battle rolls were simply not very effective without it.

The stragglers were finished off, then the main force began to spread out and try to flank the speed bumps…but that forced them to thin their formation and the mechs were peppering them with hits as the Hjar’at focused mainly on the defense turrets, trying to take their heavier weaponry out first.

After that Ichomo didn’t see what happened, for something damaged in his mech failed and his battlemap went out along with two more legs…leaving him only 5 to crawl forward on, but that was enough to keep his mech upright and moving while the battlefield behind him was igniting a wildfire that was moving only slightly slower across the plains than Ichomo’s mech was.

8

December 26, 4907

Ichyson System (Yev Region)

Hammat

Cora-005 looked down on the planet from orbit as her fleet arrived. The trailblazer didn’t have a Uriti with her, nor did she have an enormous fleet of drones. What she did have was enough to keep the Hjar’at fleet away from the planet as she watched the large-scale warfare taking place on the surface. The enemy was engaged in 83 different locations, pressing the Star Force defenders hard and mopping up territory at an incredible pace. The Bsidd and Clan troops were fighting well, but they were simply outnumbered and, for the most part, outmatched.

The Clan troops were not, but there were too few amongst the Bsidd and for every hold that was made 10 cities fell. Cora’s contribution in this war had come in places just like this, moving in to fight the ground battles while the other trailblazers mostly focused on the naval aspect. With the Uriti the V’kit’no’sat could not win this war navally and they knew it, but they were making their gains on the ground and Clan Scorpion was going to put a stop to it here.

Her entire fleet was made up of her Clan, as were two others out counterattacking invasion points rather than spreading themselves thin in defensive positions. They were the heavy hammers meant to counter the hardest hits the V’kit’no’sat could send their way…and thus far her Clan’s record was 18-1. Only in the Yarreen System had they failed to retake the planet before all planetary shield generators went down. After that happened they had to evacuate, otherwise naval firepower would have destroyed them with ease.

Here though, there were plenty of shield generators still active and for the moment she held naval superiority. That meant the V’kit’no’sat on the surface had to fear her naval guns, and right now those weapons were targeting units caught out in the open and bases that didn’t have strong enough defenses. Additionally, she was coordinating with the planetary shields so they would lower where she wanted and hit the Hjar’at and Zen’zat fighting beneath them.

Unfortunately that wasn’t good enough, and better than two thirds of the Hjar’at were well placed so they couldn’t be targeted. They didn’t have any captured shield generators, only damaged ones sabotaged by Star Force before they were overtaken or hit by the Hjar’at themselves prior to her fleet’s arrival.

What they did have was their own mobile shield generators, and they were damn strong. Some were fixed buildings that were being added to with additional supplies and pre-fabricated units, while others were specially constructed ships that could float over the surface and move the shield with the ground troops. Cora had yet to see such elaborate methods used in this war to date, and she guessed this was new technology…or at least a new use of it…for the V’kit’no’sat.

She studied the battlemap readings as her ships moved into lower orbit and began to deliver dropships and landers to the planet. From everything she was seeing, they Hjar’at wanted this planet and wanted it bad. They were moving with such rapid pace and alarmingly high numbers that Cora began to wonder what was special about this location. It took her a few minutes before it dawned on her, then everything became crystal clear.

The Ichyson System was relatively new, in so much as only Hammat had been heavily populated, but there were 19 other worlds that had hardly been touched. They held a lot of untapped resources that Star Force was going to exploit later, but there was no point in devoting so many resources to a system that was close to the Devastation Zone border. All the material was being put here, on Hammat, beneath the heavy shield generators. If they’d proceeded to the other planets already they would have needed 19 equally strong planetary shield grids on all of them…and that would have been a waste when other systems needed those shield generators.

But if the V’kit’no’sat claimed this system they could defend it against the Uriti so long as they had hostages. If the Uriti wanted to blockade this system and not let the V’kit’no’sat set up on the other planets that was a win, for other assaults would be given a free hand. If the Uriti left and roamed, the V’kit’no’sat could build on the other 19 worlds and protect them against conventional attack with a single system defense fleet and spread the prisoners out as they liked.

This was a long term play, for the V’kit’no’sat needed local resources to fuel this invasion. They couldn’t ship enough cargo out from their current territory to build what they needed. There just wasn’t the amount of safe cargo shipping conduits for even a fraction of that. They had to build with local materials and then ship in the rare commodities that couldn’t be acquired here.

Cora could see this system mushrooming with mines, factories, and shipyards in a few decades, and those assets would fuel rejuvenated V’kit’no’sat fleets to further press into the planetary defenses across Star Force territory. The V’kit’no’sat did not have the resources to take them all down quickly. They had to grind them down gradually or Star Force would win the war of attrition.

Assaulting planets was much more costly than defending them if you had the proper defensive infrastructure set up, which was why Star Force wasn’t even thinking about invading V’kit’no’sat territory. Even with the Uriti it would be damn difficult, which was why the V’kit’no’sat could pull their fleets away from defensive patrols and bring them all here…for their planetary defenses would protect them from just about any threat on their own.

Star Force had never had the time or resources to develop this system to its potential, but Cora could have sworn that was exactly what the Hjar’at were going to do, and they weren’t taking any chances with this attack. They meant to secure the planet fast before a Uriti and its corresponding fleet could arrive and ruin their party.

The Hjar’at were established enough that a Uriti alone wouldn’t fix this, but three quarters of the planet was still in Star Force possession, though being eaten away at quickly. Cora had enough to work with here, but this was going to be the hardest fight of the war yet for Clan Scorpion, and the first against the Hjar’at.

She’d fought them before, during the ‘easy’ war, but never in these numbers. Fortunately her Clan had gotten a breather in the interim, and her Clan worlds were busy producing replacement mechs at a furious pace, so she didn’t have to be careful with these. They were expendable, the pilots were not, but she had a feeling she was going to lose a lot of both before the fate of this planet was determined.

“Admiral Harrington,” she said, abandoning her place on the bridge, “the fleet is yours. Watch our back.”

“If they do not get reinforcements we’ll hold orbit,” the Human Admiral promised.

“And if they do, hold it anyway,” Cora said as she walked away. “This is going to get messy.”

“I have no doubt,” he said as she left the bridge and he assumed command within the battlemap network, giving him pathways to all of the 629 Warship-class jumpships and their corresponding drones. There were only 94 Hjar’at vessels in the system, for many had been destroyed during the initial breach of the planetary shields, but they had another 128 on the surface of the planet. Some of those were full warships, but most were transports and shield carriers.

Harrington felt confident that the Hjar’at navy could not push Clan Scorpion out of orbit, but the Admiral also had 1378 cargo ships and troop transports to defend, with a chunk of them already deploying their smaller craft to begin the transfer of troops down to the surface according to Cora’s targeting orders.

The trailblazer was going down with them, for she didn’t like to watch as other mechwarriors fought. In fact, she did very little naval work whenever there was a ground battle going on, leaving Harrington to take care of that responsibility…for which we was both grateful and cautious. If he failed, then the troops on the ground would get slaughtered.

That was the curse of naval. They had the power to do great things, but when that power failed the rest of the Star Force military was vulnerable. Everything depended on the navy, though in this fight it was the mechs that were going to win or lose the planet…so long as he gave them a chance to fight. That was his job and he knew it, and without his orbital cover Cora could never attack the currently held V’kit’no’sat areas. He had to hold orbit if the planet was to be completely retaken, and Cora didn’t care to fight for half measures. They’d either win totally…or abandon the planet. Clan Scorpion couldn’t get tied down in any one place. They were the best collection of mechwarriors Star Force had, and they had to stay mobile and go where the fighting was the worst.

And it was Harrington’s job to make sure Cora was able to do hers…but only 629 warships made him uneasy. That should be enough to do the job here, but much larger fleets had been seen regularly in the first years of this war. They’d since spread out, making engagements much smaller affairs now that the V’kit’no’sat had stable bases of operation to work out of, but it still worried him.

He had to fight the problems before him, and if a huge fleet showed up there would be little he could do to stop it…but for the moment he was in the dominant position and he intended to make the most of it.

Admiral Harrington, now that Cora was gone, took personal control over the targeting of the V’kit’no’sat ground units that were vulnerable and began probing somewhat safe areas trying to see if a little nudging here or a redirect their movements there could have an effect. He needed to keep the fleet an active participant in what was happening on the ground and a thorn in the enemy army’s side rather than be a quiet observer watching what was happening from orbit.

Harrington picked one of the heavy shield generators the V’kit’no’sat had brought in and ordered combined firepower against it. He didn’t think he’d be able to get through, but by attacking it he could size up its capability better. Star Force still didn’t have reliable schematics for this equipment, for it wasn’t in the V’kit’no’sat database recovered from Earth. These were new constructs, though based on familiar technology.

Could he penetrate these mobile shields? Maybe, maybe not, but if he could he wasn’t going to be bluffed out of trying. He was going to make the Hjar’at prove their defenses before he gave them anything on credit, and his warships had enough power available to them that he could engage in some potentially pointless bombardment without depleting his naval firepower.

So it was time to poke as the cargo fleet rained down dropships that were delivering the most badass mech army Star Force had every produced, including the most skilled mechwarrior ever seen in the form of the Scorpion trailblazer.

Cora dropped out of a heavy transport as it was taking fire from scores of Hjar’at a few miles off. Its shields held, but not by much, as her Voltron-class mech and 6 stars of others were deposited very near the edge of an ongoing city assault. Along with them came a Michelangelo-class ‘turtle’ heavy assault mech. It dropped to the swampy ground with a loud ‘smack’ of its six wide feet, then it began to walk forward slowly as the transport flew off now shieldless and taking some armor impacts that failed to penetrate.

As soon as the transport was clear the Michelangelo began lobbing energy mortars of two different makes up and over Cora’s mechs to land near the Hjar’at herds. They were not exactly pinpoint accurate, but if the Hjar’at didn’t move quickly they’d get hit. The slower of the two was the Uit Streamer that delivered globs of goo-like energy gel that essentially vaporized whatever it hit. The faster was a Hadju, and it was a Star Force original based loosely on the bloon launcher. It was contained energy inside a short lived bubble, and when the bubble expired the energy was released in an exploding orb.

Those orbs were popping inside the Hjar’at formations, forcing them to scatter a bit and keep moving, else the Uit Streamer would land on them. Their shields would protect against it if they deployed their ‘bubble-mode,’ but they couldn’t do that when moving. It was a special type of shield that worked with their Saroto’kanse’vam and it didn’t take the hit of the Uit Streamer. Rather it made them immune to it, with the gel sliding down to the ground around them.

Problem was it messed with their conventional shields, forcing them to go down…and the ‘bubble’ shield did not protect against projectiles. Most races didn’t fire projectiles, so it largely didn’t matter, but Cora had brought some of her drone mechs equipped with rail guns and the duo of mechwarriors in the Morpheus-class command mechs triggered them to target and fire the instant they saw the bubble shields activate.

The Corovon-heavy metallic slugs shot out from the arms of several drone madcats and slammed into the side of the Hjar’at, punching huge dents in their armor that then carried through and damaged their bodies with the equivalent of a boxer landing a gut punch. It didn’t take them out, let alone kill them, but it did expose a fault in the V’kit’no’sat armor design. The tiny segments that linked together to form the armor and allow it to reshape as needed, when hit with high physical impact with a sheering effect, morphed rather than broke their connections, adding a little short lived flexibility.

The Hjar’at that got hit might very well have broken ribs because of that, and Cora hoped they didn’t live long enough to see the weakness and make adjustments to their armor now or in the future.

The Michelangelo continued lobbing firepower as it slowly walked on its 6 legs behind the other mechs while more were being dropped on the other side of the battlefield. Another 23 stars in total, bringing their heavy mech count up to 4. They were bracketing the Hjar’at force assaulting the edge of the city with the Bsidd doing little more than delaying their advance, and their arrival was forcing the Hjar’at to split their attention, thus lengthening the combat potential of the Bsidd mechs as they had to deal with less firepower being thrown at them.

Cora reached her mech’s hand back over its shoulder, though her own arm did not move. She held still in her cockpit as her mind was linked to the machine. Other mechwarriors used a hybrid mode to control movements, but she had found her own body movement slightly interfered with her efficiency. It was so small that most mechwarriors couldn’t tell the difference, but as soon as Cora had discovered it she’d adjusted her ‘riding’ style to eliminate it, now leaving her in what looked like a meditative trance while all the action was occurring within her mind and outside her IDF bubble that was keeping her body stable.

Cora pulled the sword handle out from its sheath and activated it, lengthening the sword and causing it to glow bright blue just like the Hjar’at Saroto’kanse’vam. In fact it emitted the same energy, and when one of the Hjar’at fired its electrical-like discharge at her running mech, she brought the sword up in front of her and the arcs went right to it, being absorbed harmlessly.

The Hjar’at had constructed their biological weaponry so it couldn’t hurt other Hjar’at, at least not the males that had the Saroto’kanse’vam. It had been Jason’s idea to augment the Voltrons’ swords to mimic this, thus allowing Cora and the few others piloting this type of tier-2 mech to totally block the ranged discharge as long as they got the sword close to the line of transit.

Cora sent the overcharge back, shooting the lightning into the ground between two other Hjar’at so they couldn’t reabsorb and use it. The slightly swampy ground exploded in a plume of dirt and steam as the water in the soil vaporized, then Cora’s sword went dark as she got near the Hjar’at. Both sides were hurling Dre’mo’don shots at each other, but Cora got to them as they swung around to face her before either’s shields went down…then one had to dodge a Uit Streamer that the Michelangelo mechwarrior had timed perfectly.

The Hjar’at dodged to the left, exposing its left side briefly. It actually activated its bubble shield on reflex, with the bottom edge dragging on the ground as he moved rather than flowing over it as most shields did. In fact the far edge caught on the dirt and raised the Hjar’at up off its feet briefly as Cora dashed through the energy-only defense barrier and jabbed her now de-energized sword into the Hjar’at’s side.

She felt it move where it wasn’t supposed to go, which was the Hjar’at reacting quickly with its Lachka and trying to steer the sword away from point of impact. Cora half corrected for that, with the rounded tip of the sword hitting at an angle and skipping over the armor as she knocked the Hjar’at to the ground.

Its bubble shield was down now, with its normal one popping back up as Cora punched with her left hand as she knelt beside it. The Hjar’at kicked at her leg, knocking her knee back but not getting far enough under it. Cora retreated half a step and stood up, firing her Dre’mo’dons into its shields as she got hit with numerous green orbs from the Hjar’at in front of her and two more to her right.

She turned and fired a Jumat cannon, knocking one completely off its feet as another Uit streamer landed on the Hjar’at in front of her. Its bubble shield came up just in time, shifting the blue goo down to the perimeter where her mech foot was. She jumped out of the way in time, then saw a couple of rail gun rounds smack the Hjar’at in the head.

Its bubble shield went down, but it looked distracted and Cora jumped over the goo as her sword reformed into a sharp blade. She stabbed it down towards the Hjar’at’s neck and saw it hit armor. Once the tip was there she reactivated the Saroto’kanse’vam mode and pushed hard, digging it into the armor and feeling it slip through after a couple of seconds as the spiked tail flipped up and around and hit her mech in the shoulder.

Her Voltron tumbled to the ground with the hit, her shields on that side almost completely gone as the Saroto’kanse’vam spikes on the tail tried to cut through it. Cora let the tumble turn into a roll and came back up on her feet only to see the tail flop back down limp. A quick look at the neck told her she’d decapitated it within its armor. Maybe not completely, but enough to sever its spine.

Cora jumped back over to it, bringing her sword down in multiple strikes to cut through the rest of the armor before the Kich’a’kat reconnected and healed the Hjar’at. She almost got its head completely off its body before another Hjar’at rammed her away from its kin.

She saw it coming and turned into the hit, allowing it to bounce her one way while the Hjar’at went the other. Her mech stumbled due to its size and lack of agility, but she kept it on its feet as a neo fired its two heavy arm cannons into the other side, making the Hjar’at choose between the two of them.

It fired back with his Dre’mo’don in both directions, but stood over the other Hjar’at and guarded it, forcing Cora to make a choice. Either she tried to engage it and finish off the one beneath, or she went after another target.

She chose the latter, calling for the turtle to target the location, then running off to a nearby engagement as the energy rain came down. The top Hjar’at deployed its bubble shield over them both, then Cora couldn’t watch anymore as she caught another energy discharge on her sword before getting knocked to the ground.

It took her a second before she even realized what happened, then saw the little disruption on the ground that was the shape of a Zen’zat. It disappeared shortly after the explosion debris was no longer disrupting its cloaking shield.

“Fuck,” she said, sending out an alert to the others that there were invisible mine layers and saboteurs on the battlefield, but otherwise ignored it as she got up and shot in the area she had seen it. No hit was made, but she wasn’t sticking around and had to deal with the bigger threats. Her mech was bigger than the Hjar’at, the tier 1s were not, so she had to focus on them and leave the Zen’zat to the cleanup crews. Fortunately they did not have an Ultra in play, but already she was attracting a lot of attention and taking too many hits.

The other Voltrons were not because they were carrying physical shields, but Cora never did. They were too heavy and didn’t allow her to run and fight like a Commando. The Voltron was slow for that, but tolerable, though there’d been a long learning curve to make it do the things Cora did. The other Voltron pilots couldn’t keep up with her, so she roamed the battlefield rather than working in conjunction with them, often fighting with the smaller mechs and taking heat away from them.

As she was doing now, with a star of tier 1s firing from range and hitting her attackers with impunity as the Hjar’at focused on her. She was pretty sure they didn’t realize she was a trailblazer, but they could tell from the proficiency of the combat that she was amongst the most deadly mechwarriors involved in the battle. The Hjar’at were giving her the compliment of a lot of weaponsfire heading her way, with her armor already getting hit in areas when a shield temporarily collapsed.

Cora would then twist her body around and take the hits on another intact shield section while the other recharged, always keeping one direction clear of enemies with the nearby star helping her do that. If she got completely surrounded she would have no safe zone to work with, which was why she wasn’t pushing further into the Hjar’at formation.

On her battlemap she got a warning just prior to a group of Zen’zat aerial fighters zooming in and targeting her. She took a knee and suffered through the bombardment while firing back and hitting one, but it wasn’t enough to take it down. A Hjar’at charged her at the same time, with her unable to get back up before she took the ram. Instead she rolled to her right and away from the spinning buzz saw of energized Saroto’kanse’vam, then she punched into the flank armor so hard the Hjar’at spun out and flopped on its back, momentarily getting its spines stuck in the ground while upside down.

A couple of Hadju detonated on its belly, then a Uit streamer landed on it a split second later. It had half rolled back to its feet, but not enough to get over the hump as it swung back into the furrow. Unable to put up a bubble shield without its spines being in the air, the blue gel hit its armor and burned through with ease. A moment later the wriggling Hjar’at stopped moving, replaced by a greasy black smoke plume as the Uit streamer burned into its body, vaporizing half of it before it the gel was spent.

Cora took cover behind it for a moment, then ran on by as she headed to intercept a Hjar’at going for her backup star. She had to get to it before the Hjar’at could ram one of the five mechs, and if she sprinted hard enough she just might make it…

9

March 19, 4908

Ichyson System (Yev Region)

Hammat

Admiral Harrington watched with a grim expression on his face as V’kit’no’sat ships were entering the system along a jumppoint he couldn’t guard. It didn’t seem fair, for Cora and Clan Scorpion had reclaimed the planet no more than 2 days ago. Three quarters of the Scorpions’ primary mechs were destroyed and 8% of their pilots were dead, but all of the Hjar’at were gone.

They’d fought to the death, and Cora hadn’t been in a mood to go the extra effort to take some of the last few alive if they didn’t feel like surrendering. She’d given them a choice and they’d chose to fight…so she’d wiped them all out while taking a few final casualties.

The mech losses were steep, though they had replacement mechs standing by in the transports. The loss of 8% of their mechwarriors made Harrington sick to his stomach. Many of those lost he knew personally, and so many centuries of hard work and advancement were literally wiped away in an instant because the V’kit’no’sat wanted to ‘test’ Star Force. He didn’t know if he should hate them for that or thank Mak’to’ran for not bringing the Era’tran and the other 37 races into the fight, but there was something seriously twisted in their empire if they thought fighting to the death qualified as a ‘test.’

They might view their own people as expendable, but Harrington could not tolerate the idea with Star Force…and now, when they’d finally rid Hammat of their presence, another Hjar’at fleet was arriving with the bulk of the planetary defenses still down.

He couldn’t get his small fleet to the jumppoint in time to do anything worthwhile, so he kept them in orbit covering the ground troops as Cora worked to get them under existing shield generators and started prepping for a defense against a new ground assault. And it looked like the Hjar’at wanted this system pretty bad based on the size of the vessels coming into the system. A lot of them were large troop transports, and the Admiral got the feeling that the Scorpions and the Bsidd on the planet were about to be overwhelmed.

Harrington slightly turned his head to the side, closing his eyes as he resigned himself to what needed to be done.

“Contact the Count,” he told his bridge crew, referencing the Monarch that controlled this system. “Tell him to begin the planetary evacuation and get the request for civilian transport ships into the comm grid before the V’kit’no’sat take it down. I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop them this time, if the number of ships coming out of this jump is as large as I fear it is.”

3,277 lightyears away…

Thrawn had once had his claws removed by Star Force, back when he had been their prisoner and Paul had released him back to the Li’vorkrachnika. The trailblazer had rightly assumed that Thrawn would have killed himself, suspecting some sort of subterfuge, and the removal of his primary method of doing so had given his mind just enough time to analyze the situation for what it was…a true release.

Since then his body had gone through some minor changes, in which he had gotten his claws back, but the red-eyed Thrawn would never use them against himself. Nor would the Paladin. Star Force valued life whereas the Li’vorkrachnika treated it as next to worthless. The V’kit’no’sat were not so disrespectful, but it seemed the cruelness of the galaxy had corrupted them into partly believing the lie of a ‘necessary sacrifice,’ which was playing out before him now.

Whatever the V’kit’no’sat had thought when they invaded his territory, they were now fully aware that they were attacking into a mismatch. Thrawn had so many ships deployed along the border to counter their assaults that they hadn’t managed to hold a single world they’d taken…yet they kept pressing and taking unnecessary losses.

The mastermind side of the Supreme Viceroy recognized the tactic for what it was…a larger strategic play, though he couldn’t positively identify the end game. The V’kit’no’sat were accepting the death of many of their troops in exchange for something, and at the moment it wasn’t planets. It seemed they were more interested in the combat itself, or perhaps they were so arrogant they could not understand how the Paladin were defeating them.

Thrawn knew that could not be the case. Arrogant they may be, the V’kit’no’sat had a reputation for adaptation once their arrogance was proven wrong, yet he was seeing none of it here. Thus he had concluded they were intentionally dying in exchange for a larger goal.

It had taken him weeks of contemplation and study as he personally led two of the counterattacks and studied the battlemap data from the 17 different systems that had been hit thus far, but a sick suspicion was forming within him and the longer this wasteful combat continued the more certain he was becoming.

The V’kit’no’sat were not fighting honorably. They were sacrificing their troops in hopeless battles in order to draw Star Force out. Draw out their reserves and their Uriti, along with whatever other surprises the trailblazers had waiting for them. Thrawn was convinced that the assault on the Paladin, while initially it may have been intended to gain territory, was now meant to keep the Paladin here rather than reinforcing the rest of the empire…and if that meant continuing to send some of their troops to slaughter, they were willing to accept the losses in exchange for eventual victory.

That was a strategy worthy of the Li’vorkrachnika, but not the V’kit’no’sat. Where was their pride? Why were they not fighting Star Force strength against strength? It was almost as if they were conceding that they were the inferior and had to use subterfuge in order to achieve victory…and that was not the V’kit’no’sat he had come to both hate and respect over the past centuries.

They feared the Uriti, he knew that much, and they were wisely avoiding combat with them, but had Thrawn been commanding the V’kit’no’sat he would have used much the same approach but with different low level tactics. One could engage and distract without wasting troops. Star Force had taught him that long ago, and the fact that all of their space navies used expendable drones was a statement to the galaxy that the tactics of the Li’vorkrachnika were inferior, no matter how effective they might be.

Star Force could do better, and he had assumed the V’kit’no’sat could as well, for their empire had been around for millions of years and they were the dominant power in the coreward half of the galaxy…minus the Hadarak Zone that was dead center in the great galactic swirl.

And therein was the hint of an epiphany that Thrawn had just had. The way the V’kit’no’sat fought the Hadarak differed greatly from the way they fought everyone else. Against the Hadarak they died in huge numbers just to damage one of their foes. It was a war of carnage, and one that he now understood intimately thanks to the Rit’ko’sor that had joined Star Force, for some of them had been hatched before they had rebelled and went extinct as far as the galaxy was concerned.

They had told Star Force much, and Thrawn had access to all those files. He was one of the few within the Paladin that did, and he’d learned that the V’kit’no’sat did not use drone fleets because their combat efficiency against the Hadarak swarms was lower than crewed vessels. It was a lag issue, for the dynamics of swarm warfare were extremely complicated. He knew better than the trailblazers the secrets and pitfalls of such warfare, for it was how the Li’vorkrachnika had built their empire.

Reaction time was critical, and while Star Force would have accepted more equipment losses in exchange for the small amounts of lag and intermittent control disruption…which they partially countered with detailed automatic programming…the V’kit’no’sat did not. They felt that they needed to bring maximum combat potential, otherwise they would be wasting ships, for the Hadarak could so easily kill them. They’d made the choice to sacrifice personnel, which were easier to replace than ships, in order to stem the tide of losses.

They had calculated that sacrificing troops in battle would result in less loss of systems…and if even one lost system could not be fully evacuated, the number of lives saved would eclipse what was lost in battle. But above and beyond that, a system maintained was industrial capacity that would allow them to make more ships.

Thrawn could appreciate the debacle they were perpetually entangled in, and the reason why Mak’to’ran was so interested in gaining even the slightest bit of inside information about the Hadarak, but they were shirking their duty, as if the fear of the Hadarak was driving them slightly mad and they would do anything required to avoid losing systems.

Perhaps it was their ego, but Thrawn knew from his genetic memory that when many died there was no point in being fearful. Death was irrelevant. Victory was all that mattered. So he knew to be calm and disconnected as his troops died, in order that he could make their deaths matter. As cruel as the Li’vorkrachnika were, even they did not get their troops killed without their deaths serving a purpose.

But the V’kit’no’sat did, in at least a small way, against the Hadarak. Thrawn felt it was fear of failure that was driving them to sloppiness, whereas Thrawn had been engineered to feel no fear of failure. He always knew that if he could not win, others would replace him and carry on the work, thus he had to make the most out of his life, even if it was in a losing effort. He understood team warfare in a way that few others did, and in the face of death and failure the Li’vorkrachnika never so much as blinked.

And neither did Thrawn.

Paul had referred to it as ‘ice water’ in his veins, and the Human had admitted that the trailblazers’ default nature was to feel a symbiosis with those they were to protect, but they’d all learned in times of chaos and overload to disconnect. They had to do it, otherwise the fear of loss would compromise them and they would become sloppy at the minimum. In order to safeguard those under their care, they had to admit that they could not guarantee their survival and work to do what they could. Save as many as possible without betraying one.

The V’kit’no’sat were not so detached. Apathetic, they may be, but not detached. They were fearful of the Hadarak, and they chose betrayal of a few to safeguard the masses, the same as the Li’vorkrachnika. The root cause was different, for Thrawn had long suspected the Li’vorkrachnika Templars simply didn’t care about him and their other servants more than the worth of their service. The V’kit’no’sat appeared to have had higher motivations, then became corrupted out of fear of failure. They had to defeat the Hadarak, and they’d never been able to do so…with the thought of losing what small gains they had driving them a shade into madness.

And now it seemed they were responding to Star Force in a similar manner. Perhaps it was the Uriti that was doing it to them. They were too similar to the Hadarak, yet there were none in Paladin territory. Those fighting here did not have to face down a Uriti, yet they were still fighting in the same disrespectful manner, wasting their troops against mismatches as if their goal was not conquest, but rather keeping the pressure on the Paladin.

Thrawn did not like it. He expected more of them. A better challenge. Perhaps this was subterfuge for a greater strategy, but he suspected the simplest answer was the correct one in this case.

The V’kit’no’sat were not here to demonstrate dominance. They were here to win at any cost, even if it meant treating Star Force as a superior enemy. They were latching their ego to the final outcome, not the methods used to obtain it, and they were doing so out of fear of failure rather than standing toe to toe and measuring themselves against their enemy.

It was routed in cowardice, and that disappointed Thrawn. The great V’kit’no’sat empire was, at its core, insecure and fighting scared. Their ego was probably established to compensate for this, creating a bubble of false reality they cradled themselves in except for when they had to face down the Hadarak.

And it was probably that bubble that had shielded Star Force for so long. In the beginning they could have snuffed out their enemy with an invasion of this size, but their bubble of dominance wouldn’t admit that a small, illicit offshoot was that great of a threat. Now that they’d let it become a much larger one they were taking notice, but only after the insertion of the Uriti into the active fighting.

Denial did not befit a warrior, and with this latest epiphany Thrawn believed he was starting to truly understand the V’kit’no’sat. They were powerful, wise, and nearly unbeatable…but now that he and Star Force were ascending the galactic skill ranks he had a different perspective. He was starting to see the V’kit’no’sat from a peer perspective, despite their age and experience levels, and what he saw was cracks in their dominant visage.

And they were compensating for those cracks, those weaknesses, by spending the lives of their troops in swarm tactics in exchange for eventual victory.

They might eventually succeed at that, given their numbers and their industrial backing. They could replace their fleets and crews faster than Star Force could, but they didn’t have the Uriti. That was Star Force’s main advantage and the reason why each Uriti had a trailblazer-led fleet guarding it. They could not lose them, and the V’kit’no’sat were wisely avoiding those fight whenever possible, leaving the fate of the war in the hands of these secondary conflicts that Thrawn and others were responsible for.

Paul and others couldn’t win this war on their own. There were too many systems, too many planets, too many ships. An empire even of Star Force’s size was too vast for one small group to control. The trailblazers could move themselves to the largest battles, the most valuable points, but it would be those they had trained and preserved that would decide this war. Thrawn should have been killed by them long ago, but they saw value in him and made a great effort to save him, even from himself.

Now, after everything Thrawn had learned, and how much he’d grown, he was still their inferior. He did not see this as a bad thing, for he could continue to learn from them. He’d assumed the V’kit’no’sat were the same, and while not an ally, he’d thought they were an enemy that he could learn from…but not now. Either they were growing more stupid or he had finally advanced to a level of peerdom with them, for he saw nothing new in this approach. Only desperation.

But it might work, and that galled him…the idea that the trailblazers could be defeated by lesser warriors. Thrawn knew well that the leadership of an empire was critical, but it was not enough on its own. The mass of the empire mattered just as much, and Star Force’s mass was small compared to that of the V’kit’no’sat. Very, very small.

Thrawn didn’t fear death, nor failure, but the idea of Paul and the others being overwhelmed by inferior tactics angered him. It angered him greatly. Like them, he couldn’t turn this war on his own. Or even with the entirety of the Paladin. But he did have his part to play, his piece of the war to wage, and he was intent on returning their investment in him and the Paladin.

He knew the trailblazers would lose and be destroyed rather than betray a single person to attain victory, and it mirrored the ‘ice water’ in the Supreme Viceroy’s own veins. If they’d only had a few hundred more years things would be different. More time to lay defenses and build more drones. More time to grow while the V’kit’no’sat foolishly remained stagnant.

But there was no more time. The nearly full might of the V’kit’no’sat was upon them, and they were no longer assuming superiority. They were fighting as if they were inferior, and applying everything they’d learned about combat with the Hadarak against Star Force.

They were not going to fight honorably, for when their dominance was unviable, they fought with only one purpose…eventual victory, no matter what the cost, for the insecure minds who could not fathom that they were truly the inferior warriors had to have it to maintain their delusion.

But even inferior warriors with more weapons and greater numbers of soldiers could still prevail. It was how the Li’vorkrachnika had defeated many superior opponents, and Thrawn could not stand the idea of that happening to the trailblazers.

If they were trying to keep pressure on the Paladin to discourage their reinforcing the rest of the empire, Thrawn was not going to play their game. They were not devoting the resources needed to counter the number of ships he had. Perhaps they did not know, and while it was tempting to play for time so his Paladin could grow to even greater numbers with their rapid expansion potential, Thrawn knew he had to do the reverse.

If the V’kit’no’sat thought they could distract him with hard, but winnable battles, he was going to respond with equal pressure…but not in defense. He’d hold the line here, not giving up a single world without making the V’kit’no’sat earn it, but he was going to do something no one else was doing. While he had the advantage in numbers he was going to gather them to the front and push beyond it…backdoor the V’kit’no’sat assault line that was gradually eating into Star Force territory and begin assaulting worlds in adjacent regions that the V’kit’no’sat now firmly held.

If the enemy thought that Thrawn was just going to sit and play defense while they dictated the course of the war, they were about to get a lesson in how the Li’vorkrachnika fought…only amplified tenfold by Star Force methodology.

He knew he couldn’t permanently counter the V’kit’no’sat advance, but he was going to gut punch them where they thought they were invulnerable. Avoiding the Uriti and retreating when they entered a system was their plan, but they were not expecting a wave assault on dozens of systems simultaneously.

Sometimes the best strategy was not to attack to win, but to attack to disrupt your opponent. Do what they did not expect. Get them off balance, distracted, and guarding other potential weaknesses that you did not even know about, for if you can find and exploit one, they would continually be worried about the others, for they did not know how much you did not know.

It was time to turn the ‘fog of war’ against the V’kit’no’sat, and right now he held the strongest force not fully engaged. Hitting with the strength he needed meant leaving Paladin systems vulnerable, and we was willing to give them up if needed. Not to death, but to evacuation. As it was going, they were going to lose them anyway given enough time, so he was comfortable with the gamble.

It was time to make the V’kit’no’sat truly aware of the Paladin, and see if he couldn’t take some of the pressure off the trailblazers. Give them even the slightest advantage and they would make use of it. And right now they needed whatever disruption he could provide.

Thrawn’s glowing red eyes brighten as a toothy grin spread across his scaly face.

If the trailblazers were going to fall, the Paladin would fall first. Paul and the others had to survive. They were Star Force. And if the mercy they had showed the Paladin must be repaid in blood, Thrawn would happily pay it…in Star Force style…taking as many of the enemy with them as possible.

Thrawn left his private chambers and moved to the bridge of his ship, getting the attention of the crew immediately with just his presence. He looked over them briefly, with them holding his gaze, then he turned to the comms officer.

“I need couriers sent on Omni dispersion. Message is ‘Summons: Armageddon Protocol,’ location is the Tano System.”

10

July 12, 4909

Juniper System (Rim Region)

Stellar Orbit

Paul sat in his quarters, mentally linked into the nearby computer station as he reviewed thousands of various items coming into him from the three planets in the system and across Star Force territory through the comm grid. They’d managed to save the relay in this system, meaning Paul didn’t have to suffer through weeks of operating in the dark as they cleaned up the V’kit’no’sat presence left over on two of the three planets.

The Kret’net had hit the system hard, but they only had a few footholds by the time Paul’s fleet had arrived with Trident. The Uriti was currently soaking in the sun, literally, as it was submerged within the central star in the binary system. The other star was far, far away, beyond the planets even, and was barely a tenth the size of this one. Between the two they messed up the day/night cycle on the planets greatly, but since Star Force lived inside contained cities it wasn’t an issue for them.

The naval battles were over, with the Kret’net totally abandoning the system after Paul made it clear he wasn’t going to let them stick around and watch from afar. After two weeks of constant pursuits they’d elected to jump out, and since then Paul had been guarding the main jumppoints in, half expecting at least a scout ship to return. He didn’t want to let the V’kit’no’sat have any eyes here, so he was playing a game against their stealth craft, hoping to catch one in entry, though the odds of doing so were not in his favor.

Paul could have been down on one of the planets taking part in the ground fighting himself, but he wasn’t truly needed. It was intense mop up work, and while having him involved would always be an asset, he’d learned to delegate long ago, though he always cringed at the idea of someone dying because he wasn’t there. So far in this counter invasion no one had, for his fleet was aggressively pushing the enemy back and any fallen mechs or aerial craft were getting their pilots picked up rather than captured, and the Kret’net had already lost their two Ultras in play here. One of which Paul had insisted be captured.

It was going to be taken to the Detention System and held there. He would have preferred capturing them all, but the V’kit’no’sat were not playing nice and he couldn’t delay here any longer than needed, for there were dozens of other systems that needed a Uriti visit and were not getting them. The entire warfront was overtaxed, but Paul was picking his spots along with the other trailblazers and hurting the V’kit’no’sat push as well as they could.

They were coordinating across the relay grid, so it was important that Paul stayed in contact as much as possible. He figured his time was better spent now in tactical mediation, with him lounging in a soft chair as his mind worked at a furious pace that the Archon’s continual advancements had made seem almost lethargic.

He knew better than to burn himself out, but the rate his Sav-enhanced mind sifted through the data was astonishing even when he was holding back…but the numbers kept saying the same thing. Star Force was winning the short game, but they were losing the long one. They had too many systems to defend, and none of them were sufficiently hardened. It wasn’t poor planning on Star Force’s part, just a reality of spending so many centuries at war and not having the luxury to build up legacy defenses like the V’kit’no’sat had.

‘Legacy defenses’ were those you put down in times of peace. They were extra that you added, a little at a time when you had the resources, but over multiple millennia they added up to extravagant levels. Prior to the civil war, Itaru was one such system whose defenses were mind boggling. So much Yeg’gor, so many Tar’vem’jic, and so many conventional defenses stacked on top of one another it was virtually impossible to breach. When the V’kit’no’sat had turned those against each other it had been a blood bath on massive proportions that Paul had been unaware of until the Raptors had brought some limited battle data to them.

They’d left before the Rit’ko’sor had been reabsorbed, but there was enough information exchange first that the Itaru implosion had been passed along and the Raptors had brought it with them. But even with the numbers killed and the ships lost, most of the ground defenses were still intact. Not even the V’kit’no’sat had the orbital firepower needed to cleanse the legacy defenses, only poke some holes in them to drop troops through then try to take over the strongpoints from the inside.

Star Force had never had the luxury of building like that, aside from Earth long ago. Ever since it had fallen they’d been on the run, pulling back over and over again and feeding resources into ships and front line defenses to try and stall the V’kit’no’sat advance while they evacuated people further away from the fighting.

They’d put down heavier defenses at strategic points, but there was no substitute for time, and with an empire millions of years old the Star Force planetary defenses seemed pathetic in comparison. The V’kit’no’sat would be halfway through the Rim Region by now if not for the Uriti, and they were the one threat to the legacy defenses, though such attacks would have to be made carefully and slowly, otherwise the Uriti would accumulate too much damage and would become vulnerable.

But there was nothing even close to that level of a threat out here, so the Uriti dominated everywhere they went and the V’kit’no’sat avoided them. But Star Force needed thousands of them, and where they weren’t the conventional warfare reigned until Paul or one of the other escort fleet commanders could get one to them.

And there wouldn’t be anything to stop the V’kit’no’sat from coming back to this system and trying this again, especially now with a lot of the massive shield generators destroyed. The system would be more vulnerable, but Paul couldn’t stay. He could win any battle with the Uriti involved, and the V’kit’no’sat knew it, so they were giving up the systems they’d claimed if they couldn’t scare him off with the potential death of prisoners, and fortunately they’d gotten here in time to prevent that scenario. The ground troops had been able to rescue the prisoners without needing the Uriti to shoot or crush something on the surface, but in other systems it was too late.

The V’kit’no’sat had permanent territory now that they controlled underneath at least some huge shield generators with hundreds of thousands of prisoners that would die if a Uriti assaulted those locations. Paul had been involved in two campaigns to take one of those strongholds back and he was 50/50 so far. One they’d been able to slowly reclaim, but the other had received additional reinforcements and the Oso’lon were holding it firm. It didn’t help that that system held some of the strongest shield generators Star Force had ever produced, and the enemy had captured or repaired some of them in addition to what they were shipping in.

Paul had blockaded for a while, but eventually he had to leave. He hated doing it, but if he couldn’t retake the system then being tied up there meant other systems were getting hit hard without relief. It still burned him to leave those prisoners behind, but the Braum System was fully in V’kit’no’sat control now and even a blockade was too much of a distraction to mount.

It was one small victory for the V’kit’no’sat despite their hundreds of defeats, such as here. They were leaving their ground troops behind in the hope that they could dig in and persist until Paul left, but that wasn’t going to be the case this time. Paul hated this game of whack a mole, but it was the most he could do at the moment.

Thrawn, on the other hand, was not going to play that game. Paul hadn’t ordered him to stop, but the former lizard mastermind was doing something very dangerous…then again, nothing in this war was ‘safe’ and Paul could appreciate that, but he also knew the double edged sword the Supreme Viceroy was wielding, and it was him, not Kara. She wasn’t stopping him either, instead playing second fiddle and backing him up, but with almost all of the Paladin fleet going to Thrawn.

And he was using it to go after the V’kit’no’sat. Not to free prisoners or retake worlds. He was hunting them and doing the latter as an afterthought. It was leaving Paladin territory exposed, and Thrawn knew it, but he didn’t care. He was going for their throat and forcing them to play defense, and Paul had to grudgingly admit it was working.

Thrawn had pushed the V’kit’no’sat back from the spinward front, at least in terms of bases, but Kara had sent a recent report stating that the V’kit’no’sat fleets were still operating in Paladin space and returning the favor. They weren’t taking territory, they were razing it and she was short on defenses, but she backed up Thrawn, saying in the grand scheme of things it was a beneficial tradeoff and she’d evacuate her people while he played venator.

That was sloppy warfare, but that’s where they were at and he couldn’t fault Thrawn for going after them. Paul wished he could, but he had so many systems to defend that he couldn’t. He had to stall for time while Davis worked out a plan for ultimate victory…diplomatically. He hadn’t received any updates from him, nor did he need them. His place was here, fighting, while Davis had his eyes set on the distant future and how to shape it.

He had faith in the Director, but the simple truth was that Star Force was going to lose as this war played itself out, even if at the moment they were ahead on the score board.

3,692 lightyears away…

“Their victory in the Ichyson System clearly shows that even against the Hjar’at, Star Force has attained combat equity,” the Yioj Ambassador stated in the communal embassy chamber in the Arbiter System. “None of us can say the same. We have some advantages, but when taken in whole, we cannot stand nose to nose with them. Star Force is, even without their Uriti.”

“Yet they are losing,” the Guetar Ambassador pointed out. “I do not mean this as criticism, for they are doing more than anyone else in recorded history, but even if they could hold them here in a stalemate, the industrial strength of the V’kit’no’sat will prevail over time. Star Force is not large enough to fight a permanent conflict now that they have the V’kit’no’sat’s full attention.”

“All the more reason for us to unite,” the Deervew argued.

“Star Force has proven its worth,” Sarquori Ambassador said dismissively. “The lingering question is whether or not the V’kit’no’sat will honor their word.”

“It does not matter,” the Zeeross said. “Star Force has leverage.”

“What leverage? If the V’kit’no’sat move to wipe out my race, what can Star Force do to stop it?”

“They can withdraw their promise not to assault V’kit’no’sat worlds with their Uriti, or have you forgotten that clause in the Mak’to’ran deal?”

“Insignificant.”

“Very significant,” the Knight of Quenar stated firmly.

The Sarquori looked at him oddly. “How can you say that?”

“You underestimate the power of the Uriti. Star Force has never fully unleashed it for public view, but I have seen from the past what they can do, and they were specifically designed to assault and destroy civilizations. A fleet can move, a fleet can flee, a planet cannot. If I had control of a Uriti, rather than Star Force, and fully utilized it against the V’kit’no’sat, they would not have a single system that would be secure from attack. Not even their capitol. That threat is far more serious to them than your pathetic race…from their point of view,” the KoQ amended so the Sarquori knew it was not meant as an insult.

“We are still gambling on their reaction,” the Dqwet warned.

“Do not concern yourself with predicting their mindset, rather focus on what potential the Uriti have. The V’kit’no’sat are not naïve. If they will tolerate Star Force’s existence in the Rim, they will tolerate us if we ally with them,” the KOQ said, standing up from the table and looking down on the other Ambassadors. “You have seen how the enemy fights. You have seen how Star Force fights. They are peers, though one is far younger and they possess the Uriti. They are also amicable, whereas the V’kit’no’sat do not tolerate rivals. Allowing Star Force to fall is also a gamble. A gamble that the V’kit’no’sat will ignore you. If they do not, you have no chance alone. The choice before you is which gamble shall you take, and I warn you not to expect the V’kit’no’sat to behave as they have in the past. The paradigm has irrevocably changed.”

“I agree,” the Haf Ambassador reluctantly echoed, with others making similar silent gestures of support.

“You must choose now. If you wish to stand by and watch, hoping to profit by our effort, you will not be protected later. Only those who sign on will be linked to Star Force. Only those who legitimately combat them will be protected, and the Knights of Quenar will be watching. We will know if you fulfill your obligations or not, for we are everywhere within the galaxy. This compact must not be entered into lightly or deceitfully. If you decide not to join, then do not and take your chances. Falsehood will be punished.”

“Do not threaten us, Quenar,” the Xioxi Ambassador sneered.

“I am making sure there is no ambiguity in the choice before you.”

“Duly noted, but we do not answer to you.”

“We will avenge betrayal. Other than that, we do not care about you and will leave you alone,” he said, with his wolf-like visage underscoring the ‘avenge’ part of that statement, as if his race had been tailor made for such things. “Does anyone believe they need more information before a choice is made?”

No one could argue that they did. Over the previous years, Star Force had shared ample data on the war, and all of them knew the virtually unstoppable force they were being asked to oppose…but one that was focused on Star Force and had the majority of their fleet engaged here, not standing guard on their border systems across the galaxy.

“Then I believe it is time,” the Zeeross agreed. “Contact the Director.

Two days later the Ambassadors reconvened in the same chamber, but of the original 94, seven were absent, leaving the number of races represented at 87…though three of them were actually representatives from various consortiums that contained multiple races each, similar to what The Nexus had originally been, as opposed to the fragmented train wreck that it was now.

Never the less, The Nexus had been here, though they were one of the 7 that had departed. They did not have the strength to hold their own borders, let alone fight the V’kit’no’sat. Davis had included them along with the Jonstar, the latter of which was already engaged in combat against the V’kit’no’sat. He’d hoped the Sety, at least, would offer some token assistance in the form of a fleet or two, but in the end they stayed true to their selfish objectives and would not send anything. They had wanted to be on the grand stage, but had no intent to earn their place.

Davis had dismissed them from the Arbiter System along with the other 6 that had declined, making it clear they were not Star Force’s responsibility and they would have no diplomatic contact with them until this war was over, with the exception of The Nexus, whom they already had existing ties with. The others would not be gaining from this association without contributing, so their Ambassadors were gently being shoved out the door as the remaining ones once again gathered here.

A few minutes after they had arrived, a Human walked in. Though they had never met him before, they recognized him as Director Davis. He had deliberately not made personal contact with any of them, instead working through intermediaries. Him showing up now was a subtle gesture of both trust and inclusion as these races made their final choice.

“I will be blunt with you,” he said as he sat down in a high backed chair. “What we have discussed for many years is a gamble. It is a very dangerous gamble, but I believe it is achievable. The agreement I have with Mak’to’ran states that if we can survive this invasion we will be given a permanent armistice and dominion over the Rim while he leads the V’kit’no’sat against their true enemy, the Hadarak. He does not like wasting troops and ships against us, and this fight is as much a power struggle within the V’kit’no’sat as it is an attempt to destroy Star Force.”

“If we can thwart the opposition, Mak’to’ran will gain power and secure his leadership. I believe I can work with him, from a distance, and establish a mutually exclusive relationship. They leave us alone, we leave them alone, though it is impossible for us to monitor a border of galactic size. They could launch an invasion of another region, completely conquer or destroy a race, and we would never know about it. If you agree to sign on, we will establish monitoring of your territory. If you are attacked, we will know, and it will violate whatever final agreement I strike with Mak’to’ran.”

“An attack on you will be the same as an attack on us. And if such a violation occurs, we will be free to strike at them with our Uriti. We have done so once, in a light attack to prove our ability to do so. They know the threat, and this current war is contingent on us not doing so, or the V’kit’no’sat races who are sitting it out will come to the others’ aid. We also cannot attack any of their current territory. They want this to be a test of our worthiness, and we are complying because doing so is to our advantage. We gain nothing from assaulting their territory, for such battles would involve their planetary and system defenses. So long as we are the defender, we have the advantages that come with that status, but do not assume we take orders from them or Mak’to’ran. They are killing my people, and I do not tolerate that for the sake of a ‘test.’”

“The agreement says nothing of you. If you attack the V’kit’no’sat it does not violate my agreement with Mak’to’ran. If you do so, and force the V’kit’no’sat to withdraw from their war against us to defend their territory against you, we will include you as part of our domain on the following conditions.”

“One. If such an agreement is made, you will not violate the border.”

“Two. Any territory that you take from the V’kit’no’sat during this war may or may not be retained. That will be determined during the negotiations as to what the final border will be. If you refuse to give up a world taken, I will abandon you from our protection. What the final border will be I do not know, but it will be similar to what it is now. Some of you have lost territory to the V’kit’no’sat in the distant past and want it back. You may be able to keep it, or you may not. My final decision and agreement with Mak’to’ran must be honored regardless of whether you agree with it.”

“Three. Many of your races do not hold to our standards. We are not in a position to impose them on you, but do not construe this agreement for sanctioning your misdeeds. For example, the Sarquori possess many slave races. If you were closer to us, we’d invade you and free them. Right now we are not close to you, nor do we have the ships to spare. But if this works, and an armistice is reached, we will be taking domain over the entire Rim. It is not something we can do in any short amount of time, and that delay and the distances involved mean your empires will be out of our reach long into the future…but we will not tolerate bad behavior, and do not construe this agreement for anything other than mutual defense against the V’kit’no’sat and basic diplomatic relations.”

The Sarquori stood up angrily and pointed a tentacle at Davis.

“How dare you insult our empire with threats you clearly cannot follow through on. We come here in good faith and you spit on our presence. We will not…” he said, suddenly choking up as he had trouble breathing.

Davis theatrically had his hand raised towards the Sarquori with his fingers making a cupping shape so everyone knew who it was doing it to him, even if they didn’t fully understand how.

“I am currently engaged in a war with millions, soon to be billions of my people dead or captured and many more on the way. Do you really think I care about the protestations from your race on the other side of the galaxy?”

The Sarquori tried to answer, but his voice was mumbled and bubbling as his slimy throat tried to breathe and talk at the same time.

“The only reason you are even allowed here is because of the strength of your empire and how far you have come. You have achieved great things, but there is stain on your civilization. I do not care in the here and now because I can do nothing about it. You are not an ally. You are not a friend. You are a representative of a sick race who is also endangered by the V’kit’no’sat. I am offering you a limited alliance that could be mutually advantageous, but whether you take it or not, if we survive this war, we will be coming for you eventually. It might be a million years from now, but we will never accept slavery or the other misdeeds than many of your races have committed and admitted, not truly realizing what you are doing is wrong.”

Davis dropped his hand and the telekinetic pressure on the Sarquori’s neck, with him sucking in air heavily as he cleared his throat.

“The advantage you have, and the opportunity you have, is time. If we succeed in containing the V’kit’no’sat to the Core, we will not be able to come after you for a very long time, and during that time you will have ample opportunity to change your ways before we can act.”

Davis glared at them for a moment, but the Sarquori’s defiance had turned to fear and he was not interested in speaking again, clearly surprised that Davis had the ability to do that to him.

“I am being honest with you, rather than lying to get what I want. Stand with Star Force now and we will include you in the Armistice agreement. If you do not, we will not guarantee a strike on the V’kit’no’sat with our Uriti if they choose to attack you. We might overlook it depending on the situation, especially if your slave races would have slightly better lives under V’kit’no’sat control, though that’s not saying much for them. Both situations are intolerable, and I am letting you know where I stand here and now. Signing on does not mean we tolerate your bad behavior. It is only germane in matters where the V’kit’no’sat are involved. The Knights of Quenar already know this well.”

The alien in question huffed a slightly ironic laugh. “We do not hold to their scruples, particularly in how we acquire some of the Uriti, but because they cannot control us they do not try to and accept the Uriti regardless. We have an antagonistic relationship, and have always had one since the beginning. It why, even now, he is wearing a shield generator so I cannot slip a probe onto his body.”

Davis smirked slightly, for he was wearing such a shield generator, though cleverly hidden beneath his clothes so no one would notice, but apparently the Knight of Quenar had.

“We can work with Star Force even if we do not agree on methods, but if they were adjacent to our worlds they would act to stop us. We are based far from them, so there is no need to pursue animosities that have no basis in application. Our relationship is based solely on the Uriti. If they were not involved, we would not be here and we would happily watch as the V’kit’no’sat destroyed them, for it would not be worth our effort to intervene, though we hold no love for that empire either.”

“You have been their greatest supporter?” the Freii asked, its face in total shock.

“We support the logic involved, and the mutual benefit. Nothing more.”

“We are different,” the Jonstar said. “We had an alliance with another race known as the Trinx. They misbehaved and Star Force fought, conquered, and annexed them. They are now one of their member states, and we have no problem with that at all. Star Force is trustworthy, and we are already fighting alongside them because their existence is an enhancement for the galaxy. Without them, it would be a much darker place. We support both them, and the logic of the situation.”

“To each their own,” the Knight of Quenar said dismissively.

“The point being, we don’t have to like each other,” Davis continued, “and this Consortium will be bare bones. Additional items can be added later if needed or wanted, upon individual acceptance of each involved, but right now my concern is forcing the V’kit’no’sat to cede to us dominion over the Rim, which from their point of view includes all of your territories. I will then negotiate with Mak’to’ran in this manner, and from his point of view I must be unchallenged. You must obey the terms before you, to the letter, or do not sign. There can be no middle ground. You are either all in, or all out and you take your chances alone. And from personal experience, I believe Mak’to’ran will expand V’kit’no’sat holdings to provide more resources to fight the Hadarak. Whether that will be in the Core or into the Rim I cannot say, but they will not remain static. I can guarantee you that much.”

“You have had time to review this ad nauseam. You are here because you have made a decision. This is your last chance to back out, and I hope I have made it clear that I do not like all of you, so this isn’t a gesture of friendship. It is a business relationship only. And that business is war against the V’kit’no’sat,” he said, telepathically triggering the table to morph slightly with two large buttons forming and rising on the tabletop in front of each Ambassador.

Some of them flinched, a few stood up in shock, but then all settled when they saw before them the text and function of the buttons. Red for a rejection, Blue for acceptance.

“Register your choice,” Davis said simply, crossing his arms over his chest as he waited.

Most didn’t hesitate, pressing the blue button that resulted in a holographic image of their civilization’s symbol popping up over the tabletop in front of them at approximately head height, partially shielding their face in the translucent glow as the symbol rotated around its own axis.

Others delayed a few moments, but in the end even the Sarquori pressed the blue button, despite his vexed state. His anger would have prompted him to decline, but he already had orders from his leadership, and nothing said here had violated their stated triggers, so he was obliged to agree…but Davis had known that already, for the Sarquori were not immune to Ikrid, nor were most of the Ambassadors here.

One by one, 87 symbols appeared around the perimeter of the elongated table, with a Star Force symbol popping up in front of Davis. They all glowed, then shot a tiny blue beam towards the empty center where the glowing lines pooled together and formed a lumpy mass as the beams ended. That mass transformed into a new symbol that had an R with a large crescent above and capping it. Together, the two pieces were an R and a C, representing the name of this limited, war-time relationship.

“The Rim Consortium is hereby officially enacted. Now call for your military advisors to come to the war room,” he said with a snap of his fingers as the wall to the far right split and began to reveal a vast chamber with a large number of workstations and holographic maps. “I want to get to work immediately.”

www.aerkijyr.com

Fracture

1

April 19, 4914

Renscor System (Rim Region)

Hasvor

Mark-084 was not happy. He’d been on the planet with his Clan Gunstar troops for three weeks in response to an I’rar’et invasion, and while his mechs were doing fairly well against the Zen’zat assault vehicles, he could not maintain air superiority even while having orbital supremacy over half the planet.

His Clan was known for having the best aerial pilots in Star Force, but the I’rar’et were making them look like novices as they lost skeets like they were Grunts from Halo. That’s not the way Star Force fought, and even using drone skeets in many cases this was not acceptable. He couldn’t send his fighters anywhere beyond a city where he had the benefit of anti-air fire support…and when he’d tried his aerial forces had been swarmed to such a level that the I’rar’et left with few casualties while he barely had any squadrons return.

The I’rar’et had larger numbers, but that wasn’t the crux of it. They were damn good, and this branch of their race was one of the better ones. They didn’t have different sub regions within their territory like the Oso’lon did, but the I’rar’et were broken down by bloodlines and the Daer segment of their military was completely made up of one that boasted the second best I’rar’et combat wing.

Mark wasn’t even facing their best of the best, and everywhere he didn’t have close to an even fight his fighters were getting wasted…and the I’rar’et knew it. They weren’t making any planned assaults without coming in with a decent numerical advantage, which allowed few opportunities for Mark to catch them in a mismatch. He had to play defense, holding the cities while the I’rar’et probed around the edges until the Zen’zat arrived and made their over-ground push. As soon as the ground pounders got even a small wedge of anti-air defenses down, the I’rar’et would pour in and take the hits needed to capture the city.

There were trails of dead I’rar’et across the planet, attesting to how much damage Star Force was doing, but Mark wasn’t here to play defense. He was assigned roaming duty to hit the hardest fights and turn them around, but he couldn’t do that here. The skill advantage his Clan usually had over the V’kit’no’sat aerial races was gone. The Daer were their equal, then add in numerical advantage and Clan Gunstar was getting its ass kicked along with the mix of H’kar and Kiritak troops that were in even worse condition before Gunstar had arrived.

Mark had brought a sizeable naval fleet that, along with the survivors of the H’kar, had took back control of the half of the planet that still had standing Star Force cities. There were also smaller populations on the two other inhabited planets in the system. The I’rar’et had not bothered to hit them yet, putting all their effort into the assault on the main world, knowing that when it fell the other two would be far less challenging.

Elsewhere on the planet there were also engagements going on, and Mark had gotten some naval drones down to the planet’s surface and they were making it nearly impossible for the I’rar’et and Zen’zat to gain any ground there, but he had none over this city. There was too large of an enemy fleet still active in the system, and if he brought down more ships they’d engage his fleet in space. Yet if he didn’t bring down the drones, then the ground troops would be taking a lot more cities.

Add in the fact that he couldn’t bombard them from orbit, for they had mobile shield generators on the surface. He could smoke those if he was able to bring even a tenth of his 59 jumpships to bare, but the enemy fleet wasn’t allowing it. When he’d tried before the I’rar’et had engaged and lost, but bought enough time for the ground troops to move into their target city. At that point only some very limited bombardment was possible without hitting friendlies.

And because of that fight he could only hold control of part of orbit. He didn’t have enough ships left to spread them out, for they’d get hit by what the I’rar’et had left. And the enemy’s main base on the surface had a shield generator strong enough to deflect the bombardment of his entire current fleet. Thankfully it wasn’t mobile, but they had two Ardent anti-orbital guns protected beneath hit, so there was a portion of orbit on the far side that his ships couldn’t go without getting shot.

Paul had said that naval beat everything, and he was right…if you had a big enough fleet. Mark didn’t here, and even when he sent a few naval drones down to the surface he was at risk of losing them to the I’rar’et, for a good number of them were equipped with shield penetrators. Not the ones that took down an entire shield by sapping its strength more than conventional weapons would, but rather these destabilized the shields at the point of contact briefly, much like a Jumat blast did, and if the I’rar’et focused their attacks in groups they could punch through a tiny piece of the drone’s shield and hit a weapon’s battery beneath.

So Mark had quite a few drones being plucked of weapons while they hovered in the sky over various cities, then he’d have to bring them back up to orbit and onboard his jumpships for repair. He was losing so many spare parts he was relying on the cities that were still in Star Force possession to make replacement weapons…and then he had to have those shipped up to orbit without getting ambushed by the V’kit’no’sat so he could keep repairing his drones.

It was hard for the ground troops to take down warships, even those as small as the drones, but deny them their weapons and there wasn’t a lot they could do, especially against the tiny infantry of the Zen’zat and flying I’rar’et given how spread out they were. That said, Mark had used a few to scrape the surface and plow over Zen’zat assault vehicles, but the V’kit’no’sat were getting very inventive at finding ways to circumvent the Star Force naval playbook, and with the skill of the I’rar’et in aerial combat, Mark had little in the way of true advantages to work with.

Right now he was not in the sky, but in a remote pod along with his other pilots inside a city some 340 miles away from the current engagement. One advantage of being a defender meant you had infrastructure on the planet to use, which included the battlemap system that allowed him to remote fly a skeet from a point of relative safety. The lag time was so low it was better this way, but had he been assaulting the V’kit’no’sat stronghold on the other side of the planet he would have to be there in person, for bouncing the signals up to his fleet and back down again around the planet would punch the lag just a little too high.

He could manage it if needed, but it took the edge off and opened up more jamming possibilities that naval combat didn’t have to worry about, for their comm systems were so much larger. Right now though, fighting around a Star Force city, he didn’t need to worry about jamming and was currently engaged with a flock of I’rar’et as he flew not one, but 10 skeets at once. Some of his other pilots were flying more than one, but he knew not to push it too far, because the movements required were a lot more complicated than the slow combat in space, and he needed to do a lot of adjusting to the I’rar’et’s movements, and these were definitely not rookies he was going up against.

Mark wanted to strafe the Zen’zat skirmish tanks, but the I’rar’et were having nothing of it and kept blocking his approach with three times as many flyers as he had, and the same was true elsewhere as the city rim defenses kept poking at them. Most times they hit they didn’t deliver a fatal blow, for the armor on these I’rar’et was damn good and they weren’t getting close enough for the city gunners to pinpoint target points on their bodies even with the computer enhanced tracking.

That meant when hit, one could fly off and survive while others took their place…all the while the Zen’zat heavy cannons were moving closer and closer to the city underneath the protection of a mobile shield generator that was not only blocking easy shots from orbit, but from the rim defenses as well. They were pouring heavy firepower into it, and whenever Mark had a chance he had his squadron add a few shots. The damage was insignificant, but every bit helped in the long run.

Though he wasn’t paying heavy attention to them, his mechs were out and about, fighting their way towards those heavy cannons and the shield perimeter. If they got there they could punch their way through with proximity disruptors…but they required physical contact to destabilize a shield of that size and strength. It was only covering an area of a little more than a square mile, but because it didn’t have to defend the ground it could double up the power up top and make it twice as strong as its naval counterparts who had to defend both directions.

More than that, the shield generator was all shield and no living quarters, no weapons, and no hangar bays. Pound for pound it was stronger than a warship, but this was a small one. The larger ones were miles back and holding position as staging points. If Mark could even get a couple of heavy drones down here he could ram this one and take it out…but he could see the V’kit’no’sat ships hovering just above the atmosphere on the horizon, ready and willing to move into blocking position should he try to bring down his fleet from their high orbit position.

He could probably win that fight, but the naval losses would hurt for later. Mark felt they could hold this city without them, but it was going to be a hard fight with a lot of aerial and mech losses…yet those could be replaced much more easily than naval drones.

That said, he wasn’t going to play the V’kit’no’sat’s game entirely, so he ordered two drones to accelerate down towards the planet at a rush, almost making microjumps to do it, and that sudden move caught the V’kit’no’sat off guard. Their warships didn’t move fast enough, and the drones got down into firing position…still well above the atmosphere…and put several shots into the smaller mobile shield generator before they quickly fled as several Ti’mat were hot on their heels. Those vessels got shot by long range weapons on a few Star Force drones that had drifted down lower from the fleet, as well as anti-orbital fire from a few cities.

One of the Ti’mat got caught in the cross fire and lost shields…along with a chunk of its hull before it was able to pull out. When the V’kit’no’sat saw the rest of the Star Force fleet was holding position they decided not to get involved, meaning the short skirmish was over almost before it began.

But Mark had got several heavy shots into the mobile shield generator, and according to his sensor readings it was almost half depleted.

That wasn’t much considering how little heavy firepower he had to work with as more and more rim defense cannons went down, but the Zen’zat assault vehicles sparring with the mechs were diminishing in number rather fast while Mark and his pilots kept up their dance in the sky and the aerial forces distracted each other away from the groundpounders for the most part.

The trailblazer hadn’t lost a skeet in his squadron yet, but that was because he was playing it safe. I’rar’et flew by a combination of their armor and wings…and the latter got tired. The longer this furball lasted the more lethargic their movements would get, whereas his skeets didn’t tire out, and he was willing to put his mental stamina up against their physical strength any day. Problem was the city was losing defenses rapidly, and he doubted the I’rar’et would tire enough before they had punched a sizeable foothold in the defense line.

He kept trying to bait them closer to the anti-air weaponry in the city, but aside from a few brief chases the enemy was holding to their battle plan closely. If he could just get them to break their formation, even a crack, his pilots could start to get some decent strafing runs in on the Zen’zat, but so far the enemy was providing a solid wall of aerial resistance and that wasn’t likely to end until they were right outside the city walls…

Kli’ja was not flying with the rest of the Daer, rather he was back in the nearby staging area monitoring and directing his troops as needed from a perch within one of the Zen’zat command vehicles. The recent strike by the Star Force naval drones had been concerning, but now he saw it was just a temporary ploy, perhaps an attempt to get his warships in range of the surface guns, but aside from the damage to one Ti’mat there was little consequence, though that was a small victory for the Humans.

If they’d decided to make a full naval fight out of it, Kli’ja would have gone all in. He could not allow Star Force naval superiority or they would pick his ground troops apart, even with the mobile shield generators. They were a relatively new technology added to the V’kit’no’sat arsenal, though the principles were ancient. The I’rar’et had never constructed them before because they always had naval superiority. Assaulting cities on a planet while the enemy held orbit used to be an unthinkable thing…but with the emergence of the Uriti that had changed and Virokor had demanded new options.

Kli’ja didn’t disagree, but while their shield generators were almost omnipotent against the normal opposition within the galaxy, Star Force was using stolen V’kit’no’sat technology and that changed everything. They could break through the smaller shield generators quickly with a sustained naval bombardment, and he didn’t have any of the larger units. Given how big some Star Force fleets were, even those would be at risk, but in recent years the combat had spread out and smaller and smaller fleet engagements were being seen except where the Uriti went, making even these smaller models useful.

Right now it was being very useful against the city defenses, for he had the shield down almost all the way to ground to block the fire from the city perimeter cannons that were being methodically picked apart from range by the Zen’zat vehicles inside the shield perimeter. They had longer weaponry and were firing through the mechs rather than at them while other vehicles beyond the shield were engaging and losing against them.

The losses didn’t matter. The number of mechs and aerial craft taken down didn’t matter. All that mattered was punching a hole in the city walls…of which there were three…and getting the Zen’zat inside so they could take down the anti-air batteries directly. That was the path to victory, and once the I’rar’et could fly through the city buildings with impunity it would be all but over.

But they weren’t there yet, and the Star Force flyers were giving his I’rar’et all they could handle. Neither side was winning out, though the enemy kept trying to draw his flyers over the city guns. That was a pathetic hope, for only a fool would fight over anti-air defenses, but it was the only real hope they had right now, for his Zen’zat were creeping their way forward and taking down turret after turret and the enemy mechs weren’t going to be enough to stop them before a breach occurred…

Three hours later the situation had changed drastically. Mark was flying with only 3 of his 10 skeets, and he was piloting them around city buildings chasing, or being chased by, I’rar’et as they pummeled the city at pointblank range. The mechs had won their fight, killing all the Zen’zat vehicles, even their heavy cannons, but not before they’d gotten their infantry inside the city. Visible and cloaked Zen’zat had spread out and began sabotaging whatever they could find, eventually getting enough anti-air cannons down that the I’rar’et were able to move in at street level and assist them.

Then they’d wave-pushed across the city at lightning speed, ignoring almost everything but the anti-air turrets, and now they were going back and hitting the rest with virtual impunity, for the mechs couldn’t target them well zipping in and out of buildings. Mark had kept most of them outside the city where they could get better firing lines into the sky, but the smaller ones he’d been forced to bring in and try to hunt down the Zen’zat where they could.

There were so many here Mark couldn’t get a good count. Transports stacked with them had been underneath the shield and invisible, for the shield also acted as a sensor barrier. He hadn’t realized they were there until it went down, then they’d dispersed tens of thousands of them into the city with all manner of heavy weaponry, including satchel explosives…and the V’kit’no’sat version was far more powerful than the lizard’s Star Force had become intimately familiar with so long ago.

Before the anti-orbital cannons went down, Mark had ordered four drones to the surface. The V’kit’no’sat had destroyed one before it could get to atmosphere, but the other three made it down, one without shields and some hull damage, before the V’kit’no’sat warships retreated back out of firing range as the heavy planetary shields blocked them from following the drones all the way down through the atmosphere.

But the I’rar’et didn’t just let the drones come in. Huge flocks of them rose up from the city and attacked them head on, going first for the wounded one and plucking its weaponry away with ease…but Mark brought it down to just above the building tops, actually crushing some of them, to block the sky as he organized an evacuation route out to where some of the mechs were already gathering. The other two drones engaged the flyers, doing tremendous damage to them, but each I’rar’et was so small that it took time to thin their numbers.

And not enough for Mark’s remaining pilots to take them all down. Eventually both drones wound up being shieldless, weaponless, and being chewed apart slowly as they could not fight back. When they reached that point Mark also brought them down, making impromptu roofs out of them as he evacuated what was left of the people in the city and pulled back all his remaining fighters to cover the convoy as it traveled over land to the next closet location with the drones staying directly above them.

The mechs kept up their anti-air fire around the edges, and eventually the I’rar’et let them go as they took possession of the city that held a major planetary shield generator. Mark kept it operational the whole time so the V’kit’no’sat warships could not shoot the evacuation convoy, but he’d left behind enough explosives in it to make sure that the I’rar’et couldn’t repurpose it for their own uses.

Once the convoy got within range of the nearby city’s defenses, he sent the activation signal and saw the mushroom cloud explosion across the horizon. It was too far away to actually hear, but the telemetry confirmed that the shield generator was thoroughly destroyed…though now there was only the small city shield over top of the evacuees now.

He was going to have to evacuate most of it before it could get hit, but for now the I’rar’et seemed content to claim their new prize as Mark transitioned the broken drones across the surface of the planet until they were far enough away from the enemy fleet to head back to space and rendezvous with the jumpships. They took them back onboard and began repairs, though these three were going to be out of commission for a while…along with many others in the vast bays that were visually open to space but protected by massive shield generators.

It looked like a junkyard ship rather than a warship, with racks of broken drones lining it, some of which had been completely cut in half, but any parts they could salvage and reuse in others they would, for the more cities that were lost the less replacement parts they would be getting.

But at least the V’kit’no’sat were not getting more toys to play with. At least not until they got reinforcements. And the only silver lining in this fight was the fact that they were wearing down too much through attrition to take the rest of the planet. Mark could hold it with what he had, plus what the local population was making to replace some of his equipment losses, but if the I’rar’et got even limited reinforcements the only thing they could hope to do was call in evacuation ships and leave.

And given the situation on the warfront, he decided it was best to call in the cargo ships now, for he didn’t want to have to face leaving people behind unnecessarily. Already the V’kit’no’sat had prisoners from this planet, and he didn’t want to give them any more if he could avoid it.

2

May 4, 4914

Mid Jump (Rim Region)

Morgan sat in her quarters with a big plate of cookies that she was snacking on as the trailblazer continued to review war data picked up before they’d made their last jump. Updates could not be received during transit, so the data was a bit delayed but still valuable, for this war didn’t change from minutes to minute, and there were days of lag involved with the relay network anyway.

She was leading one of Star Force’s primary fleets, escorting the Uriti Squiddy from system to system and scaring away what V’kit’no’sat she found there. Earth, oddly enough, had been ignored. The same was true for Grid Point Stargate and the systems surrounding it. Even the Uriti Preserve was only receiving light attacks, which she assumed was to make them keep at least a few Uriti there in defense…which they were doing anyway. The infrastructure built up there was too important to lose, plus they didn’t have enough ships to maintain fleets protecting all the Uriti.

If one took enough damage to require a long rest, they’d swap them out and use the same fleet to protect the new one, though those fleets were losing ships and those ships had to be replaced occasionally. There wasn’t much combat, except for when a planetary shield had to be battered down and anti-orbital guns faced. Sometimes she’d let Squiddy take the brunt of the attack, other times she’d bring the fleet down and they would lose ships because the V’kit’no’sat knew that they couldn’t kill the Uriti…but she could spare it damage, and Morgan knew she couldn’t let it accumulate too much damage year after year or it would become vulnerable enough the enemy might try and take it out.

Earth was still defended, but without a Uriti there. One was always nearby, roaming the Devastation Zone and rotating out with the three in the Preserve, and where it was currently located was always a mystery, much like Morgan’s own fleet. They didn’t want to give the V’kit’no’sat a fixed map to plan against, and even the other trailblazers didn’t know where Morgan was going…for she hadn’t decided yet.

She was studying the map and the systems nearby, trying to figure out how to get the most effect out of her fleet and Squiddy while too many systems were coming under attack for her to respond to. Within a 10 jump range there were 183 systems under assault, plus another 7 that were firmly under V’kit’no’sat control. She knew better than to waste time there, for they’d already been hit by others and the V’kit’no’sat defenses had held, so going back would be a waste of time…unless they decided to ignore prisoner deaths and just blast the hell out of the place, which they never would.

And the number of V’kit’no’sat assaults was continuing to increase. It was like they’d gone soft on Star Force in the beginning of the resumed war, but as they got more comfortable with Uriti dodging they were getting more aggressive and spreading out. That meant she had the ability, with her large fleet, to turn just about any fight she involved herself in, but there were too many for her to get to in this region, and the same was true for the others fighting in different sections of the warfront.

One update caught her eye, and that was from the Renscor System. Mark was there, as in Mark-084, not Mark-099 who was currently all the way over in the Avta Region. They had the same name, but the two trailblazers were considerably different. One was an Aquatics/Naval staple while the other was the best aerial pilot in the empire.

It was the aerial pilot who had not been given a Uriti, for his skills were better spent in the atmosphere with his Clan rooting out the toughest opposition the V’kit’no’sat could throw at them…but it seemed he was getting his ass kicked. Not in a total fashion, but he was not overcoming the planet he’d reinforced as he should have been, so Morgan pulled up more information from that engagement with her frown deepening.

He was in trouble, though doing a good job managing the bad situation. It was three jumps from their destination system and Morgan made the snap decision to head there. If he remained tied up, then he couldn’t be moving around and finding mismatches on his way to major bottlenecks. Clan Gunstar was also losing a considerable number of its people, which was bad. The only way they could fight this war was if they lost machines, which were easily replaceable, but not their pilots.

Whatever nest of trouble he’d fallen into was kicking his ass, and Morgan knew she had to get involved before they lost any more. Squiddy wouldn’t be too much help, but Morgan could swing through that system enroute to other larger fights and spend a few days bailing him out. She had enough ground troops with her to overwhelm this ‘small’ engagement that had brought two very elite aerial fighter units against each other, and the I’rar’et were far better than the Zen’zat pilots that most races used. The tradeoff was their ground warfare was less robust, but in this case the I’rar’et were slowly beating up Mark’s people and taking the planet out from under him in what was oscillating between a standstill and a grinding advance.

She’d put an end to that and free Mark up to hit elsewhere, but there were many other systems in the same or worse condition, and few in better. The V’kit’no’sat were being very savvy about how many troops to send where, and the tide was definitely turning in their favor even as Morgan’s fleet hadn’t yet lost a fight. There were just too many fights for them to get to, and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t seem to care about losing entire armies in the effort if they came out the victors at the end…

Tre’sti was some 129 lightyears away from the assault in the Renscor System, though he was the one who had ordered that assault launched. The third highest ranking I’rar’et commander in the war was currently in the captured Flying Monkey System. He’d originally targeted it because of the name, for it was some sort of a joke reference to the fact that there was a high number of aerial assets based there…or rather had been. When the system had fallen those units were either defeated or evacuated, with their facilities now solidly in V’kit’no’sat hands.

Before a Uriti could show up to depose them they’d gotten four of the Star Force shield generators working and had been adding their own ever since. One attack later had involved a Uriti and a massive ground campaign to retake the planet…but Star Force had only been interested in evacuating as many of the prisoners as they could get their hands on after it was clear the V’kit’no’sat would not be removed from the surface. They had plenty more captives around the shield generators and other sensitive areas, with the Uriti and its guardian fleet eventually moving on and leaving the personnel they couldn’t rescue behind.

That was the only practical decision they could make if they weren’t willing to sacrifice them, which Tre’sti would have done in a heartbeat. Star Force could actually be winning this war if they’d used the Uriti to their full potential, but he was glad they weren’t. He had often wondered what he could do had he possessed even the smallest of them, and that thought terrified him when he turned it around and realized what Star Force could do to them if they wanted.

But the enemy was holding firm to their principles and giving the I’rar’et a foothold in their territory that was continuing to expand. Tre’sti had hoped to include the Renscor System, but a recent report he’d just received from a retreating ship indicated that nearly the entire assault force had been destroyed. A Uriti fleet had arrived and overwhelmed them, keeping the system in Star Force hands for the time being.

Tre’sti gripped his perch rod so hard it dented…then the material reformed as he gradually released it. Setbacks were happening everywhere and losses were expected, so he forced himself to return to a state of calmness despite the fact that several members of the Daer in that attack were his personal friends…or had been, unless Star Force had captured them or they’d managed to escape on a ship, though the one that had just come back indicated that no evacuation of the surface had been feasible, and only a small portion of the surviving naval blockade had managed to get away.

That put Tre’sti into a bad mood for weeks to follow, though the invasions continued. He launched two more in that time to other systems, sending out more I’rar’et and Zen’zat that would live or die largely by chance. If a Uriti arrived they were doomed. If one did not, they would have a chance to accomplish their mission, and neither Tre’sti nor any other V’kit’no’sat had been able to determine a pattern in the Star Force Uriti fleet movements.

But all the V’kit’no’sat were willing to risk it in order to put an end to this heresy once and for all. Tre’sti just hated that it had been allowed to fester this long. They were paying the price for their arrogance, for they should have snuffed this heresy out long ago rather than allow it to limp on long enough to grow to this size, though to be entirely honest it was the Uriti that was saving them and not their own strength.

However, that salvation would be short lived now that they’d finally brought their full power down on the rogue Zen’zat and their servants, but the price still galled Tre’sti to no end.

Then he got word through the broken Urrtren link back to the empire and patched together with couriers crossing the gaps. Halfway across the galaxy from the current war zone the empire had come under attack from a Rim race known as the Piol. No warnings. No declarations. No reason at all was given for the attack, and it was already causing the Elder Council in Itaru to go nuts…which was made all the worse when two weeks later another report that another far off portion of the empire had come under attack from a completely unknown Rim race.

By the time the reports made it all the way out to Tre’sti there 6 confirmed invasions of V’kit’no’sat territory by Rim races, all far from the Star Force warfront, and the recriminations were coming through loud and clear. This massive attack against Star Force had pulled their mobile fleets away from their own territory, and they’d been promised that there was no threat to their own empire, for no one was powerful enough, nor stupid enough, to try and attack them when they were absent.

But now that promise was falling apart as multiple races, including the I’rar’et, were having their homes eradicated via orbital bombardment.

Tre’sti had no detailed information, only general news packets, but they indicated that the attacks were savage in their ferocity, and while the invaders were losing a massive number of ships, they were coming in with overwhelming force that even the planetary defense stations could not hold up against. The attacks were on the frontier worlds, but that didn’t matter. They were V’kit’no’sat territory as much as any other, and it wasn’t just the smaller outposts getting hit. Several major border worlds were under assault and predicted to fall, including his own hatch world of Veernum.

He hadn’t been hatched on the surface, but rather one of the I’rar’et’s floating cities known as Sharduut. They normally rested on support pillars, but they could disconnect and roam the planet or even travel up to orbit and latch on to a transport vessel that could move them between systems. Tre’sti was in a Sharduut now, and it hadn’t been built locally. Most I’rar’et structures were made out of Shardutt, while other land facilities were made and inhabited by the Zen’zat that served them, but all of it was V’kit’no’sat and Tre’sti could still remember clearly the aerial views of what had been his home more than 600,000 years ago.

He hadn’t been on that world in more than half that time, but it was still his home and now it was coming under attack, perhaps destroyed, without the defense fleets nearby that could have reinforced it. Tre’sti knew there were some ships still on patrol, but a pathetic number that could not counter an invasion of this magnitude. The Freii had sent more than half a million of their ships to Veernum, and based on the limited tech specs that came in the news packet they were at least as capable, if not more so, than the standard ship design the V’kit’no’sat had on file in their database.

And that meant without reinforcement Veernum would fall and the Sharduut where he had been hatched would most likely be destroyed with all the I’rar’et inside, for the report also indicated that any fleeing ships were being shot down, meaning it was unlikely that anyone would survive the slaughter.

And Tre’sti couldn’t help them. He and his forces were fully engaged here, and even if they left immediately they would most likely not be able to return in time to do more than count the bodies and take what was left of the planet back, which was anticipated to be nothing by the bombardment records of the regions that had already seen shield collapse.

When he read that report, Tre’sti ripped his perch off its base and flung it across the room into the wall, and he wasn’t the only one. Similar reactions across the planet, not to mention across the warfront, began to spring up along with calls for at least some of the fleets assaulting Star Force to return to V’kit’no’sat territory before more losses were incurred.

3

May 28, 4914

Erol System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Stellar Orbit

Mak’to’ran had a fleet of just under 60,000 warships sitting around the star with a long trail of some 12,000 damaged or destroyed warships leading back to the third planet in the V’kit’no’sat system that they’d just driven a tier 3 Hadarak from. They hadn’t been able to kill it, but they’d destroyed all its minions and wounded it enough to force it to flee to the star for safety, where it was currently hiding in anonymity.

There were 2 inhabited planets in this system, which was some 52 lightyears back from the Hadarak border. Typically that was far enough back to avoid a direct hit, even though geographically speaking it was sitting on the line. The difference was that there were a cluster of V’kit’no’sat systems in close proximity and the Hadarak had passed through not one, but two others to get here.

Then it had landed on the most heavily populated world, breaking through the planetary shields and releasing enough minions to overwhelm the defense fleet that had been waiting for it along with Mak’to’ran. Despite having 72,000 warships and numerous defense stations, the Hadarak had just ignored them all and went straight for the planet, crushing through mostly evacuated cities, for they’d had ample forewarning that it was coming.

But not enough. They’d assumed it would hit one of the other two systems it had passed through, so they’d only had a few months of warning to evacuate part of the population. The rest had moved towards the equator, for Hadarak typically landed on a rotating world near one of the poles. That wasn’t always the case, but more often than not their tendency, and here was no exception. It had come down on the southern pole and began sending out tendrils into the planet’s crust and down into the molten core.

But a 628 mile wide Hadarak did not ‘sit’ on the crust. It broke right through, forcing a tidal wave of molten material out along the edges in massive volcanos, for the volume of the Hadarak pushed down so much the material beneath had to move and move fast. Some of the spurts made it all the way up to orbit and were currently curling over and returning to the planet over the course of days. That was how high the material had been ejected, and the landscape surrounding the Hadarak was now mountains that reached above the atmosphere.

The cities that had been on them were obliterated, and earthquakes were ravaging the rest of the planet in response. Plates were not only cracking apart, but being shifted up and over others. The two oceans on the world, named Stageri, were shifting across the continents in massive tidal waves and vaporizing where they hit the molten material coming up to the surface.

The entire planet was a hellish nightmare now, but there were still some 3 billion V’kit’no’sat down there dying or near to dying because of the size of the Hadarak that had come out this far, and the fact that it had bypassed the obvious worlds that Mak’to’ran was prepared to lose. This one was not so expendable, though it had been designed to evacuate quickly…meaning 6 months or more. Hadarak moved slowly, but the closeness of the targets had backfired on the V’kit’no’sat, and now those on the surface were paying the price for that miscalculation even as evacuation ships continued to fly down through the roiling atmosphere, punching through the new cloud and ash cover to find handfuls of people to pull out to transports waiting in orbit.

Tier 3 Hadarak began at 385 miles wide and ranged all the way up to 829, but they rarely pushed out this far. Normally that was the job of the tier 1s and 2s, but since the new V’kit’no’sat Harthur were killing a fair number of them, Mak’to’ran believed this strike was both a response and test to see how dangerous the V’kit’no’sat now were. Unfortunately the Harthur, despite a heavy research and development budget, could not create a capture sphere for Hadarak larger than 260 miles wide. Attempts at anything larger could see the Hadarak’s tentacles or grapple fields able to damage the structure and free itself, meaning that the larger tier 2s were also uncaptureable.

This tier 3 was far larger than that, meaning the V’kit’no’sat had to fight it in the only way available to them for millions of years…up close and taking massive casualties. Once the minions were removed they had additional options and could damage the Hadarak from range with impunity, but that’s when the Hadarak would invariably head to the nearest star to avoid them, and this time was no different.

Mak’to’ran knew they weren’t going to be able to kill it, though he’d summoned reinforcements that were taking considerable time in getting here. But what he’d just bought was time to evacuate more of the far side of the planet. The side where the Hadarak had landed, and now vacated, was completely molten and swamping the nearby crust…which had been pushed up, then fallen back down once the Hadarak left. They were searching for survivors there, but other than a few freak circumstances there was nothing left.

And along with the massive deaths came the destruction of a huge number of foodstuff production facilities that fed the nearby systems. Now there would have to be a massive redirection in cargo transport from much further away or they’d have to downscale those nearby worlds, for they’d deliberately been built with light infrastructure as a lure to the Hadarak. They’d wanted them to be hit rather than others, so they’d been relying on Stageri for the bulk of their production.

Did the Hadarak know that? Could they understand the V’kit’no’sat technology to a degree, or was this a random thrust further in that happened to land here? Regardless of how it had happened, this was a massive debacle and all Mak’to’ran could do was salvage as many survivors from the planet as possible…and at the cost of many more onboard the destroyed warships.

Meanwhile rescues of the crews on the damaged vessels were continuing as the bulk of his fleet held position over the star so they could fire on the Hadarak if and when it began to emerge. Given the sizeable hole they’d punched in it, it would vulnerable for months before even a small patch formed that could allow it to run to another star system. If it tried before then, Mak’to’ran would do a lot more damage as it moved, but he still wouldn’t be able to kill it. It was so big it could lose a quarter of its mass and survive, and even if it didn’t have a Yeg’gor shell it would be hard to destroy that much mass with sustained bombardment.

But they’d done it many times in the past, and right now the Hadarak was probably growing new minions to screen for it when it left. It wasn’t going to be able to stay in this system, not without getting help, and Mak’to’ran’s fleet had already shot down two couriers it had tried to release.

He was not going to let it call for help or report back in any fashion. It was going to have to go itself and take more damage along the way, but he did want it to report back. If it just disappeared that could cause more problems than it solved, for if the Hadarak thought that the Harthur could kill a tier 3 of this size, they may just start sending tier 4s. Few had ever been fought, but none had ever been killed. The V’kit’no’sat simply couldn’t mass enough firepower to get the job done, and the Hadarak never stayed put long enough to let them try to any worthwhile degree.

The V’kit’no’sat needed to kill Hadarak, but if they were provoking even larger ones to come out because of those additional kills…or perhaps the mystery of how they were being killed…that could do more harm than good, for according to the Rit’ko’sor reconnaissance reports there were far more Hadarak deeper into the Core, and there was little hope of thinning their numbers to a useful point. The Hadarak population was a bomb waiting to go off, but Mak’to’ran couldn’t just stand down and let them wreck whatever planets they wanted. He had to fight and kill them, but he feared doing so in greater numbers would only make the situation worse.

His best hope would be to severely wound this one and have it get away, reporting back to the others that the V’kit’no’sat had no new weapon…or perhaps not whatever it was they were searching for. He didn’t know what that ‘whatever’ was, but they were definitely looking for, or at least patrolling against, something in the galaxy. Something far more important to the Hadarak than the V’kit’no’sat. And if he was accidentally giving them the impression that that something was out here killing some Hadarak, then he needed them to discover otherwise before more heavy assaults like this began to take place.

So he needed this one to live and get away, which was fortunate, for he knew he couldn’t kill it.

While his fleet waited and the rescue and evacuation efforts continued at a frantic pace, a courier of their own arrived since the Urrtren relay had been attacked and destroyed by the Hadarak minions. That, he knew, was no accident, for they’d targeted them before. It was speculated that the energies involved somehow registered to them telepathically, but he wasn’t convinced of that. He suspected they knew they were important to the V’kit’no’sat and took them out for at least that reason, if not perhaps knowing even more than they gave them credit for. Regardless, communications with this system were down, so a ship had to be sent to inform Mak’to’ran of addition bad news…which he did not take well.

Several pieces of equipment on the command deck got destroyed by his short lived temper tantrum, at the end of which he saw similar anger in the eyes of his Era’tran crew…and frightened, cowering looks from the Zen’zat who did not fully understand what was going on.

“The Oso’lon have been played for fools!” he yelled, but letting his glowing claws burn out while several destroyed consoles continued to seep smoke. “They assured us the empire would be safe while they pursued the conquest of Star Force, but they once again underestimated them. This is no coincidence. These races assaulting our border are not seeing an opportunity to strike and taking it. This is coordinated. The timing is too precise to be otherwise. Star Force has allies we did not know about and they are hitting us where we are weak while the Oso’lon lead a fools quest to conquer an enemy that does not need to be an enemy! Now their arrogance and stupidity are seeing our worlds fall in their absence!”

“We are fighting our true enemy here,” he continued, rage clear in his voice and telepathy, which he was simulcasting so others nearby in the ship could hear him as well, “while they leave us vulnerable to lesser threats. We cannot leave to cover their folly. You all have a broken planet before you as proof as to why. The Oso’lon gave their word the empire would be safe, now we are engaged in the largest war since the Zak’de’ron purge…all the while the Hadarak are on the move. Am I the only sane V’kit’no’sat left? Can no one else see how we are heading towards self-destruction?”

“The Era’tran are with you, Mak’to’ran,” another of the crew stated firmly. “You are not alone.”

“We are not enough,” he told him, while offering a telepathic ping of thanks. “We need the full might of the empire to fight as one, but we are fractured. More than that, we need Star Force’s assistance with the Hadarak. I care not for their heresy when they can be turned into an asset, but the Oso’lon are destroying what leverage we have with them. The long-necked buffoons are obsessed with control and will not relinquish their war, even in the face of this new invasion. Now I have to leave. I have to travel to Itaru and rally whatever loyal V’kit’no’sat remain away from the Oso’lon…all the while the Hadarak are doing this…” he said, bringing up a live view of the formerly round planet that now had a crater in it so large that half of the ring that had not collapsed was still higher than the atmosphere.

“You will remain here. I will not take a Kafcha away from the true war now. I will go on my own to Itaru, but you must stay here and hold to the purpose of our empire while I try to save it. This will not be resolved quickly, and more sacrifices will need to be made. Our worlds may need to be let fall, for you cannot leave the front. No matter what occurs, you are to stay here, hold the line, do your duty. It is the others that must abandon their war against Star Force and do their duty. If they do not agree with this sentiment, there will be blood split, but you must not get involved. You must stay here until I order otherwise. Do you understand?”

“You need not take time lecturing us. We will do our duty. Go and do what must be done,” Har’jer said, with the planetary defense commanding Voro’nam having been one of the few lucky ones to be plucked from the dead vessels and brought onboard the Era’tran Kafcha.

“The ship is yours. Command of the fleet falls to Sar’von,” he said calmly, but the anger was still there as he all but stomped off the command deck en route to a hangar bay to transfer over to the courier ship and have it take him all the way to Itaru.

Mark-084 was relieved to be freed up from the I’rar’et jamb he’d been in, and was grateful for the minion factories that Morgan and Squiddy had left behind. Right now they were just getting established on the planet with ant-like workers being grown and sent into the field immediately to begin harvesting resources to grow more. In time they’d add fighting units, additional structures, and grow so fast that they made the Paladin expansion rate look slow. Morgan had left a Uriti Wrangler behind to control the minions, as well as a bracelet for Mark as well, though he didn’t intend to stay in Renscor too much longer.

He couldn’t leave yet, especially if the V’kit’no’sat decided to invade again, but his people also needed a rest and he needed replacement aerial craft and mechs. The I’rar’et had hurt his Clan badly, but most of his people had been recovered. The same wasn’t true for the H’kar and Kiritak, who’d taken far more losses, but the planet and system were still in Star Force possession for the moment, and with the Kiritak on the planet he had no doubt repair work would be occurring at a furious pace.

Mark wanted to go out and hit another invasion, but logistically he just couldn’t right now. He’d faced this sort of thing before, but with resources having to be spread out everywhere, even as a trailblazer he didn’t get priority over all of it. This might be where he had to dig in a while, and if Morgan had thought it necessary to leave minions behind then that was a bad sign. She was one of the most aggressive of the trailblazers, and using minions was a fallback option for them.

The minions had their uses, but they were essentially biological machines…and machines couldn’t think. They could only do what they were programmed to do, and if that was a good option then all mechs and aerial crafts would have been built without pilots. Even naval drones needed operators nearby to give them specialized orders, and the few times when communications disruptions occurred their fighting ability dropped precipitously despite the many years of programming refinements that Paul and Roger had made.

The drones were ‘good robots’ when it came to fighting, but they couldn’t hold a candle to a person who could mentally merge with the computer systems, gaining all their advantages, but being able to think outside the box and adjust to new things that presented themselves. Throw something new at a machine and they were often easy to beat, for they couldn’t adapt to something not in their programming.

The minions were the same way, for the Chixzon had not wanted them to be able to think on their own like the Hadarak minions could. So they’d created the Uriti to spawn biological machines, not produce people, and those machines are something that Star Force could waste if needed…and when things got sloppy, having disposable units around was almost a necessity.

But put those units in a populated area and you could see your own people getting killed by friendly fire, because a machine was stupid when it came to such things or was overly hesitant. And if they were hesitant the enemy could use that against them as well.

But with an Archon Wrangler guiding them most of that would disappear. But still, using them was a sign of desperation, but totally warranted right now on this planet. They needed an army and defensive structures ASAP, for right now they were ripe for another invasion. Morgan and her fleet were gone, so it was just a matter of what the V’kit’no’sat felt was the best next target for them…and the more defenses Mark could get up in a hurry the more those calculations altered to deter another small scale assault.

But minions or no, even a medium sized attack would overrun Hasvor and deliver the Renscor System into V’kit’no’sat possession.

4

August 23, 4914

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat capitol)

Stellar Orbit

In the past, Mak’to’ran had been greatly honored every time he had cause to visit the V’kit’no’sat capitol system, let alone land on Wendigama, the planetary capitol of the entire empire. It was large, with a gravity of 3.4 that required most of the cities on the surface to have artificial augments, and a surface area 5 times that of Earth with about a fourth of that being 3 oceans. It was the largest planet in the system, at least as far as surface viability was concerned. There were four gas giants far larger, but the V’kit’no’sat did not inhabit them beyond floating mining operations in their thick atmospheres.

In addition to Wendigama, there were 16 other planets and 183 moons, all of which were heavily inhabited. The system was the crowning jewel of the V’kit’no’sat empire and the damage done during the most recent civil war had all been repaired, leaving it a sight to behold. The traffic alone was staggering, with the moving ships looking like swarms of insects despite the fact each of those ships was miles long.

Then there was the local traffic that was much smaller, ferrying people and material from planet to planet across the system. Add in orbital infrastructure and free standing stations in their own stellar orbits, and the Itaru System was easily the most advanced and densely populated system in the galaxy with over 128 trillion inhabitants. There were some other systems outside V’kit’no’sat territory that might boast a higher population, but that was only because their races were diminutive in size, so they really didn’t count.

Mak’to’ran had always viewed it as a symbol of power and stability. Of the dominance of the V’kit’no’sat empire. But ever since he’d taken leadership of it his trips here had been less auspicious, and today he did not want to be here. The fact that they’d forced his return was still angering him after months of travel, and when he landed on Wendigama they were not going to like his arrival.

He overrode the traffic control requirements, allowing his tiny Kaeper to head across the system and down into Wendigama’s atmosphere without delay as many other ships were sitting in parking orbits waiting for their chance to unload cargo or passengers. Mak’to’ran’s ship, at his order, did not go to a landing field. Instead it went into restricted space above the Elder Conclave but not the main chamber. It hovered over the adjacent facilities that housed the workspace for the members, and Mak’to’ran stepped out of an airlock on the ship and floated down to the rooftop via the emergency anti-gravity in his armor. It wasn’t enough to fly, but it allowed him to avoid damaging falls and in this case dropped him near a roof access port with only a small thud as his two large feet smashed down on the building amidst a sea of Conclave guardians.

“Step aside,” Mak’to’ran growled as he headed for the entrance, with the mix of races including some Era’tran silently making way for his unorthodox arrival. They followed him inside as he headed for the Oso’lon annex, then they stopped him when he tried to go through the private doors.

Mak’to’ran glared at them, flashing his claws aglow as a warning, then when the pair of Oso’lon stationed at the doors refused to move aside he lashed out at them with his Jumat, knocking them askew enough to slide between them and kick into the front leg of the one on his right, buckling it before he physically rammed the larger quadruped in the side and knocked it to the ground further out into the hall.

The other Oso’lon fired back with its own Jumat, but Mak’to’ran blocked it with his Nakane and rammed the surprised Oso’lon as well, knocking it to the ground then cut through the door latch with his claws before plowing through it so fast the others had little chance to react…though the rest of the Conclave guardians had no intention of interfering. They were merely observing, for technically Mak’to’ran was the leader of the entire empire, though the Oso’lon had never actually conceded that point.

“Trebrel!” Mak’to’ran yelled, with his telepathic shout being far louder. “Get your incompetent tail out here now!”

One of the guards reached out with its Lachka from behind, trying to stop Mak’to’ran from going further, but after a moment of being in the Oso’lon’s vice grip it melted away as Mak’to’ran condescendingly activated his Rentar and didn’t look back.

The Era’tran marched through the wide open architecture of the Oso’lon ‘embassy’, for lack of a better word, as many Zen’zat and other Oso’lon got out of his way…though the larger race did not go far, with many of them sending evil looks his way as he invaded their private space. They did not seek to bar his path as the Conclave guardians had, both of whom were now trailing behind him at a respectful distance with their long necks rising high above the shorter guards from the other races that had also followed Mak’to’ran into the off-limits sanctuary.

The Era’tran pounded his way through the Oso’lon compound until the lead Elder representing the Oso’lon on the Council finally appeared before him. He wasn’t the Primearch, nor the handful of other powerful Oso’lon that made up the Teelriem, but he was their mouthpiece to the empire and one in particular who had promised that V’kit’no’sat territory would be safe with the bulk of the fleet sent elsewhere.

“You have no right to be here, no matter what the situation is,” the Oso’lon said, looking down on the Era’tran from nearly twice his height, for Trebrel was one of the smaller Oso’lon Ultras whose shoulders rose higher than Mak’to’ran’s head. “And who authorized you to possess Rentar? It is forbidden to the Era’tran.”

“I authorized it,” Mak’to’ran said, throwing a Jumat blast at half power into Trebel’s long neck, smacking it backwards while he stood nearly immune to the immediate backlash from the Oso’lon, though his bioshields nearly fell to the piercing nature of the Jumat energy. “It is necessary to deal with obstinance such as yours. What do you have to say to the…”

Mak’to’ran didn’t get to finish the sentence before the Oso’lon swung his neck down and tried to headbutt him. He dodged before a Lachka hold took hold and delayed him just enough for contact to be made. The Era’tran was driven backwards, but he didn’t bother to use his armor. The Oso’lon had none, and he wasn’t going to take advantage of the mismatch.

He reached out with his own Lachka and held the Oso’lon’s neck down, then jumped with all his might up and onto the Ultra’s back. He head butted down into Trebrel’s neck, then released the biggest Jumat blast he could directly down, knocking the Oso’lon to his knees before he was thrown off. Trebrel didn’t bother to try his Lachka again, rather rolling to the side and dumping Mak’to’ran off, then driving his legs hard to force his back like a battering ram to the side.

Mak’to’ran fell off and rolled over, coming up to his feet just as the big Oso’lon’s tail whipped around. He took it on his Nakane, but his bioshields collapsed and he got whacked in the face, wrenching his neck around, but he held his ground as the tail came back in a reversal. He activated his claws and merely held them out, letting Trebrel impale himself on them.

The Oso’lon roared even as Mak’to’ran was knocked down, for he now had multiple holes that were stretched into slashes. The Jumat blast that came was so large that Mak’to’ran, now without his Nakane, could not withstand it. It tossed him across the hallway into the far wall, but Mak’to’ran simply squeezed the Oso’lon’s tail telekinetically, making the wounds hurt even worse.

“Do I have your attention yet, you fool?” the Era’tran asked, releasing his grip before another blow could fall.

“You are the foolish one to think you can invade our chambers and assault me with impunity,” Trebrel said, turning around to face him squarely. “You do not rule us.”

“I warned that we would be vulnerable. I warned that our fight was with the Hadarak, but you do not listen and now we are under assault on all our borders! I could kill you now if I wanted, but what do we have need of more dead V’kit’no’sat? There are too many dying already.”

“Even with your illegal upgrade, you cannot kill me, Era’tran. And I am nearly to the point of killing you to prove it.”

“You will find that far harder than you imagine,” Mak’to’ran said, though he wasn’t actually here to kill him. At least, he wasn’t there yet. “How many systems have we lost?”

“Three,” the Oso’lon said, glaring down at the other Oso’lon and Council guards who had allowed Mak’to’ran inside.

“And how many are under assault?” Mak’to’ran countered.

“537 as of today,” Trebrel said, giving the exact number that he was obviously aware of. “Border worlds that we can afford to lose if needed. Star Force is the greater threat. Why can you not see that?”

“You promised this would not happen, and now when it is thrown in your face you still refuse to acknowledge the mistake?”

“The mistake was yours. You have left us divided.”

“It would not matter!” Mak’to’ran yelled. “We only have so many ships, and the Hadarak border cannot be abandoned. What else can we do to protect our territory other than recall your fleets?”

“You can let the Hadarak have a few worlds, join us against Star Force, end this even more quickly, then we can return to the Hadarak.”

“Is this the final decision of the Oso’lon, or your own stupidity?”

“We stand united…though some are lacking in conviction,” he said, referencing his guards. “And your actions here will not be tolerated. I may spare you, but your leadership of the V’kit’no’sat is over.”

“So be it then,” Mak’to’ran said, activating his armor and charging the Oso’lon…then all hell broke loose.

“What?” Hamob asked when a priority message came in to his private residence on Holloi from the Yaern’ek.

“We have received word from Itaru,” the representative of the active leadership of the Era’tran said, though he was in fact junior to the reclusive true leadership of Hamob and a few others. “Mak’to’ran is there, and he has killed Trebrel.”

Hamob’s eyes widened. “For what reason?”

“No reason has been stated. Itaru is in a state of chaos. But initial reports indicate Mak’to’ran is leading a coup against the Oso’lon.”

“What of the J’gar?”

“They have remained silent, though our reports are preliminary only.”

Hamob was thoughtful for a moment, then sighed regretfully. “They pushed him too far. There is only so much incompetence and corruption Mak’to’ran can stomach.”

“Is he in the wrong?”

“That depends how you look at it. If keeping the empire together is our highest priority, then he is in the wrong. If there are higher concerns, then he may be in the right, but logistically speaking a conflict with the Oso’lon while we are under assault on multiple fronts is stupidity on the grandest of scale.”

“Then why is he doing this? Did he consult with you first?”

“No. I assumed he was still fighting the Hadarak.”

“How should we respond?”

“Respond to what? Has he made a request?”

“He has not contacted us at all.”

“Then wait until he does. Until then, watch and listen, but do not act. Our focus must be on the Hadarak.”

“We cannot ignore this.”

“We will not,” Hamob promised. “But we cannot act until we know what is transpiring. Until then, do nothing.”

“What of our fleets?”

“Do not alter their current assignments, but begin formulating orders for their repositioning against the Oso’lon if it should come to that. If the time comes, I will give the order. You are to alter nothing until then.”

“We are to remain neutral when our fleet in Itaru is engaging in battle?”

“Fighting who?”

“Unknown, but there is heavy fleet engagement. This is not a personnel realignment.”

“Mak’to’ran will have a plan, whether he has informed us of it or not. We will stand ready, but take no action until he calls on us.”

“And we will follow him into civil war?”

“I do not know. We need more information. We cannot act on assumptions.”

“We will get it shortly. Until then we cannot act as if nothing has occurred. Word is spreading across the Urrtren.”

“Tell them what we know…which is not enough. We need further information before acting.”

“As you wish, Hamob, but I do not like this.”

“Neither do I, but we both know this has been inevitable in its coming, Traveen.”

“I had hoped you were wrong. And the timing is horrible.”

“Unless the timing is a result of the invasions.”

“What do you suspect?”

“It is irrelevant. I do not want to comment without further information.”

“But you have a suspicion?”

“I always have suspicions. That is nothing new.”

“When your suspicions become confirmation, please inform us. We must ready the Era’tran for whatever is coming.”

“I know your duties, but for the moment you are to maintain and await orders. The future of our race is my concern.”

“And the present events ours. We will wait, but there will come a point when we must respond. I hope you have your answers by then,” the Era’tran said with a respectful nod, then ended the transmission.

“Mak’to’ran, what are you doing?” Hamob asked to the silence as his thoughts moved to Itaru and he opened up a direct computer link to the Urrtren to see for himself what little information had made its way out across the galaxy thus far.

The Primearch of the Oso’lon was not in Itaru. He was in another system a quarter of the way around the galactic Core, but when he’d heard that Mak’to’ran had personally gone on a rampage killing elite Oso’lon, he knew this was not some mild squabble that could be resolved with the loss of some ships. The triad established to end the recent civil war had been tenuous and slowly stabilizing up until the revelation of the return of the Zak’de’ron. Yaniel had confided in the Primearch and no other, and the Primearch understood the secrecy needed to insure the survival of the V’kit’no’sat.

But Mak’to’ran also knew of this, yet he was committing treason once again, and against the Oso’lon specifically this time. Whatever had caused him to flip was something significant, and the Primearch knew it had to have something to do with the Rim assaults. They were disturbing, and continually escalating, but overall they could not seriously hamper the empire. Defeating Star Force was the key to unifying the V’kit’no’sat so they could prepare for the return of the Zak’de’ron, and even this inopportune turn of events would not shake them from this path.

The Primearch feared Mak’to’ran was of the opposite mind, and if intractable, only the J’gar Didact could settle this. The Primearch was heading to meet with him as he received a return signal indicating that the Didact wanted to meet in Itaru, along with Mak’to’ran, and settle this amongst themselves before the situation got any further out of hand.

So he’d altered course, heading back the way he’d just come and retreading ground until he passed his original, private system and continued on his way to Itaru, getting more and more recent updates the closer he got. By the time he arrived, Itaru was no longer the V’kit’no’sat capitol. Instead it was an Era’tran-led bastion of rebellion, with Mak’to’ran having somehow managed to oust both the Oso’lon and the Elder Council, planting himself as the sole ruler of the system.

That was not expected. Not at all. Even with all the fleets sent to fight Star Force, Itaru held massive defenses in orbit, not to mention those on the planets…and yet, there wasn’t that much battle damage visible upon arrival into the system, and traffic flows appeared to be almost normal.

The J’gar Didact had arrived before him, signaling the moment the Primearch arrived to rendezvous with a huge J’gar fleet holding position in neutral space between the 16th and 17th planetary orbits and far from any other ships or stations. By the time the sizeable Oso’lon fleet arrived at the same location, the Primearch had learned that most of the planets and various enclaves in the system had chosen to side with Mak’to’ran and his call to defend the empire rather than pursue the war with Star Force.

Those who had sided against them were either dead or taken prisoner at the end of a violent, but short lived civil war within the system…leaving Mak’to’ran in control of everything, including the Oso’lon settlements, some of which had even sided with him before being attacked. That act of treason rankled the Primearch, but the swift change here worried him. Had he misread the masses that badly? He could not tell them the real reason behind the war, about the Zak’de’ron, but that should have worked to his advantage, for why would V’kit’no’sat not want to put down the lingering heresy of Star Force?

The Didact invited him onboard the J’gar’s massive command ship that was, in fact, a Mach’nel. The Oso’lon Mach’nel were in the war zone, but those that had opted to fight the Hadarak instead were still here and the Didact had felt like bringing one, either as protection for himself or as a reminder that the bulk of the Oso’lon power base was beyond the Rim border and presently unavailable to the Primearch.

The Oso’lon transferred over to the Mach’nel and landed in one of their air accessible bays. Most of the ship was flooded with water, but they’d made a few levels air capable for the Zen’zat to operate in without special equipment and it was there that the Primearch and 6 Oso’lon guards were welcomed by the J’gar’s own Zen’zat and led to one of the pools where they could interact face to face.

Inside of it were many J’gar, glowing with bioluminescent patches below and above the surface as their necks reached up into the air much like the Oso’lon, except that the J’gar could breathe both air and water, as all V’kit’no’sat aquatics races could, but one individual above all the others stood out telepathically, and it was to that one that the Primearch focused his attention.

“You have been here long enough to study the situation. What do you make of it?” he asked the Didact.

“Mak’to’ran has full control of Itaru, and taking it from him now is unfeasible. He has the support of the other races, including pieces of our own. They want a leader that will act against the threats against our own territory, and if we do not heed that calling I fear many of our worlds will side with him as well.”

“They will be culled if they try.”

“We are beyond that, Primearch. The galaxy has changed and now the empire is under direct assault from someone other than the Hadarak. This is unprecedented, and we are losing worlds. Our dominance is in question, and that is something the V’kit’no’sat cannot tolerate.”

“Trebrel is dead, as are other Oso’lon,” the Primearch protested angrily. “Are you suggesting I am to just ignore that fact?”

“You must…at least for the moment. We are to speak with Mak’to’ran, and there must be no violence.”

“If he comes before me I will kill him myself.”

“No, you will not,” the Era’tran said, stepping out of the shadows and the telepathic inhibitor that was hiding him there.

The Primearch spun around, thoughts of treason surrounding the J’gar, but the Didact’s telepathic response was as calm as ever.

We are here to settle this, and it will not be settled with blood. Stand down and listen, or you will give our empire back to the Zak’de’ron with little effort, the Didact said telepathically so the guards and Mak’to’ran could not hear.

“You should have told me he was here before I came onboard,” the Primearch said as Mak’to’ran walked closer, without armor, then stopped a good distance away from the Oso’lon leader while his guards were standing at the ready to attack whenever needed, for they did have armor on and many weapons in it to kill the traitor.

“We needed to speak in private. Can we do that and dismiss our retainers, or are you going to behave like an arrogant hatchling and demand millions more of us die while all can be settled with a simple conversation?”

“You are pathetically optimistic,” the Primearch snarled, “but I will grant you your conversation…so long as that traitor keeps his distance.”

“Mak’to’ran?” the Didact asked.

“Killing him without my armor would be difficult, so I will not try,” he said with obvious animosity.

“Very well then,” the Didact said, looking to his left and gesturing for the other J’gar to leave. The dozens of long necks dipped back down into the water and their glowy presences disappeared deeper until they were gone entirely, then the Didact looked to the Primearch.

“Wait outside,” the Oso’lon said, with his own 6 guards being very reluctant to leave, though they obeyed none the less. When they were gone and the doorway sealed, the little Zen’zat surrounding them everywhere scurried away, leaving the hangar-sized chamber completely empty save for the three V’kit’no’sat triad leaders.

“For the sake of the empire and our future war against the Zak’de’ron, we have to end this now,” the Didact said firmly, swimming up into the shallows and resting his body on the submerged ramp so he could get closer to the two widely spaced peers who were both keeping their distance from one another.

5

“This will end with his execution,” the Primearch said angrily.

Mak’to’ran huffed sarcastically, but offered no other response, instead letting the Didact lead this conversation.

“If he dies, we die with him,” the J’gar said earnestly. “He is all that is holding the empire together. That is evident here, where factions of our own races have sided with him. You and I still bear the taint of Terraxis, and we cannot cleanse it without revealing the existence of the Zak’de’ron. If we do that, we lose our own advantage against them. I do not like the situation, but it is what it is. Your plans to destroy Star Force became untenable when the Rim races began attacking us.”

“You and I are the V’kit’no’sat. The fact that we have allowed him and the Era’tran to pretend be our equals does not make it a reality. And our invasion continues. We can suffer losses on the Rim now if it benefits us greater in the long term. It is a cost I do not want to pay, but pay it we will if needed. Star Force must be destroyed or annexed, if not they will grow into a far larger power.”

“A power we need to fight the Zak’de’ron and the Hadarak,” Mak’to’ran interjected. “Not to mention the Chixzon.”

“They cannot be allowed independence. We cannot control what they will do with our stolen technology. They may very well give it to others, then our dominance over the galaxy will diminish greatly.”

“Our dominance is gone,” the Didact said firmly. “We are set for execution, and we must defeat the Zak’de’ron before we can ever claim dominance again. I do not know how we can do that, so our focus must be on survival, not dominance.”

“We must eliminate the enemy before us now, while we can, and deal with the unseen threats later,” the Primearch insisted.

“That is not going to happen now. The other races will not sacrifice the Rim to accomplish this. Already recall orders have been sent out, and at least some of the fleets will respond. You no longer have the strength to defeat Star Force quickly and efficiently, and if you continue to push that war you will leave us so weak the Zak’de’ron will have an easy time ending us.”

“What recall order?”

“The one I sent,” Mak’to’ran said. “I lead the V’kit’no’sat, and I ordered a recall to defend our borders. We will see how many respond.”

The Primearch half turned, looking like he was going to attack the impudent Era’tran, but eventually held back for reasons even he was not sure of. “That is not your decision to make.”

“It is. You have wasted time, ships, lives, and what little good will we have with Star Force on this invasion, and it has resulted in others taking advantage of our weakness. I will tolerate it no longer, and in truth I never should have in the first place, but I was trying not to start another civil war. Now, with our territory under attack, there is little desire to ignore it in favor of pursuing Star Force, who has not invaded our territory. You have lost the argument amongst the masses, and we will be divided no longer. The invasion is over.”

“If you want a civil war, you have just guaranteed one. The Era’tran will be culled.”

“You are welcome to try,” Mak’to’ran invited, but a strong telepathic surge from the J’gar stopped any further comments like a slap to the face.

“No. Changes must occur, but we will not destroy what little chance we have of survival by fighting each other. Mak’to’ran leads the empire, in fact beyond mere title now that he controls Itaru. If the fleets recall on his order, then we will know the full extent of his power. I assume many will, and even the Zak’de’ron could not win against the combined might of all the V’kit’no’sat races. The same will be true of the J’gar and Oso’lon, even if we allied together. You know this, Primearch, or have you become delusional?”

“We cannot permit this heresy,” he said, almost pleading with the one individual in the empire that he deemed his peer.

“And we will not. At least privately.”

“You appear to have a suggestion,” Mak’to’ran observed. “Make it.”

“You have suspended the Elder Council. Do you intend to permanently delete it?”

“Possibly. It was never intended to function as the leadership of the empire. The Zak’de’ron always held that role and the Elder Council assisted them. With that void, it has not been functioning as designed.”

“True,” the Didact admitted. “We have tried to fill that void, but have only partially succeeded,” he said, referring to the J’gar and Oso’lon. “What do you plan to do about that problem?”

“Solve it. Until then, I will hold personal control and deal with the immediate threat of the Rim races, many of which we did not even know existed. Our knowledge of the Rim is lacking. We should have done a full survey long ago, but we were forbidden to do so. I imagine the Zak’de’ron had their own charts that they did not share with us, but we must fill in that void and know who is really out there…after we defend our territory.”

“You believe the Zak’de’ron are located there?”

“Possibly, but I’m more concerned about others. We had no idea there were this many powerful races beyond our borders. We have been caught off guard by our lack of reconnaissance.”

“Would you agree with that?” the J’gar asked the Primearch.

“Yes,” he said simply, sensing some grand plan and waiting for the J’gar to lay it out.

“We cannot conquer the Rim,” the Didact confirmed the obvious. “The galaxy is too large and we have overextended ourselves already. Our supply lines are too long because we have been seeking ideal worlds rather than augmenting lesser ones. We have had this luxury because we were largely uncontested, but it leaves us very vulnerable to the Zak’de’ron. Should they collapse the Urrtren we will be so spread out and isolated we will be easy to conquer.”

“I believe they did that intentionally,” Mak’to’ran added, “to insure that we could not betray them, and that all races were reliant on the empire and not their own territories.”

“I concur. If we do not continue to operate as an empire, we are lost…but we cannot continue to operate as an empire. You have gone too far. I would have you killed if you were not holding our fate in your hands. But since that is not an option, we must seek another path forward.”

“I have done what is necessary, and what the two of you failed to do. I have no regrets,” the Era’tran said firmly.

“And that is why there can be no reconciliation between us. The triad that we attempted to revive must be abandoned. It broke long ago, and we need to acknowledge that fact rather than deny it and pretend functionality where there is none.”

“Yet we must remain together,” the Primearch said, not entirely following the logic strand. “How do you suggest we rectify this?”

“By splitting apart,” the Didact said bluntly. “I have no use fighting Hadarak when we will not survive the Zak’de’ron. Despite the Harthur and your commendable intelligence gathered on our sworn enemy, we are nowhere close to defeating them. It is an impossible task that has kept us together, bound in duty, but it is irrelevant if we are going to be destroyed prior to any hope of success. I have no wish to lose another J’gar ship to such useless fighting.”

Mak’to’ran flashed his Saroto’kanse’vam at the J’gar’s utter treason. The red of his claws glowed deeply, casting pale shadows in the dim chamber as he stood his ground and glared just as intently at the J’gar.

“You abandon all that we are…while forgetting that if we do not hold the line the Hadarak will creep outwards and other worlds, safe worlds, will be destroyed. There are consequences if we do not do our duty. Consequences that you cannot dissipate with obstinance.”

“And yet, can we hold the line and fight the Zak’de’ron at the same time?”

“No, we cannot. But until that is upon us, we must do our duty. The Zak’de’ron want the Hadarak contained, and I do not believe they will attack us in a way that releases them to undo the work they started. They must replace us, unless their vengeance supersedes the mandate that they created the V’kit’no’sat for initially.”

“It might. Why do you assume it would not?” the Primearch asked with a sneer.

“Because we are not dead yet. They have had time to rebuild. They are being patient, and patience does not beget irrational actions based on strong emotions.”

“You rely too much on the information from Star Force,” the J’gar cautioned. “The Zak’de’ron are master manipulators, and that may have come to our ears because they wished it.”

“Even if I grant you that, the situation remains the same. If we do not fight the Hadarak, we will lose many of our worlds. Even if we evacuate them, we will be diminished. Even now, a tier 3 Hadarak has encroached beyond the border and wrecked the Erol System. They are not a threat we can ignore, and had it not been for your incompetence,” he said, glaring at the Primearch, “I would not have needed to return here. Our place…all of our place…is in battle against the Hadarak. We must prepare for the Zak’de’ron, but abandoning our primary fight is not an option.”

“There you are wrong,” the Didact said regretfully. “You are so bound in duty and honor that you cannot see clearly the multiple paths forward. The J’gar will no longer fight against the Hadarak, and if needed, we will evacuate worlds in their path. If the Era’tran and your followers wish to do so, you can continue as you are, but we will waste no more resources when the Zak’de’ron lurk in the shadows ready to slash our necks.”

“And you,” the Didact said to the Primearch. “We will not support an equally wasteful war against Star Force. Both of you do not recognize the peril we are in. The Zak’de’ron will destroy us all, and when that happens none of these other issues will matter. We must survive first, and leave the rest of the galaxy behind until we can reestablish our dominance. I cannot see how we do that, so it is time to stop overreaching and prepare for the enemy that we cannot tell the empire exists without also letting our enemy know we know they are out there.”

“How do we accomplish this?” the Primearch asked.

“We divide, but in a manner that doesn’t end the empire. We must fight the Zak’de’ron as a united force, but we can slowly begin to rearrange the empire. Evacuate systems that are on the Rim or near the inner Core. Colonize new worlds that are valuable, but not prime, in clusters that can reinforce each other when under attack. We must begin to set our battlefield on our terms and stop using the Zak’de’ron geography. Our strength is in the empire, but we can each have our own corner of it without breaking ties. Our economy will remain the same, but if and when the Zak’de’ron attack, they will sever the bonds between us and we will have to fight on our own.”

“Do you speak of only your race, or do you intend to pull others into this treason?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“We will not reorganize by race. Some J’gar worlds will follow you, and I will not forbid it. Privately I will write them off while consolidating my power base elsewhere. We will agree to avoid one another while you run the empire. Fight the Hadarak if you wish,” he said, looking at Mak’to’ran and then at the Primearch. “Fight Star Force if you wish. But we will not do either.”

“And what of the Rim races?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“Those we will fight as needed, but in our own systems. I am claiming dominion over the Hesphatus and Delogi regions. We will not abandon our other territory unless forced to, but there the J’gar will begin colonizing other worlds and bringing our allies with us. Quietly. Slowly. So as not to alert the Zak’de’ron or anyone else to what we are doing. You can have your empire, Mak’to’ran, but I will have mine within it and I will tolerate no interference. We will not make it public, but we three will divide the empire between us.”

“So you break ties with the Oso’lon as well,” the Primearch asked.

“Do you disagree? I see no advantage in working together. You are of the land, we are of the water. The Zak’de’ron bound us together and now they seek to destroy us. I think it best if we go our separate ways within the empire and make our final stands alone.”

“You anticipate defeat?” Mak’to’ran asked, aghast at the words he was hearing from one of the founding races of the V’kit’no’sat.

“They created the V’kit’no’sat. They know how to uncreate us.”

“It didn’t stop us from killing them the first time,” the Oso’lon differed.

“But we didn’t finish the job, and the galaxy is too large to ever make sure we did. Until we can achieve parity of technology and knowledge, all the J’gar will do is defend our own and work with Mak’to’ran’s empire for mutual advantage, but I anticipate our destruction none the less.”

“You have lost your nerve, Didact,” Mak’to’ran said angrily. “You are unfit to lead.”

“It is fortunate that you have assumed command then,” the J’gar said disrespectfully. “Recruit what worlds you want from the races, I will do the same, but my dominion will be led by the J’gar and the J’gar alone. We cannot afford any more…half measures.”

“At least we agree on that,” Mak’to’ran said, glaring at the Primearch.

“And we cannot pursue Star Force without the full might of the empire,” the Oso’lon admitted. “You have boxed me in well, Didact.”

“Most of it was your own doing.”

“Star Force will destroy us if the Zak’de’ron do not. Give them a million years and they will try, I promise you, even without their Uriti.”

“Which the Zak’de’ron now have one of their own,” the J’gar reminded him. “Have you been able to capture one for us?”

“No.”

“And you will not. Star Force guards them too closely and our searches have not discovered another hidden in the galaxy. Even with one, the Zak’de’ron claim immediate superiority over us, and you are worried about Star Force.”

“Who have never attacked us in anything but self-defense,” Mak’to’ran piled on.

“We create rules, then you both recklessly abandon them. Neither of you are fit to lead the empire,” the Primearch said, turning to the J’gar with utter hatred that had not been there previously. “You are right, we can no longer coexist in this triad. The Oso’lon will also create our own strongholds. Mak’to’ran, you can have the empire in large and keep up pretenses for the sake of morale, but we are done with you.”

“If both of you are going to abandon our duty, our very identity, then so be it. But I will take on any of your worlds that do not agree with you, and you will not hinder their involvement. This must be agreed or we will have a civil war.”

“We will vie with you for control,” the J’gar promised, “but only through influence. We will not fight, for we cannot and hold any chance of survival against the Zak’de’ron.”

“Agreed,” the Primearch said. “If any Oso’lon wish to fight the Hadarak, they are yours. I will quietly exile them from the loyal, for I will not tolerate dissent any longer. The Oso’lon will be purged, and I care not if you take our trash and use it for your own purposes…so long as you agree to the same with the Era’tran, for I don’t imagine they all follow your lead so willingly.”

“If you wish to have our trash, you are welcome to it,” Mak’to’ran snipped. “So long as they know what it is they are actually doing. I will not permit subterfuge.”

“None will be needed. Especially when the Zak’de’ron come for us and the true power bases within the empire are revealed. We will survive when you do not.”

“Then you agree to let Star Force go?”

“We are fools to do so, but without a combined effort the Oso’lon would be gutted, and I intend to be the last race standing if we are to eventually fall.”

“And the current invasion?”

“We will let you handle the retreat and take the blame for it as we send fleets to protect the Rim,” the Didact offered/demanded. “Beyond that, the J’gar will set our own future.”

“And we will do the same. May your rule be long and glorious, Mak’to’ran, so we have time to grow while you gut yourself on the Hadarak. I will enjoy hearing the news of when the Zak’de’ron destroy you.”

“So this is what the great and powerful J’gar and Oso’lon have become? Cowards, bitter with resentment and loss of purpose. Very well. We will walk down this tangent path, but Itaru remains mine.”

“It is the heart of the empire to which I no longer hold an allegiance,” the Didact stated disinterestedly. “I no longer care to claim it…or other shared systems.”

“The empire is officially dead, though we must keep up pretenses for the sake of buying time,” the Primearch agreed. “You may have the corpse of it.”

“Then I will waste no more time with either of you. Leave this system and take your followers with you. I will take on the responsibility that you are both shirking,” Mak’to’ran said, spinning around and plodding off out of sight.

“You were wise to suggest this path,” the Primearch said to the Didact after he’d left. “It maximizes our chances of survival and lets the pretender play to our benefit.”

“We are not united in this,” the Didact stated. “I am as displeased with you as I am with him. Now that we no longer have the Zak’de’ron’s legacy to hold together, I suggest we amicably go our separate ways. We have always been incompatible, and I see no reason for further interaction.”

“Agreed,” the Primearch said, summarily walking away while happily turning his back on the J’gar. Their races had been at odds for perpetuity, and despite the massive losses this fracture would result in, he was glad to finally be free of their shackles. The Oso’lon would rule unfettered from now on…at least until the Zak’de’ron returned to avenge themselves against their betrayers.

6

December 13, 4914

Flying Monkey System (V’kit’no’sat-captured territory)

Finley

Tre’sti had watched the few reports coming in to the warzone over the past months, seeing that the situation was getting dire for the empire. They were under assault all around the Rim border with no sizeable defense fleets available to rush to those systems’ aid…until the order from Mak’to’ran arrived. On his authority, which technically he didn’t have, he was ordering all fleets in the Star Force warzone to stop offensive assaults, abandon all worlds they couldn’t defend against the Uriti, and hold those they could while the bulk of their forces were told to move with all speed to defend the empire’s border worlds.

Word also came through about the takeover in Itaru, and surprising as that was, Tre’sti truly didn’t care. What Mak’to’ran had to do to deal with the Oso’lon and the J’gar was his problem, but as long as he appeared to be in control and calling for a defense of the empire, Tre’sti wasn’t going to argue the point.

Before a counter-order could come through from Virokor or the other I’rar’et commanders, Tre’sti began pulling in all I’rar’et fleets and their Zen’zat troops that he could to Flying Monkey as he assembled a massive convoy in preparation to leave and head for the nearest I’rar’et system under attack. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be Veernum, for it was on the other side of the galaxy, but as long as Mak’to’ran wasn’t giving specific orders about where to go, Tre’sti was not going to bother defending the systems held by other races. He was going straight to the Bearadan System where the I’rar’et held two out of the six planets.

Bearadan was approximately 5 months away from their current position, though had the fleets not been all the way out in the middle of nowhere, reinforcements could have arrived within days, or weeks at the most. They were so out of position it was painfully obvious that the V’kit’no’sat had made a huge mistake in devoting so many military resources to this single invasion…and to his credit, Mak’to’ran had warned this would be a bad idea.

But the Era’tran fleets were clustered around the Core fighting the Hadarak, so they weren’t in position to immediately help, but they would be able to get to the systems across the galaxy far faster along with the other 37 races that had not taken part in the Star Force invasion. But even then, they were going to be late getting there and already some systems were reported to have completely fallen into enemy hands.

Bearadan would not fall so quickly with 6 worlds, so Tre’sti was somewhat sure there would be V’kit’no’sat in the system to reinforce when he got there. Would the I’rar’et worlds hold out, he couldn’t say, but the fact that they were getting hit by an enemy the V’kit’no’sat had no knowledge of was disturbing. They were using ships even larger than those of the V’kit’no’sat and some weapon systems that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Their effect wasn’t greater than the weapons of the V’kit’no’sat, but the unknown nature of the combat made it difficult to predict what months of conflict would result in.

But still, 6 V’kit’no’sat worlds that could reinforce each other would bleed the enemy dry unless they came in with so much force that they were completely overwhelmed. There was no data on fleet size in the most recent update, so Tre’sti couldn’t know, but he wasn’t going wait here any longer than he needed. I’rar’et worlds were under assault and his fleet belonged there, defending their territory, rather than here going after an enemy that didn’t have the arrogance to directly attack the empire…save for one quick strike on their shipyards with a Uriti to prove their point.

Mak’to’ran had been right. Tre’sti should have given him the benefit of the doubt earlier, but the heresy of Star Force had blinded him with rage to the point that he agreed with the Oso’lon that they must be destroyed or, at the very minimum, annexed back into the empire. But Mak’to’ran had seen wisdom he had not, and the vulnerability that few had been willing to admit existed was now being exploited by races that had never been seen before.

The V’kit’no’sat had assumed dominance, but now it was clear there were many races out in the Rim that wished to challenge them…and they’d been biding their time until they saw an opportunity to strike, which apparently was now.

And if they were somehow coordinating with Star Force, then this whole invasion may have been a massive trap.

Tre’sti couldn’t be sure of anything. The empire was so large the idea of it falling was absurd, but a few systems had already been lost and more were under assault. What was the enemy thinking? Did they actually have a chance to topple the V’kit’no’sat? Tre’sti thought not, but why would they do this if they didn’t have a chance of victory? Was the real situation out there worse than the reports indicated?

The more he thought about it the more concerned he became, and the fact that Mak’to’ran had seen fit to overthrow the Oso’lon and J’gar, not to mention disbanding the Elder Council, suggested the situation might just be that dire.

Tre’sti hated waiting for his fleets to return to his command center, but he couldn’t leave anyone behind. They’d be easy targets for Star Force, and when his fleet moved they might even get ambushed enroute. They had to go as one, and Tre’sti had already decided to abandon Flying Monkey as well. The Hjar’at had agreed to move in and hold it for them, for they were not heeding Mak’to’ran’s order to withdraw…at least not all of them. He’d heard that Hirojen was, in defiance of Virokor’s orders, and there may have been many other defectors from his own race, which was all the more reason to get out of here as quickly as possible. This warfront was now chaos, and while Tre’sti had not followed Mak’to’ran’s lead before he would not make the same mistake twice. The Era’tran were the only reliable leadership now, and while he didn’t know how long that would last, what Mak’to’ran was ordering made sense.

The empire was under attack, and the empire had to respond. Tre’sti was going, though he didn’t know how many others would. Itaru was helpless to fight this coordinated attack without the war fleets, and there was no way Tre’sti was going to stay here fighting a defending enemy when I’rar’et systems were calling for aid.

When the last of his ships arrived Tre’sti gladly gave the order to jump out, even before the Hjar’at had enough ships to properly defend the system. They were here, it was their problem now, and he wasn’t going to waste a day. The I’rar’et fleets were already late as it was, and he wasn’t going to make it any worse by delaying more.

Virokor wisely did not try to order him to stay, for he would have disobeyed anyway, and he had not received any orders from I’rar’et superiors, so he left the V’kit’no’sat communications network behind and jumped out of the system along with his 32,733 ships and began taking the quickest route to Bearadan possible, meaning he’d be out of contact with the empire as he pushed through the Rim spinward and came in behind the mysterious attackers.

Assuming they would still be there 5 months from now. He just hoped there would be some I’rar’et left to save, though he had a sinking feeling he just might find the entire system razed and lifeless without any enemy to avenge themselves on…

8 months later…

Hamob had been recalled to Itaru after Mak’to’ran had seized it, and the Elder Era’tran had been thoroughly surprised by both his decision and the response by the empire. There was nearly unanimous support within Itaru for his actions. Not amongst the elite leadership, but from the mid level planetary commanders and the populous in general. It seemed the direct assault on V’kit’no’sat territory had been enough to bring them in firmly behind his leadership…yet the dissolving of the Elder Council was a step that he didn’t think anyone would have stood for.

But they had. The empire was now at war, and a righteous one at that. There was no division on the need to protect their own territory and Mak’to’ran had already made the painful decision to pull off the bulk of the Era’tran fleets on the Hadarak border save for the current hot spots. He was gambling on the other areas, for the remaining patrols allowed the V’kit’no’sat a presence for the Hadarak to detect, though without them knowing how weak they now were. Add in the fact that the Hadarak moved slowly and it might be a gamble that would pay off, though the Hadarak combat of the past year was vicious enough to give him pause.

He didn’t envy Mak’to’ran the choice, for he knew the younger Era’tran hated abandoning their duty on that border, but with the bulk of the V’kit’no’sat fleet on the opposite side of the galaxy from Jamtren it would take them a year or more to cross the distance, and Hamob knew they couldn’t wait that long. The races holding the Hadarak border had to respond, along with every scrap of defense fleets from the other worlds not yet under attack. Those could get to the fighting sooner, but the Era’tran had the strongest fleet available after the J’gar, who curiously had agreed to hold the line against the Hadarak until reinforcement fleets from the Star Force warfront replaced them.

When Hamob had arrived in Itaru he’d had a very long and heated debate with Mak’to’ran, but the path they were on had already been chosen and there was nothing to do but follow it. He’d confided in Hamob about the decision of the triad and the dissolution of the V’kit’no’sat, but that didn’t fully explain the J’gar’s decision to stay on the Hadarak border. They’d be taking serious losses there as well, perhaps more even than those heading for the Rim because planetary defenses had little to no effect on the Hadarak. The attacking races were not so immune, so the J’gar’s play was both curious and a relief, but it was clear they wanted to separate themselves from the rest of the empire and perhaps even fighting alongside one another was too much for the Didact’s ego to handle, hence they were not rushing to the Rim border.

The bulk of the Oso’lon fleets were engaged against Star Force and Hamob did not know if they’d all recall or not. The Primearch had said they would, but how many they would leave behind to guard their taken worlds was in question. They had not agreed to relinquish them, and he doubted the Oso’lon would break ranks on Mak’to’ran’s order alone, so at best they would be even more delayed in getting to the other Rim warzones than the rest of the races.

Mak’to’ran had called Hamob to Itaru for the specific reason of using him as an emissary to Star Force. He wanted to go himself, but he admitted that he could not leave Itaru any longer. Not even to go to the Hadarak front or these Rim assaults. Itaru had to hold the empire together, and without his presence Itaru could not function. For better or worse he was stuck here semi-permanently, but an agreement with Star Force had to be forged and Hamob had been his choice to go.

So now Hamob was racing through space beyond V’kit’no’sat territory to rendezvous with Virokor, who had volunteered to stay behind and oversee their conquests. That was not easy for a Hjar’at, especially a legendary commander such as him. He wanted to be in the thick of battle, and while this conflict with Star Force wasn’t over yet, the idea of the empire being attacked and him not being involved must have hurt him badly…but he had a duty and he was carrying it out as he saw fit. Hamob respected that, but when he finally tracked him down and brought him up to speed on most of what Mak’to’ran had confided in him, the Hjar’at was incensed.

They did not come to blows, but the idea of abandoning everything they’d been fighting for the past two decades was not something he could take. He flat out refused to abide by Mak’to’ran’s orders or accept him as the uncontested leader of the V’kit’no’sat, but as Hamob gradually went through the logistics of the war they were fighting on multiple fronts, the Hjar’at finally saw the sad truth behind the numbers.

Star Force was beyond their ability to destroy now, unless they were willing to sacrifice the Rim border worlds, which was something the Hjar’at was also not willing to concede, but he was so conflicted that Hamob ultimately decided to exercise the option Mak’to’ran had given him. So he’d taken Virokor into a secure chamber and revealed the truth about the Zak’de’ron and the much larger fight that was ahead of them…and how the Oso’lon and others had wanted to waste time and ships on conquering Star Force first.

It took only moments for Virokor’s demeanor to change, and the fire in his eyes nearly matched the glow of his Saroto’kanse’vam as Hamob explained the situation in detail. Once he did, and Virokor got past the shock of their existence, he could see the writing on the wall clearly enough. Mak’to’ran’s takeover of Itaru was necessary to prepare for what was coming, and the war that Virokor had been so painstakingly progressing was for naught. They needed Star Force as an ally, or at least as a distraction against the Zak’de’ron, and the past 20 years had no doubt seriously hurt that potential cooperation.

When he learned that it was Star Force who had informed the V’kit’no’sat of the Zak’de’ron’s existence the Hjar’at was fuming. Whatever heresy they had committed had been absolved in his mind, and the fact that he’d been tricked into fighting them after they’d confided the most valuable secret in the galaxy to the V’kit’no’sat was appalling to him. At that point he demanded that he be allowed to travel with Hamob to meet with them, and the Era’tran knew the Hjar’at’s honor would not allow anything less.

So he took Virokor onboard his Kafcha and secretly left the ‘safe’ captured systems and ventured into Star Force territory…where they came to a respectful stop inside one of their more fortified systems and began broadcasting their request for a summit to discuss the ending of the war.

7

August 18, 4915

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

Tewvo

It’d been three months since Tre’sti had arrived in the Bearadan System, and in that time the situation had not improved. Three of the 6 inhabited planets were gone. Every living thing on their surface destroyed, and not just the V’kit’no’sat living there. All the plants and indigenous lifeforms were gone as well, leaving nothing but scorched, barren soil behind.

One of those had been an I’rar’et world, but fortunately the other still stood, along with a Brat’mar planet and one mixed with 8 different races, the largest faction being the Bez. Only the Brat’mar world was not yet under assault, with the other two already having massive holes in their planetary shield system and enemy troops on the ground going after the others.

Tre’sti’s fleet had saved those three worlds, temporarily at least, but he did not have control of the system. The enemy fleet, still unidentified since the invaders wouldn’t respond to any communications, had received reinforcements two weeks ago and Tre’sti was now firmly at a disadvantage in naval combat…but pull within range of the planetary defense stations and he has zones of dominance to work out of, which was why the enemy was breaking off pieces of its huge ships and landing them on the surface.

From there they broke down further, forming their ground ‘troops’ that were floating just over the ground and engaging the V’kit’no’sat infantry. They were smaller than Star Force drones, but larger than Zen’zat assault craft and so many in number that it was hard to kill them fast enough, given their higher mass…and they could recombine into larger units that had better shields when needed, such as when attacking fixed emplacements.

Who was inside the ships had remained a mystery up until Tre’sti had arrived and led a short-lived reversal on the shared planet. They’d managed to capture and examine some of the dead ‘troop’ ships, finding biological material inside that was apparently grafted to the vessels. It had died along with them, for the most part, and what was there was not something that could have escaped the ships.

The V’kit’no’sat were not quite sure what to make of them. Were they biological components akin to computer systems, or were they people physically and permanently melded with the technology? He feared the latter, for the ships were psionically shielded against Ikrid, and when they had tried to connect to the biological parts once the shells were breached they died instantly. A few Bez had indicated they have very brief contact that was ended immediately with their deaths, but it was so short they couldn’t be sure if it was just an echo off the neurological systems or an actual person’s mind inside.

Speculation was that there was a suicide protocol on the biomatter if the psionic defenses were breached, and perhaps even when the ships were damaged to the point of inoperability. Either way, it was clear this enemy did not want prisoners taken or their biological technology examined, and they were behaving in the same way with their attack on the V’kit’no’sat. On the three devastated planets, once they had the shield generators down, they attacked the geography with some kind of energy weapon never before seen. Tre’sti had no idea even what class it was in, for there was nothing in the database like it.

It started small, dropped on the surface like a Uit Streamer in a glob of energy matrix, then it sat there for several minutes, seeming to do nothing. After a while it began to move, burning all beneath it, and with the more material it digested the larger it got. It spread outward like a donut, leaving the interior scorched and lifeless as the ring expanded and washed over territory with growing rapidity. How it escalated so much was beyond current V’kit’no’sat science, and when it hit water it went crazy, growing beyond measure and totally vaporizing the oceans.

Except it wasn’t vapor that remained. It was hydrogen and oxygen being released into the atmosphere and growing it considerably in size…then some lightning strike would occur and detonate the hydrogen, causing it to reform with the oxygen in explosive fashion…resulting in huge amounts of rain that were washing over the dead planets hour after hour with no end in sight as the oceans gradually reformed, dirty with ash and debris.

But this enemy was not launching this weapon until all the shield generators were down. Whether that was protocol or functional Tre’sti didn’t know, but if they couldn’t keep at least some shield generators up on the remaining worlds they’d be eradicated in a similar fashion…along with far more people, many of which had been evacuated off the other worlds during the fighting. Not all had made it off, but now the survivors were pinned along with the inhabitants of these three worlds, and if all fell, virtually every one on them was going to burn in that final red energy corrosion attack.

The V’kit’no’sat still had their Urrtren link, and were sending out calls for assistance constantly, but so far only Tre’sti’s fleet group had arrived from the Star Force invasion front. Other smaller bits of assistance had been arriving from nearby systems in the empire, but not in the numbers they needed to combat this larger unidentified fleet who had many ships twice as large as a Mach’nel.

And the enemy had already received reinforcements once, they may very well get more in the coming weeks, for since the attack here other systems in this region had come under assault from the same type of ships, now 9 systems in all, and they kept getting reinforcements too. Whoever this was, they were proceeding gradually, and that didn’t bode well for the future of the Bearadan System.

Tre’sti felt they were going to lose everyone here, and damn him and the others for leaving the empire so exposed as to allow this.

Hamob’s Kafcha held position with Star Force ships all around it. They weren’t shooting, but they were cutting off all escape avenues as the V’kit’no’sat were forced to wait for days that became weeks before another Star Force fleet arrived. This one came with the Uriti named Bumblebee, and the yellow-colored semi-rectangular mass of living terror released from its transport vessel and headed down into the star…and not towards the single V’kit’no’sat ship.

That was a relief for both Hamob and Virokor, but one of the command ships in the fleet did come towards their location and was let past the blockading ring of drones surrounding the Kafcha, then the trailblazer onboard signaled for the V’kit’no’sat delegation to transfer over to his vessel.

Hamob wanted to refuse, but he knew he had few options here. When Mak’to’ran had talked to them before he had transferred to the Star Force vessel, but if this Era’tran had a say he would have handled things differently. Unfortunately he didn’t, so he and Virokor alone took a drop pod over into the Star Force command ship where they found a completely empty hangar bay save for one tiny Human.

Hamob and Virokor walked down the boarding ramp into the hangar, which was small compared to the size the V’kit’no’sat normally used, but they could easily fit 500 Era’tran in here if needed. Taking a cue from Mak’to’ran’s reports, he ordered the drop pod to leave as a sign that they were here to talk in private, absent recordings, which is why he figured the Human was here alone.

“Ready to give up?” Kip-022 asked mockingly in V’kit’no’sat.

“Am I to assume this chamber is secure?”

“Just us and no recordings. So speak freely.”

“Mak’to’ran sent me to speak for him,” Hamob continued. “I know what he knows.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“That the Zak’de’ron are alive.”

“He wasn’t supposed to tell people that,” Kip pointed out.

“Only a handful know. Even Virokor was not told until recently,” the Era’tran said, gesturing to the angry Hjar’at beside him who was grinding his stub claws into the hangar floor repetitively.

“Well you’re not happy,” Kip said, standing about 30 meters away from the pair, which was painfully close given their larger size.

“I was led into a fight without knowledge as to why,” the Hjar’at said snippily. “Had I known you were the ones who betrayed the Zak’de’ron and alerted us to their existence, I never would have led the attack against you. We both have our survival at stake and it is wasteful for us to be fighting each other.”

“Now you figure this out? What took so long?”

“The empire has not been told of the Zak’de’ron. Without that knowledge, you appeared to be the greatest threat to us.”

“Mak’to’ran has told me to negotiate an end to the war,” Hamob interjected. “We are under attack across the galaxy and cannot continue to fight you effectively while defending our own territory.”

“How bad are you getting hit?”

“You already knew?” Virokor asked.

Kip nodded. “The races attacking you are in league with us for one purpose and one purpose alone. We want you out of the Rim, and per the terms of the deal Mak’to’ran struck with us, if you cannot conquer Star Force now you will cede control over the entire Rim…”

“You are responsible for this?” Virokor said, aghast. He’d suspected there might be a connection beyond mere opportunism, but to hear the Human so blithely admit it was beyond infuriating.

“They came to us, because we were the first ones to legitimately stand against your dominance of the galaxy. They’ve been staying away because they knew they could not fight you individually. You left the door wide open for them, so we offered a little organization and a promise. They’ve done the rest, which you know better than we do. We don’t have any effective communication with them, so for all we know they reneged on the deal. I’m glad to hear they didn’t.”

“What promise did you give them?” Hamob asked darkly.

“That when we got dominion over the Rim, we would protect them from you. We can’t do that when we don’t have ships out there, but we can promise retribution against you with our Uriti if you strike them after we’ve negotiated a firm border between Rim and Core.”

“You knew we’d be coming?” Virokor asked, not used to such arrogance from Zen’zat, who this Human was, regardless of his self-appointed title.

“As you said, you have the Zak’de’ron to worry about and there is no guarantee you can defeat us and the Rim Consortium if we all attack at the same time. It’s possible we could, given enough time, rid the galaxy of you. That is not a fight I want to take on given the layered defenses you have throughout your empire, but it is possible. At the minimum we can shrink your territory considerably, but we both have much to gain from an amicable agreement to ignore one another as we deal with other threats.”

“This was your plan from the beginning?” Hamob asked.

“Pretty much.”

“Then we have been played for fools,” Virokor said, but he wasn’t looking at Kip. He was glaring at Hamob. “We didn’t even know these races were out here.”

“You made two major mistakes,” Kip said before the Era’tran could respond…at least vocally. He had no idea what side discussions the two were having telepathically. “The first was deciding to kill all of us simply because our being born violated a rule. I mean seriously, what the hell is that? Killing us because we didn’t have permission to be born? You’re the ones that left the Zen’zat behind. If anything it was your fault, but still, killing people just because they were born. Big mistake.”

“Your second one was, once you decided to eradicate us you never finished the job. If you had sent this many ships initially we could not have survived. You underestimated us and continued to do so every step of the way. You expected us to crumble when you took our capitol first, then smashed every other world we had painstakingly built up. But we kept expanding and building new worlds and you never finished the job. Now we utterly hate you. We have a mutual enemy in the Zak’de’ron, but we will never be allies. That ship has sailed. What you’ve done we will never forgive, but that doesn’t mean we can’t both prepare for the Zak’de’ron separately, in our own ways, and stop wasting resources in this stupid war.”

Virokor walked towards Kip a few steps, with the helmet-less, armored Archon not budging, but before the Hjar’at could step on him the larger warrior took a knee and eventually sat flat on the floor so he could bring his head level with the trailblazer’s and only two meters away.

“I am not one to repeat mistakes. You have killed many of my race, and those of my brothers, but you have done so in defense of yourself, which is honorable. You also warned us of the Zak’de’ron, and that act alone absolves you of any and all actions previously. We never should have attacked you after that revelation. I never would have led the invasion had I known. And while I greatly wish to beat some respect into you, I apologize for my actions. I was in the wrong. We were in the wrong. The Zak’de’ron will destroy the V’kit’no’sat if they are able. If we cannot survive their revenge, then nothing else matters.”

“Respect is earned, not demanded,” Kip corrected him, then looked at the Era’tran. “And what about you?”

“I speak for Mak’to’ran. He has overthrown the V’kit’no’sat leadership, disbanded the Elder Council…which I assume you know the function of…and has taken personal command over the empire. He cannot leave Itaru, though he wished to speak with you personally. He also knows you will not travel to Itaru, so I am here to speak for him, and he never wanted this resumed war. Those that did are now removed from power. He wishes to end this conflict so we can both prepare for the future, and he also wished me to inform you that the Hadarak are growing bolder in response to the Harthur and our ability to more easily kill the smaller of their kind.”

“Interesting, but not our concern right now,” Kip said, looking back at the big Hjar’at head directly in front of him. “Have you stood down all your attacks?”

“The orders have went out. There may be some delay in them getting to all our fleets. I have told them to defend the worlds we currently possess and evacuate those under assault.”

“It’s a start,” Kip said evenly. “We will want those worlds back.”

“And we will want this Rim Consortium,” Hamob responded, “to stop its attacks and return the territory they have taken.”

“No,” Kip said, pointing to his right in the general direction of the Devastation Zone. “Out there is a dead region of space where you destroyed thousands of our planets. The fact that we have moved rimward and built new worlds does not replace what you have destroyed. The lives you have taken cannot be returned. We are not just going to give you back the worlds you lost. You will pay a price for what you’ve done. A price in territory.”

“How much?” Virokor asked, masking his reflexive anger.

“Enough for a buffer zone between us. You don’t have many systems this far out, and those under attack by the Consortium I am assuming are those closest to the Rim?”

“They are.”

“Some of those worlds used to belong to the Consortium races, or so they say. They are taking them back and I’m not going to tell them they can’t. If we can agree to a border, then we can send it to them and they will have to respect it. If they do not, you’re free to attack them. If they won’t respect the new border we’re not going to avenge them.”

“Do you have a recommendation?” Hamob asked.

“Some, but I won’t be making the final calls. The Director will. But before we start drawing lines, we need your prisoners released. Now.”

“If you promise not to attack the planets we took from you, you can have them before we negotiate a border.”

“That I can agree to,” Kip confirmed. “And when we get them back we’ll give you our prisoners.”

Virokor frowned heavily. “You have some of our people?”

“Not many, but yes. We have some prisoners. Do you want them back, or will you just kill them for their failure? If so we’ll keep them.”

“They will not be killed,” Virokor said angrily. “We are not so arrogant to assume victory in every battle.”

“I heard some of you are. And you obviously don’t have a problem killing people for rules violations.”

“Mak’to’ran has already lifted the death mark on you,” Hamob pointed out.

“Yet you’re still out here killing us. Not much difference.”

“You will have your prisoners back,” Virokor promised. “We will cease all attacks on you and return most territory taken.”

“Most?”

“Do you truly want the Ziviri back after they betrayed you?”

Kip’s face scrunched up in an odd look. “Not sure about that one. What do you want with them?”

“To add them to the V’kit’no’sat empire.”

“As a member or slave race?”

“I will not make that determination, but we need to increase our strength before the Zak’de’ron strike. The Ziviri hold promise, and they do not want to be part of Star Force.”

“Some do, most don’t,” Kip corrected him. “Do you want them or their worlds?”

“Their race, though maintaining a link to you would be best if we are to maintain a stable border. It may be better to retain their territory given its closeness to yours.”

“Theirs is our territory.”

“Not most of it right now, and if we establish an Urrtren link to you we will have to guard it. Better to have a reason for ships to be nearby than to have patrols alone.”

“Why not just take them with you and not bother on the communication part?”

“When the Zak’de’ron choose to strike, they will most likely disable communications to blind us and you. The faster we can spread information the harder it will be for them to block it. We will need every advantage we can get. Despite our war with you, I have no doubt you know who is the greater threat to your existence.”

Kip turned to face the Era’tran. “Does Mak’to’ran think the same?”

“He wants a resolution, and I am empowered to negotiate on his behalf. He will honor whatever agreement we strike.”

“And the rest of the V’kit’no’sat?”

“The Oso’lon and J’gar have split from the empire, but they will remain visibly a part of it and interconnected with our economy so not to invite the Zak’de’ron to return sooner. But they will not take orders from Mak’to’ran. The rest of the empire will. The Oso’lon wanted this war with you, but they cannot fight it alone. They and the J’gar are retreating into separate regions of the empire where they will colonize new worlds in close proximity and prepare for the war to come. You will be left alone because they do not have the power to strike at you. The rest of the empire will follow Mak’to’ran to their deaths. He is the only link keeping them together. Our negotiations will not be undermined.”

“Have you found any more sleeping Uriti?”

“We have not,” Hamob said. “Nor have we found the one the Zak’de’ron stole.”

“But you are still looking?”

“Of course.”

“Any that you find will be turned over to us,” Kip demanded. “You cannot control them anyway, and despite what the Chixzon used them for they have a pack mentality. They need to be kept together.”

“You are seeking to determine our sincerity?” Virokor asked.

“That, and I want the Uriti,” Kip admitted. “Before the Zak’de’ron find them.”

“Can they control them?” Hamob asked.

“I don’t know. But I doubt they would take one unless they had some idea about how to make it happen. For both our sakes, you need to keep looking and turn any found over to us.”

“I can agree to that, contingent on your assistance with the Hadarak threat.”

“We’re not using the Uriti to fight them.”

“I was referring to knowledge gathering only. We do not want them knowing the Uriti exist or it could provoke a much stronger reaction. The one you revealed the Uriti to was destroyed before it could inform the others. We want research assistance only.”

“So long as that ‘research’ isn’t barbaric, I can agree to that.”

“Then we have the beginning of an agreement,” Hamob noted.

“It seems we do.”

“How certain are you that the other races will honor the agreement?” Virokor asked.

“I honestly don’t know, but if some honor it and some don’t, you can mass your fleets against those that continue to fight and wipe them out. Their strength comes from simultaneous action. The rogues don’t really stand a chance.”

“I expected you to speak better of your allies,” Hamob probed.

“They are our associates only. If we ever grow large enough to expand near some of their borders, we’ll be invading them, for they are no better than you with regards to barbarism. The Rim Consortium is very limited in scope, and was created solely to get you out of the Rim.”

“Then you can work with those you despise?” Virokor suggested.

“If needed, but we won’t participate in their dishonorable practices. Nor yours.”

“We have done you wrong. I admit that. But in the end, we will need each other to survive the Zak’de’ron. They will not allow you to retain our knowledge. Not unless you serve them, and perhaps not even then.”

“Well you’re being remarkably friendly. A month ago you were trying to kill us.”

“Conquer. We only killed those who fought us, and that is coming to an end.”

“Only the useless civies didn’t fight, so it’s basically the same thing.”

“Nevertheless, the Zak’de’ron are our enemy and the Hjar’at will attempt to make amends for the dishonor we have participated in.”

“How so?”

“I do not know for certain, but we owe you a debt for warning us, and an even further debt for us repaying that favor with invasion.”

“We can discuss that later. Right now my highest priority is recovering the prisoners. Go set that in motion and we will continue this later.”

“As you wish,” Virokor said, standing up and walking back towards the hangar doors that began to crack open and reveal open space beyond. He used his armor to contact the drop pod and have it return, with it coming into view only seconds later, for it hadn’t gone far.

“Do you have a personal message for me to relay to Mak’to’ran?” Hamob asked as the spherical drop pod came through the atmospheric containment shield and set down just inside the ship.

“Tell him all the damage your empire is taking across the galaxy is punishment for him not overthrowing the V’kit’no’sat sooner.”

“This he already knows,” Hamob said with a sneer as he turned and began walking back to the extending boarding ramp. The Human might have a point, but he was glad to have a reprieve from his perpetual arrogance. He hadn’t once thanked the V’kit’no’sat for ending the war, and despite Virokor’s overdone shame, he wasn’t about to admit peerdom with these Humans. He’d hold his temper for negotiation’s sake, but the lack of respect was gnawing on him. He’d lived for millions of years, and as the Archon had said, respect was earned.

And Hamob had earned more of it than any Human could imagine.

8

September 6, 4915

Braum System (V’kit’no’sat-held territory)

Winage

Gardo Veer woke at the tone along with thousands of other Bsidd scrunched down into small egg-shaped beds the V’kit’no’sat had built for them. He was an old Gamma that stood twice Human height, but that made him look almost the same as the new Tridas variant. His joints hurt as he stood up, but not because of his age. He’d been painless and in the best shape of his 1700 year life when the Oso’lon had invaded, but since then his body had stagnated over 18 years of capture, though he was far from dead yet.

He and the others had work to do, and the tone meant it was time for them to wake and get to work…but that work was no substitute for the training that Star Force lived on, and such training was forbidden to the prisoners. Gardo didn’t see why the larger Oso’lon wanted to keep the Bsidd weak, for there was no way they were going to overpower them. One could lift a Bsidd off its feet with its telekinesis and literally rip their body apart with a mere thought. He’d seen it happen twice when some of the prisoners didn’t obey commands, and the second time the Oso’lon who did it got tail slapped by another one. Since then there had been no more summary executions, but some of the Bsidd had still died.

They were ones who had not attained self-sufficiency beforehand, or had only achieved it recently and lightly. Gardo’s strength, built up over more than a millennia was sustaining him, but he could feel the gradual loss in his body as he pried himself up and onto his mandibles with multiple sore spots in his joints.

He walked with the others clustered around him slowly, for there was little room to move around. The V’kit’no’sat had packed them in close rather than allowing them to stay in the Star Force structures as they had initially, but now everything they lived and worked in was built by the invaders.

Gardo filed out with the others under the watch of Zen’zat guards, then split off with those that were headed to the production facility that he was assigned to work. There was nothing there to sabotage, for the facility was processing materials used to make equipment for the Bsidd. Other similar ones produced their food while the V’kit’no’sat did not use the prisoners for their own supply chain.

That meant any sabotage would only hurt the Bsidd further, and word had it from the few Bsidd that actually spoke V’kit’no’sat that the Oso’lon had given the Zen’zat orders to keep the Bsidd alive as long as possible because no queens had been captured. That meant the prisoners could not reproduce new living shields for the enemy to use to hold the Uriti at bay. Gardo had seen the massive Sivir come down to the planet then leave, and he’d heard it had nearly crushed others before pulling back at the last moment.

Star Force wasn’t going to kill their own, and the V’kit’no’sat were using that against them. Gardo was a pawn, and while he knew Star Force would never give up on him he doubted they had the ability to retake this planet without killing him and the others in the process. And at this point, who knew how bad of shape the empire was in? They hadn’t expected to win the war easily, merely survive it, and now the Braum System was firmly in enemy hands.

Gardo kind of hoped that when he and the others died off Star Force would come back and obliterate it from orbit, but that wasn’t going to happy anytime soon. He and the other Bsidd were doing little workouts here and there where they could, mostly grappling with each other for a crude sort of resistance workout. They were doing anything they could to fight off the stagnation while having to endure the repetitive and mundane work the V’kit’no’sat had them doing.

Most of it was useless work that machines could have handled. Perhaps the V’kit’no’sat thought it would keep them busy or that it would substitute for workouts, but it did not. It was far better than being locked in their dormitories all day every day, but there was no purpose in it. No chance to advance, or to help Star Force do so. It was just day in and day out, methodically, spirit-breaking work that had them lifting heavy canisters that mechs normally would. They had to work together to do it, and it was wearing on Gardo’s joints since he didn’t have the proper nutritional supplements to counteract the damage.

The V’kit’no’sat food for them was limited, and they were on rations. Everything seemed to be in it that was needed to sustain them, but not at levels that would allow them to increase in strength. It was like they wanted them alive forever, but stuck in the same state. The universe didn’t work that way, and if you weren’t improving you were most likely declining, as Gardo and the others were, but their guards did not care. Maybe they would when more died off, but for now the dead were simply removed to a medical station where a regenerator would bring them back to life…at least until their bodies were so weak from multiple treatments that they became unsavable.

Something would break, they’d heal it, but then it would break again because the new tissue was always weaker than the original. That was a drawback of the technology, but was easily overcome with training that the Bsidd were not allowed to do…and they would not let Gardo or the others get treatment until something big broke, meaning his aching joints he would have to endure until something snapped.

He’d fought internally before, trying to resist in some way, any way, against what was happening to his body, but it was no use. He and the others couldn’t do enough, and the strength of the Bsidd on the planet had waned considerably over the past 18 years. They couldn’t train, they couldn’t fight, they couldn’t easily die either…they were just stuck in place. Treated like war prizes rather than people. Star Force prisons allowed for training. They even encouraged it as a form of rehab. But the V’kit’no’sat seemed totally indifferent, making it clear the Bsidd would only live so long as they were of use to the enemy.

Gardo’s daily routine did not change for years, but today something did. The Zen’zat leading his group took a different turn, prompting surprise amongst them all. One of them asked where they were going in the few V’kit’no’sat words that they all had learned, but the Zen’zat just telekinetically slapped the one that spoke and told him to shut up.

The Bsidd did as told and the group followed the pair of Zen’zat in front while a few others paced beside them and two more followed up in the rear. Had the Bsidd wanted to overpower them they could have just with their numbers, for there were 428 in this group, but they didn’t have weapons, armor, or must stamina left. And even if they did take the Zen’zat down, where would they go?

In the past some had tried just that, but they couldn’t kill the Zen’zat in their armor, only knock them down, and with the enemy Dre’mo’dons built into the forearms of their armor, they couldn’t be disarmed either.

Gardo wondered if this change was good or bad. He hadn’t heard of any group executions ever taking place. Maybe they had opened up a new facility, but if they had the construction would have made the rounds of the comm grid they’d set up via relay…with that relay being word of mouth only. With nothing to do here, even the smallest change or bit of information gleamed spread quickly throughout this prisoner colony set at the base of the huge shield generator that towered over them to the south. It blocked the sun most of the day, but it was early enough now that the sunlight made it past the monolith and down into the trench-like valleys between the much shorter V’kit’no’sat buildings that surrounded the site.

They eventually were taken to a spaceport…a place they had never been allowed to go before…and they were made to wait out in the open in rows as more Bsidd arrived behind them in stages. They were not told what was happening, which was normal. They’d know when they needed to know, and not before. That was practically the Zen’zat motto around here, and the first inclination of something being up came when a break in the clouds showed a fleet of ships in orbit.

That wasn’t unusual, for the V’kit’no’sat had many up there. Some came low enough you could make out their dimensions easily, for they were large enough to be seen without magnification, but none looked like what the Bsidd were now seeing.

“Those are our jumpships,” someone said beside Gardo as all the Bsidd craned their necks up to look.

There were 4 of them, each more than 20 miles long with their submarine-like shape easily distinguishable. If they had a flock of drones around them those would be harder to see, but Gardo couldn’t make out the usual dark fog that they represented when passing in front of the grey beasts.

Had the V’kit’no’sat captured them? That would explain there being no drones…or were there drones and they were pushed further away. With it being daylight now he couldn’t see them blocking out starlight, and the black drones were meant to be hard to see anyway.

A cloud passed over the spot, cutting off their view, but a few minutes later silver drops began to poke through the clouds and Gardo’s heartbeat skyrocketed. Those were Star Force dropships! Not V’kit’no’sat drop pods.

He watched as they flew down to several locations nearby, then one big one…a Dragon-class that typically carried mechs and heavy cargo…turned towards them. It’s wide, fat wings sliced through the air quickly, then it set down on the landing pad half a mile away from them. The small cargo ramp on the side opened and lowered, with a pair of Calavari commandos walking out in their orange armor and coming towards the Bsidd.

Gardo was watching them so closely he didn’t notice that the Zen’zat had disappeared, but word spread from the others as they saw the Zen’zat walking away from them without any instructions.

“Hey guys,” one of the Calavari said from behind his helmet. “You need a ride?”

A bazillion questions were blasted out, with Gardo included blurting a ‘what’s going on’ before one of the Calavari raised his lower right hand and they took the cue to quiet down.

“Relax. The V’kit’no’sat are turning you over to us. Now let’s get everyone onboard before they change their mind,” he said, thumbing back towards the dropship. “Move…now,” he ordered.

Gardo didn’t hesitate, nor did the others. Sore joints or not, he scrambled with them towards the beautiful dropship and felt an overwhelming sense of relief when his mandible nubs touched the material of the ramp. It was like a shower washing the V’kit’no’sat stench off of him, and when he saw the few other Star Force personnel in the cargo hold giving them directions on how to pack in tightly because they wanted to squeeze in as many as possible to avoid making too many trips, he finally realized this was real and that he and the others were being freed.

“Long story short,” another Calavari said loudly so all could hear. “The war is over. We won. Our allies around the galaxy all attacked at once and forced the V’kit’no’sat to back off. All prisoners are being freed while we negotiate an end to the fighting. Everything in this region is settling down, but the V’kit’no’sat are getting their asses kicked around the galaxy and we’re not going to call them off until we get all of you out.”

“What allies?” someone else asked, though Gardo was thinking the same thing.

“The Director made a lot of friends when we weren’t looking. They hate the V’kit’no’sat as much as we do and decided to join up into what’s being called the Rim Consortium. They’re not part of Star Force, we’re just working together to kick the crap out of the V’kit’no’sat. And it worked. Pack in tight and you’ll get more information once you get to orbit. If anyone is in bad shape let us know, we’ve got a few regenerators here if needed. We don’t want to lose you on the way up.”

Gardo felt like he was going to have a heart attack…and he might, given his current lack of fitness. But he didn’t. He just ached all over, but it was good ache. A very good ache. It was like a breath he’d been holding in for years had just been let out, and his body was hurting because it was no longer there to brace against.

Others were not so lucky, and some of them did have heart attacks at the sudden joy of release. A medtech got to them quickly so none would be lost, then more and more prisoners were brought onto the dropship until it was literally packed with people from one side to the other…then some more were shoved in and Gardo had to crunch down into a tight sitting position to make room, but he didn’t care. When the doors closed and the dropship took off, he knew all he had to do was just sit and ride along, and that was something he had plenty of experience doing in recent years.

Everyone was talking in hushed tones, not wanting to get noisy, but they couldn’t help but talk. Some were wondering if this wasn’t some trap, and that made Gardo’s joy hesitate. The Calavari all had their helmets on, so maybe they weren’t Calavari. Or maybe they were and working with the…

No, no. That was crazy. He was being stupid. This was Star Force. It had to be. The V’kit’no’sat had never tried to trick them before. They hadn’t cared to. They just told them what to do and beat those that didn’t comply…then sent them to a regenerator station to fix the broken bones.

Gardo was sure this was really Star Force, but others were not so sure until the dropship doors opened again and they were ushered out onto the hangar deck of a Star Force Calavari jumpship with crew all over without armor on and other large groups of Bsidd filing off of other dropships.

“It’s real,” Gardo said to the others. “It’s real…”

“You bet your stick ass its real,” a Calavari said from behind Gardo. “Now keep moving. We’ve got a lot more people to bring up and they don’t want to wait while you look around. Keep walking, sticky.”

The Bsidd smiled at the nickname some in the empire had given to the Bsidd. A nickname, and sometimes an insult, that he hadn’t heard in a long, long time. He tapped the Calavari in the chest with the rounded end of one of his mandibles then walked on, for he didn’t want to delay any of the others from being brought up.

“Make sure you get everyone,” someone else pleaded. “Don’t leave anyone behind.”

“We won’t,” the Calavari promised. “Report everything you know to the debriefers. All the locations of holding sites. All the work places. Everything. We’ll make sure the Viks don’t hold anyone back.”

“Are they keeping the planet?” Gardo asked as he continued to walk.

“Hasn’t been decided yet. We’re just getting you guys off first. Director Davis will only negotiate after we have all the prisoners returned. You can send him a thank you message later. Right now, keep moving and get the debriefers all the intel you can. We’re not trusting these bastards one iota.”

And with that Gardo finally had an assignment that was worthwhile. He had a purpose again and set his wildly fluctuating mind to it. He had to give the Star Force personnel that would be interviewing them everything he knew about the current state of the planet, so he started mentally preparing the most succinct report he could and exchanged notes with the others as they walked and then waited while others were questioned…but not all of them. There wasn’t time. So they were picking certain individuals out and Gardo got tagged by some of the other Bsidd to represent them.

They gave him everything they knew, most of which Gardo already knew, then he left for a private meeting with a Calavari Maverick no less, and started spilling out every bit of reconnaissance he could on the state of the prisoners and what the V’kit’no’sat had been up to on the planet since they’d taken control of it 18 years ago.

9

October 2, 4915

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

Tewvo

Tre’sti watched with horror as the still unidentified attackers received another batch of reinforcements. It was only 1,289 ships, but those ships outmassed the V’kit’no’sat ones, making them at least an even match given the V’kit’no’sat’s superior weaponry. But along with this group came something else. At first he thought it was a sensor echo of a tightly packed fleet, but once the analysts began to chew on it they saw that it was not a fleet…but rather one massive vessel with numerous holes in it.

It was more than 1000 miles long and half that high, built in a honeycomb fashion with a lot of internal space missing. The I’rar’et ran a quick check through the V’kit’no’sat database, but there were no matches. Nothing even close. Whoever this race was, they’d completely avoided detection and had amassed an impressive fleet…and now they were throwing themselves at the V’kit’no’sat in numbers that Tre’sti could not counter. He’d already lost another planet, sadly the I’rar’et one, with the survivors having been moved to Tewvo and Hamjew, the latter being the Brat’mar world whose planetary shields had not yet been penetrated.

Tre’sti was currently engaged in a staring match with the enemy fleet over Tewvo as the ground troops fought for possession of the planet. He was daring the enemy to come in low over the intact planetary defenses but they weren’t taking the bait…though they might as soon as those reinforcements got out there. If they did he’d hurt them as badly as possible. If they didn’t, then this system was going to fall and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Hamjew would hold out a while, but everyone moving there would have nowhere to flee and some 28 billion people were going to die, for the enemy was not taking prisoners.

But while the Urrtren was still intact he could at least warn the others of this new ship. It might just be a cargo hauler, but Tre’sti had a sinking feeling it was not, and that the V’kit’no’sat were going to lose multiple systems in very short order before the enemy stretched themselves thin enough that the planetary defense stations could hold their own.

But here they were being overwhelmed, despite doing massive damage to the attacking fleets and ground assaults…with the enemy choosing the latter after the first three costly orbital strikes.

Tre’sti couldn’t believe what was happening. Who had the ability to do this? Who was this enemy? And where was the rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleets? This system wasn’t that far from the Star Force front. Were they all skipping by it to head to other engagements? And where were the 38 races that had chosen to stay and fight on the Hadarak front? Was no one else coming? Did no one else care?

Tre’sti couldn’t evacuate what was left. He didn’t have the ships. And if those on the planets were going to get wiped out, then the I’rar’et fleet was going to go down with them and hurt this enemy as much as possible when they made their final assault on the Brat’mar world. There would be no pulling back. They’d go all in and protect the planetary defenses as long as possible. The Tar’vem’jic had the biggest punch, so the longer Tre’sti could keep them in operation the less ships the enemy would have afterward, and the enemy was going to have to face at least one of them to punch an initial hole in the shields…so that’s where he and the I’rar’et fleet would make their last stand, along with what ships remained from the system defenders.

And when they were destroyed, those on the planet would have to die with honor…for there was no escape for them and Tre’sti wasn’t going to run away. He was going to make this mysterious foe pay as high a price as possible to claim total possession of the Bearadan System.

13,042 lightyears away…

The Nooron System was one of the handful of V’kit’no’sat border systems in line with the conduit to Star Force territory. It had been used as a waypoint in the initial attack on Terraxis that had taken their capitol and then destroyed the Humans’ most valuable systems. During the most recent war it had been one of several transfer points, as well as being in a region that was not coming under attack by the Rim Consortium…a name just now beginning to filter through the Urrtren as the empire came under attack on virtually all fronts.

But not in Nooron and the surrounding systems. It seemed the area near Star Force territory was being left alone, perhaps because the fighting had pressed into their territory and there was no need to backdoor the forces they were already fighting with.

That had been the theory, and some of the few ships that could be sparred had been sent to reinforce the neighboring regions adjacent to Tamprani, leaving Nooron and the other border systems with a skeleton defense fleet as some of the major combat fleets passed through enroute to other engagements.

Or rather they had been. Now it was quiet here, for the fighting against Star Force had now stopped and both sides were in a holding action while negotiations were being pursued. That was all that Nooron knew, thinking they were safe from reprisal so long as at least some of their fleets were nearby and holding the territory they’d won to date in the war.

But that didn’t prove to be the case when ships started pouring in through one jumppoint only. The few patrol ships the V’kit’no’sat had there intervened and fought a pitched battle, but they eventually lost it and this new foe had gained a foothold that, for the following weeks, poured ship after ship into the system and began to overwhelm orbital defenses and installations through sheer numbers of weaker craft that were noted in the database, though no one in the system recognized the inferior race they belonged to.

They’d been marked for extermination before, then Terraxis had been discovered and the civil war following it had caused them to be ignored and spared. Now they were actively attacking the V’kit’no’sat in a way they’d never dared to do before…except now they were not so weak. Their technology, while still inferior, had advanced greatly. Too much to have occurred without outside help. They were approaching the level of the strongest non V’kit’no’sat races encountered and defeated in the past, but they didn’t build like it. They were fielding massive jumpships that carried smaller attack craft on them, somewhat similar to Star Force drones, yet these were manned and incredibly aggressive...eager to trade their lives for V’kit’no’sat losses without hesitation, and they were using that strategy to great effect as more and more of their ships continued to enter the system.

Nooron had no backup, and as the number of enemy ships eclipsed 400,000 they realized that the single inhabited planet might be in danger, despite their small size. The ship count continued to rise as all installations beyond the planet were attacked, being destroyed or in some cases captured, but they did not attack the planet. Instead they continued to wait for more ships to come in, and when the number passed 600,000 the combination of Oso’lon, Pas’cha, and Zep’sha that shared this world began frantically calling for help…but there was no one available to help as the Li’vorkrachnika took advantage of the multi-prong assault against the V’kit’no’sat to launch their own attack against multiple systems in the Tamprani Region…

Leonit was surprised when the Oso’lon contacted him. The Neokko were one of the lowest races in the V’kit’no’sat hierarchy and one often shunned because of their favor by the Zak’de’ron, who had included them into the empire shortly before the group betrayal. The Neokko had not stood by the Zak’de’ron when the time came, but the fact that they had been gifted with more psionics than the others felt was deserving had left a lingering resentment afterward that still existed to this day.

As a result, the Neokko were allowed less planets, less population, and were forbidden from having any stature whatsoever within the empire. Their small claim to their name was their cargo fleets, as they focused on trading to supplement their limited resources and make themselves valuable to the few races who would make agreements with them. But beyond those exceptions, most of the empire ignored them, forcing the Neokko to live in semi-exile while still being a part of the empire.

When the choice of the Star Force invasion hit them, they’d decided to side with the Era’tran...the only major race that had offered even minimal trading options for the Neokko cargo fleets. Leonit had never expected an Oso’lon to contact him, yet here was the message transmitted through the Urrtren offering him and the Neokko a deal.

One of their colonies was under assault on the border, as many were, but the Oso’lon did not intend to keep the planet. They were going to let the enemy have it and were not asking for reinforcements to fight…only to help evacuate…and they were offering a high price in exchange for the Neokko’s help. They needed to move some 74 million of them, plus another half billion Zen’zat, and they didn’t have the transports available to do it.

Abandoning territory was not the V’kit’no’sat way, and the Oso’lon did not want them to transport the survivors to a nearby system…but all the way out of Tamprani to the Feerno Region. That was a quarter way around the galactic swirl and would take, at best, 4 or 5 months travel time even with utilizing the main black hole jump routes.

But the offer of one of their exclusive systems in the Scrim Region was unheard of, making Leonit question whether this was a legit message or not, but it had all the proper coding. Why the Oso’lon would want to trade one of their fully intact systems for help in evacuating another to an enemy invasion was perplexing. Leonit researched the Ghanset System and saw it had three habitable planets, all moderately built up but not overwhelmingly so. There was still plenty of untouched land masses, but the Oso’lon weren’t offering to let them build there…they were going to give the entire system to the Neokko as is once they evacuated it as well.

It was not, as far as Leonit could determine, under attack nor near the current invasion zones. It was in the rimward half of the empire, but not on the far edge. It was too good of a deal, but one that Leonit could not pass on if it was legitimate, so he began calling in all of the Neokko cargo fleets in the area, had them dump their cargos in the closest safe system, then proceed to a rendezvous point near Nooron but far enough away that Leonit could gather his ships together without fear of getting attacked.

The quadruped ‘Chimaera’ did not know how this hasty transaction would go down, but he intended to be there himself to find out, so the third highest ranking Neokko boarded a system defense Na’shor and traveled out with the cargo fleet and as many escorts as he could scrounge up within Tamprani and the adjacent Olobiv Region. The Oso’lon had included a brief window of opportunity and Leonit wasn’t going to miss it, though if he’d only had an additional 2 months he could have brought ten times the number of ships to bear.

As it was, he had 7 weeks to work with and no more, for the Oso’lon were going to evacuate what few they could on their own in that timeframe and they did not expect to be able to hold the system beyond that point.

Leonit did not know which was more shocking. The Oso’lon losing a system that they shared with their two most trusted subordinate races, or the fact that they were asking the Neokko for help. Either way, things within the empire had drastically changed over the past few centuries and Leonit did not like it, but he did sense opportunity for the Neokko and he was going to seize it…and hope that Mak’to’ran could hold the empire together through this invasion and the fallout from him disbanding the Elder Council and taking full personal leadership of the V’kit’no’sat.

10

March 19, 4916

Detention System (Dagran Region)

Planet 3

Lasme had finished his obstacle course run in record time…which wasn’t too surprising. He’d been breaking personal records off and on for the past 3 years during his confinement. Initially the Kret’net Ultra had resisted the Star Force ‘options’ available for him, but eventually the boredom and stagnation convinced him to try some of them just to break the monotony.

He’d expected some sort of trick, or humiliation, but Lasme had learned it was simply what it was stated to be…training. Done the Star Force way. And as long as it helped Lasme maintain his fitness he was now willing to go along with it, and after his record run today he was led back into his cushy prison cell by a series of doors that opened and closed without any sight of the Humans or anyone else.

Aside from the few times they’d come to speak with him, he was left entirely alone. It was not what he’d expected when he’d been taken prisoner. He’d expected some sort of torture or other punishment, but he hadn’t been touched.

But his ego had. He was one of the largest Kret’net in the galaxy, having earned the size increase by being one of the rarest of the rare warriors his race possessed. And one that was willing to tolerate the disadvantages of that size as well. Not all did, but he knew his role and it wasn’t to be quick or agile. His place was one of immobility, soaking up damage and taking on the toughest opponents while the others handled secondary measures.

Ultras were meant to work as a team and provide a valuable asset in heavy combat, and they were only applied for such. Now Lasme had no one. If there were other prisoners here he had never seen them, and could not feel them, for he wore a brain box melded into the fin on his skull that was suppressing his telepathy and other psionics. He’d had to eat his foot with his hands or bend over and just shovel it in his face with his tongue.

Maybe Star Force didn’t know what level of an insult that was, or perhaps they did and it was an intentional humilitation, but he had long lost his animosity for his captors. What he hated was the confinement, but he’d numbed up to it and focused on learning what Star Force had to offer…which was more than he’d expected from heretics who had stolen their knowledge from the V’kit’no’sat.

They had a unique philosophy on life and the universe, one that had apparently worked well for them with the Uriti. There wasn’t a lot of information about them available to Lasme, but it was stated that they rarely used their command controls for the spacefaring beasts. Rather, they had used that connection to establish a relationship that now did not require the brute force control mechanism.

The V’kit’no’sat had long searched for that closely held secret, but no one they had ever captured had known of it. Yet, if what Star Force said was true, they no longer needed it. Their ability to befriend others was something the Kret’net had never bothered to attain since joining the V’kit’no’sat, and now Lasme wondered if that wasn’t a mistake. He still had little doubt that Star Force would be destroyed and one day he would be rescued, but there was no denying how much the heretics had accomplished and now that he had no choice but to sit and think, over and over again, he couldn’t deny their accomplishments.

Their take on training was also curious, for the V’kit’no’sat often pushed one to the physical breaking point then repaired them afterwards. Star Force held back on the damage aspect, focusing instead on exhaustion prompting adaptational advancement.

But it was the failure that gnawed on him the most. The training ‘challenges’ were designed to make you fail, over and over again, until you advanced enough to succeed, and that was something that Lasme could not tolerate in the beginning. V’kit’no’sat were not supposed to fail, yet Star Force hammered you until you did…all while making you do it to yourself. Those that simply refused were not punished. They were let alone so stagnation could eat away at them. There was no prodding, which the V’kit’no’sat relied on heavily for their hatchlings, and that made no sense to the Kret’net initially, but now he understood.

Those who were self-motivated advanced in Star Force, while those who were not were simply left behind.

No, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t left behind because Star Force never abandoned them. They’d put the opportunity before them every day until they finally accepted it…or died from stagnation. And had it not been for that persistence, Lasme would not be doing their training now, for it took a long time for his ego to finally surrender to boredom.

And therein lay their secret. They didn’t use pain or damage as torture, but Star Force did torture. And they did it with simple boredom…which the prisoner would ironically inflict upon themself.

Tricky they were. They appeared incompetent, but there was a hidden strength to them and as long as Lasme was imprisoned here he might as well learn from it so the V’kit’no’sat could assimilate their small advantages once the Star Force empire finally fell.

Lasme returned to his cell and bathed in a deep pool before laying down on a cushioned pedestal for a nap…which was interrupted by a door opening. It was so unusual, for the training times were literally hammered into the stone walls of the cell and never changing, that the Kret’net jolted upright at the sound of the door as if it were a bomb going off.

And as far as his prison routine was concerned, it was. But the sight of a tiny Human standing behind the opening door was far more alarming…for none had ever entered his cell before. Perhaps this was another…

“No, I am not a hologram,” the Archon said in English with an ironic smile, for all the prisoners had been forced to learn the language in order to access certain privileges. “You’re time here is now over.”

“The planet is under assault?” Lasme asked, standing up and walking halfway towards the Human but no closer, fearing a trap. He could kill the Archon with ease even without his psionics and the Humans knew it, so there had to be something else…

“No, but you are being released. A V’kit’no’sat fleet has arrived to pick you and the others up. Your empire has already released their prisoners, now we are releasing you.”

Lasme huffed in utter confusion. “Why would we release our prisoners?”

“Because the war is over…or rather, the V’kit’no’sat war against Star Force is over. At present you are fighting others and do not have time to bother with us anymore.”

“What has happened?”

“They can explain, but let me just say that other races in the Rim want to be left alone and they’re all attacking simultaneously to force the V’kit’no’sat into an agreement to stay out of the Rim altogether. Your people are currently negotiating with ours as to the final details, but right now you’re getting your assess kicked and your invasion fleets have left to defend your borders. The war between us and you is at an end.”

“Itaru would never agree to this.”

“Mak’to’ran now leads, and he has disbanded the Elder Council as punishment for leaving the empire so vulnerable. He is not here, but there is another Era’tran speaking for him and he arranged the release of all our prisoners. So now we release you. A path will show you the way to the spaceport. I am here simply to say goodbye.”

“What have you been promised by Mak’to’ran?”

“You stay on your side of the line, we stay on our side…more or less.”

“He has given you dominion over the Rim?”

“That was the agreement if you could not conquer us.”

Lasme looked at the open doorway beyond the Human and the new route to the left just a little further out that had never been open to him before.

“What are you waiting for? You want to stay?” the Archon asked.

Lasme hesitated, his mind racing with emotions and fears that he had long since buried. All of it was coming out now, unnumbing him, but he was not so overcome that he couldn’t think. If he was being released, then there was no point in delaying.

He stepped forward without saying another word, nearly stepping on the Archon before he jumped up and flew into the air, pacing the giant Kret’net through the massive hallway.

“Who are you?” Lasme asked as he walked up to the door in the corridor that had never been open before, seeing that it led to a long, thin passage that curved slightly to the right.

“My name is Liam.”

“I thought only the most elite Archons could fly?” the Kret’et asked as he passed through the new doorway and felt a shiver of excitement and trepidation run through him.

“Correct,” the Archon said, following him in the air. He wore no armor, just a simple white uniform with pair of blue and orange stripes running along the limbs.

“Are you the warlord Liam?” Lasme asked, but he was faced forward pacing through the hallway at a fast walk and eager to see what lay beyond.

“I am a trailblazer, if that is what you mean.”

“Then why are you here?”

“The fighting is over, so my fleet was recalled. Figured I’d come here and see you guys off.”

“Why did you take us prisoner? You did not need us as hostages?”

“We get tired of killing, so taking the extra effort now and then to keep some of you alive helps us stay sane.”

“I suspect it is more than that,” Lasme said as he continued to walk through a very long and meandering hallway that had several hills, both up and down, making it hard to know which direction he was actually going after several turns that seemed to defy predictable geometry.

“Perhaps, but that’s the main reason.”

“I suspect you knew you were going to win. You had this invasion planned all along, didn’t you?”

“Possibly.”

“Then I say you brought me here to teach me things you wanted the other V’kit’no’sat to learn,” Lasme said, stopping and turning to face the Archon. “Why?”

“We will never forgive the V’kit’no’sat for what they’ve done. As an empire, they are our forever enemy. But the individuals within that empire are not necessarily our enemy. If you learn, and change your ways, you will cease to be V’kit’no’sat. We seek to destroy you with knowledge.”

“And what happens to the fragments if you succeed?”

“The Rit’ko’sor have already joined us,” Liam said simply.

Lasme huffed. “Do not expect more to follow.”

“We don’t have to except to lay the seeds for what might later grow into an ally. We don’t give up on anyone, or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”

“Even those who killed many Humans?”

“If you change, the enemy is defeated and destroyed. Who then do we have a grudge with?”

“You do not believe in punishment?” Lasme asked, turning to face the long hallway again as he resumed walking.

“Only as a learning opportunity. If someone will not change, better to just kill them immediately. There is no purpose in making them suffer before they die.”

“And you thought I would be one to change?”

“You have, even if you do not realize it. Is it enough? Well, we’ll see. If you stay in the Core then it won’t matter either way, because we’ve got a lot of work out here to do. But for your sake, I hope you have learned enough.”

“So arrogant,” Lasme mumbled

“You spawned us, intentionally or not.”

“I would have killed you immediately if we did not need hostages,” he said as natural light began to filter in above the top of a high hill in the hallway before him.

“So would a lot of inferiors. Be glad that we have transcended the V’kit’no’sat,” Liam said as he stopped flying forward and let Lasme take the last bit of his journey alone.

Lasme glanced back to see where he went, for he could not feel him, but the Kret’net did not stop walking. The lure of the light of potential freedom began to consume him and he began to slowly run up the hill until the plateau came into sight and the open doorway beyond. He ran out onto a vast, open air spaceport and as he passed the through the exit archway the brain box on his head disconnected and fell off.

Suddenly his psionics, which he had not felt for years, were returned to him and he could feel the telepathic communication from the V’kit’no’sat a few miles out on the landing pad signaling him to come to them.

Lasme kicked back his head and looked straight up into the blue sky, roaring loudly out of a mix of frustration and relief, then he realized that there were others coming out of archways set into little domes spread all across the landing pad. He spun around, seeing that the pad was so large it spread out tens of miles in every direction, leaving all he could see being the small protrusions and the scattering of V’kit’no’sat walking or running from them to the drop pods waiting further out.

Lasme didn’t feel like walking, so he took off running towards the mind that was signaling to him, still somewhat concerned this might be some giant trap, but the closer he got the more details his mind registered and the more information he got from the Brat’mar ahead that were here to pick everyone up.

The empire was under assault. The war against Star Force had ended. And negotiations were underway to get all the members of the new Rim Consortium to back off…but until they had an agreement and that word spread via courier to all those involved, the invasion of V’kit’no’sat territory continued with many losses across their Rim border.

Lasme ran all the way up to the drop pod before he finally saw the Brat’mar he was talking to standing just inside. He asked the question and the Brat’mar said they were not allowed to step off the ships, only wait for the prisoners to come to them. He told the Kret’net to come aboard and Lasme walked up the ramp into the V’kit’no’sat ship where he saw a half dozen others waiting inside.

Two were Oso’lon, another Kar’ka, with the remainder being the tiny Ari’tat.

“Did they capture any of the Zen’zat?” he asked, speaking his own language aloud again.

“I do not know. None have been released if they did,” the Brat’mar said. “We were told there were not many prisoners taken. Only a mere 9,273. You are one of the fortunate ones.”

“How badly did we hurt them before they unveiled their allies?”

“We took many worlds along their border, but did not have time to push in to their most valuable worlds.”

“Have we surrendered them?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting on the final agreement. Until then, we hold the territory we’ve taken. Star Force has not attacked to try and take it back and we have released our own prisoners. If they wanted to do so now, they could annihilate us with their Uriti. I do not like the situation, but it is what Mak’to’ran has instructed.”

“Itaru?”

“Now under Mak’to’ran’s personal control. He leads us uncontested.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“The invasion has changed many things. We are not accustomed to losing territory to races we did not even know existed.”

“What?” one of the Oso’lon prisoners asked.

“Many of the races are unknown to us. We have no information on who they are or where they are based. And many of them are powerful. Some, very powerful. We have been taken off guard and paid the price with many lives, for these allies do not fight according to Star Force’s rules. Most of them are simply annihilating worlds they take,” the Brat’mar said as an I’rar’et flew up to the doorway then landed and walked inside.

“8 more,” the Brat’mar said, “then we lift off and get you back to civilization.”

78,822 lightyears away…

The Zak’de’ron had managed to find another Protovic strain, but no more. That left them at 3 of 8 and the possibility of finding the rest was diminishing, though not gone. It was likely that the Knights of Quenar had found the most visible Protovic colonies to immunize, but the galaxy was huge and there were bound to be many more hiding out there waiting to be found. The Zak’de’ron would find them all, given time, but whether they would locate them before the Knights of Quenar did was questionable.

Today that was not the issue at hand, for their telepathic efforts with the Uriti known as Bulmuthal had progressed favorably, so much so that it was time to finally release the beast from its slumber out on the far Rim and away from prying eyes. They’d brought Bulmuthal to one of the systems on the extreme edge of the galaxy, with no stars and only galaxies visible in the night sky when looking out, but with the whole of their own galaxy in view in the other direction.

It was a sight that few had ever beheld, but the Zak’de’ron had been everywhere in this galaxy aside from the Deep Core. They had seen things that no others had, and this edge view was one that instilled humility into the dominant race. There was so much beyond their own galaxy, so many possibilities beyond that the stark view of them here was unnerving. The Hadarak dominated the Core of this galaxy, and the giant swirl of stars was so big that many races had never even heard of the Hadarak. It was too big for the Zak’de’ron to ever totally control, yet there were so many galaxies beyond that when one even cursory attempt at quantifying it all ran through your mind you had to shake it free, otherwise it would drive you mad.

Looking at that view now was the reminder of the lesson the V’kit’no’sat had painfully taught the Zak’de’ron…not to try to control everything. To pick their time, their place, and their territory, but not to go too bold, too big, and not to rely on others to do it. The Zak’de’ron could only control what they could control. They could use others, but never rely on them. That would greatly diminish the size of the territory they could monitor, but they didn’t need as much control as they’d tried before. They needed to prune, not possess, and knock down the largest powers. What happened in the cracks and the wide open, unimportant regions was something they could let go. Let the lessers have their freedom as the Zak’de’ron worked to reign in the greater powers. They would obtain their dominance, not by conquering territory, but by being the last major race standing in this galaxy.

But to do that they had to avenge themselves against the V’kit’no’sat and then take down the Hadarak, the latter of which made the former look easy. But today they would take their first step towards that ultimate victory as Bulmuthal was released from its Zak’de’ron-built transport and let free float near the red star that stood on the edge of the galaxy looking out into the true void.

The lower dose of sedative that the Uriti had been kept under still took time to wear off, but as it did the Zak’de’ron were in constant telepathic communication with it, and there was no violent reaction when it did fully wake. It was a smooth transition and many cubes of valuable resources were floating nearby provided by the Uriti’s new friends. Bulmuthal dragged them towards it in its grapple fields, smashing them against its body and absorbing the material to help repair the limited damage done from stagnation.

From there they talked, and talked a lot…about what had happened to the Uriti. How it had been created. Who its creators were and how they had betrayed it.

Then they began to explain how the Zak’de’ron were going to teach and guide the Uriti in a way the Chixzon never had. They were never going to leave it alone. The Uriti would join their herd and together they would fight the Chixzon and their allies in a long and massive struggle to determine who held dominion over this galaxy.

Bulmuthal then asked a question that they did not expect. For as pleased as it was to have a herd, something it had never experienced before but somehow instinctively understood, it did not seem concerned about who held dominion over the galaxy. Rather, it asked who held dominion over the galaxies…

www.aerkijyr.com

Forsaken

1

January 13, 4917

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat capitol)

Wendigama

Hamob returned to Mak’to’ran several months after news of the Armistice with Star Force had made its way through the Urrtren to find an empire in peril. The attacks around the galaxy had increased greatly, and the couriers from the Rim Consortium races that he’d met during the negotiations were going to take even more time to reach their homelands and order them to stand down. That meant at least another year of fighting in some places, due to the fact that the Consortium was an organization in name only and had no means of intra-galactic communication aside from couriers.

The V’kit’no’sat had the Urrtren, plus their massive territory was consolidated in the center of the galaxy whereas the Rim was even more spread out, and if the couriers didn’t want to take the risk of cutting through V’kit’no’sat territory they’d have to go the long way around, meaning it could be several years before the races on the far side of the galaxy got the stand down order.

But this war was coming to an end, and despite the losses they were suffering, those attacking races were soon to be mitigated by Star Force’s newly granted dominion over the entire Rim. If not, then the V’kit’no’sat would have leave to fight the races that refused to hold to the terms. That was good news, but the situation was far more complicated.

“What?” Mak’to’ran asked, his shock reciprocated by the other 6 Era’tran in his newly constructed command deck that stood at the center of what used to be the Elder Conclave. Two Hamob knew, Bar’su and De’grana, but the other four were junior Era’tran that Mak’to’ran must have elevated to whatever new positions he was creating as he started to rework Itaru and the empire as a whole into a semblance of real unity.

“There are 87 races in the Rim Consortium,” Hamob explained. “As of last count, there are 136 attacking us. I met with each of the 87 and have limited files on all. The other races are not coordinating with Star Force…they are operating completely on their own. Director Davis wasn’t even aware of their existence.”

Mak’to’ran swung his giant head to the side, with his body following as he began to pace around the huge holographic map at the center of the chamber. Two of the other Era’tran moved out of his way, allowing him to begin walking a lap around it as he was visibly fuming.

“Have we truly garnered that many enemies?” he asked. “Have we missed that many powers in our search of the galaxy?”

“I am beginning to wonder if the Oso’lon and J’gar did not reveal everything to us.”

“I wonder that as well, but I sense more to this,” Mak’to’ran said, telepathically signaling the other Era’tran and Zen’zat in the chamber to leave. He needed to have a private discussion with Hamob, and they all left without hesitation or resentment, leaving the pair of million year old Era’tran alone.

“The Zak’de’ron?” Hamob asked once the door closed.

“They strike at us through intermediaries rather than face to face,” Mak’to’ran said with a sneer. “Or fear of us has diminished to such a level that those we previously suppressed now sense a weakness and opportunity.”

“One that will quickly end when the Rim Consortium ceases their attacks.”

“What did you have to give up? Your message said nothing of the terms.”

Hamob sighed. “What was necessary, but it will be difficult for the empire to accept.”

“We are in difficult times, Hamob. We cannot tolerate weak V’kit’no’sat. Those that cannot handle the burdens of duty will be dealt with or discarded. What are the terms?”

“Many of the Rim Consortium are wanting territory from us. They are taking it by force, and I saw no reason to fight to hold worlds we need to discard anyway. We are too spread out, and we need to consolidate our holdings. I have agreed to vacate the outer rim of our territory completely. We will cleanse our worlds of any useful infrastructure, except for a ring of worlds that we will be handing over to Star Force intact. Including planetary defense stations.”

Mak’to’ran flinched for a moment, then nodded his head in agreement as the logic of the situation sunk in. “You want to use them to guard our outer border?”

“As long as we are giving them dominion over the Rim, we might as well benefit from it. They will tolerate no leash…that was made abundantly clear. We have burnt any chance of an alliance with our relentless pursuit of their destruction. They will not forgive the deaths we caused, but that said, they are being extremely reasonable. Far more than I expected. They are willing to do the work we need of them, but on their own terms. In effect, they are part of the V’kit’no’sat but in denial of that fact…minus the control of Itaru.”

“How many systems?”

“We will vacate 2,713. Of those, 283 will be turned over to Star Force, and the sooner the better. They will use our technology to keep the Rim Consortium away from the new border, as a watchdog that cannot be displaced. They will be so far from reinforcement they must have our planetary defenses or they could be erased before a report reached Director Davis. And there is nothing of our technology that they do not already possess. I am concerned, however, of the captured worlds and the Rim Consortium backwards engineering our technology. I recommend an immediate counterattack to destroy what has been captured.”

“Despite the fact that we have an Armistice?”

“Word will not have reached many of them yet. As long as they continue to attack us, we are free to defend ourselves. We must act quickly to destroy what they have taken. We cannot allow our technology in the hands of others.”

“And the ones to whom word has already reached?”

“We destroy them. Terms of the Armistice do not give any of the Rim Consortium ownership of our worlds, and how we evacuate is up to us. It may be a violation in spirit, but we cannot let our technology fall into their hands.”

“Assuming they have not already removed some of it,” Mak’to’ran pointed out.

“We must mitigate our losses.”

“We are stretched thin, Hamob. We do not have the forces available to do what you suggest. Not until we can close out engagements in some areas.”

“We must. Our situation is improving, but we must act quickly or we risk facing an enemy who possesses our own technology…and one who is far less restrained than Star Force.”

“We do not have the ships to send, Hamob.”

“Pull defenses from interior worlds. We know the war on the Rim is going to get lighter in a few years. These races will not push far enough to threaten them in that time. Leave them undefended and push to cleanse the outer Rim before we relinquish it.”

Hamob closed his eyes, then slowly spun around…a sign of frustration and reluctance.

“Very well. Which races are we going to have to deal with once the Armistice takes effect?”

Hamob floated a small data crystal away from one of the insets in his armor and inserted it into a slot on the base of the holomap. Those races in the Rim Consortium were highlighted, leaving the rest as being the V’kit’no’sat’s problem and not Star Force’s.

“The Li’vorkrachnika?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“Star Force may have a splinter of their race working for them, but they are not united in any fashion. Director Davis was surprised when he heard of their assaults against us, and even more concerned about their technological advancement. He recommends that we annihilate them quickly.”

Mak’to’ran huffed. “Annihilate?”

“Star Force has a long history with the Li’vorkrachnika, whom they irreverently call ‘lizards.’ It is an insult, and one well deserved. Star Force tried to annihilate them before, but could not continue closer to the Core without encountering us, so they were forced to let them migrate beyond their reach. Those they conscripted were acquired in a nearly impossible scenario. They do not think it can occur again, and when Li’vorkrachnika are captured they kill themselves. Their use of suicide attacks is also indicative of a race that thrives in bloodshed. I’ve been analyzing their attacks, and despite their inferiority they are overcoming their disadvantage with sacrifices of a staggering nature. They cannot be negotiated with.”

“Still, that is far beyond what Star Force norms are.”

“Not at all. Their long history has seen them try, numerous times, for some form of mitigation. Director Davis knows that there can be none, so they are no longer trying. The Li’vorkrachnika are an enemy that must be destroyed, and Star Force has offered their assistance with the rimward side of the Li’vorkrachnika’s territory. When defeated, the Li’vorkrachnika will send out ships to start new colonies, making them extremely hard to completely eradicate. Star Force will monitor, intercept, and destroy any ships heading for the Rim.”

“A joint effort?”

“In a fashion. I could sense fear in Davis. The technology upgrades the Li’vorkrachnika have seen are not natural progression. They have a sponsor. It is only a question of whom, and Davis fears either the Zak’de’ron or the Chixzon, though the possibility of a third unknown is also disturbing.”

“The gains the Li’vorkrachnika are making are also disturbing,” Mak’to’ran said, telepathically signaling the map to zoom in on the Tamprani and Olobiv Regions. “We have lost more systems to them than any other race, and they are pushing deeper at a furious pace. Where is the new border line?”

Hamob adjusted the map and a new outer boundary appeared, only 140 lightyears from the furthest Li’vorkrachnika incursion.

“They will be beyond it soon,” Hamob noted. “We need to hold that line at the minimum.”

“We don’t have the ships,” Mak’to’ran said sourly. “Too many were wasted fighting Star Force.”

“We must snuff this threat out before it grows further. Their rate of expansion is alarming, as is their lack of respect for life. They have no elders. Most live only as long as the mission dictates. They are an expendable resource for their hidden leaders and spread like a virus. If they had our technology, they would dominate the galaxy. Star Force is adamant that they must be destroyed or they will become a threat to both our survival.”

“The soul raiders are not part of the Consortium?” Mak’to’ran asked, looking at the other races listed.

“Soul raiders?”

“The only name we have for them. They will not identify themselves, but their ships have living beings engineered into them. We do not know if they are their own race, but some speculate they might be enslaving those they conquer in a hideously grotesque fashion. I have scouts out now trying to ascertain if they are doing the same to our people caught on the fallen worlds. If they are, we will burn them from the galaxy before we even look at the Li’vorkrachnika.”

“What have you learned thus far?”

“The individuals function as a biological computer system that works with the physical hardware. They are psionically shielded and self-destruct whenever it is breached. That has made it hard to determine what exactly they are, for the bio-matter is liquefied almost instantaneously, but we have had brief telepathic contact with some of them. Enough to realize that they have been altered heavily. Their minds are not free, but constrained. We suspect it is a programming override of their consciousness to ensure compliance.”

“To what advantage?”

“Adaptability,” Mak’to’ran said as if it were obvious. “Even given constraints, a person will be able to adapt to what a machine cannot. It is the same reason the Hadarak minions are superior to the one’s produced by the Uriti, but I fear there may be a punitive function as well. The Soul Raiders must be destroyed, and many of the other races are only slightly less abominations. The Ridoken are eating those they capture…alive. They are drinking their biofluids straight out of their bodies like a leach. I would rid the galaxy of them as well if they were not part of the Rim Consortium, but if they withdraw we must leave them be. We have too much to do elsewhere.”

“You fear we must sacrifice a larger part of the empire than we discussed in order to save it?”

“I fear the Zak’de’ron are exacting their revenge as we speak. Our systems will not fall easily or quickly, but our response forces are overwhelmed and the Hadarak continue to probe heavily. We are under assault on all fronts. The Armistice is the only advantage we have.”

“I have never seen you like this,” Hamob admitted. “You appear almost broken.”

“Our empire is crumbling, from within and without. I cannot hold it all together. We have wasted too much and our enemies are far greater in number and power than we had ever expected. The Oso’lon and J’gar have doomed us with their incompetence. We need to rebuild, but we don’t have the luxury of time and I do not think the Zak’de’ron will allow it. When we become weak enough they will emerge and the final confrontation will begin. I fear we are far closer to it than any of us realized.”

“And you have no plan of action?”

“I am badly in need of your counsel, Hamob.”

“If the empire is to break, we must ensure that the Era’tran survive. We are the central pillar of strength to build on now that the Oso’lon and J’gar have failed in their duty.”

“If we lose the other races we will not be able to stand against the Zak’de’ron. We cannot withdraw.”

“No, we cannot, but if panic ensues we must focus on our own worlds and those of our closest allies.”

Mak’to’ran swung his tail to the left and whacked a console, putting a dent in it as the Era’tran vented the frustration he dare not show anyone else.

“Only a few years ago we were stable. Now everything is falling apart. If the Rim Consortium is only responsible for part of these assaults, their withdraw is not going to be enough. We are going to lose massive amounts of territory before we are able to avenge the losses. And even one more downturn could spiral us into destruction.”

“You suspect the Zak’de’ron have more avenues of attack to unveil?”

“I assume they have plotted our downfall in excruciating detail, and we have no allies to turn to. Our obsession with dominance was twisted into sole control. Star Force has demonstrated a different kind of dominance, one that I wish we could have learned from rather than attempting to destroy. We are doomed, Hamob. I can see it clearly now. As I know you can.”

“The revelation of these other races beyond the Consortium also floored me, though I had not known it was growing this bad. There is no Urrtren link to Star Force, so I only had limited information getting through. But the advantage in that was I was able to think for a long time, so this is not as much of a shock to me as it is to you.”

“What do you advise?” Mak’to’ran asked, a glimmer of hope in his voice.

“We have not told the empire the truth, and while the appearance of unity remains, the underlying fractures deepen. The old empire is gone. And before the V’kit’no’sat realize this, you must build a new one. In that, you have far more experience than I do, and I was wrong to criticize your move here. In retrospect it was overdue.”

“I need more than that, Hamob. I suspect you have something.”

“I was surprised at Director Davis suggesting the Li’vorkrachnika should be annihilated. It is so different from their normal resistance to death I decided to probe it further. I was expecting to find hypocrisy, rather I found pragmatism. They gave the Li’vorkrachnika every chance to change. They offered them time and time again to surrender and survive. They even forced it upon them until they suicided so much that Star Force stopped trying. Even then they did not quit, and somehow managed to turn one of their mastermind variants. Through him they seized control of large sections of the Li’vorkrachnika population that were tasked with fighting and dying to buy time for their leaders to escape. They were expended, and if not for some biochemical trickery Star Force would have had to kill them all. Such trickery, I am told, has almost certainly been engineered out of the current Li’vorkrachnika.”

“So they are beyond hope, from Star Force’s perspective?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“I checked the records they made available. In the past, once they had expended their compassion on the Li’vorkrachnika, they began orbital bombardment of their worlds beyond taking down defenses. They destroyed them from orbit rather than risking their ground troops. They fought much like we do, because they know the Li’vorkrachnika have no individuals. All are programmed to serve their leaders, whom they refer to as Templar. Star Force has never encountered a single individual who had undone the programming. They are all enslaved, and Star Force cannot undo the enslavement, so the only recourse is to kill them before they kill others.”

“And you say this is not hypocrisy?”

“It is not. If there was even one individual out of a billion that could be saved, they would not bombard a planet. But they know how strong the genetic holds are on the Li’vorkrachnika. They have their own variants to study in detail, information on which is far less available. They fear the Li’vorkrachnika, not because of their superiority, but because they will spread across the galaxy if unchecked. That is why they have offered to block their retreat to the Rim.”

“That is of limited help. What are you driving at?”

“The Uriti,” Hamob said simply. It took a moment for that to fully register, then Hamob blinked twice in shock.

“Why would they?”

“We must offer them something in exchange. I am not sure what that would be, but they are the only quasi-ally we have, and the only known power in the galaxy greater than ours is at their command.”

2

January 31, 4917

Ohson System (V’kit’no’sat territory, Tamprani Region)

Neonni

Hanniena looked up into the sky from the Wass’mat world, able to see the fleet of Li’vorkrachnika ships as thick as clouds blockading the planet while the invaders attacked two others, forcing this world’s defenders to hold position and not reinforce the others. When they’d tried to do just that 3 days ago the Li’vorkrachnika had attacked Neonni and forced the ships to return. Now they just waited, staring at each other up there while the other two Wass’mat planets were getting hammered.

Kienma already had its planetary shields down and a full scale planetary invasion taking place. Logsda had only one generator down and the beginnings of an invasion getting a foothold on the planet, but its prospects did not look good. The formidable enemy, whom the Wass’mat did not even know had existed previously, had come in with such overwhelming force it was just a matter of time until all 3 planets were taken. The system and planetary defenses could not hold, and Hanniena only suspected preservation of resources was holding back the lizards from assaulting all three simultaneously.

That’s what Star Force called them, and during her stay in their prison facility Hanniena had learned quite a lot about them…for she’d been so bored that digging through the available historical records was preferable to staring at the walls in her cell. The thing was, the lizards were never this powerful before. Somehow they’d gotten a significant technological boost, as well as the audacity to attack the V’kit’no’sat a second time after being spared from annihilation by freak events previously.

They’d only killed a single Zen’zat that time, seriously wounding a second, and that had been enough for the empire to demand their deletion from the galaxy. Now they were here, with a massive fleet and the will to take entire planets…yet there was no response from the empire other than to say help was not available. They were still waiting to hear back from other Wass’mat worlds, and Hanniena had been summoned to the planetary Council Chambers to discuss what she hoped would be a timetable for holding out until help from their own race could arrive.

The sight of the enemy fleet overhead was ominous and overbearing, especially considering their tiny size. Both their ships and bodies were small, but their strength came in their numbers. The V’kit’no’sat should not be threatened by such a foe, but half of the system defense fleet had been sent away to assist other worlds as they fought off numerous assaults from the Rim races. No one had thought those systems near the Star Force border would come under attack, let alone from a race that Star Force thoroughly despised.

Hanniena walked steadily and quickly on her 6 thick legs, making sure not to twist her head to the side too quickly, for her pair of Saroto’kanse’vam tusks stuck out well in front of her and could easily knock Zen’zat over with a mere brush, but Wass’mat had long ago learned to look with their eyes and only move their heads when needed, meaning the other Wass’mat she passed did not impale each other. They moved with an almost lethargic grace, knowing the power of their bodies and their psionics were a threat if mishandled, but the skill her entire race showed in their choreographed movements belied the danger. They were fully in control of their bodies, their worlds, and their tiny slice of the empire.

But today there was a telepathic buzz of uncertainty palpable everywhere one went, and it did not evaporate when Hanniena passed by the guards at the entrance to the Council Chambers. In fact, it got a great deal worse.

“They have refused to help us,” Gargara said flatly when the former fleet commander arrived, finishing off the set of 8 who had been invited. The doors closed behind Hanniena, sealing them inside as the system governor’s panic was evident in his telepathic aura. “No one is coming.”

“Our own people won’t help?” Bweto asked.

“All our fleets are engaged in other fights. None are available and the limited ships that could head our way are mostly transports. They are coming to evacuate the few of us they can, but with that fleet overhead it is unlikely that they will be able to get through. No warfleets are coming.”

“Have they completely abandoned Tamprani?” Jovcho, the planetary defense commander, asked.

“Itaru has informed us that Tamprani is likely to fall. They are mounting a containment force, but those systems already under assault are on their own. We are on our own. The empire will not assist worlds that cannot be held. We have been ordered to evacuate what we can, and to make the enemy pay as high a price as possible when the end finally comes.”

Hanniena huffed angrily. How could the empire do this? Their bonds required they come to each other’s defense. There had to be some fleets available, even if they were just protecting worlds closer to the Core. Why were they hesitating? Was the threat from the Rim worse than was being reported? Could it be that bad?

No, the empire was huge. Beyond huge. Even if it took time to move forces around there were a plentiful number of them. This system had sent help to others, compromising its own defenses, and now it was the responsibility of others to do the same to help them…and not even their own race would! There were four Wass’mat systems, fully or partly owned, within 4 weeks travel. None of them had come under attack, nor were close to it, and they had warships they could send, even if it was just to assist in an evacuation. Why weren’t they?

“How many can we evacuate?” Bweto asked.

“346,000,” Trevarin answered. “If we can get all ships free…which I highly doubt.”

“Is that including Zen’zat?” Gargara asked.

“No. That is packing in every Wass’mat that we can, far beyond safety standards. Rations will have to be minimal, or the number goes down in order to stock more supplies.”

“346,000, max, out of 4.3 billion…not to mention 27 billion Zen’zat,” Parwa said, vibrating her head angrily. “How many additional transports are coming?”

“Enough for 48,000 more.”

“That’s all?”

“Unfortunately yes.”

“I do not know what else we can do,” Gargara stated flatly. “We need another option. Give me one.”

“We cannot leave and we cannot stay,” Jovcho announced. “Unless warfleets arrive, we will die here. I do not see where we will get them.”

“What about the forces still in Star Force territory?” Hanniena asked.

“Already gone or heading elsewhere. None have responded with anything more than apologies,” Gargara informed her. “They are needed elsewhere.”

“The interior systems are hoarding their ships,” Bweto said with a snarl. “They are betraying their duty.”

“Agreed, but we cannot force them to send their ships. What other options do we have?” Gargara repeated.

“Abandon the other two planets and pull all ships here,” Jovcho said, nearly spitting in disgust.

“Will that be enough to save us?”

“It will not, but our only chance is keeping the shields up. When the assault comes, we have to damage them as much as we can. If the other planets are going to fall, we could at least repurpose some of their ships prior to their destruction.”

“They would fall even quicker,” Hanniena reminded him.

“I know, but he asked for options. And right now bad options are all I have to give.”

“Then what other bad options do we have?” Gargara asked.

“Send our ships out to defend the other planets, forcing the Li’vorkrachnika to attack us here or follow them. If they attack now, without the rest of their fleet, they will take greater damage, but they will still penetrate the shields. I see no way we can fight this without ultimate loss.”

“If we will not support each other, our race is broken,” Shastah said mournfully. “It’s bad enough that the empire will not respond, but our own people…I cannot believe it has come to this. They are prioritizing other races’ worlds over our own.”

“They see us as expendable,” Gargara explained. “Why fight for a lost system when more valuable ones that could be held are in jeopardy.”

“How many do you think we will lose in Tamprani?” Bweto asked.

“If the empire does not respond,” Jovcho answered, “we could lose half the region. There aren’t a lot of valuable systems here, but I don’t see the entire region falling. It’s clear, though, that the outermost bands have been abandoned, us included.”

“Then we’re being left for dead?” Hanniena asked.

“It seems we are.”

“How shall we make our last stand?” Gargara asked. “Abandon our fellow planets or defend all 3 as long as possible?”

“If we are all going to die, what’s the point of betraying the others,” Shastah noted. “I would not do so anyway. At least let us die with honor.”

“What honor is there to dying to this vermin?” Trevarin challenged. “Where has our dominance gone?”

“Ask the J’gar that question,” Gargara responded angrily. “They gave it away when they sponsored Terraxis.”

“We don’t know that…for sure.”

“It was them or the Oso’lon,” Bweto echoed. “And the J’gar refused to fight this last war.”

“So did the Era’tran,” Hanniena pointed out.

“They did not have command codes then. Only the Oso’lon and J’gar did.”

“Both of them have failed us,” Jovcho said dismissively. “And now the empire has as well. I do not care about complaining while we are still alive. We must find a way to fight this better.”

Hanniena growled, dipping her right tusk down and impaling the console in front of her, then flicking her head up and ripping it off its attachments. A telekinetic push took it off its spear and sent it flying past Trevarin to where it hit the floor and rolled in a spray of debris halfway towards the far wall.

“We have another option,” she snarled, hating the words as she spoke them.

“Speak it,” Gargara demanded.

“If the empire has abandoned us. If our own race has abandoned us. Then we must seek a new allegiance.”

“What do you mean?” Jovcho asked.

“She means Star Force,” Shastah said, almost spitting the name.

“I do not like it any more than you do,” Hanniena said virulently, “but they hate the Li’vorkrachnika. They would have wiped them out long ago if not for fear of alerting us to their presence.”

“They are already fighting a rear guard against them,” Gargara noted. “Why would they come here to help us?”

“If we leave the empire and…join them, they would,” she said, barely choking out the words.

“Itaru would never…” Bweto began, then caught himself as he realized the stupidity of what he was saying.

“If they’ve left us for dead, it does not matter what Itaru wants,” Hanniena continued. “We are expendable to them.”

“Star Force hates us,” Gargara reminded her. “The Rit’ko’sor never fought them. We have.”

“It does not matter. During my captivity they gave me a lot of information. I think for this very reason. They hate V’kit’no’sat. If we stop being V’kit’no’sat…which we will when we die…then they will not hold a grudge against us.”

“Would they help a neutral or require us to join them?” Jovcho asked.

“They won’t fight our wars for us. We would have to become Star Force.”

“What would that mean?” Liol, the eldest among them, asked.

“They would send an Archon here to remake our race, as they have done with others. We would lose our dominance and have to follow their commands, but once inside their empire we would have our freedom…so long as we do not betray them.”

“Why would they want us in their midst?” Gargara asked. “We would be a threat to them.”

“Would we? They command the Uriti and have survived us for 1300 years. With the Armistice in place, they hold the dominant position in the galaxy if the V’kit’no’sat have truly broken. They do not fear us, but they know what we are capable of. They already possess one V’kit’no’sat race. They will want another in order to harness our potential and add it to their own.”

“This is treason,” Jovcho stated calmly, “but if there is a chance we can survive, and the war with the empire is over, we will do our race and Itaru no harm by surviving under another’s banner. I do not like it, but we have no other options for survival, and I do wish to survive this betrayal.”

“Why do you care what Itaru thinks?” Parwa asked.

“I do not want to survive if we are in the wrong. But if we are not, and Itaru is, I can grudgingly accept walking away from the empire if our duty has been fulfilled. In order to save this system, the Li’vorkrachnika will have to be destroyed, more so than we are capable of doing. If Star Force will intervene and kill them, then we have done our duty. Our corpses can then go where they wish so long as we do not later turn against the empire.”

“And what of our own race?” Liol asked.

“What do you say?” Jovcho said, turning it back on the Elder.

“I say that if they cannot even attempt to come to our aid, then what they think is irrelevant. We have an obligation to the Wass’mat and Zen’zat in this system to protect them. What I question is Star Force being willing to intervene so soon after a costly war.”

“Do not concern yourself with that,” Hanniena scoffed. “We have turned them into warriors. At this point, they are not content to sit and lick their wounds. They will be fighting in the Far Rim soon, if not already. They crave it now, and peace will not easily take that craving from them. Wherever there is a worthy fight, they will be there. Even for us if we make the right request.”

“And how do we do that?” Gargara wondered.

“We have to submit to their dominance and learn their ways. We have to become Star Force. If we are willing they will come. If we are not, they will not. If we pretend, they will know. There can be no subterfuge in this.”

“Will we be interrogated?” Liol asked.

“They cause no physical harm in interrogation, nor mental damage, but they will look to make sure we are not deceiving them.”

“You were not harmed at all after your capture?” Bweto asked.

“Not that they did to me. My pain came from my own failure.”

“Meaning what?” Trevarin asked.

“Star Force uses pain for training, but it has to be self-inflicted. You have to choose to accept their challenges, and through the challenges your torment comes from your own failure. It is how they weed out those who are unworthy, but they force it on no one. Those who do not accept the challenge are allowed to live in unimportant roles. None are harmed, aside from the stagnation. They used stagnation to get me to do what they wanted, and it is a very effective and honorable method. They will not torture in the conventional sense. No dismemberment. No beatings. No mind shreddings.”

“They use stagnation?” Liol said curiously. “Many crave stagnation. How have they not collapsed?”

“Stagnation and isolation are a powerful incentive. When you are offered something to break either of them, you will take it. And when they do not beat you, it is hard to carry spite over the years. They wear you down with time. There was a race of Protovic whom they fought a war with, then imprisoned all of them. Those that came through the training were released into their civilization. Those that did not succumbed to the stagnation and died in their cells. If we ask for membership, we will most likely be treated with greater respect than those who were forcibly annexed.”

“What you speak of is appalling, but far preferable to certain death. You have lived through it, so I ask you…is this better than standing our ground and dying here?”

“Some of us could leave and survive, but I would rather see this world join Star Force and live than leave them to die.”

“As would I. What say the rest of you?”

“If you wish to evacuate, you may do so along with a few others,” Gargara stated evenly, “but I am remaining with the Wass’mat here, and we will be asking Star Force for membership. There is no other choice in light of the empire’s betrayal. If you wish to leave, do so now and head to a single ship. We will need the rest. There will be no conflict between us. Itaru has created this situation. Not those in this chamber. Make your choice now.”

A few telepathic conversations were held in private, then 5 of the 8 Wass’mat in the chamber walked out, leaving only Gargara, Liol, and Hanniena behind.

“The masses will not accept this easily,” Liol warned. “Letting some of them leave would be a mistake.”

“I agree. Let those few go along with their associates, quietly. Hanniena, I need you to…”

“I know. That’s the only reason why I stayed. I do not want to be here.”

“Nor do we, but we have a responsibility to acquit. The others are free of it now, so I do not blame them for leaving.”

“I do,” Liol said angrily, “but it is better to have them gone rather than stay and undermine the transition. If we can survive this, we must fully commit to it. Star Force is not made up of fools. The Rit’ko’sor joined them willingly and have been given respect. We must have that, or there is no chance our people will accept their dominion.”

“I understand,” Hanniena said firmly. “Shall I leave now?”

“Go,” Gargara said with a flick of his head. “Negotiate and bargain whatever you must. If you cannot get their assistance, do not return here to die with us.”

“Shall I take others with me now, so not to waste a ship?”

“Yes. Take who you wish and go, and be quick of it. Their blockade is not tight, but it can easily become so if they anticipate more ships leaving. I suggest you leave at the same time or sooner than the others. I no longer care about them, but you must make it out.”

“Then I will waste no more time here. I have my mission.”

“Our fate rests on your ability to make them believe,” Liol reminded her as she turned.

“I know,” the Wass’mat said, jogging out of the chamber to save time on her way to the nearest spaceport as she made contacts with those she wanted to accompany her via the comm in her armor that she wore in bands around each of her six legs.

Three hours later, 18 Wass’mat and over 400 Zen’zat boarded drop pods and made their way up to a stealth-equipped Kaeper that easily made its way between the gaps in the lizard fleet groups that now massed more than 250,000 vessels, not counting their delivery jumpships that were, like Star Force’s, hiding in deep space safely beyond the potential combat.

Hanniena’s Kaeper took an obscure jumpline to avoid the bottlenecks at the most heavily trafficked ones the lizards were guarding, then she was off through backwater systems enroute to Earth, the closest Star Force outpost and hopefully one with enough ships to help the Wass’mat in time before the lizards overran and exterminated them all.

3

March 13, 4917

Solar System

Earth

Paul-024 flew through the air a couple hundred meters above the Gulf of Mexico, traveling from the southern tip of Florida down to Cuba wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts. Normally February would have been mild weather in the Gulf, but since the V’kit’no’sat had added atmosphere to the planet and thus increased the greenhouse effect a touch, it was now a warm 98 degrees even in winter. The polar ice caps were gone and the planet was green throughout. Even the Sahara desert was gone now, covered in trees and a few V’kit’no’sat cities that hadn’t been removed yet. And Star Force wasn’t planning on changing Earth back, so warm it would stay, for the next few thousand years at least. The snow lovers would have to go to another planet to get their chill on.

Right now Paul was on vacation…sort of. Archons never really had vacations, but with the war over and Star Force retooling before heavily moving into the abandoned Nexus territories to salvage what was left, there was a waiting period while war damage was repaired and new ships were built. And that left the trailblazers with little to do.

6 of them were on Earth now, along with a lot of other Archons and Monarchs as they began recolonization plans for the Devastation Zone. Rebuilding it would take a long, long time but Star Force wasn’t going to delay any more than necessary. Saving those people in need came first, so the majority of the freed up supplies would go to them, but as soon as there was a surplus again…which was a luxury Star Force hadn’t seen in a long time…they were coming here and Earth would be the focal point for the rebuilding.

But that wasn’t why Paul was here. Even though there was now an Armistice, Star Force wasn’t going to count on the V’kit’no’sat honoring it. He didn’t expect them to break it, but he had a sizeable fleet here anyway just in case, as did the 5 additional trailblazers and the other two that were out patrolling the Devastation Zone on the lookout for V’kit’no’sat ships and squatters trying to claim the dead worlds for their own. Star Force still publically laid claim to them, but now that the war was over there were already small expeditions being sent out from various races and corporations trying to get an unauthorized foothold established.

Those were minor problems, and right now Paul was just taking the time to relax and get back into a normal training rhythm. That meant long sessions that passed 30 hours and shorter, more intense workouts that needed to be done in sequence…something that had always been getting interrupted for missions.

At the moment Paul was on a rest period and had been doing some sensory enhancement training in Florida along with a few second gen Archons. He was scheduled to get back into mech training exercises tomorrow and had decided to fly on his own back to Cuba, for the island was one of the few places on the planet that was nearly back to Star Force norms.

The V’kit’no’sat structures were gone and Star Force ones were either already built or under construction, with an army of Kiritak swarming around with their Human counterparts to get the advanced training facilities that Earth had once sported rebuilt and tailored to the now far more extensive capabilities of the Archons and other elite personnel. The civilian population could wait, and there were none on Earth now, nor would be in the near future. They could stay where they were at the moment while Earth got the key infrastructure rebuilt using resources that had previously gone to planetary defenses and critical industry.

That said, Earth still needed more of both. Its planetary shields were decent and globe-spanning, but Paul and the others were going to strengthen them at least 20 times what they were now. Same went for the anti-orbital guns, which were going to be upgraded to Tar’vem’jic being produced in the secret Preema territory colony Star Force had. Now that the war was over the agreement with the somewhat friendly race had not ended. In fact it had been expanded greatly and the construction of new Grid Points was being rushed…as much as one could rush such huge constructs.

The plan was to extend a single line out from the network in The Nexus that already existed. A road that, in the extremely far future, would stretch all the way around the Rim that Star Force now had dominion over, at least as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned. It would connect the worlds that Star Force was inheriting from their former enemy, then have the ability to branch off further rimward to various locations.

It was so ambitious and costly that Paul was surprised the Preema had agreed to it, but they stood to gain immensely from the trade that would result. Star Force was going to build a highway around the galaxy, and the Preema were going to be suppling most of the raw materials for the section in their local region. They’d be hooked in to the current network first, but that wasn’t going to happen for centuries. There were so many links in the chain required, and two constructs at each location minimum, but already there were four constructs partially constructed inside Preema territory and more would follow.

Star Force wouldn’t be providing the raw materials in the near future. That was also part of the deal. They had so much to do, including rebuilding the Devastation Zone, that the initial resource payments would be supplied by the Preema, but once the new colonies got their foothold and started exporting, Star Force would begin to add to the officially titled ‘Hula Hoop.’

But that was a distant project that Star Force was wisely beginning now. For Paul, he had more immediate concerns to worry about, but nothing major now that the war was over. One of the other reasons he was here on Earth was the lizards. When the V’kit’no’sat destroyed them Star Force was going to try and intercept as many evacuation ships as they could so that they couldn’t run away and rebuild somewhere else in the galaxy. The odds of getting them all were slim, but they were going to try and finish what they’d started so long ago.

However, the dramatic increase in the lizards’ technology concerned him. There was no way they could have advanced that far on their own. Even if they had recovered bits and pieces of V’kit’no’sat technology they could not have unlocked the secrets so fast. Star Force had had not only the technology, but the database that explained it, and it had taken them forever to master it. No, the lizards had another race feeding them technology just as the Trinx had, so the sooner they were taken out the better.

Paul wondered how the Templars would respond when the fighting across V’kit’no’sat territory suddenly stopped and they were left alone fighting the V’kit’no’sat. They’d made such a colossal miscalculation is was almost funny, though the thought of so much death took the levity out of it, leaving the cold irony of the situation.

Star Force would do their part to stop the lizards fleeing rimward, but he was glad the V’kit’no’sat were going to be the ones to destroy them. It was long past time their blood thirsty fleets were put to a proper use.

Paul was flying quickly, but not so much that it was exhausting, though he had to use his bioshields to block the wind from his face. One disadvantage of having a slightly thicker atmosphere was more air molecules to push when flying, though the birds liked it. It increased the efficiency of their wings in producing lift, but even they had more wind resistance to fight when moving.

Below him now was nothing but water, but on the horizon ahead he could see a sliver of land and the needle-like buildings reaching up into the sky from it. The sun was near to setting in the west, but even at night it wouldn’t get cold here. He hadn’t worn his armor on purpose, nor even took a commlink. His telepathy had range, but not enough to contact anyone out here. He was, for the first time in forever, completely alone and vulnerable.

And it was refreshing. Paul was essentially superhuman now, but all his combat occurred behind walls of metal and machines. It had been longer than he could remember when he’d been in a non-training fight without his armor or a warship, and feeling the limited air on his body as he flew, sensing the deep water below that could easily kill him if he fell and drowned, or was eaten by a shark or davril, made him feel more alive than he had been in a long time.

He’d gotten so numb to the fighting and the routine of it that he was only now returning to his norm…but his norm was also constantly around people. It had been so long since he’d been out in the raw wilds on his own that he was savoring every moment of this flight and almost wanted to turn to the east and keep going.

The trailblazer had the strength to, but what would be the point? He was traveling to a destination and taking the long way, but it was still a mission…

Paul stopped flying suddenly, coming to a stop and hovering in the air as he let his bioshields down and felt the natural breeze on his skin looking out at the setting sun and the island of Cuba in the distance.

“Damn. I really do need a vacation. I’ve been so focused on holding out forever I forgot how to breathe.”

He took a moment longer to let the situation sink in, then realized what he needed to do.

He needed to go AWOL for a while. Completely out of contact and off the grid. Most of Earth was still barren right now. Vast tracks of forest that even the V’kit’no’sat had not gotten around to colonizing, and it would take centuries for the Star Force cities to return…though this time they were going to keep some of the forests. There wasn’t an overpopulation problem here anymore, so they weren’t going to pack things in so close. There’d be more of a balance that would allow Earth to escape the claustrophobic feel of heavily urbanized worlds, and while it was going to return to being the functional capitol of the empire, it would also be more of a trophy world. A luxury for those allowed to come and live here, much like many of the V’kit’no’sat capitols were.

But right now it was still very raw, and Paul felt an intense need to disappear into it for a while…and if he felt like that, he guessed there were a few other people on the planet that might need the vacation as well.

So he accelerated again, this time faster than before, and headed like a bullet for Cuba, excited more than he’d expected to be, as he went to hunt for the other trailblazers and organize a jailbreak from their responsibilities for a while. There was nothing the second gen and others couldn’t handle now that the war was over, and the only way to truly go on vacation was for no one to know where you were going…or even know that you were gone.

Two days later…

Morgan-063 flew at the head of the 6 trailblazer wedge only a few meters above the treetops. They could have gone higher for a better view, but that wasn’t as much fun as skimming and having to adjust elevation with the terrain. Indiana wasn’t that hilly, especially the central part, but not all the trees were the same height either. There was another abandoned V’kit’no’sat city far to the west and visible as it glinted off the sunlight, but the trailblazers were staying clear of it and any other signs of civilization as they continued their northward trek from Cuba, having covered a lot of ground yesterday and today, and Morgan was waiting for Paul to tell her when they got to the right location.

That occurred 7 minutes later with him telepathically pinging the exact location next to a river, and as one the Archons slowed down their fast flight and hovered in the air over the spot, seeing nothing but trees, trees, and more trees aside from the sliver of water running through them.

“This is it?” Oni-081 asked, floating to Paul’s right.

“Yeah. My house used to be at the base of that hill, right where the water runs now. It must have cut into it over the years.”

“How can you be sure?” Jason-025 asked.

“This spot was burned into my mind long ago, and we never altered the river’s course. It’s the same as it was back when I was born.”

“Did the V’kit’no’sat rip out the house or did we?” Logan-036 asked.

“It was removed a long time ago after Star Force took control of the United States, but the V’kit’no’sat ripped out whatever was here. I wonder what they did with all the rubble?”

“Recycled it, probably,” Morgan commented as they continued to hang in the air, wearing casual clothing and nothing even resembling a uniform, though they all wore small backpacks that looked similar to the book bags Paul had used when he was in high school and the others were at similar juvenile facilities in other countries. “You see a good spot?”

Paul reached out with his Pefbar as far as he could, then pointed down and to the right. “There, but I want a better look first,” he said, flying straight up with the others following after a slight delay. They flew up well over a mile before finding the air thin a bit uncomfortably and get chilly. There they held position, looking out over the trees that now blurred into a green mass beneath them with the river barely visible.

Everywhere they looked it appeared to be a flat forest carpet that reached out until a break occurred where a V’kit’no’sat colony had been. Two were visible from this height, with the second being extremely far away but large enough to show up to the enhanced Archon eyes. Other than those two blemishes, it appeared that Earth was uninhabited and completely raw…which is exactly the experience he’d been going for.

“How many are we going to cut down?” Oni asked.

“A lot,” Paul admitted. “But Earth is home and it shouldn’t be wild once we get fully moved back in.”

“But there is an appeal to this.”

“Agreed…until you reach out and feel the critters eating each other.”

“I’m still surprised so many survived,” Jason added.

“It’s a big planet,” Morgan explained. “And the V’kit’no’sat didn’t bombard all of it like the others.”

“They added some too,” Rafa-080 pointed out. “Especially in the oceans, but there are a few primitive races here that I know weren’t originally on Earth.”

“We brought a few back from other worlds,” Paul said, looking down below his hanging feet as his legs and the rest of his body where Yen’mer particles were located held firmly against the pull of the planet’s gravity. “Everything changes, yet in some way things stay the same. Earth is still home, and this is where I began.”

“Is it?” Oni asked. “The people are gone, the civilization is gone, and this isn’t the same spot in space the Earth was back then.”

“Fair point, but there’s enough to proc memories.”

“And the feelings of separation?”

Paul glanced at her. “You too?”

“The future doesn’t wait for the past, it’s always moving forward. We surf that wave. The wave is our home, not where it crosses. Do you truly feel at home here, or just nostalgic?”

“A little of both. I was born here, within a few miles anyway, and I still don’t know where I came from. This is my first known point, before that lies the mystery. The first point is significant because it’s a glaring reminder we still don’t know what the hell is going on in the universe.”

“We’re here now. We don’t need to know the past. We live in the present, not the past nor the future,” Oni lectured. “But I am curious as well. I sometimes wonder what the V’kit’no’sat think after living a million years.”

“They kill a lot,” Jason offered. “I don’t think that’s driven by enlightenment or nostalgia.”

“They are embracing a part of the chaos,” Rafa explained. “The universe puts us here without instructions or purpose. We just have a little genetic memory and we’re set loose, often in horrific circumstances that we can’t survive. The carnage that ensues is everywhere, and some people choose to embrace it rather than rise above it. The V’kit’no’sat are a mixed bag. Let’s make sure Star Force never devolves to that level.”

“The more people we bring into the fold, the harder it will be,” Logan agreed. “Thankfully we’re not lazy and a like a challenge.”

“It is maddening,” Morgan added. “If you really try and get a feel for it. We normally numb up and do the best we can, but right now, when we have no responsibilities…if you open your mind up it threatens to drive you insane. So much chaos. So much pain and suffering. Loneliness. Confusion. Despair. It’s like the universe is either tormenting us intentionally or just forgot about us entirely.”

“And we have to clean up the mess as best we can,” Jason added. “Not that we can ever win without knowing the objective.”

“That also threatens to drive you insane.”

“Death,” Paul said, quoting an old story, “would be a great adventure.”

“I think I’ll hang around here a bit longer,” Morgan answered. “There’s plenty to explore here.”

“Agreed,” Rafa said as a shadow crossed over them. He looked up, seeing the dark blot of a massive cargo ship in orbit as it briefly occupied the glowing spot in the sky. A few seconds later the sunlight returned, but it was a reminder that Earth was not, in fact, raw wilderness.

“Let’s get down before anyone comes looking for autographs,” Logan said, starting to descend slowly from their aerial viewpoint.

“Ditto,” Jason agreed as the others followed, except Paul. “You coming?”

“Just give me a couple minutes and I’ll join you.”

“It’s your birthplace, not mine. Take as long as you want,” the fellow 2 said, dropping down and leaving the sky solely to Paul.

He floated there for a while, just soaking in the environment and trying not to think. He was so wound up after years of combat, training, and trying to solve the galaxy’s problems that not thinking was hard. It took a conscious effort to slow down and relax, and it was something that all of them had made considerable progress on the past two days, but they still had a way to go to fully defrag…and they wouldn’t know how much was left until they got through it, for it operated like a fog on the mind that you couldn’t see more than 3 inches through.

But that fog was lifting and Paul was feeling more and more like his old self, and so were the others. This vacation had been spur of the moment, but it was turning out to be a very good thing. Even superhumans needed some time off every millennia or so.

“Hello, Indiana,” he whispered, looking out at the sea of trees, some of which were extremely tall. “You really need to shave.”

4

Jason was laying on the forest floor, his head cushioned on the crudely rolled up sleeping sleeve as an impromptu pillow as he stared at the campfire just past his feet. The sun had gone down a couple hours ago and their tent was set up to the far left between two thick trees in the small clearing they’d had to make, for there was scrub brush everywhere even a little sunlight got through the trees.

A little bioplasma here and there had solved that problem, giving the six of them a comfortable campsite about 15 meters away from the shallow river. Past Jason’s feet and the campfire was Oni leaning against a tree trunk, then behind her was the water and the opening in the canopy it provided…which was just enough to see a bit of stars through.

“I didn’t realize doing nothing could be so tiring,” Logan commented as the six of them were all lounging in various fashions around the campfire, which was completely unnecessary given the mild temperatures, heated tent, and ample artificial lighting they’d brought with them, but the trailblazers were all old enough to remember when campfires had been commonly used, and it felt appropriate to make one now…especially since they could light one using nothing but the palm of their hands.

“I don’t know about you guys, but that’s the longest I’ve ever flown,” Rafa commented. “Beat my old record by 3 hours.”

“Same here,” Paul added. “Never had enough time to go that far before. My body is tingling all over. Feels good…”

“Slackers,” Morgan said with a smirk. “I’ve gone 18 hours straight before.”

The other five looked at her curiously, then Oni shook her head. “Should have expected that.”

“Ginsi went 17,” Morgan explained. “Couldn’t let her keep the record.”

“Can you still take her?” Jason asked.

“Barely. She’s stronger and faster, but I know her fighting style well enough to predict most of it. I’ve also got two inches and 12 pounds on her.”

“I’d like to see her go up against Kara,” Paul commented. “Any bets?”

“Ginsi would take her,” Morgan said firmly. “She’s the better tactician.”

“You taught her well,” Logan noted.

“I didn’t teach her everything,” Morgan declared with a humorless smile. “She’s not better than us. She’s just focused more of her training in one area. Makes her a good commando, but a poor Archon.”

“Maybe we should do something about that,” Rafa floated.

“I think we should,” Oni said pensively. “We’re all multi-taskers by nature. Not all of the others are, and forcing them into fixed roles won’t work either. I think we need a branch function.”

“To what end?” Morgan asked. “Even with all the losses we’ve taken, Star Force is getting huge. Ginsi wants to be the best hand to hand fighter, she wants to be the best of the best, but you can only do that as an Archon. Arc Knights and Arc Commandos aren’t suited for her. They’re too one dimensional, yet she still wants to focus on her skills. She doesn’t really fit anywhere.”

“Same with the Twins,” Jason added. “Archons are meant to be soloists as a base, but those two need each other to really shine. I think we need more Archon options when you get to the higher ranks. The bottom ones are solid and what bind us all together, but the upper levels aren’t working the best for everyone.”

“Work in progress,” Oni noted. “We’ve got some big decisions to make for ourselves too.”

“I’m staying as is,” Paul said, drawing some odd looks. Advancement was the lifeblood of the Archons and stagnation was essentially treason. “I’m not going to lose any psionics to extend others. We’re going to hit limits no matter what we do unless we keep increasing our size, and I like mine the way it is. The V’kit’no’sat will always be stronger. There’s no way we can get our cranium size up to Era’tran levels, so this is one area that I’m not going to delve into the way Aaron has.”

“Our empire aside,” Morgan said, being more candid with her brothers and sisters than she’d had with anyone for centuries, “what do we do when we hit growth limits? My entire life has been based on improving, and not being able to scares the shit out of me. I feel like we’re only a few hundred years away from losing our path, and I’m not going to vicariously live through the younger generations retreading the same path we’ve already walked. Where do we go from here?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it,” Logan said with a frown. “The empire has always taken up so much time, but I see your point. Something tells me we will be able to keep advancing, someway, somehow, because that’s the way the universe designed us. I don’t truly believe we’re fixed to plateaus. Yet cranium size is there staring us in the face. I’m mixed on this, but I think we’ll eventually find a way forward.”

“But what about the others?” Oni asked. “Most will never reach our level. We need to give them options.”

“Draw the line at Mage,” Paul said. “Don’t touch anything before that.”

“Then let them specialize after that?” Jason wondered. “Special ranks if they want to go a different way?”

“Not ranks, positions,” Rafa corrected. “Special roles based off preferences more than skills. The larger our ranks grow, the less multi-tasking we need to be. Well, others I mean. We’ll always need a core of pure Archons.”

“Ginsi is a Brawler then,” Morgan coined.

“Scouts too,” Jason added. “Some want to go beyond the empire and explore more than train. If they can get to Mage, then they’ve learned enough. We can keep the forever training to ourselves.”

“To what end?” Oni asked. “Now that I’ve got a chance to think about it, and we don’t have V’kit’no’sat breathing down our necks, what do we do when we finish? Building an empire is something we’re perfect for, but what then? Monarchs can maintain, but we go where the need is. I feel we’re not built for peace. We’re meant to go for the next challenge. So what do we do if we eventually win? Beyond the normal problems that others can usually solve if they’re in the right place at the right time.”

“That’s a good question, Oni,” Paul said ominously. “I think that’s what’s bothering Morgan too. Once we win something, we can’t just stop. We have to move on to the next challenge. We can’t be adults and defer to the next generation. We’re forever kids climbing the ladder, and the end of the ladder is…unacceptable.”

“Don’t worry,” Logan assured them. “The universe is too large to ever fully know. We’ll never run out of challenges.”

“I think we need to seek them out together,” Rafa cautioned. “I think there’s going to come a point where we’re going to get lost in this monster we’ve created and be lured into a doldrum.”

“So we need to start taking on apprentices again?” Paul asked.

“Yeah we do, but I’m talking long term. Eventually I think we need to group up, back like when we were in basic training. We haven’t had that luxury recently, but down the road I think we’ll have to…or we’ll be hammering on plateaus we can’t break through alone.”

“You guys worry too much,” Logan dismissed. “Some people wonder about the purpose of life. How we began, why we’re here. Me, I just accept the fact that I am here and I’m supposed to be a badass. Being me is the objective, and right now I’ve got plenty to do.”

“To do for what purpose?” Morgan asked. “We instinctively react to injustice, but beyond that, what’s the point? I feel we’re missing something.”

“We’re defaultly designed to advance,” Paul said. “We know we’re supposed to. It’s our driving purpose. The idea of that ceasing to exist by hitting the peak improvement is problematic. But I’m with Logan. The answers are there, we just have to find them. I mean look at me. I used to live here, and compared to now I knew nothing then. There were a lot of dead ends I faced, thinking there was nothing more beyond. Me being here, now, is proof that life is full of mirages. The fact that we’re even concerned about this is proof that there is something more. If not, we wouldn’t care.”

“You don’t feel it then?” Morgan asked. “This threat in our personal futures. Aaron faced it already and found a way to postpone it, but I feel something worse is waiting for us. The others will probably never reach it, but we will.”

“You seem rattled,” Logan noted. “That’s not like you.”

“I suppose I am,” she admitted. “My entire life has been a quest. I don’t ever want it to end. If it did, my life would be pointless.”

“Is this the price of victory?” Rafa wondered. “The V’kit’no’sat have been our driving enemy for our entire lives since joining Star Force. Now the war is over. We’ve still got two worse enemies out there, at the minimum, but I feel it too. The constant, never-ending threat is now gone…and I’m not liking it either.”

“We’re trailblazers,” Jason summed up. “We push through the wilderness and leave a trail behind for others to follow. But it’s not about the others for us. It’s a critical function we provide, but that’s not really why we do it, do we? Why do we do it?”

“The adventure,” Paul admitted. “The challenge. We can’t stand still. We have to constantly be moving.”

“At first we learned from others…long, long ago. Since then we’ve been figuring things out for ourselves. If we suddenly came into contact with another race, a superior race. A better race. One that offered to teach us. What would we do?”

“Accept,” Oni answered. “I’d be there in a heartbeat. And now that you ask, that surprises me.”

“Why?” Paul asked.

“I thought Star Force was my home. But if what Logan said actually happened, I’d leave it eagerly. Why would I want to do that?”

“We want to be the best,” Morgan said pithily. “We always have.”

“It’s a call to duty,” Jason said as an epiphany hit him. “We don’t really want to rule, we want to serve in a war that we can’t fully understand. It’s there, we can feel it, but it wasn’t the V’kit’no’sat. I’d say it was good versus evil but that falls hollow. It’s something else at the periphery that I can’t quite latch onto. Without that war I’d feel like Morgan does. Pointless. Useless. Like a civie.”

Paul chuckled at that, knowing what he meant. “You get the feeling that we’re not supposed to be the old guys instructing others. We’re supposed to be the younglings learning as fast as we can.”

“And we were left clues,” Oni added. “Genetic memories driving us onward towards the horizon. Always seeking what is beyond.”

“Exactly,” Morgan agreed, feeling like a block in her mind had just dissipated. “Why didn’t I see that?”

“You just proved my point,” Rafa emphasized. “We work well alone, but we figure things out much quicker bouncing ideas off each other. For the bigger challenges, we have to group up. We’re not there yet. We still got a lot of house cleaning and empire building to do, but when the time comes, we have to face this together.”

“Is this why all the mythical wise ones eventually go into self-imposed exile?” Oni wondered.

“As we are right now?” Logan echoed.

“When we’re together we’re peers, not masters moving at the pace of the apprentices,” Paul pointed out. “We’re being held back by more than just the war.”

“So we need to…” Oni said, interrupted by a telepathic ping from the tent.

Morgan moaned, then all eyes focused on her.

“You didn’t…” Oni said accusingly.

“I told them only in an emergency,” she said, lifting a tiny comm out of her pack and floating it through the air, out of the tent, and into her hand.

“Traitor,” Paul mumbled as she put it to her ear.

“Yes?” Morgan said, then fell silent as she listened. Paul could almost make out some of the words, but the din of the river and chirping frogs was too much for even his advanced hearing to overcome.

“Stand by,” Morgan said, looking at The Admiral. “A V’kit’no’sat ship has arrived. They want to talk.”

“About?” Jason asked.

“The lizards are hammering systems near us and the V’kit’no’sat are not sending reinforcements. They’re leaving systems to die, and a Wass’mat one wants to discuss membership in Star Force.”

Paul rolled his eyes, leaning his head back then covering his face with his hands. “Fine, you win.”

“She usually does,” Logan pointed out. “Good call, Morgan.”

“Send a dropship to pick us up,” she said into the headset, then turned it off and threw it back towards the tent…where it curved and landed neatly back inside her pack. “Sorry, Paul. We couldn’t all be completely out of communication.”

“Looks like our future will have to wait. The present calls,” Jason said as he sat up.

“Next time we leave Logan behind to mind the store,” Paul quipped.

“Agreed,” Oni said humorously as she jumped to her feet.

“Why me?” he protested.

“You’re the badass,” Morgan reminded him as she stood.

“I’ll pack up,” Jason offered, looking at Paul. “If it’s lizards, you probably want to call Thrawn.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, telekinetically reaching into Morgan’s pack and pulling her comm back out and flying it to him. “We’ll table this discussion for later. Looks like we’ve got some more bad guys to kill first.”

5

March 17, 4917

Pooovalla System (H’kar territory, Rim Region)

Ratchniva

Thrawn was sleeping onboard his flagship when a chime woke him. He pulled his head up from the curl that Paladin preferred with their tails wrapping around to touch near their nose. Their bodies were so lithe, the position that would have seen Humans breaking their spine was actually comfortable for them, and Star Force had fashioned unique bed pods for them that had a warming feature built into it that replaced traditional blankets.

The Supreme Viceroy looked to the small notification device beside his bed, then jolted upright when he saw the red icon that represented the trailblazers. That meant this wasn’t a notification from the bridge, or Arch Duke Tevvaline, whose world he was currently orbiting as his fleet continued to make repairs while guarding the ‘safe’ border that Thrawn did not quite consider so.

He half stood up and crawled to the device, pressing the activation button and seeing a text message appear in hologram.

Combat with lizards imminent. Rescue mission to the Ohson System. Will arrive before you do. I need you to hold and defend the system afterwards. Get here fast.

The message was marked as coming from Paul-024, though it didn’t come through normal channels. That was odd, but he didn’t doubt the content. The system name, however, he did not recognize.

Thrawn fully pulled himself out of bed and over to a proper terminal, then looked up the information from the ship’s database…which prompted a perplexed look on his face. The Ohson System was a V’kit’no’sat one, and not on the list of worlds to be ceded to Star Force as part of the Armistice. It was slightly coreward of that, in the Tamprani Region, meaning it was close to Star Force territory but still about 8 weeks away from his current position in H’kar territory.

Earth was closer, which was where Paul was last noted as being, and that meant Thrawn was already 2 weeks behind in travel time. It would be shorter than that if he took the Grid Points, but he couldn’t with his fleet. There weren’t enough mag drive transports available on short notice, so they were going to have to make their way across the Devastation Zone just to get to Earth, and from there further coreward.

Actually, he could save some time by bypassing Earth, and he hoped a subsequent message would follow explaining more, but he couldn’t wait too long and the relay grid in the Devastation Zone was virtually non-existent. A limited line to Earth had been reestablished using mobile relays until permanent ones could be rebuilt, but that meant everywhere else where there would have originally been a system with a relay that he could tap into enroute was now dead to the grid.

So if a message didn’t come in from Paul soon, he was going to have to go straight to Ohson and find out in person what was going on…and every minute he wasted could have implications.

Thrawn activated the comm and reached the bridge, issuing orders before he got there to save a little more time…

“Stay,” the H’kar tech said, tapping the table for emphasis as he set his cards down and looked to his right at another H’kar. There were five of them at the table along with a Paladin technomage, their version of a tech but with extra abilities that the H’kar had not been granted. Namely the psionics Pefbar, Lachka, and Rensiek.

The H’kar were still sore about that, as were many other techs in other races, but HABDX-28894 had explained to them that if any Paladin wished to leave for civilian life they’d have to give up the psionics. Or rather a block would be installed rather than the tissue being removed, so if they chose to reenter service they would be able to reclaim their abilities without having to start from scratch again. It was said that Paladin civilians were rarer than rare, but there were a few exceptions.

Those exceptions left Paladin worlds, for there was no civilian presence there. They made their way into Axius or wherever else would take them, and it was hard to ever get to talk to a Paladin in service, with this technomage being an exception. He was older than the others, having survived over 900 years, and in that time he’d loosened up enough to spend his off duty hours exploring and interacting with other races…and in this case, finding card games to play with other techs.

And he was good at it. Good enough that there was concern he was somehow using his Pefbar to cheat and look at their cards, but it had long been said that Pefbar couldn’t see colors, only physical objects, and unless there was a raised portion on the cards they would just look flat to Pefbar view.

The H’kar had to take the word of those with it, for only a few H’kar had ever been granted the ability and those were Mavericks and Monarchs, who rarely interacted with the lower ranks. HABDX was the first these techs had ever directly talked to who had psionics, and he’d been more free with information than they’d expected.

“Raise 20,” the Paladin said, flicking a holographic chip into the holographic container in the center of the table.

“Out,” another H’kar said, putting his real cards face down on the table, for only the scoring metrics were holographic.

Before the next player could respond, a small device strapped to the left wrist of the Paladin sounded a repetitive alarm.

“What is that?” a H’kar asked.

“I have to go,” the Paladin said, standing up and dropping his cards on the table face up. “We are called to battle.”

“Battle?” the others said, standing up in a panic. “What are you talking about?”

“I am summoned to my ship,” he said heading for the door. “If I do not get there in time I will be left behind. This sound,” he said, touching the device and silencing the alarm as he walked, “says the summons comes from a trailblazer, and they are calling us to war. I must go,” he said, running out the door and disappearing from view.

“I thought the war was over?” one of the H’kar said, looking at the others.

“Why are we not getting an alarm?”

“Maybe the fighting isn’t here. Maybe the Paladin are being called to another system.”

“I knew it was too good to last. The V’kit’no’sat went back on their word, I guarantee you that.”

“So much for the rebuilding,” another said, throwing his cards on the table.

“Let’s see if we can find someone who knows what’s going on and figure out how much time we have left before our shore leave is canceled…”

HABDX-28894 ran out of the H’kar building on the planet’s surface and headed on foot towards the nearest pod car station, for the H’kar were not the best runners and had railways built on the side of their buildings high above their streets that carried passengers around the city at far faster pace than the pedestrians could manage.

Despite his being a tech, the Paladin basic physiology was much faster than that of the H’kar and he found himself having to zig zag between the pedestrians until he got to the base of one of the vertical tube clusters. Fortunately he only had to wait a few seconds for one to open up, then he jumped inside the chamber large enough for 5 or 6 H’kar and sealed himself in alone, upsetting the H’kar behind him that he’d pushed his way past.

He input his destination onto the navigation panel and the pod lifted up through the clear tubes for about 40 meters, then hit open air as it transitioned to one of the many lateral rails that were inset into the buildings and jumped the gaps between them. Once his was latched on, it accelerated rapidly with buildings passing by the clear pod every few seconds on his way to the nearby spaceport that his comm device was signaling him to get to.

All the Paladin wore the devices when they were off ship, allowing the captain to recall the crew and guide them to the closest pickup points. HABDX actually got to the spaceport just as the Paladin dropship was descending through the sky nearby, with the pod stopping and descending through another set of tubes as the ship made final approach and he lost sight of it.

The Paladin ran out, pushing by the H’kar outside and attracting the attention of the security guards at the entrance to the spaceport. Rather than stopping him they cleared a path, yelling at him and another Paladin a few steps ahead and further to the right to move through. Apparently the fleet had contacted the spaceport ahead of them and explained the urgency, otherwise he would have had to wait more than half an hour to get through this crowded checkpoint.

More Paladin were arriving behind him, but he was one of the first two out onto the landing pad as the dropship opened its boarding ramp a mere 8 seconds before HABDX’s feet hit it. He and the others ran in and to the waiting seats wordlessly. Other races might talk nervously, but Paladin didn’t. They all knew their duty, and unless it required them to talk they would sit silent and await orders…which is exactly what he did as a little more than half the seats were filled before the ramp pulled back in and they took off.

The dropship headed straight up, being given priority clearance and cutting through all the traffic of the H’kar civilian ships as they headed up to the Paladin jumpships along with a scattering of other dropships doing the same. Fortunately most Paladin crews stayed onboard, even during peacetime, so they didn’t have a lot of people to recover, but some of their ships were still damaged and sitting inside H’kar shipyard slips.

But they were moving too, casting off the repair scaffolding probably faster than the H’kar wanted. When the trailblazers called, no Paladin wanted to be left behind, and fortunately only one jumpship had been destroyed in this fleet during combat, leaving the rest of the damaged ones operational even before repairs had begun. That meant they were better off now than before, even if they still had some visible holes in their massive hulls.

Before the dropship docked, he could see fleets of drones around the damaged jumpships like bees around a hive as they raced to dock in the slots and refill, with his jumpship already being fully loaded, as was standard. Paladin ships did not release drones unless there was a need, so they could be moved immediately when orders came. Only the damaged ones and those on patrol had their drones missing, and right now they were frantically trying to get them onboard as the majority of the fleet was already making microjumps out.

That meant the combat wasn’t at this planet, at least, and once HABDX got off the dropship and back into the crew rotation he learned the truth. Star Force wasn’t under attack. The V’kit’no’sat were and they were being called to a rescue mission. A rescue mission that would see them fighting the lizards to save a V’kit’no’sat world.

The idea of saving the V’kit’no’sat meant the Armistice hadn’t been broken, but coming to the rescue of the enemy didn’t feel right. However, the inclusion of the lizards made everything crystal clear. The V’kit’no’sat might be Star Force’s arch nemesis, but to the Paladin there was one of higher priority to them, and that was the lizards. They were their evil twin, and the meaning of their relationship had been encoded in his genetic memory.

If the trailblazers were calling on them to fight the lizards, then there could be no more important mission for a Paladin. This fight was personal, despite HABDX never having had any contact with them. He was Paladin, and Paladin had a group memory from birth, a portion of which had come directly from the Supreme Viceroy who had once been a lizard before being saved by the trailblazers.

HABDX also knew the method of that rescue had most likely been safeguarded against by the Templars, meaning the only freedom the Paladin could offer the lizards was through their deaths…and better it be in combat than the lizards suiciding when captured.

The Paladin hated the lizards, because they were the sworn enemy of Star Force, because they operated opposite the loyalty and duty the Paladin lived and breathed, and because the lizards who had begun the Paladin had been left to die in combat against Star Force while the Templars ran. Paladin understood dying for their duty, but they were Star Force and that had to fall inside the lines of trying to save each other. The lizards threw away their lives…HABDX could remember that vividly…and it was only because their enemy at the time had chosen to save them were they still here.

The lizards were in the wrong, his people betrayed by the Templars and twisted into evil, and now that he was going to have a chance to get some payback, HABDX was just as eager as the others to get out of H’kar territory and into whatever battle the trailblazers were calling them to.

Add to that the fact that the Paladin had never fought the lizards before, and this mission took on historic meaning as well as procing their professional pride. Star Force had taken the discarded enemy soldiers and transformed them into something better. Something that fought for stability and uplifting the galaxy rather than chaos and destruction. And it was time to prove their superiority over their evil doppelgangers.

Thrawn had given his fleet in this system 3 hours to gather, and he was pleased to see that most of them had reported ready to jump out within 2. A few of the ships in the yard had taken longer, but all had transitioned with nearly full loads of drones to the stellar jumppoint as five other fleets along the border were doing likewise on Thrawn’s order. Kara wasn’t here, so it was up to him to respond as soon as possible, but he sent her a message that would take days to reach her in the Paladin Zone informing her of what ships he was taking and recommended her sending others to replace them just in case the border would come under attack in his absence.

The Arch Duke had contacted him previously, asking what the hell was going on, for apparently the message had come to Thrawn only. He took a small measure of pride in the fact that Paul hadn’t bothered to tell anyone else, even an Arch Duke, but he explained the situation to the Monarch none the less and she’d quickly cleared orbital routes to expedite his fleet’s departure from the planets.

Three hours might have seemed extremely fast to begin leaving the system, but it was just more time added to how far behind the Paladin were to whatever fleets Paul was taking. Most of those in the Devastation Zone were at Earth or the Uriti Preserve, plus the roaming ones on patrol. He had no idea what strength level the lizards were at now, for they hadn’t done much surveillance on them since the war with the V’kit’no’sat initially began, but they’d managed a few scouts over the centuries and they knew their tech level had advanced considerably, as had their numbers.

The Skarrons were gone now. Probably completely eradicated, though without a serious and comprehensive scouting campaign there was no way to know for sure, but everywhere they had looked the Skarron worlds were now full of lizards, and if they were choosing combat against the V’kit’no’sat and threatening to take their worlds, against their technology, then Thrawn wasn’t going to expect an easy fight.

In his opinion this fight was long overdue. Star Force had let the lizards go coreward because they couldn’t risk exposing their existence to the V’kit’no’sat. Since then things had greatly changed, and while a lot of Star Force was beat up from the war, the Paladin were ready and eager to fight. They always were. It was one of the primary reasons they existed.

And Paul knew that, which was why Thrawn was very grateful that the trailblazer was calling on him, despite the fact that the Paladin were the closest reinforcements along with the H’kar, but he’d checked and the H’kar hadn’t been summoned. In the past Paul had said he didn’t want the Paladin fighting the lizards, for the confliction that might ensue, but the Paladin were well past that point now and they would do their duty without hesitation. The lizards were not Thrawn’s people. They were slaves, at best, and slaves he couldn’t free now that the Templars had altered the biochemistry that had allowed him to assume command over the others.

The few genetic samples retrieved by the scouts had confirmed this, along with a significant alteration in other areas. These lizards were not the same as his had been, and if any of those still existed they would be few in number, for lizards did not live long when engaged in combat. His Paladin, on the other hand, were another matter entirely.

He privately wished he could go on a campaign of conquest, claiming the lizards as his own as he once had, but without the built in acceptance of his authority he knew they’d never turn. He knew it in a way that even the trailblazers did not. He did not like to admit defeat, but he knew that short of rewriting their mental code there was no way to save them. And to do that would essentially destroy them. They might live, but without their genetic coding guiding them the lizards and Paladin would go berserk. The trailblazers had tried it on some of their prisoners, thinking it would be better than them killing themselves, but they only turned into zombies, for Star Force didn’t have the ability to do more than block their programing at the time.

Since then they’d come much further, experimenting on some Paladin to see what happened when they were ‘freed’ from the mental order. They’d been born without the coding, and had quickly needed to be altered to include it, for they could not function at all. Even when picking and choosing how much to include, it just wasn’t possible to grow an adult with a ‘clean slate,’ and Paladin biology no longer included a means to reproduce infants, if it ever had.

Star Force had tried to undo the coding in adults, with disastrous effects. Some had lashed out trying to kill everything around them, others had killed themselves…only to be regenerated and have their coding restored. For whatever reason the lizards/Paladin were hard wired to a communal genetic memory, and there was no way to free them from it…so the trailblazers had chosen to turn it into an advantage while minimizing the downsides.

Thrawn was proud of what the Paladin had become, but he knew his own ascension to individuality had come at a heavy price that the others could not pay. If not for Paul and the trailblazers he never would have learned the truth…for he had to learn it, rather than being told it. That was a distinction lost on the others, and sometimes he felt he was the only Paladin truly awake and free…which meant he had to use that freedom to guide the others. They relied on him more than even the Archons, and if the Paladin were to truly earn their place in Star Force, they had to be able to operate independently without the Archons carrying them on every occasion.

The Paladin were far from that, and Thrawn feared they never would reach that point without the necessary experience that their genetic memory effectively blocked. He’d discussed some type of training program with the 2s to recreate what he went through, but they’d nixed that. Thrawn had to go through what he went through because the genetic memory was pushing him in the wrong direction. Now that it had been altered to bring them into the light, they would wait and watch for those curious enough to work their way free of it on their own rather than trying to force them out.

And they were still waiting. Many had made progress, but none had made it all the way. Going with what they were instinctually driven to do was too easy and too comfortable. No one wanted to completely break free, and Thrawn knew that only when they did would they gain the skills needed to truly lead the Paladin.

Perhaps the Paladin were not meant to ascend to that level. Perhaps it would undo their strength if it did. That put Thrawn in a solitary position. He existed because he had been in the transition, and as Paul had said, he’d been curious enough to choose to look after considerable pushing. If someone was not curious, the pushing would not matter. And he knew that was true for nearly all of his people.

And with the lizard genetic memories taking them the other way, he knew he wasn’t going to find any that could work their way out of it. If there were, they would have been executed long ago.

Gruesome work was ahead, but it had to be done and he knew the Paladin wouldn’t hesitate. Neither would the Archons, but only because they had exhausted all other possibilities. The Paladin simply would because they had been instructed to, and that worried Thrawn. So long as the reigns of the Paladin remained in the right hands things would be fine, but if someone altered them the Paladin wouldn’t care. They’d mindlessly follow orders just like the lizards. Age might temper that a bit, and the Paladin’s longevity was something to explore in that regard, but Thrawn suspected the truth.

The trailblazers had pulled him out of the trap that the lizards were, yet they were unable to do the same for others. Rather they had taken the enslavement and turned it into structure that would enhance and protect the Paladin, but they would never be free. Their greatest strength was also their greatest hindrance. Thrawn, for whatever reason, had been given the advantages of both, and that was why he thought Paul felt confident enough to call him to this fight.

And he would kill every lizard he could find. Not because he wanted to, but because he knew, as Paul did, that there was no other feasible way to deal with them. They had to be exterminated, and Thrawn hoped this would be the beginning of their end, either at Star Force’s hands or trodden under the heavy foot of the V’kit’no’sat.

But either way, it had to be done, and it was his responsibility more than anyone’s to see that it was.

6

May 2, 4917

Unnamed System (Tamprani Region)

Stellar Orbit

Paul was onboard the Excalibur two jumps away from the Ohson System and a few minutes away from entry into another uninhabited pass-through when he got a warning signal from one of the Ma’kri scout ships sent ahead of the main fleet. They had arrived, coming out of their jumps and reporting back on the way ahead via hyper-compressed, brief messages due to the nature of the signal being sent and the relative speeds involved in their reception.

But it was enough to get vital information back to the fleet, and it was signaling that there was a large lizard fleet in the system ahead, but they were not blockading the incoming jumppoint. They were pooled around the star in what appeared to be a holding pattern…and there were a lot of them. Upwards of 60,000 jumpships.

“Damn it,” Paul whispered to himself from the command nexus where we was waiting. He’d had a feeling they’d run into them before they arrived, and now he had a choice to make. Fight here and now or press on to the target system, and he knew it had to be the latter. The longer they were delayed, the less Wass’mat there would be alive to rescue.

With a thought he sent out orders to the other ships in line, with the Excalibur being 18th and only a few seconds away from the head of the convoy. The other trailblazers were further back, staggered within the 34,833 jumpships that they’d stolen away from Earth defense. They’d left some ships there so not to rely entirely on planetary defenses, but the bulk of their fleets were now behind Paul and creeping their way into V’kit’no’sat territory like a line of ants, spread out across lightyears as they jumped from star to star.

If the lizards had been sitting on their incoming jumpline it would have been a problem, but they had enough play with this star to come out a bit early in middle orbit and give them at least half an hour before the first of the lizard fleet could get to them.

That wouldn’t be enough time for their entire fleet to arrive, so if the lizards wanted a fight they could start one, but Paul didn’t intend to stick around to finish it.

He heard the battle alarm sound, though he hadn’t initiated it. Admiral Peterson, a new appointment to Paul’s command ship, had initiated it when he’d reviewed the status and Paul’s orders. That was typical, for while Paul was in charge of everything, the more others could take off his hands the better, and alerting the crew to battle was something the Captain or Admiral had the responsibility for.

Paul had 1 minute and 32 seconds left, due to the fact that the signals coming from the Ma’kri were only so strong and the further they traveled the more they weakened. So even if they had gotten to the system a day ahead of time, they couldn’t have sent a signal much further than they were now without bringing a full-fledged comm ship with an interstellar relay…and one of those big ass ships wasn’t something you snuck into a system to have a look around with.

But a minute and change was more than Paul needed, and by the time the Excalibur jumped into the system he had already sent messages to the other trailblazers and informed his leading ships how he wanted them to exit. They were not going to hold position and screen for the others. They were going to move, splitting up and fanning out across the system to disguise their intent and see how the lizards would respond.

And that’s exactly what happened when the massive blue shift ended and the light of the yellow star shrunk back down to normal intensity levels. He could see his other jumpships moving off and spewing drones as they went into flocks that followed along with much greater ease as the big ships began recharging their capacitors so they could execute large jumps again. They had a little charge left, enough to maneuver, but not enough to leave the system or make an emergency microjump. They’d nearly drained them braking extra hard to come out of the jumps earlier in this system than planned, but the capacitors recharged quickly and they wouldn’t need to make a full jump for hours to come…plenty of time to get them back to 100% even if they had to do some evasive maneuvering in the meantime.

As for the drones, they didn’t have the larger engines and capacitors needed for interstellar jumps, nor the necessary navigation systems. They were lighter, had larger power cores that fed the required energy directly to systems and required only a small capacitor for big microjumps. They were also denser, pound for pound, because they weren’t carriers, but they were still faster insystem until the jumpships got enough power back to make some massive maneuvers, then the drones would be turtles in comparison.

The Excalibur came out and continued heading directly towards the star for a few minutes, then slowed to a stop and held position as his fleet continued to spread out behind him to various additional holding points. The other trailblazer fleets were behind his, meaning all these first ships he was used to working with, and they were used to The Admiral’s predictable unpredictability.

Paul just sat and waited while the sensor signals bouncing off his ships eventually made their way to the lizards. He could see them long before they could see him, for the light bouncing off them had already traveled out to middle orbit. They could have moved since then, but he at least had some idea of where they were, and it took some time before the lizard fleet got caught on to their arrival here.

Paul noted that the lizards were receiving additional ships as well, from a jumpline a third of the way around the star. He couldn’t see any outgoing jumplines, though it was possible there could be one directly opposite the star. He guessed they were waiting here until more had arrived or they received a courier with attack orders, but they were still in the way and he doubted they were going to allow him to simply go around them.

“Alright you guys,” Paul said quietly. “We haven’t fought in a long time, so how are you going to play this? You’re stronger now, but so are we. You’ve laid off us all this time. Do you have orders for that or were you just busy with the Skarrons? Come on, show me your cards, you bastards.”

Paul waited until he knew that the sensor bounces from the lizards would have gotten back to them…but they didn’t move. They didn’t come after the fleet, nor did they even reposition from their holding orbits. They just sat there as if they didn’t know the Star Force ships had arrived.

V’kit’no’sat ships were somewhat sensor-eating, meaning lesser races couldn’t detect them at range. Star Force had incorporated a bit of that into their hulls, and the fleet wasn’t running with IDF active, so Paul had them light up their beacons, meaning that even if the lizard sensors were somehow not good enough to pick them up, the identification beacons would not be missed and would tell everyone watching exactly who these newly arriving ships belonged to.

But minutes later when those signals would have reached them and the return bounces got back to Paul’s fleet, there was still no response. The lizards were not reacting at all.

“Playing it cool, huh? Or just waiting to see if we have a Uriti before you attack?” he said as more and more Star Force ships arrived and spread out to 18 different rally points too far away from each other to assist in combat. Paul wanted them really spread out, and it looked like the lizards were not going to knee jerk attack any of them. In the past they would have, throwing themselves at one of the smaller groups and trying to overwhelm it or heading straight to the jumppoint and trying to hit the incoming ships before they could launch their drones.

But no…this was different. They had orders. There was no other way they would just be sitting there when Star Force was arriving into the system. So what was the game? Attack the V’kit’no’sat and not piss off Star Force at the same time? Hope that Star Force wouldn’t resume the war against the lizards now that they had an Armistice with the V’kit’no’sat? Or did they not know that yet?

It was possible they didn’t, despite it being news amongst many races beyond Star Force, but for whatever reason the lizards were just ignoring Paul’s fleet…and he wasn’t about to have that.

“Jason, you have fleet command,” he said, recording and transmitting a message, for his friend hadn’t yet arrived out of his jump. “I’m going to go poke them with a stick.”

He informed the rest of the ships of the transfer, then headed the Excalibur in towards the star and the waiting lizard fleet, getting better sensor readings the closer he got. He wanted to see if they would react, but he also wanted as much updated reconnaissance on their ships as he could get before they went into battle here or in the Ohson System.

In he crept in his massive, donut-shaped command ship, and still the lizards did not budge. He got all the way to low stellar orbit and only 8,000 miles away before he held station and just looked at them, scanning intently as they floated like sleeping fish with all their cruisers tucked neatly into the hulls of the jumpships that were even larger than the Excalibur.

“Hello there,” he said through the comm and translated into Li’vorkrachnika. He could read their language fairly well, but his pronunciations were crap and it was easier to let the translation program handle it. “I am Archon Paul-024, commander of the Star Force fleet now entering this system. I find it odd you are not moving to engage us, given that we are still in a state of war. If there is a reason I shouldn’t destroy you here and now, please state it. I am very curious as to why you think we are not worth engaging at our jumppoint.”

No response came for more than 15 minutes, then the image of a mastermind appeared in holo before him…but it didn’t look right. Paul could see the similarity, but the physiology had been altered. Still green as green could be, but there were armor patches and a few other oddities on its skin. Also, its eyes were smaller, its claws longer, and many subtle changes that caused Paul to flinch. The lizards did not alter their variants. They created new ones when the need arose and retired the old designs. They didn’t upgrade existing ones, and the mastermind body had remained unchanged since it was created long, long ago, with only coding changes and other small internal improvements made over the years.

“We are not here for you, Star Force. We are engaged in a war against your enemy. Combat between us would be a mutual disadvantage. Why are you seeking to provoke us?”

Paul raised an eyebrow. After so much time spent with Thrawn and the other mastermind converts, not to mention the Paladin, he picked up on the differences in tone and conversation instantly. This might be a lizard, but it wasn’t a mastermind.

“You tried to wipe us out long ago. We tend not to forget such things.”

“We are doing you a service by wounding the V’kit’no’sat. Interference would be illogical.”

“So if we pass through this system without attacking you, will you interfere?”

“We will remain in our current position. Move around us and we will not attack. Come much closer than you are now, and we will out of prudence.”

“Bargained and done,” Paul said with finality. “Tell me, why don’t you look like the masterminds I’ve dealt with in the past?”

“I am better than those you corrupted. Pass through as you wish. We will remain where we are.”

The lizard cut the comm, and Paul wasn’t going to squander the opportunity to get past them without a fight, so he ordered the Ma’kri scouts ahead and signaled Jason to begin moving around the system, keeping well away from low stellar orbit. Paul, though, stayed nearby, gaining a little extra distance between the Excalibur and the lizard fleet, but essentially buzzed them all the way around collecting ample amounts of sensor scans on their new ships.

As promised, none of them so much as moved. Their ships were shaped similar to what they had once been, but the materials were vastly different and much more powerful, though still built cheaply via mass production. That said, they had access to a lot of technologies that Star Force hadn’t possessed when they’d first fought, including something akin to a Dre’mo’don.

They didn’t have to fire them for the sensors to pick up the weapon systems, for the firing chambers stood out against several exotic scans. Based on the shape he guessed they were what the V’kit’no’sat labeled as Be’hast, something of similar energy but far less density per shot. In order to upgrade to a full Dre’mo’don you had to obtain Sha’gart particles to create the necessary density, and that was a technological leap that most races never obtained.

But the fact that these lizards appeared to have Be’hast as their standard weaponry was a bad sign. Only a handful of races cataloged by the V’kit’no’sat had ever reached that level, and even The Nexus races had never achieved that particular technology. They had others, and there were many, many ways to craft energy weapons, but Be’hast was the first foundational building block of V’kit’no’sat-level weaponry, and it was something that the lizards should not have possessed. Even if they found a Dre’mo’don and tore it apart it would do no good. They could not replicate it without understanding the microscopic physics principles, and without a manual to go along with it, primitive races couldn’t hope to understand V’kit’no’sat technology.

Star Force had had that manual, in the form of their database, and even then it had taken them forever to figure it out. This, more than anything, confirmed that someone was helping the lizards advance rapidly. The question was, who had the knowledge to give them? And who would be stupid enough to try, considering who and what they were?

Not to mention the biological changes. It looked like they had gotten more than just weaponry upgrades, and even having a mastermind talk to you was unnatural. They were typically silent and hidden within their ranks, though if this fleet contained a Templar he could understand why the mastermind would take the lead…except that they would typically just ignore you entirely. They must have had orders not to engage Star Force, but Paul still had a bad feeling that these lizards were not the same lizards he had fought long ago.

Something had changed drastically, but he wasn’t going to stick around here to figure it out. The fleet was moving quickly to the outgoing jumppoint even as more ships kept coming in along the convoy line. Paul stayed in the system, sending Jason to the front of the line, and made sure that the lizards didn’t double-cross them and hit the end of the convoy, then the Excalibur made the last jump out, intending to catch up in the next layover to be at the head of the line when they finally got to the Ohson System.

7

May 4, 4917

Ohson System (V’kit’no’sat territory, Tamprani Region)

Stellar Orbit

Hanniena’s Kaeper had traveled with the Star Force fleet near the head of the line, coming off the jumpline and proceeding further into the system at an angle in order to get decelerated in time yet missing the jumppoint itself. She felt safe doing this, having known the layout of the system when she left, and fortunately there were no Li’vorkrachnika ships in her flight path to accidentally ram, for the signal bounces coming back from the Star Force fleet were focused straight ahead on the jumpline.

There was an enemy fleet guarding the jumppoint, and the leading Star Force ships were already heavily engaged as her stealthy Kaeper slipped by them all and linked in to the V’kit’no’sat Urrtren. The relay was down, meaning interstellar communications were now cut off, though the insystem transmitters were still operational…but the situation was bad. Kienma and Logsda were gone. There were no V’kit’no’sat signals coming from them and the fleet over Logsda was currently bombarding the planet from orbit. Kienma was already a wasteland with all V’kit’no’sat infrastructure destroyed, including the planetary defense station, whose smoking rubble still remained visible but broken at the cap where the Tar’vem’jic had been located.

She could see the relayed images of the hole that had been bored in it from the bombardment, and the other ones in the system hadn’t fared much better. All were down, with two damaged by sabotage measures when the Li’vorkrachnika had invaded on land and taken them over from within on Neonni. Now the main planet was under full ground assault, with barely a third of it still fielding planetary shield generators.

A much larger fleet there was bombarding the parts of the planet that were exposed and did not currently contain Li’vorkrachnika troops. Hanniena could see in detail on the transmitted reports what her ship could not from so far away, and that data said they were almost too late. Two planets’ worth of Wass’mat were destroyed, and from the damage on Neonni she guessed at least half the population was dead already.

The bombardment was continuing ruthlessly as her ship moved through a microjump to get to the planet…then the attack suddenly stopped. The signal reception from the planet was sketchy when moving at jump speeds, but the cessation of the bombardment made it through the hyper compression disruption and soon thereafter the Kaeper got collision warnings and had to veer off the jumpline to avoid hitting the Li’vorkrachnika ships leaving the planet and heading towards the star.

Her ship made another angled braking maneuver that brought it well wide of the intended jumppoint and slid into a hasty orbit as she watched the massive fleet crowding the jumppoint to the star. It looked as if they were fleeing, but there were so many of their cruisers in the field that she doubted they would run from Star Force and not the V’kit’no’sat. As more data was gathered she noted the location of the Li’vorkrachnika jumpships out elsewhere in the system and saw that the cruisers were not heading there. They were heading out in a long line towards the distant jumppoint where the Star Force fleet was still entering.

They weren’t waiting for them to come to the planet. They were heading out to them. Every…single…ship…was headed out, leaving planetary orbit barren aside from the glut of vessels waiting near the exiting jumppoint. And not just around Neonni, but the ships around Logsda were also abandoning their bombardment and heading out to the star.

Hanniena didn’t understand that. They were leaving their troops on the planet completely unguarded, and while a Kaeper wasn’t much of a warship, it still had a lot of firepower compared to ground troops.

“Move us into low orbit and coordinate with planetary defense on bombardment coordinates…but do not drop stealth measures until the rest of their fleet leaves,” she ordered, sickened at the sight of the planet succumbing to destruction like a virus slowly spreading across the surface.

The scout ship moved into position and waited as ordered, with her ship still able to pick up basic sensor data from the Star Force fleet, for they’d offered a tie-in during the trip out here for navigational purposes and they hadn’t rescinded it yet, so she could see the battle taking place and was taken aback at the ferocity of it. Small ships fighting small ships was not the way V’kit’no’sat handled battle, and while they had gotten used to fighting Star Force’s small ships, they had never seen them go head to head with another small fleet.

But it was more than that. Their movements were…extreme. The tactics totally different and incredibly intricate. She realized after her ship began its own bombardment of exposed Li’vorkrachnika ground troops that what she was witnessing was two enemies that were extremely familiar with one another with a long history of warfare. This wasn’t a first conflict situation. This was an old feud brought to life again and it showed.

Hanniena had been a fleet commander before her capture. It was doubtful she would ever be one again after suffering that humiliating defeat, but she could appreciate what she was seeing. The movements were so complicated that she couldn’t follow them all, but the end result was always the same…dead Li’vorkrachnika ships, even as the ship count increased furiously as the massive assault fleets outnumbering Star Force 5 to 1 gradually worked their way out to the jumppoint. Not all of the Star Force fleet was here yet, and wouldn’t be for some time, but the Li’vorkrachnika were losing and losing badly.

What surprised her the most was how fast ships were lost. Star Force always had to whittle away at the larger V’kit’no’sat ships and often let them retreat if they abandoned their objective. But there was no mercy being shown here. No retreat. No withdrawal. No damaging ships to take prisoners later. There was just utter carnage with Star Force destroying all wounded ships as quickly as they could. They let nothing get away...not that the Li’vorkrachnika were trying. They were fighting to the death, and the ships that lost weaponry were making suicide runs along with fully operational ships that had decent positioning to do so.

Hanniena had never seen anything like it before, and it sent a chill down her spine all the way to the Saroto’kanse’vam spike on her tail. She didn’t understand why, for they’d been fighting Star Force for so long there was nothing about their combat style that hadn’t been documented and analyzed intimately. The inclusion of the Uriti had altered the status quo greatly, but there was no Uriti here, so what was the difference? It wasn’t just the ship size.

As she watched more and more Li’vorkrachnika tanks being destroyed under her Kaeper’s guns, taking satisfaction at each bit of vengeance, it finally dawned on her what was happening.

Star Force had a code of conduct, one that often seemed counter-productive. Even when fighting the V’kit’no’sat to retake planets claimed from them, they had been the defenders. Rescuing their people had been the priority, and beyond that, defeating the V’kit’no’sat had been the objective.

But not killing them. She’d been captured because Star Force chose to do so. They didn’t have the luxury of taking too many prisoners, but they still took some. From what the trailblazers had told her, the Li’vorkrachnika could not be taken prisoner. They’d fight to damage or destroy you every waking second, and when put in a position where they couldn’t do that, they’d kill themselves rather than be complacent.

When Hanniena’s fleet had been defeated, she couldn’t understand why she’d lost. Then the Wass’mat had a long time in prison to figure it out, but during all that time she had never been afraid of Star Force. They were dangerous and always had been so, but they were inferior and timid, except when backed into a corner. Then they fought more freely, but it was always in defense, one way or another.

But not now. They were here to defend the system, which now technically belonged to them per the deal she’d struck, but the Star Force fleet wasn’t acting like a defender. They were acting like an exterminator, and that truly scared Hanniena. She had never seen them fight like this, when they had the advantage in technology and essentially even ship size. They were so aggressive and unrelenting that even the V’kit’no’sat seemed lethargic in comparison.

Their drone movement was so complex, so coordinated, and so numerous she couldn’t understand how they were managing it. This wasn’t a cluster of vessels targeting a single opponent, moving around it and essentially sitting still firing. This was active ship to ship combat on a scale the Wass’mat had never known possible before, and even as she watched the small amount of damage her own ship was doing, she could barely keep her eyes off the sensor readings the Star Force fleet were transmitting out across the system.

And it seemed the Li’vorkrachnika knew what they were facing, for they were throwing every ship they had at them as quickly as possible…and were destroying many drones in the process, but they couldn’t get to the jumpships, even when those ships engaged in the combat. The drones screened for them so much that they couldn’t be damaged enough to be pinned in place, and their larger weapons were savaging the Li’vorkrachnika ships…especially the Star Force command ships. They looked like Brat’mar vessels smoothed on the edges, and they were not holding back, rather pushing forward with the drones despite the fact that they contained crews.

They rarely did that against the V’kit’no’sat. For all the time she’d spend in battle with them, Hanniena had never gotten a single clean shot at a jumpship or command ship. But now, here, they were using them to fight, at times in very close quarters, but the Li’vorkrachnika couldn’t destroy them and when they tried the drones counter-swarmed them while the heavy shields on the jumpships soaked up damage that otherwise would have killed more drones.

She felt she was getting an advanced lesson in warfare just by watching, and realized that the larger ship sizes of the V’kit’no’sat allowed for dominance through…admittedly…lazier combat. Moving a 36 mile wide ship around was extremely easy compared to moving around a fleet of thousands of drones equal in mass on individual attack patterns.

Hanniena didn’t know how Star Force was doing it. Even the Li’vorkachnika’s movements were damn impressive, but they all had living crews onboard. And the fact that Star Force didn’t seem to care about that was what scared her the most. She didn’t know the full history of the Star Force/Li’vorkrachnika conflict, only what they’d allowed her to learn as a prisoner, but the bad blood between them was undeniable. After all the V’kit’no’sat had done to Star Force, they had never fought like this against the invasion meant to wipe them out.

The trailblazers had said the Li’vorkrachnika must be destroyed, and Hanniena assumed that they had never gotten to that point with the V’kit’no’sat, though why not she didn’t understand. Was it because the Li’vorkrachnika would not be taken prisoner? Was it because Star Force was, in some way, part of the V’kit’no’sat, even in a heretical sense, and they saw the V’kit’no’sat as kin?

Honestly, she didn’t know what she was witnessing, but it was clear that Star Force hated the Li’vorkrachnika on a level they did not share with the V’kit’no’sat…and vice versa. She couldn’t attest to the hate level of the Li’vorkrachnika, but the way they moved their fleet and hit them with maximum speed and firepower suggested they knew better than to give them an inch.

The battle at the jumppoint was still escalating and would go on for hours, but Hanniena couldn’t stay here and watch it. The Kaeper had to keep using its advantage as the only starship in orbit to help the embattled ground troops as they continued to lose territory and more shield generators were at risk of falling, but she didn’t need to be here. The ship’s crew could follow commands from the surface. Her presence was unnecessary, and while her strength was fleet command she was a Wass’mat, and had psionics tailored to close combat.

So Hanniena boarded a drop pod and headed down to one of the combat zones, dawning her armor and taking part in the battle to save what was left of the planet while Star Force fought the naval war to save the Wass’mat from eradication.

The irony was evident, but this is what fate had brought them to in the wake of the empire’s unwillingness to defend them. Hanniena didn’t know what the future brought, but she was going to stay here and stick it out regardless, even while others would be running back to the empire that had abandoned them, for the trailblazers had already told her that those not wanting to stay would be allowed to leave once the system was secured.

And after what she had just seen in orbit, and her own experience in losing to them in naval combat, perhaps joining their empire wouldn’t be as bad as she was expecting. Never in her life would she have expected the V’kit’no’sat to be pushed back on its heels by unknown rim races. But then again, she had never expected the Terraxis heresy in the first place. So many things had changed in recent years that she wondered if the V’kit’no’sat were really V’kit’no’sat anymore.

Where was the dominance they lived and breathed? Certainly not here, abandoned to die against a race of vermin too numerous to count. The fact that they could openly attack the V’kit’no’sat and live was beyond what she would have expected even a few millennia ago. Now they were freely taking worlds and Itaru was doing nothing to counter it.

The only dominance here was Star Force’s, and with what she was witnessing here, Hanniena had no doubt they would cleanse the system of all Li’vorkrachnika presence with a vengeance, no matter how many enemy ships there were. They were showing the level of dominance that the V’kit’no’sat had identified as their birthright, yet they were showing mercy to their enemy by coming to the Wass’mat’s rescue. How they would deal with the survivors remained to be seen, but the fact that they were not letting them die or killing both the Li’vorkrachnika and the Wass’mat was different from how the V’kit’no’sat would have responded.

Hanniena understood times had changed and were continuing to change fast, and she wasn’t sure where this would end up, but if the galaxy was coming alive with multifaceted warfare, joining with the dominant empire was the most prudent means of survival, and between being defeated herself, their possession of the Uriti, and what she was witnessing here, there was little doubt in her mind that Star Force was now the dominant force in the galaxy and not the V’kit’no’sat, no matter how much larger her former empire was. They were on the decline. Star Force was on the rise.

And if Hanniena lived through the next few days, she had no idea what the future would look like. Everything was upside down now, but her race was under attack and she had her tusks to offer in assistance, so she put any other thoughts aside and dove into battle, shooting, cutting, and stomping the little Li’vorkrachnika on the surface along with the others…and hoping they wouldn’t nicked to death by their tiny weapons as wave after wave flowed across the terrain to oppose them.

There were literally too many to kill without naval assistance, but there were many other Wass’mat refugees in the ‘safe’ zones behind them, and the longer they delayed the Li’vorkrachnika’s advance the more there would be alive when Star Force made it to the planet.

Sadly, Hanniena would not be one of them, for two days later she would fall in combat multiple times, with her Kich’a’kat reviving her each time until her armor was so damaged that she died for the final time, surrounded by scores of Li’vorkrachnika, and unrecoverable by the other Wass’mat as they were pushed further and further back, leaving her body to be trampled on by the enemy reinforcements as they surged forward in unending numbers.

8

May 19, 4917

Ohson System (Tamprani Region)

Stellar Orbit

Thrawn’s fleet came into the system amidst a major war. Paul and the other trailblazers’ fleets were wrapped around one planet in the system and nowhere else. Lizard fleets, however, were everywhere, including his incoming jumppoint, but not in enough numbers to be a problem. The first few jumpships took some serious hits, but none were destroyed prior to releasing their plus-shaped drones that mimicked the hulls of the lizard cruisers.

They launched from the underside rear of the jumpships, whereas the lizard cruisers stuck into all sides of the hull on their carriers, looking like ticks rather than having a protective bay for them. None of their jumpships were near…Thrawn could see them positioned elsewhere in the system in large clusters, staying out of the fighting along with the transport ships, leaving only cruisers waiting at this jumppoint and 13 others.

That meant they didn’t know the Paladin were coming, else they would have had far more here. It almost felt like a token gesture, for most of the lizard fleet was blockading Neonni and engaging in sporadic combat. There were more than 2 million cruisers in play, and debris fields from far more at various points around the system…including this jumppoint, suggesting that there had been a much bigger fight here when the trailblazers had arrived.

Thrawn’s fleet made quick work of the few thousand cruisers waiting for them and secured the jumppoint before other lizard fleets began to race across the system towards them. Had he only been bringing a few ships it wouldn’t have mattered, but he had a long train of jumpships coming that stretched out more than a day long, meaning the lizard cruisers had plenty of time to get here before the last of them came out.

He had many minutes to contemplate the lizards’ next move as sensor images and comm telemetry raced both ways across the system. They could hold position around the planet and get caught between Star Force ships on both sides. They could force an all-out assault on the planet before the Paladin fleet could arrive, or they could abandon the planet and hit the Paladin full force before they could fully arrive. Then again they could always run away, but they weren’t going to do that. They were expendable, and doing damage to the Star Force fleet was worth their deaths even if they couldn’t take the planet.

So the question was, how could they do the most damage?

Thrawn knew what he would do in their position, and just as he expected, the blockading fleet began to rapidly withdraw and head for the star…and from there, he knew, they would be coming straight for the Paladin, even as the last of the cruisers here were blasted into oblivion.

“So be it,” he said to himself as he watched the belated sensor images of the ships making microjumps away from Neonni towards the star. They appeared as blurs on the sensor bounces, and when combined visually it looked like rain falling through space from the planet and combining into a river that then snaked around the star in droplets headed for his fleet’s left flank.

That occurred over a matter of hours as Thrawn waited, fighting the first elements to reach him as more and more of his jumpships arrived to reinforce the jumppoint, which had to have an open space protected inside a cup-shaped formation. If any of his incoming ships had engine trouble they would overshoot that gap and potentially ram the defending ships, so a jumppoint hold wasn’t an easy way to fight a battle. In fact it was damn hard, for aside from the navigationally issues and coordinating with the ships coming in using only small blurps of messages sent out to the rapidly approaching ships, they had to protect against the lizards backdooring the jumppoint and hitting the newly arrived ships before they could deploy their drones.

That’s why the cup kept stretching further and further back into a tube around a region of space only 12,000 miles wide. That might sound like a lot of room to maneuver in, but when jumping from another star system it was a damn precise target to hit, and a little finagling with other gravity wells in the system at the last moment allowed for some minor corrections, but the tightly spaced jump intervals between ships made it even more tenuous.

But Star Force was well practiced in such maneuvers and Thrawn had the Paladin ready for the lizards before the first reinforcements arrived into the grinder. The lizards came in solo to begin with, throwing themselves into the fray with no hope of survival in order to do some damage and disrupt the incoming ships, but they couldn’t get through. They tried, running some cruisers past the Paladin drones to try and get through to the jumpships but they didn’t make it. The incoming firepower was too strong along with numerous dampening shields thrown up in their path.

So after the first few attempts the lizards began to arrive just short of firing range, pooling their ships into greater numbers before launching another attempt to get through, not even bothering to stop and fight it out normally. They rammed every ship that got in their way, attempting to blow a hole in the formation for others to follow through, but Thrawn knew how they thought, for he had once been one of them. The Paladin’s genetic memories had been altered, but not his. His memories were still Li’vorkrachnika ones, though he thought of them as lizards now. His base skill set was that of the enemy, but his loyalty and advancement were completely Star Force, and that gave him a huge advantage.

The lizards were going to do damage, they always did, but they were not going to get at the vulnerable ships arriving at such high speed that normal collisions turned fatal. Nor were they going to catch a fully loaded ship in a kamikaze run. Thrawn had enough drones now to prevent that, with more arriving faster than the lizards could destroy them. He had the jumppoint locked down and enough ships coming to handle what was before him, but the trailblazers weren’t going to let him fight alone.

The fleet defending Neonni was breaking up, with part of it engaging the lizards as they fled through a single jumppoint. That forced them to jump away at multiple points that did not allow them to directly approach the star. Some went to other planets, but most just jumped off slowly into null space. Those ships had to then curve back towards the star at slow speeds because they didn’t have a solid gravitational base to push off of. Forcing that maneuver would delay their arrival at the Paladin jumppoint by hours, and those ships that did not quickly get away from Neonni were caught in combat with the trailblazers’ fleets.

Not many did get caught, and Thrawn understood why. Sometimes lizards shot the closest enemy regardless of numbers, but there was a mastermind in this fleet…perhaps several, which meant they were going to operate on a higher tactical level. The lizard technology, while obviously more advanced than what Thrawn had when he served them, was not up to Star Force standards. That meant grouping was essential and getting split apart was not going to see the trailing ships do much damage at all. Mathematically it was better to run and regroup to hit harder later, which was why the lizards were abandoning the planet with such haste.

During the fighting Thrawn got an update from Paul, informing him that the Wass’mat on the planet were now reluctantly part of Star Force, though more than 90% of those in the system were dead. They hadn’t gotten here soon enough to save the other two worlds, and the one that still stood was in tatters.

Thrawn wasn’t worried about that. He knew Star Force would take any small amount of the Wass’mat and grow them into a new Star Force faction, as well as the fact that those on the surface would not be touched now that the trailblazers were here. That part of the mission was secure now, and as for the losses of the other Wass’mat, he personally did not care. A good number of his Paladin had died to the Wass’mat, and while he was willing to accept those that changed sides, trusting in the trailblazers’ wisdom, he wasn’t concerned with V’kit’no’sat losses.

In fact it was almost ironic, after all the time they’d spent trying to destroy Star Force, now they couldn’t even defend their own territory. It was downright pathetic, actually, that one’s sworn enemy has to come to the aid of a system abandoned by its own empire. And just like the Templars had abandoned Thrawn to die fighting, so too had the V’kit’no’sat abandoned these Wass’mat.

And the thing that drove the V’kit’no’sat so hard was their dominance. Well now they weren’t dominant. They were getting beaten by the lizards and a lot of other races out there, and despite Star Force being the weaker in the recent war, the empire that had rescued him was now rising to dominance. Give it enough time and Director Davis and the trailblazers would grow it to the point where it was larger and more powerful than the V’kit’no’sat, but even now, in this situation, Star Force held the upper hand and rescuing these Wass’mat was another small puzzle piece involved in growing the empire further.

So no, the lizards were not going to win here. They were not going to kill the rest of the Wass’mat. They were not going to claim this system for their own. They were not going to overrun Star Force and push them out. They were not going to destroy them. And they were not going to compromise this jumppoint.

But they were going to make Star Force pay a price for it in ships…but not in lives. Drones they would lose, but they were not going to take down a jumpship. Thrawn would make certain of that. But a price had to be paid in materiel, and seeing the records Paul was sending him about how many relief fleets the lizards had been getting, he made the decision to send a courier back to rally more Paladin to defend this system against however many subsequent attacks they decided to make.

Dominance was formed in permanence, and no matter how many more ships the lizards sent to this system, Thrawn was going to make sure they lost all of them.

Jason went down to the planet before the naval fighting was over, leaving Paul to handle the combat at the jumppoint as the other 4 trailblazers organized orbital bombardments to decimate the lizard formations on the planet still engaged against the Wass’mat. The few mech units onboard the command ships went down with Jason and helped to defend key points while the lizards were thinned out, then when the tide swung to the defenders advantage he didn’t have to do anything more. The Wass’mat were so incensed that they were out actively hunting down the remaining lizards and wiping them out in a small act of revenge.

Even as the naval conflict continued, the process of annexing the Wass’mat was beginning with Jason as he met with the leader of the planet in one of their intact cities. He went alone, wearing his combat armor but with no escorts, as the mechs had been sent to secure a spaceport for Star Force’s use.

“What do you require of us?” Gargara asked simply when the Jason arrived amongst a half dozen Wass’mat in an open air courtyard.

“Once we get this system stabilized, we will allow those who wish to return to the V’kit’no’sat to do so. We’re not going to treat this as a hostile annexation. Those that remain will have your normal infrastructure operations maintained while we slowly modify the planet. Right now I need you to keep things working, repair essential services, and just hold tight as you decide who goes and who stays.”

The Wass’mat exchanged a flurry of telepathic conversation, but it was Gargara who finally spoke again.

“You are letting us go? You only want the system?”

“We didn’t come for the planets, though they are prime,” Jason admitted. “We intend to keep them regardless, but we came for you. The V’kit’no’sat abandoned you. If you want to go back to them, you can. You would be stupid to do so, but we’re giving you that choice. Those who stay will go through a similar process to what the Rit’ko’sor did, and you will become the foundation for a new faction within Star Force.”

“What will our penance be?”

Jason frowned. “What do you mean?”

“For our part in the war against you. The Rit’ko’sor were not involved. We were.”

“Mercy is a luxury of the dominant. There will be no penance for you. The V’kit’no’sat penance was detailed in the Armistice. Any of you that choose to stay here will no longer be seen as V’kit’no’sat. You will be Star Force and treated as such.”

“We do not understand what that means,” Gargara admitted

“It means a lot of training. Not punishment. But training for those who willingly go through it. Those that do not should leave. We have no intention on annexing a problem. We intend to annex an asset. See to it that those who do not want to be here are put on the leave list.”

“How will they leave?”

“V’kit’no’sat ships can come to pick you up, or we can deliver you to the nearest V’kit’no’sat world not in the war zone. That will take time, and those who wish to leave must not make themselves a problem while they wait.”

“I will assure they do not,” Gargara promised. “And I will be one who is staying. I cannot promise any others will.”

“If you’re the only one, you will be welcome. In the meantime, all of the Li’vorkrachnika must be destroyed. They will not surrender, and will seek to do whatever damage they can until they are dead. But do not torment or torture them. Simply kill them.”

“They will not last long,” Jovcho, the planetary defense commander, assured him.

“Eliminating them is the first priority. The second priority are foodstuffs. Has enough production survived to accommodate the existing population?”

“We are at 83% production,” Gargara said. “We have some stores of supplies to compensate, but we do not have enough to perpetually sustain us.”

“Put your construction efforts there first. Even ahead of planetary defense. We will protect the planet, but you must get the foodstuff supply up to 100% to sustain you through the initial transition. We’ll build our own facilities when we’re able, but it will be months before we can get even limited production. We’ll ship in some supplies before then, but you need to maximize what production you have in the interim. How long can your surplus last?”

“I do not know. Several weeks at the minimum. Possibly longer. We have not done a full tally of resources remaining.”

“Do so now. I need to know. Are all of your injured being treated with Kich’a’kat?”

“Our armor has it included. Those few exceptions are being dealt with. Your assistance there is not required.”

“Good. Do you have any ships left?”

“Drop pods only. All our starships were destroyed.”

“Use them to search for and pull in survivors. Don’t assume the lizards got them all. And ‘lizards’ is the term we use for Li’vorkrachnika. It’s a shorter word and an insult. As for language, I and many others speak V’kit’no’sat, but our empire uses English and you’ll need to learn it eventually. For those who want to start now, I’ll have the files transmitted…assuming you don’t already have them. For the next few years V’kit’no’sat will suffice, so there’s no rush, but we don’t like different factions with different languages. If we can’t talk to each other, what’s the point of communication?”

“That will not be well received.”

“A lot won’t be. Which is why we’re letting those of you go that wish to. Changes will be occurring, but beneficial ones. We defend our people rather than writing them off as expendable. We also do a lot of other things differently. We won’t expect you to change instantaneously, but it will be a process…and it’s a process we’ve had a lot of experience with.”

“If not for you we would be dead,” Gargara stated unenthusiastically. “A life in Star Force is preferable to no life. That is what we agreed when sending Hanniena to ask you for assistance, now you tell us we can leave. We did not expect that.”

“We’re the good guys. The V’kit’no’sat are not. That’s why we do things differently. That’s why we were in the right in the recent war, you were on the wrong side. That’s a tough lesson to learn, and not always a fast one, but as I said, mercy is a luxury of the dominant, and we’re offering you a path forward. Until you decided whether to take it or not, we need to secure and stabilize the planet. During that process you will have plenty of time to think…while we keep the lizards at bay and the V’kit’no’sat don’t give a damn. Keep that factoid in mind throughout this transition process.”

9

February 12, 4919

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

Davis stood less than a meter in front of the enormous windows in his office looking out over the ocean and beach beyond. Palm-like trees were swaying slightly in the wind with small waves lapping up onto the shore where dozens of Meintre were walking about on their 6 thick legs. All of them were part of their faction’s leaders, for the beach was part of the command complex where Davis had set up his unofficial capitol when he’d taken on the personal duty of annexing the Meintre into Star Force.

In the beginning he hadn’t been sure whether the Meintre could be a full-fledged faction, or would become a sub-faction that couldn’t field all 5 divisions of military assets. Given their size, aerial combat and aquatics were a concern, but as it turned out the latter was actually an asset. It had taken a lot of time and bravery to get the Meintre to swim, for they instinctively did not like the deep water, but with appropriate suits they actually fared well compared to many of Star Force’s other races, though aquatics wasn’t their specialty by any stretch of the imagination.

Their four trunks, especially, were well suited for manipulation underwater and actually allowed them to work well as construction crews when needed, but most of their aquatic and aerial forces were drones piloted by Meintre in secure locations. They had to have backups, meaning the ability for manned craft and a proficiency in them, which they’d proven, thus their race had been designated as ‘faction’ status and the responsibilities that came along with it.

A lot of interior work was still being done on their race, and a faction had to not only support themselves, but support the rest of the empire as well, both in combat and other functions. That was why they had to have all 5 military divisions and an exporting economy, and the Meintre had been coming along nicely. Far better than other Monarchs had expected, but Davis had seen their potential immediately, which was why he’d taken on the task of their annexation personally. Others had suggested a low level Monarch would be best, for the Meintre were not a broken people. They had joined by choice and were one of the stable Nexus races that had agreed to change sides.

But such stability was misleading at times, and when changes had to be made a stable race sometimes was more resistant. Fortunately there hadn’t been any major issues with the Meintre, and Davis had headed off many others before they arose. They’d never be among the most numerous races in Star Force, but they were among the largest. Ironically the Meintre and the Wass’mat had a lot in common, despite their origins.

The Meintre were covered in hair, whereas the Wass’mat were reptilian and covered with thick skin scales. The Meintre also stood taller, whereas the Wass’mat were wider and flatter, but both were large massed, hexped, and moved about in a lumbering nature. The Meintre didn’t have the psionic upgrades that the Wass’mat had, and the Wass’mat didn’t have the facial trunks, but both were now the primary large races within Star Force.

The Ikrotor had been with Star Force since nearly the beginning, though not as a member race. They were still independent, even after having to be evacuated from their homeworld in the ADZ when the Devastation Zone consumed it. But a lot of Ikrotor had joined Axius and they had formed the central core of the large-scale infantry units that were essentially the size of mechs. They were true biped, which was rare for such large races. None of the V’kit’no’sat bipeds had straight vertical backs, such as Humans did, and the same was mostly true for the other known large races in the galaxy.

But as a race, the Ikrotor were not unified. They were more a loose association of individuals, and even those that had joined Axius, or were born into it, were lacking a gravitas that the Meintre had. Their inclusion in Star Force had been more important than anyone else realized, aside from Davis, and now he had been gifted with another such race even more impressive.

Right now the trailblazers were overseeing their initial stabilization while the Ohson System remained a war zone. The lizards kept attacking it, but so far no other Star Force world. It was odd, why they would be so insistent on that one yet not engage the rest of the empire. It was also odd, if they were trying to avoid combat with Star Force, as Paul had suggested, that they would not let that system go. They had the V’kit’no’sat to deal with, and they were going to be destroyed by them, so why bother with Star Force now?

Something about that didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t pin it down. He also couldn’t understand why the lizards were fighting the V’kit’no’sat. It was too much for them to handle, even if the V’kit’no’sat were busy fighting the Rim Consortium. Better to just let them fight it out and then assault the crumbs that remained afterward. No, whoever was feeding the lizards tech had to be nudging them into this fight…or worse. As bad as the lizards had always been, they were never stupid. This was stupid, unless there was something else in play.

There was a small V’kit’no’sat delegation on the planet now, acting as ambassadors. At his request they were Ari’tat, and thus smaller than Humans. Having the larger races around, with their host of psionics, was dangerous and put everyone else on edge. Security especially didn’t like them getting close to Davis, but the Ari’tat, while they did have basic psionics, were nothing that Davis couldn’t handle with his own. Right now couriers were still being used, as a full scale Urrtren extension had not yet been built, primarily because Tamprani was a lizard-infested war zone, but the Ari’tat had enough ships coming and going regularly to keep both empires in decent communication.

And what they’d told him of the wars going on indicated that some of the Rim Consortium had already backed off, in some cases abandoning taken planets and in others holding them. So far none were violating the terms of the Armistice and the lines of dominion established, but the races on the far side of the galaxy probably hadn’t gotten word of the Armistice yet, and as such they were still fighting.

But there were others, like the lizards, who were not part of the Rim Consortium and were continuing to push into V’kit’no’sat territory. The fleets who were being freed up from those war zones that were standing down were being redistributed, but not enough to stem the tide yet. The V’kit’no’sat were losing a lot of outer territory, including some of the systems promised to Star Force as a buffer zone.

Davis had informed the Ari’tat that the V’kit’no’sat must retake them and then deliver them to Star Force, for he wouldn’t be doing that job for them, but already there were 9 systems that had been evacuated and handed over in the regions on either side of Tamprani. Davis had sent different races to those systems, but all were accompanied by either Kiritak, Bsidd, or Paladin so they would have access to larger populations quickly. The distances between them and the empire weren’t much different than the trek out to Shangri-La, but the other ones that would soon to be added to the occupied list would be further and further away from Star Force territory and help if needed. They had to stand on their own, so population spamming was going to be required.

The Ohson System wasn’t originally on that list, but Davis had decided to keep it and add it to that ring of systems that would eventually encircle the galaxy. 14% of the Wass’mat there had decided to stay, with the rest in the process of being picked up by other Wass’mat ships who were volunteering to come get them. Davis had been told there was some bad blood between those picking them up and those refusing to leave, but no fighting had broken out. For whatever the reason, some wanted to stay with Star Force and Davis had to make good on their membership, just like he had with the Rit’ko’sor.

Which brought him back to the Meintre. They couldn’t walk around on other worlds with the smaller races. The size difference was too dangerous. That was why Axius worlds were divided into size zones. And while all Star Force infrastructure was built on the big side, the Meintre and Wass’mat really needed super-sized cities. Star Force had already built some for the Reen and others, but none of their civilizations were as motivated, unified, and as loyal as the Meintre were.

Davis had kept the Meintre integrated into the empire, but also separate at the same time. Their worlds had some other races on them, but not in large amounts and only to use as intermediaries. That wasn’t totally unusual in Star Force, for aside from Axius and Beacon, a lot of races were little empires within themselves, but Humans and Protovic and Calavari easily mixed with one another. But with the Meintre it wasn’t the same.

There was no issue working with Monarchs and Archons, nor the elite individuals within the empire. It was the civilian aspect that didn’t mix well, and the fact that the Meintre were simply more advanced than many other races. It wasn’t snobbishness on their part, it was just a side effect of being superior. They related better to those with skills and, frankly, more knowledge than them than they did to those weaker, stupider ones. Those they tended to avoid, though politely, and interacted via intermediaries such as the Kiritak, whom they had developed a curious relationship with.

Not unlike the Wass’mat and their Zen’zat, some of whom had decided to stay with their masters. Fortunately there were only a few thousand, but Davis had to confine them to the planet until he figured out what to do with them.

And that also brought him back to the moment of change he knew had been coming, but he was still unsure about how to handle it. Size differences in Axius had forced him to segregate that faction for safety concerns. Then when the Raptors had been included, he had to treat them like Arc Knights from hatching, stripping those who did not wish to be held to such high standards of their psionics and letting them move freely about the empire. There was no Raptor civilian population, and with the Wass’mat it was going to have to be the same. He didn’t want to take away their psionics, or even hold them suppressed, because their races had become so accustomed to them. Even walking back the Raptors’ with the Ikrid blocks had been immensely troublesome. They were adapting to it, but they’d taken a big hit with that necessary change.

If Davis had removed Ikrid from them entirely he felt they would have fallen apart. Much the same way that if he suddenly banned the Archons from training they would go crazy. Normal civilians wouldn’t, because laziness was commonplace. But the Archons had risen so far that you couldn’t force them backwards. They were no longer compatible with laziness, just as the Raptors were no longer compatible with the lack of telepathy. Moreover, Davis didn’t have a pre-telepathic template to work with, and it was far easier to give Humans psionic upgrades than it was to take what had become a staple to the Raptors away from them.

More than 80% of those Raptors who chose to leave eventually came back, for they couldn’t stand to have their telepathy silenced. They thought they could, but eventually it drove them nuts and they boomeranged. Some didn’t, and Davis had talked to many of them. They all admitted to a tough transition period, but they’d adapted to it…and all of those that he had met with had been surrender monkeys. They wanted easy challenges, rather than being completely stagnant, but they didn’t really want to stress themselves. What they wanted was a simpler life, and not having telepathy worked to their advantage in that, but to the others they couldn’t stand going backwards and becoming less, and Davis doubted the Wass’mat or the Zen’zat would be any different.

The trailblazers and the Arch Dukes knew of the problem he now faced, but none of them fully understood it. The V’kit’no’sat had Ikrid as standard, and while a few of them suppressed it in their hatchlings until they could develop further, their entire society was based on it and personal privacy was obtained by having a stronger mind, or at least one trained to block out others.

They had made it work, but there were problems they still faced. It was the pack mentality, for when you had other people in your head constantly you became less like you and more like them. He’d seen this full tilt with the Elves, and while they were doing ok with guidance, they were not a stable society. Without that guidance they’d veer off wildly into self-destruction, which was why the new Elf colonies that had been established had telepathy but with Ikrid blocks. That meant only physical contact would allow one in another’s mind, and that had brought a lot of improvement to the Elves, so much so that the existing ‘free mind’ Elves were being asked not to reproduce. To let their societies age and focus on attaining and maintaining self-sufficiency.

He wasn’t going to force Ikrid blocks on them or make them mix with the other Elves, but birthing more of their kind was an error that he wasn’t going to allow to continue. Too much influence from others could help or hurt you, and Davis knew that if even for the better it was a dangerous thing. People had to learn to think and question, not just accept and do as you’re told. Effort and obedience did not conflict with curiosity, and the free Elves seriously lacked curiosity wherever a current of their society pushed or blocked them.

They had essentially become Lemmings, and while that might be useful to others who wanted servants, it was worthless to Davis who wanted peers. And the difference between the Elves and Paladin was that the Paladin already had ample experience through their genetic memories. The Elves were ignorant of everything in the beginning, and they came to rely on the hive mind of their society for everything.

And when no one knew how to lead, to explore, to figure things out…the whole mass referred back to itself in what would become a state of madness without a stabilizing rod to structure off of. The Archons had been those stabilizing rods for the Elves, but the free Elves were a dead end. One that Davis had learned a lot from, but they were not the future of his race.

And Davis knew trying to take the Raptors or Wass’mat backwards would also be a mistake. He had to take them forward, perhaps sideways to find a new path, and with the Zen’zat, at least, they were not going to reproduce, so that headache was avoided there, but he’d already asked Jason to work with them and give him suggestions on how to make use of them. Hopefully they’d come up with a better idea, for while having smaller races attending to the larger ones made some practical sense, that’s not how he wanted Star Force to be structured going into the future…because it instilled laziness in the larger ones.

And this was why he was the Director. Everyone else was running the empire, making sure supplies got delivered, training schedules were met, research done. They were competent and left Davis free to tackle the problems on the horizon. To guide Star Force forward and avoid as many headaches as he could by being able to see problems before they arose, and to note those in other races and learn from them.

So no, taking the V’kit’no’sat races backwards was not the solution. Ikrid blocks were necessary, but removing their telepathy was not an option unless they individually opted out. He wasn’t going to deny those individuals the freedom to roam the empire as others did, but so long as there was an ‘elite’ race division, they were going to have to be held to higher standards and that meant no civilian life.

Part of Davis didn’t want to officially develop an elite division, for the founding races of Star Force…Humans, Calavari, Kiritas, and Protovic…would not be included. The Archons, Mavericks, and Monarchs would be recruited out of them, but the masses just weren’t good enough. It wasn’t the fault of the individuals, but of their basic biology. Those exceptional individuals would find their way out, but the average Human would not match up to the average Raptor. The Raptor race was just too damn advanced at this point.

And the same was true of the Meintre. They were simply better, on average, than any other race aside from the Raptors, and while Star Force was built on the individual and always would be, the communities where those individuals lived were structured on the group, and Davis had to create pockets of the empire where they could not only live, but thrive and prosper.

So it had to happen, and the newly included Wass’mat were forcing his hand sooner than he’d expected. He could choose to wait longer, but this was the way the empire had to move forward. The junior high team just couldn’t play with the varsity, and keeping them somewhat separate was best for both so long as he maintained routes for individuals to surpass their race…and to fall below it.

It was ironic that Star Force was starting to mirror the internal structure of the V’kit’no’sat. They had different tiers of races as well, though they didn’t put as much thought into it. Maybe they would have become something more if the Zak’de’ron had still been leading them…or maybe not, if the Zak’de’ron just wanted pawns to use as they pushed their agendas on the galaxy.

Davis didn’t want pawns, and he only put up with the Paladin because they relied on their genetic memories. Their starting point was what it was, but it wasn’t what they’d stay at. The Paladin weren’t the goal, but victims being rescued and given a choice where they had none before.

But many people just went along with what everyone else was doing, and in that respect he had more control over the Paladin than other races. He could keep them safer, but blindly following orders was insufficient for many things.

No, the only path forward was advancement, and holding back the superior races was stupid. The Meintre were growing to the point where a choice had to be made, so he might as well make it now. He just didn’t want the Wass’mat to think he was carving out a ‘former V’kit’no’sat’ wing to the empire, but he’d jump off that bridge when he came to it.

A tone sounded and he slowly turned around to see a Human attendant standing on the threshold of his office entrance.

“Ambassador Nilhan has an urgent message to relay.”

“Very well,” Davis said, abandoning his ocean view and heading back to his large, clear desk. “Send him in.”

He sat down just before a tiny Ari’tat came bouncing into the huge room and over to his desk, where he hopped up onto one of the opposite chairs and stood there, leaning back on his tiny tail.

“Ambassador,” Davis greeted in V’kit’no’sat as he sat back and steepled his hands together. “What do you have for me today?”

“I have an offer directly from Mak’to’ran,” the Ari’tat said in all seriousness. “It concerns the Li’vorkrachnika.”

Davis sighed. “You’re getting beat, aren’t you?”

10

“We are still engaged on many warfronts, including with most of the Rim Consortium. It seems they lack the fast access transit routes that we have in the Core and have not yet arrived to deliver the Armistice to their empires. Even still, there are non-Consortium members attacking us simultaneously that will not stand down. We will prevail eventually, but in the meantime we are taking losses, including some of the systems we have promised to you.”

“Which are your responsibility to reclaim and repair prior to transfer,” Davis insisted.

“So it would seem, but given your unusual insistence on the destruction of the Li’vorkrachnika, I have been instructed to relay a special offer from Mak’to’ran.”

“Go ahead.”

“We want you to eliminate them for us.”

Davis laughed. “Your empire’s level of arrogance is astounding. I may have worked with you out of prudence, but we are not allies and I have not, and will not, forgive you for what you have done to my people. What compensation do you think would over-ride that?”

“To begin with, free transit across our empire so you can access the far side of the galaxy more quickly.”

“Noted,” Davis said, making it clear that was minor in comparison to what was being asked.

“We will also compensate you, in the form of materials, for any and all ships you lose in combat.”

“We’re in the process of rebuilding from the damage you did. Sending our current ships to fight the lizards would pull them away from other small scale activities where they are needed. And at the end of it all, replacement will be a wash, assuming we lose no personnel, which you cannot replace. We have business to attend to in the Rim, and the longer we delay the more primitive races die.”

“Furthermore,” the Ari’tat continued, “due to a realignment within our empire, we are willing to cede all of the Tamprani Region to you, intact, along with any planetary populations that wish to remain.”

Davis raised an eyebrow, thoroughly surprised. “And why do you assume we want them?”

Ambassador Nilhan looked shocked, but his tiny face’s composure recovered quickly. “You have already illegally annexed one of our worlds. We are willing to sanction this and any others that wish to join you. This is a major concession that will not be well received in the empire, but Mak’to’ran is offering it none the less.”

“Why?”

“He feels that the Li’vorkrachnika, if left unchecked and in possession of V’kit’no’sat technology, could expand greatly and become a larger threat in the distant future…but a gnawing one in the present. We do not think they will only take a few worlds and stop. They will continue to press until they run out of ships or until we make them stop, and their industrious nature has been noticed. Mak’to’ran wishes to secure the Tamprani Region, and would rather see it in your hands than reduced to rubble and become a breeding ground for an…unstable race.”

“You were about to say ‘enemy,’ which we still are.”

“You are not reckless, nor are you seeking combat. The past aside, we do not view you as a threat in the future. Well, to be perfectly honest, many still do. Especially the Oso’lon. But Mak’to’ran trusts your intent is not to destroy us and he is willing to cede Tamprani to you if you will eliminate the Li’vorkrachnika threat permanently.”

“There is no way to eliminate them permanently, for they can regrow from a single ship. They must be destroyed now, and not allowed to rebuild elsewhere. A guarantee of total erasure from the galaxy is foolish.”

“So I have been told. But a single ship will pose no threat to V’kit’no’sat worlds, and we can destroy any that we find in our territory. You can do the same and the threat will essentially be eliminated if their current holdings are destroyed. You possess the Uriti but have been unwilling to fully utilize them for fear of unintended deaths. You have also said all Li’vorkrachnika must die. That they will not switch sides nor allow themselves to be confined as prisoners. In light of that, I am ordered to ask if you are capable of fully unleashing their destructive potential on Li’vorkrachnika worlds?”

“They are our allies. We would have to ask them.”

“Assume they agree. In principle, would you fully unleash their power on the Li’vorkrachnika?”

“Yes,” Davis said firmly, surprising the Ari’tat again at his immediate and unequivocal answer.

“I am also authorized to offer you sanction as part of the V’kit’no’sat empire,” he said, holding up a tiny hand to forestall Davis’s kneejerk response. “This is not for your sake, but a way to justify the situation within our own empire. The genetic power imbued in V’kit’no’sat races is something we closely guard. Your Zen’zat coding is one of the primary reasons we could not simply let you live free. No one can leave the V’kit’no’sat because of what has been granted to them in their genetic coding. The Wass’mat that you have claimed have violated this, as have the Rit’ko’sor that joined you. The death mark on them remains, and we cannot allow others to join you from Tamprani unless we claim you are part of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“How exactly would that work?”

“Mak’to’ran once offered to sanction you as the Rimward guard of the V’kit’no’sat, under his authority. He will do so again, but as an independent faction that has no duty to fight the Hadarak. You will protect us from the Rim, which we now see holds many threats we never knew about. You will do so in your own way, and over the course of time, once you fully encircle the galaxy, you will shield the bulk of our empire as we engage the insurmountable task of defeating the Hadarak, which is what we were created to do.”

“How many races are in Tamprani?”

“All have some presence there. Under former rules, we had to disperse our populations equally in every region. Now we are restructuring into clumps of territory that are more easily defensible.”

“You were going to abandon Tamprani all along?”

“What Mak’to’ran intended I do not know. But the pullback orders I have seen do not go as deeply to completely abandon the Rim regions. We are willing, however, to fully cede you Tamprani and all our worlds within it, with full infrastructure and weapons, if you are willing to destroy the Li’vorkrachnika and enter into this galactic realignment. Your dominion over the Rim has already been agreed to by the Armistice. We are simply asking that you exert dominance over it when you eventually grow to sufficient size and shield us from any threats there. This is not out of alignment with what you are currently doing in this area of the galaxy.”

“And if someone does attack you from the Rim? What are our obligations then?”

“In the near future, none. You may have dominion, but you have no presence in most of the galaxy. When you do, your natural inclinations are sufficient for Mak’to’ran. He does not ask an oath of mutual defense. He knows you will pursue threats within the Rim for your own reasons. You will attract their attention before we do, and we will still be the stronger. If they come for us, we will deal with them in the Core. What we do not want to have to do is station a strong fleet on our border with you. That would defeat the purpose of our offer.”

“We will never operate under the V’kit’no’sat banner. We will never authorize this agreement. If it is for your empire only, then I am not opposed to it, but if anyone asks us…we are not part of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Your ancestry says you are, and that is sufficient for us. You also wield our weapons, and now have some of our worlds. Your claim to independence falls on deaf ears when you are literally our progeny. I do not mean that as an insult, for I know you hate us, but from others’ perspective you are V’kit’no’sat.”

“Point taken. What of the lizard incursions into Olobiv?”

“We can defend those if you take the offensive against the Li’vorkrachnika home worlds. We will also offer you any systems in Olobiv that have fallen to the lizards that you can reclaim.”

“And if we are part of your empire, what of those within the Coreward realm that wish to transfer to the Rimward?”

“Such things will be discouraged, but allowed. I trust you see the immense power this affords you?”

“We could potentially gain access to all your races even if those in Tamprani do not wish to stay.”

“Yes. Is that sufficient compensation?”

Davis, still leaning back in his chair, rested an elbow on the rim of his desk and cradled his other in his hand, propping up his right arm as he pinched the bridge of his nose and temporarily hid his face behind his hand.

“What is Mak’to’ran’s long term agenda?”

“He has not informed me, other than to insist that this arrangement is mutually beneficial. He wants to return his attention to the Hadarak, as is our duty, and you wish to have your independence. By appearing to unite, from the outsiders’ view, we discourage attacks against either one of us and bring the galaxy into a far more civilized state than we have ever been able to do before. The Rim has always been beyond our grasp, and Mak’to’ran believes we have spread out too much already. It has weakened us. We cannot fully control the galaxy. We know this now. But if one spawned of us took on the mantle of responsibility for the parts we cannot, both would gain immensely from it.”

“And how do we gain from it?”

“Aside from all I have offered, we will continue to shield you from the Hadarak. Or have we done such an efficient job of it that you forgot they once stretched this far out into the galaxy?”

“Barely,” Davis corrected him, “and only in small numbers, but your point is taken. Any and all economic links will be done through conversion points. I will not allow V’kit’no’sat to have regular access to Star Force markets or planets.”

“You are free to configure our access to your empire in any way you wish. As I said, such things will be discouraged, but not disallowed. If you want to negotiate trade or personnel transfers with member races, systems, or individuals you may do so, but you will not be allowed to send your people to our worlds without those individual worlds’ permission. Furthermore, only your sanctioned ships can travel through our territory. Your civilians cannot. We do not want them on our worlds, nor to colonize within our domain.”

“We each stay on our side of the line and cooperate on occasion?”

“Exactly. The galaxy is large enough to share, us to the Core and you to the Rim.”

“And what do the Ari’tat have to say of this?”

“We see immense potential in establishing limited trade relationships with Rim races, if you would allow it.”

“Who does not like it?”

“The Oso’lon still wish you to be destroyed, but they cannot overrule Mak’to’ran now. He leads unopposed.”

“So much so that he cannot come here and discuss this in person?”

“He is needed on Itaru. His absence would have negative consequences.”

“If you are on the verge of another civil war, then this agreement could become moot.”

“That will not happen. Not so long as Mak’to’ran leads. The invasion from the Rim has assured this. He was proven correct, the Oso’lon were proven wrong. The empire is behind Mak’to’ran now.”

“Yet he asks them to do many things they do not wish to do.”

“The empire is healing, but old wounds do not mend fast. Our stability will grow when we are opposed by a common enemy, as of now. When the Rim Consortium fully withdraws and we have dealt with the others, internal issues will reassert themselves. We need to have this agreement fixed well before then so others can adapt to it while…distracted with combat.”

“And he also wants a demonstration as to what the Uriti are truly capable of?” Davis guessed.

“It would help to forestall the credibility of those who still call for your destruction. You have chosen not to assault V’kit’no’sat worlds. Some think that is because you are not capable of doing so, as foolish as that is. Evidence to the contrary would be useful, in a small way. Destroying the Li’vorkrachnika is the priority, however, and any witness of the Uriti’s destructive power is merely a beneficial side effect.”

“How many systems are currently in Tamprani?”

“1628, though several have already been lost to the Li’vorkrachnika…and one to you.”

Davis remembered back to when they had found the pyramid on Earth and had his first look at the V’kit’no’sat maps. He’d thought their empire only had around 2,000 system at that time and the regional capitol was their primary, because they only made maps based on layers. The pertinent worlds were marked, but all the irrelevant ones were omitted unless additional refinement was requested.

The full number of V’kit’no’sat systems back then, discovered after the Zak’de’ron had unlocked the database and Star Force had learned how to use it properly, had been more than half a million. Records on Tamprani alone had been more readily visible, but only the local region around Sol had been available on a complete map back in the beginning. And now, millennia later, he was being offered approximately the same number of systems he once though had comprised the entirety of the V’kit’no’sat’s unbeatable empire…as nothing more than a bargaining chip in negotiation.

He’d gained a lot for Star Force in the fall of the first Alliance, and then again during the fall of The Nexus. Now it seemed he was cleaning up more systems and races as the V’kit’no’sat hemorrhaged territory prior to their predicted collapse. Ambassador Nilhan did not know of the existence of the Zak’de’ron, but Mak’to’ran did, and he knew their far flung empire was weak against a focused attack on individual systems. So it seemed that Mak’to’ran was executing a controlled collapse of their most rimward territories and Star Force stood to benefit from it even more than what was allocated in the Armistice…if they fully engaged and destroyed the lizards.

That wasn’t going to be easy, but it was something that Star Force needed to do, for its own sake, and Mak’to’ran, despite his many faults, was a master negotiator. Mutual benefit was the name of the game, and he’d crafted this deal expertly…along with a dose of ‘I told you so’ by means of Star Force joining the V’kit’no’sat, in name only, as he’d similarly suggested long ago.

Davis stood up from his chair, walking around behind it, and stared at the Ari’tat as he rested his arms on the headrest from behind.

“This will require some finessing, but in principle, we accept.”

“Very good. I will send word to Mak’to’ran while we endeavor to come to an agreement on the finer details of our new relationship. And I will say, on a personal level, this is the way it should be. Independent as you are, we both originate from a common ancestry. Our fighting one another was never right.”

“It would have been nice if you figured that out long before now,” Davis quipped.

“An error on our part,” Nilhan admitted, hopping down from his chair to the floor where he stood and looked up at Davis. “I hope you can see the exchange of many of our worlds as a form of compensation. Is there anything else you require of me?”

“I need time to consider the ramifications of this agreement. Come back tomorrow and we can begin formulating the bounds of our limited interconnection.”

“Tomorrow I will return,” he said with a bob of his head, then turned and ran/walked out of Davis’s office as the Director headed back to his window view of the ocean. He had known Star Force needed to make a change, but he had not seen this coming. Mak’to’ran was afraid. Very afraid. And the thought of the current instability bringing forth the Zak’de’ron early was probably driving this generous offer. Then again, some of the races attacking the V’kit’no’sat might be doing so on the orders of the Zak’de’ron.

Mak’to’ran was desperate, but he was also savvy. This realignment would strengthen both the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force…as well as giving Davis the V’kit’no’sat races. It wasn’t quite as good as getting a batch of eggs from each, but they’d never allow that. Touching an egg was almost sacrilege for them, and allowing individuals to move from Core to Rim within the same empire was a workaround.

Mak’to’ran knew he had erred, and while this might also be part of his penance, Davis knew that Mak’to’ran needed Star Force to grow as large and fast and strong as possible for when the Zak’de’ron returned, because Davis knew they’d both have to fight simultaneously or be defeated singly. The wrath of the Zak’de’ron was coming, and if Davis let the V’kit’no’sat be destroyed then the Zak’de’ron would eventually turn on Star Force, for they would not allow a peer to exist, and Star Force had already grown beyond the bounds of a servant.

“Cousins it is then,” he said softly. “And the last one standing inherits the galaxy.”

www.aerkijyr.com

Instinct

1

May 29, 4919

Alamo System (Uriti Preserve)

Stellar Orbit

Riley-038 stood looking out the virtual window onboard his flagship. He was well inside the hull, with multiple decks between him and space, but he’d added the holographic view to the mediation chamber so he could look at who he was talking with…or rather communicating with, for they still hadn’t managed to learn to speak directly to the Uriti in any form of language that could be quantified and computerized. It was a meshing of thoughts and feelings that was used, and right now Riley could see Bahamut, Sub Zero, and Sivir just outside his ship while 8 others were down inside the glowing star soaking up energy directly.

The room Riley was in was locked, with a guard outside that was mostly unnecessary. No non-Star Force personnel were onboard his ship, but it was just a little extra measure meant to give him someone watching his back, for while in contact with the Uriti his Pefbar wouldn’t function and someone could literally walk up behind him without his knowing.

Riley looked at the three Uriti outside as the chrome gauntlet he wore had the glowing jewel burning green, meaning his mind was in the correct mental alignment to access the Chixzon interface, giving him the connection to the Uriti that they would not ignore. His personal telepathy was far too small for them to notice, let alone travel the distance out from the ship to them. He’d need a booster, but even then the Uriti wouldn’t recognize him. There was one channel that made his presence ‘important’ enough to get noticed, and it was a method that was one of Star Force’s most closely guarded secrets.

Kara knew of it, but she didn’t know how it worked, which meant the Zak’de’ron didn’t have that technology. Only Star Force and the Chixzon did, and Riley had been working hard to develop a relationship with the Uriti that would be the tie-breaker if a Chixzon showed up and tried a tug of war for influence over them. And that meant he had to ask for their help now, not order it.

Our war with the V’kit’no’sat is over, Riley said, not in those words, but in a series of images and familiar emotions that they’d developed a sort of short-hand for, and often Riley had trouble trying to translate between the two. He wasn’t as good as the Wranglers, who had literally started to think like the Uriti, but he needed to be the one to ask, given the situation before them. But another threat is before us. One we must utterly destroy.

Before the V’kit’no’sat found us we were attacked and nearly defeated by a weaker enemy. We survived, and outgrew them, and were nearly to the point of destroying them when they fled towards V’kit’no’sat star systems. We could not pursue without revealing our presence, so this enemy escaped us. We are far more powerful than them now, but they have been getting help from another. We do not know who, but their strength is growing to dangerous levels. Now that we are free of the V’kit’no’sat, we must eliminate this enemy before they can grow strong enough to attack us once again.

We do not want to do so, but there are no other options. We have tried to negotiate. We have tried to teach. We have tried to capture them. They will not listen. They will destroy all around them, and if they are unable to do more damage they will destroy themselves rather than accept imprisonment. Long ago we found a way, a very difficult way, to save some of them. Those that we did now serve us as Paladin. But the method we used to reach them has now been blocked. Their minds enslaved to the orders of their leaders. We cannot rescue them. We cannot contain them. And the longer they live, the more people they will destroy. To protect others, we must eliminate them now, before they can spread further.

I have been sent to ask if you would assist us with this eradication. It is a fight we must make, but they are not your enemy. If you do not wish to fight them, we understand. This is our burden to carry.

Riley signaled that he was done, then the response from Bahamut came in without hesitation.

The pack fights as one. Where our little brothers fight, we will fight.

There is danger, Riley warned. They are not as powerful as the V’kit’no’sat, but they are far more numerous. It will be difficult to kill them all before they can inflict damage on us.

The little ones cannot stand against us.

No, they cannot. Which is why I ask your help. The challenge will be in killing them fast enough to prevent them from fleeing and rebuilding elsewhere in the galaxy. We will need your full power. Including your minions.

Did the V’kit’no’sat not deserve destruction? Sivir asked. Our full power was restrained against them.

To avoid killing our own people they had imprisoned. This new enemy does not capture. They destroy. So their worlds will be empty aside from them. If we find otherwise we will make adjustments, but I anticipate a sea of enemies with no allies or neutrals in sight. It is a type of war that we have not fought in a long time, and one we do not like, but it must be done.

Have the Hadarak been seen? Sub Zero asked, repeating a question that had almost become their mantra.

No. They are still far from here, and will be far from the fight against this new enemy.

What do you call this enemy? Bahamut asked.

They call themselves Li’vorkrachnika. We call them, lizards.

And you say they must all be destroyed.

Unfortunately yes. We can find no other way to stop them, and we have looked for a long time.

We were built to destroy the little ones and those that cannot be stopped. We will erase them with you.

Riley frowned. He had never heard that before. Who are ‘those that cannot be stopped?’

Those we are meant to delay and warn of.

Warn who?

The Hadarak. They cannot stop them, but they will slow them.

How do you recognize those who cannot be stopped? Riley asked, feeling as if he’d stumbled onto a very valuable data nugget.

They glow. We are meant to fight and slow them. The Hadarak are meant to fight and slow them. We are meant to fight together.

Riley felt a deep sadness and betrayal there, for despite their size and power, the Uriti were essentially overgrown Hadarak minions, not Hadarak themselves. Their bodies were, but their minds were a hybrid and the reproductive process that had spurned them came from the minions, so in some ways they thought as Hadarak, and in others they thought as minions. Living minions, not the lifeless biological programming that the Chixzon had modified the Uriti-produced minions to be. And the Uriti could not understand why the Hadarak did not accept them as such. It was simply beyond their ability to comprehend, but they did learn and were now very wary of the Hadarak. Still, they did not understand why they had been attacked and those wounds still burnt bright inside them, especially Bahamut.

Are the ones that glow big or little ones?

All who glow.

Have you ever encountered one that glowed?

No. Neither have the Hadarak.

They told you that?

They said we did not glow, but we had to be destroyed the same. They knew not what one that glowed was. We do not know. We will know when we know.

Are the Hadarak searching for the ones that glow?

They are waiting for the ones who glow to come. They always come. We wait.

Will you win?

We will die. We always die. We will delay and warn. We will not win.

I prefer winning.

You cannot win lizards. You not try. You say impossible. Defeat glowing ones impossible.

It is difficult because we might be able to find a way. But waiting means others are killed while we search. We must protect others. We do not have a way now. Therefore it is impossible. Must you fight the glowing ones, or can you wait?

When we find the glowing ones we cannot wait. They must be slowed. Do you know how to slow glowing ones?

I do not know what glowing ones are. I do not know where they are. Are they in the center of the galaxy?

They will appear where they appear. We must wait. We help our little brothers while we wait. Summon the fast ones and we will travel with you.

Riley knew ‘fast ones’ meant the Uriti transports that could fly between stars far faster than the Uriti could ever hope to. It was a sign that they were ready and willing to leave now and dive back into a fight after only a few years of peace…though to be accurate, they hadn’t fought very many battles, and most of the time it was just laying some precision fire down on a planet while the V’kit’no’sat ran for their lives.

This war was going to be different. The lizards would not run, despite their new marching orders that Paul had reported. He knew the Uriti could handle it, but they were going to take damage and he hated putting them into that situation.

But these ‘glowing ones’ bothered him. The Uriti had never spoken of them before, but what Riley was sensing indicated that this was one of their primary purposes for existing…and he was pretty sure this didn’t come from the Chixzon if it was a trait that the Hadarak also shared.

That fast ones are waiting. We need to take you all. Do the others agree to fight?

The pack fights as one, Bahamut repeated. Show us what little ones need deleted and we will make them gone.

Riley sent the coordinates for them to rendezvous at, then partially broke his concentration to interface with the wristband on his opposite arm that tied into the ship’s computer. He didn’t need his telepathy to do it, since he was already in physical contact and the device made the connection to his mind for him, and he used the interlink to signal the waiting transports to begin moving down into low stellar orbit to pick up the Uriti. He hadn’t wanted to bring them out before the Uriti agreed to fight, but it seemed that concern had been pointless. To the Uriti, Star Force was part of their family, or ‘pack’ as they called it. And the idea of asking for help was beyond them. They were one, and fought as one…and apparently didn’t care about how many little ones were wiped out, which was yet one more reason that Riley was glad that only Star Force had access to them, for they weren’t exactly what one would call ‘discerning’ when it came to killing.

They were living war machines, and ironically that’s exactly what Star Force needed them to be this time. Not just a threat of massive retaliation, but now they needed to actually use their full power to wipe out an entire race…if they were lucky. Riley doubted they would get them all, but they needed to break their powerbase and make them completely rebuild, and when it came to breaking things, the Uriti could do so just by their mere proximity.

Riley was still chewing on who the glowing ones might be, but another corner of his mind face-palmed itself as a course of action he hadn’t thought of before seemed obvious.

But no, the telepathic aura of the Uriti could render the lizards inert, but it couldn’t reprogram them. The genetic memories couldn’t be erased, but it did mean that the lizards couldn’t run suicide bombers up to the Uriti at close range, because they’d lose the minds before they got to physical contact. That wouldn’t do much for a kamikaze ship, but it meant if a Uriti landed on a planet, a zone around it would be free of harm from infantry, aircraft, and anything else that had a pilot in it.

And that was going to be the best way to shield minion production facilities. Riley kicked himself for not picking up on that before, but was saddened that the massive telepathic aura couldn’t somehow be used to override the lizard mental programming. Nothing they had learned of the Uriti suggested that was possible, but it was nice to know he had several large jamming devices available to him at close range.

Riley raised an eyebrow as he saw Bahamut and the other two Uriti moving off towards the rendezvous point with several more coming up from within the star on the nearby tracking screen, for they hadn’t quite reached the surface yet and even when they did you’d need a filter on the sunlight to see them, which a ‘normal’ window wouldn’t accommodate.

The passive Uriti telepathic aura was potent near the beasts, but suddenly Riley wondered how large they could push it consciously? The Yisv couldn’t be anywhere near a Uriti when it was awake. Even partway across a star system was too close. So he wondered at what range a Uriti could disable lizard minds?

That was something he was going to investigate for sure, because if it worked out to be naval range…then this was going to get even easier than the trailblazers had been expecting.

2

June 16, 4919

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

Vortison was waiting in his lab when one of the oldest Archons walked in. He’d been expecting her, but he wasn’t happy that she was here.

“This is a bad idea,” he reminded her as Lara-379 almost floated across the floor in a typical Archon stride so refined from centuries of training to be as efficient as possible. “Give me another 10 years. Please.”

“Have you many any progress the past 10?” she challenged.

The master medtech sighed. “Not really, but what’s the rush?”

Lara stopped in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders as he sat on a chair slightly lower than she stood. “You know this has to be refined with training, and you’re never going to be able to simulate that in the lab. It has to be done by one of us. Waiting another decade won’t change that.”

“You never know for sure. We’re going beyond both the V’kit’no’sat and the Chixzon. We’re flying blind here, so we don’t know that more years won’t matter.”

“There’s a difference between patience and hesitance,” she said, releasing him and taking a half step back. “Which is this?”

“It could kill you,” he warned.

“I know. Which is why I’m going to do it and not the trailblazers. We can’t risk them.”

“No Archon should do it. You all push too hard. This is the complete opposite. You have to sip at the power. Too much and you burn out. I might be able to keep you alive, but you’ll lose hundreds of years of training at the best. The stopgaps might not even work and you could end up dead, Lara.”

“Been there once, not going back,” she said firmly. “That’s why I have to be the one to do this. I learned extreme patience the hard way.”

“I want to wait.”

“I’m free now and the trailblazers are busy. Perfect timing. Let’s get this started before they can object. You know they’ll want to do this.”

“I’ve been stalling them for years. Why can’t I stall you?”

“Because this is personal for me. And I’m not going to let what happened to me happen to anyone else. You need someone to monitor and make adjustments from…that’s me. No one else. And there’s no point in waiting anymore. I’m available, so let’s get this started.”

“It will take years, you know. You won’t be able to train normally…” he added, with Lara putting up a hand for him to stop.

“This is my path forward. I’ve accepted that. No looking back. I’ll put up with the training disruption. I had to do it before. This time I’m choosing to.”

“Why?”

“We train to get more power. If I can get more power another way. A lot more power. Then this is my new training.”

“I really don’t want to do this, Lara. It’s theoretical only, loosely based on Chixzon biotech. There are too many unknowns.”

“Which will not be known until we explore them. I’m self-anointing myself trailblazer here. Someone has to go where no one has gone before, and this time it’s me. Besides, I’ve already got a head start on the total rebuild thing. And I will drop the guilt bomb on you if needed.”

Vortison smacked a datapad aside, with it falling off the tabletop onto the floor. He still blamed himself for Lara nearly dying when she experienced psionic overload. He didn’t cause it, but he should have foreseen the problem before it happened. It was a glitch in the V’kit’no’sat coding, or perhaps even the Zak’de’ron coding. They hadn’t seen it because Zen’zat never accumulated as many psionics as the Archons had, and where they had failed Vortison had to step in and make adjustments to their coding after the fact, but not before Lara’s bones literally broke from the inside as overlapping psionics caused an unexpected malfunction.

“You’re the smartest guy we have,” Lara pointed out. “I’m better off with you than someone else.”

“No one else can do this,” Vortison sneered. “Not even Nefron. He’s a databank, not a scientist.”

“It’s my life to risk, and I know you’ll feel horrible if something happened to me, but suck it up, cupcake. I’m going to be doing the hard part.”

“Cupcake?” he asked, having to snicker a bit at that.

“That’s what you’re acting like.”

“You don’t understand what is going to happen to you. I do...to a point.”

“I’ll go slow. I promise.”

“It’s your instinctual reaction that worries me, Lara. When your head swarms with confusion, will you be patient or push? Archons always push.”

“Which is why I have to be the one to do this so you can refine the process. Pushing for me is a luxury. When my body went backwards, it couldn’t keep up with my memories. I literally couldn’t push how my mind knew I was capable of. I learned to go slow. I learned why I had to. I developed a habit. I still have that habit, even if I don’t use it much. The experience is there,” she said, pointing a finger at her own head. “The others don’t have it. I do. So let me do this.”

“If I said ‘why do you need the power,’ you’d probably feel compelled to beat the stupidity out of me,” he said sarcastically.

Lara leaned forward and put her finger underneath his chin, forcing him to look her in her eyes.

“Come on. Help me become a Super Saiyan. Pretty please.”

“Why does that reference hold such importance for you? For all of you? It’s just a very unorthodox and illogical ancient cartoon.”

“If you have to ask, you’ll never understand. This is worth going after, Vortison. More so than you realize. I’ll go as slow as I need to in order to achieve it, not because I promised you I would. Count on my greed for more power to fuel my patience.”

He swiped away her finger with his hand. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

“Nope,” she said defiantly.

“I could report you to the trailblazers.”

“Do you want to experience broken bones too?”

“Bluff,” he declared.

“I’m doing this and you’re going to help me,” she said firmly. “If I die you’re going to feel horrible, despite it being my choice. If I succeed, I open up a whole new level of Archon advancement and give you a new playground of Human genetics to explore.

“If we do this, you will no longer be Human,” he underscored.

“That’s the point,” she said firmly.

The medtech dipped his head. “I’m worried about you, not my feelings. I have no control over this. Medically speaking, we’re in the wilderness.”

“That’s why you have to trust me to find the way. You know biology from the spectator’s point of view. I know it far better from the user interface, and that’s where the training effect happens. You know that.”

“Fine,” he relented. “It is your ass on the line. And I haven’t been working on this for nothing. I just wished I could have gotten closer before hitting the wall. Someone has to break through to give me data, it’s just that you…”

“If I get screwed it’s doubly unfair because it will be the second time,” she finished for him. “I know. I’m willing to risk it because this time I’m in the pilot’s seat. Not a helpless victim. The hard work has to be done by somebody, and in this case that somebody is me and you and whatever other staff you need. Just give me the push I need, and I’ll do the rest.”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to a low pedestal set into a wall alcove. “Take off your clothes and get ready to stand still for a few hours.”

“Thank you,” she said, eagerly stripping off her uniform while walking across the lab, leaving a trail of clothing that she telekinetically pulled into a ball and floated on top of a table as she spun around and stepped back into the alcove with her bare feet feeling tingly on the material that had to be energized in some way.

“Anders,” Vortison said to another medtech across the room. “Get Carson and Neuroi in here. We’ve got work to do.”

“On it,” the man said, disappearing to round up the other medtechs that would be needed for this project. There would be too many variables to monitor on his own, even with computer assistance, and he had to give Lara every advantage possible.

He walked up beside her and tapped on a display screen that began waking up the new machine that the Archon was standing on.

“How does the clothing interfere?” she asked. “Am I going to Jumat pulse?”

“Please don’t. You’ll wreck the machinery. I don’t have a Jumat-proof shield.”

“There is no such thing. So why no clothes?”

“Because with all the stress you’re going to be putting me under these coming years, this is a tiny compensation. I am a guy, you know.”

Lara smirked. “As long as I end up with yellow hair, I’ll live naked for you if that’s what you want.”

“And there’s the small chance that you might set them on fire,” he added in a whisper.

“Killjoy. I liked your first answer better.”

“My staff and I are going to get to know your body on an extremely intimate level. You’re not going to be able to hide anything from us, physically or mentally, so why bother with pointless formality,” he said, pulling a small device out of a nearby drawer. “And then there’s this. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to attach it directly to your cranium. I’ve looked for a better way, but with the things you do during training, it’s the only way to keep it from falling off.”

“Where are you putting it?” she teased.

“Nowhere fun,” he said deadpan, reaching up and gently affixing it above her right eyebrow. Lara felt part of her face go numb, then a few seconds later Vortison pulled his hands back and she felt a warmth return…along with what felt like a bone bump. She reached up and stroked the device, confirming it was melded to the bone with several heft jerks.

“That’s what I mean. Aggressive by instinct,” he warned. “Patience, my naked one. Patience.”

“So you’re going to try to distract my innate aggressiveness with flirtation? That won’t work, but feel free to keep trying.”

“Something to do with why Archons don’t mate?”

“We don’t like slipping out of combat mode. It weakens us.”

Vortison froze, then locked eyes with her, totally serious. “Then you might want to try it. Combat mode will kill you if you can’t shake free of it.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“And if I insist?”

“You’re cute, but no thanks. I know how to relax while in combat mode. It’s called sleeping.”

“Actually…you’ve given me an idea. Hold on a second,” he said, running off and leaving her standing there alone. She waited patiently, having committed herself to this course a long time ago. There was no going back, no regrets, no matter how this turned out. If someone had to take the hit on this, it was going to be her…not the trailblazers. She was going to shield them, with her death if need be, though she knew if this came down to her skill in controlling herself, then she’d make it through.

When Vortison came back he had a small cylinder in his hand. He touched it briefly to her new cranial piece then tossed it on a nearby table as he typed irregularly on a datapad…which was a sign of mixed input from his fingers and his telepathy.

“Stand still, I need to test a theory.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, then she clenched up in shock as a very unfamiliar sensation crept through her body and her mind flushed. “What the hell…”

“Good,” Vortison said, ignoring her and focused entirely on his data, completely missing the look of shock on her face. “Very good.”

“Did you just Lachka grab me?” she asked, not having sensed any Pefbar fields.

“No, sorry. Nothing that crude. We haven’t made the technology public, because we know a lot of people would retreat to their rooms and never come out again, but we have the ability to induce arousal and unlimited orgasms through direct mental manipulation. The fact that you’re so unused to them is a plus here.”

“Wait a second, what are you saying?” she asked, suddenly feeling naked for the first time.

“How committed are you to seeing this through?”

“Is this really necessary?”

“If it keeps you out of combat mode, then yes. It could mean the difference between you living or dying, so don’t get shy on me,” he said, cracking a smirk at the end. “I’m serious, but I do appreciate the irony here. Your instinct is combat mode. You’re going to need that later, but most of the time you gotta scale down. If arousal keeps you out of combat mode, then that’s what we will use.”

“Oh I’m so not ready for this,” she said, looking down at her naked body, the same as she had done many times, but now it looked different. Her combat mode was trying to reset itself, seeing her arms and legs and the musculature there as weapons…which they truly were…while arousal gave false sensor readings designed for one purpose and one purpose only. That being to reproduce. It was the one lie that the body told to the user, and because it wasn’t a real need the Archons avoided it, but it felt damn real now. But then again, an unconvincing mirage wouldn’t work, so of course it would feel real.

“How long?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. At least 18 hours a day, at various levels. A low level one while you sleep. Can’t have any combat dreams throwing you off.”

Lara’s mouth dropped open. “Do you have any idea what that will do to me?”

“Not really. Other than making you very, very happy.”

“It’ll made me very, very pathetic. I’ll lose my mojo.”

“And you can’t get it back later?”

“I…I don’t know. Probably. Maybe. Damn you, this isn’t what I wanted.”

“No, you wanted to fight your way through this like a typical Archon. But if this will allow you to reach your greater power, what’s stopping you?”

“You find this funny, don’t you?”

“On a personal level, yes I do. But I’m not playing games with you, Lara. We gotta make use of whatever nullifiers we can. Including this, if it will work, and my short test showed a wide range of nullification.”

“The increased heart rate isn’t a problem?”

“Compared to what it is when you’re in combat? This is nothing.”

“I hate you.”

“We can call it off then.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I just don’t see how I’m going to control this if you’ve got me in an uncontrollable state.”

“The state will make it so you don’t have to control it. You just have to sit and let it happen. That’s exactly what your instincts will not let you do.”

“And when I do need to go into combat mode? I’ll be so loopy I might not be able to.”

“Sips, Lara. Small steps. You won’t have to go into full combat mode until years down the road. By then you’ll have adapted to this and it won’t be as effective. But you’re new to arousal, at least compared to the rest of us. You haven’t used it in so long…”

“I get it,” she said, banging her head back against the wall in frustration, then sheepishly glanced back making sure she didn’t damage it. “Ok, I guess I just proved your point. I just don’t like feeling helpless like this when my life is on the line.”

“You’re putting your life in my hands anyway. And I know you’re going to try and go super saiyan inside, and that will blow you up. I did watch the cartoon, you know. That’s exactly the wrong mental state to be in, and you really don’t know much else, do you?”

“So we use the built in idiot switch,” she added. “Might as well get some beneficial use out of it, if that’s the only way?”

“It’s the best way I can find. Actually, I’m more confident now that I was before. In order for this to work, you have to stop being an Archon for a long periods of time.”

“That’s…just…not…fair,” she groaned.

“Suck it up, cupcake.”

She glared at him for a second, but it melted into a laugh. “You’re right. If I can handle pain then I can handle this. But if this is going take hours, then you’re going to need to mop the floor,” she said apologetically.

“We’re medtechs. Biological fluids are normal around here.”

“Are they? I thought the regenerator did everything unseen.”

“The inside of a Dre’mo’don rifle would be unusual to me. Would it be to you, because you normally use them intact?”

“Fine. Fine. I’m just feeling…off. Even though this thing isn’t turned on anymore.”

“Mode change. I’m surprised you haven’t developed some training for that.”

“We did. But I never got it because I was too old and I didn’t feel like it. I thought staying in combat mode was better than getting my buttons pushed. Unless someone captured me and put me somewhere,” she said, gesturing around her, “like this, it would never come up.”

“When I start the procedure, you’re going to feel resistance. You’re going to want to push back. I want you to try it your way first, and then when your levels get too high we’ll go to the backup plan. In fact, we’ll do that every day, to help you learn control. Your punishment for failure will be unending orgasms.”

“Now that is torture.”

“There’s the door if you want out,” the medtech said, pointing across the lab as a side door opened up and Anders came back in with the other two assistants.

“Lock the lab when I’m here and nobody tells anyone anything about this,” she said, staring laser beams at him. “Not until we succeed.”

“That will be years…but we’ll keep this aspect out of the reports until you say otherwise. I promise, shy one.”

“I don’t think I’m going to have the luxury of shyness much longer,” she said grumpily. “Alright, tell me what I have to do to avoid your punishment.”

“It’s calibration. Your body gets altered wide scale, but in small increments. You have to adapt to the increments. This is going to be stressful in the extreme, but a low level stress. You’re going to want to stoke your healing…don’t. You have to let the effect soak in, and that means not fighting it. Merely enduring it.”

“And then?”

“And then I don’t know. That’s where we begin. Beyond that, we’re going to have to figure things out as you transition away from being Human and further into Super Human.”

“Saiyan. We’re calling it Saiyan. And don’t forget to make my hair yellow when it works.”

“We’re a long way from that, but the change is easy to engineer. I’ve already programmed it.”

“Alright, hit me with it then.”

“We’ll need some time to set up. Just wait where you are.”

Lara sighed, then let them prep the machinery while she waited. This wasn’t what she had expected coming here, and she could sense the pleasure Vortison was getting at making her so uncomfortable. But his own discomfort was also evident, though he did feel this was a much better approach when he began connecting physical conduits form the machine to various points on her body and he made flesh to flesh contact for a second, which was enough for her to sneak a quick peak at his mind.

Ok, Lara, she told herself. You’re about to fail, and fail miserably, then turn into a drooling idiot over and over again until you learn to control this. Fun times ahead. Best to just run straight into it than dilly dallying around. And if I can do this and Vortison can get his data, maybe none of the others will have to. If I have to take the pleasure hit for them, then that’s better than dying…right?

Oh hell, why I am being such a wuss. Your body is going to be a wreck anyway. Why not have your mind one too?

“Alright, we’re ready,” Vortison said some 18 minutes later. “Are you?”

“Yes. Did you lock the door?”

Vortison glanced back at the entrance and telepathically signaled it to lock, seeing a small indicator light shift from blue to green.

“Locked. And remember, no Jumat. I can’t block it out and rework your body at the same time.”

“If I’m sane I won’t. No promises when I go all…you know.”

“Alright, stay calm and let the burn happen. Not sure what it will feel like beyond that, so just keep still, inside and out. Here we go.”

Lara let out a deep breath then clenched up in anticipation, then caught Vortison’s eye and realized that wasn’t the way to go. She relaxed her shoulders and let her legs sag just a touch, then a spike of hot lightning shot through her that felt…wrong. Very wrong. Like it was eating her alive from the inside out.

She wanted to fight it, but knew she couldn’t. So she just put her mind into Rocky mode, as if she was taking punch after punch and just shaking it off. It was almost too much for her, then it suddenly ended and a lingering burn was left behind.

“Lara?” she heard Vortison ask, though it sounded like he was miles away.

“Still sane,” she mumbled, her tongue feeling numb.

“You made it through the first one. Now stay here for a couple hours and let it ride. You need time to adapt.”

“I don’t…” she said, leaning forward and being caught by the machine arms that kept her from falling as she suddenly puked all over the front of the pedestal and out onto the floor once, then she just hung there limp still attached to the machine.

To her credit she hung in there, with her stress levels hanging just below danger zone all the way up to the next treatment. And the next one, and the next. She made it 6 days until she started fighting it too much and Vortison had to enact the backup plan, distracting her from the discomfort so she wouldn’t fight it.

It worked in keeping her from overloading, but the efficiently level of the adaptation tanked. It seemed she needed to feel it to adapt the quickest, but if slow was the only way to get there, then slow and inefficient it would be.

Vortison and the others took shifts sleeping over the next 22 days, with Lara staying attached to the machine the entire time and it handling her feeding and waste extraction internally until they reached the end of the first phase and she was released to fall into a pain stricken yet euphoric state that had made it hard to walk on top of the stiffness from her body being a scarecrow for so long.

They helped Lara into a nearby tube that she laid down in and was sealed over top of her, then they had her body transported across the facility to a special training den that she had to herself. She was so weak she couldn’t climb out without help, then her wildly conflicted mind solidified somewhat as the training course before her signaled a start chime.

She walked, still naked, one stumbling step at a time on the easiest challenge course imaginable…but it was damn hard for her to do. She tried to focus, but the low level arousal Vortison was keeping her in wouldn’t let her. It was like trying to control your own body by remote, as if she wasn’t quite in it and looking on as a spectator, but the farther she went the more control she gained. Enough, at least, to be able to walk in a straight line and stumble/fall over low walls.

Lara only made it a third of the way through the course before her legs went out, then the dedicated handlers the medtechs had assigned to her picked her up and put her back inside the tube where she would sleep for the next 13 hours, then wake and try the course again.

Another 11 days of that and she was able to complete the course with ease…which meant it was time to send her back to the lab for another series of treatments and repeat the process all over again.

3

December 2, 4922

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

Lara had changed, and not just in the physical. Her body was a wreck, but her mind was in a state she had never experienced before as he climbed up a ladder then swung her feet through an aperture that led to a slide. She twirled around and around before landing in a sand pit that she began to run across and up a nearby dune inside the training facility. Her movements were slow and awkward compared to what she had once been capable of, but she could barely remember those times.

The past 3 years felt like an eternity. The wars she had fought in the past were gone. Her training as an Archon was gone. Her memories of Star Force were gone. All she knew now was the training courses and the medbay. Everything else was such a hazy blur it was like she had never existed anywhere else.

She’d partially held out against the onslaught of the physical changes for 6 weeks before Vortison’s backup plan had to fully kick in and Lara became a quavering mass of sexual arousal around the clock. It had felt good but sickening at the same time, for it couldn’t completely obscure the damage happening to her body. But worse of all, what it had done was break her defiant mojo and sent her into a tailspin of confusion and vulnerability, for she couldn’t identify her target to fight back against.

That had been the point, so her internal conflict wouldn’t snowball into an overload, but it had hit Lara far harder than she’d expected. Right now she couldn’t remember much from then, for the period of sexual arousal had only lasted a few months. Since then she’d regained a semblance of stability and held it together enough that the backup plan wasn’t needed, but it was still there and she desperately did not want to go back into that state.

Like many younger Archons had testified too before, once inundated with unnaturally strong orgasms over and over again, the pleasure torture lost its effect on Lara as she adapted to it, but the disruption remained. She was no longer ‘shy’ in that regard, and a curious thing had happened during that transition. Despite the looseness of her mind now that she still couldn’t manage to shake, not for two seconds, she had somehow managed to transcend the arousal, disconnecting from her body in a fashion that allowed her to see it for the biomechanical function that it was.

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t a part of who she was. It was the body she was in, and once that fact had fully sunk in she had been able to smooth out her resistance to it and turn it into an advantage. That had been what had allowed her to regain enough stability to no longer need it, and while that was a valuable lesson learned it was almost meaningless compared to what was still happening to her.

The obstacle course she was running now wasn’t too hard, but it was impossible compared to what she had been going through two years ago. The more strength she gained the more Vortison changed her, but there was base improvement going on that was allowing her more and more ability. That made it look like she was recovering, but she wasn’t. In fact, the torrent inside her body was getting gradually worse.

She was in constant agony, lost in the pain and torsion that she experienced as Vortison made small changes to her biology…allowed her to adapt to them…then made more changes based on how that adaptation occurred. He wasn’t going to graft alien genetics to her, which would have been far easier. No, he needed her body to produce tissue of its own for various functions that Humans didn’t currently possess, and the process had never been done before so he was being very clunky in the modifications.

Vortison had refined the process a great deal already, meaning the next person to go through this would not have the same difficulty, but Lara was the trailblazer and taking the hits along the way to give him the data he needed, and it was her body that was telling Vortison what was and was not possible.

For Lara, riding that out was pure agony, and her determination had long ago faded. Now she was in a zombie mentality, moving through minute after minute with no hope, no drive, no goals, no nothing. There was just endurance. Holding on to the moment and trying not to lose what little self-control she had scraped together by being subjected to the arousal treatment again, because she knew if that happened she’d go back to being totally rudderless.

But right now she was in heavy defensive mode and hanging on to any small amount of progress she had, as if pulling on a giant rope through the fog, unable to see what was ahead or behind her and only the few knots in the rope near her grasp. Getting to the next knot was all that she could focus on, and this had been going on so long she had no idea how long the rope was behind her, nor ahead, leaving her lost inside the cocoon of the changes being made to her.

But she didn’t have to know, she just had to endure and keep pushing forward. Vortison was the one that had to know, and in the past 3 years he had learned more about the Human body than he’d learned in the past millennia. He had gone past the V’kit’no’sat and Chixzon files, far past now, and Lara was truly becoming superhuman as her body made what was mostly intra-cell upgrades.

That meant no new body parts, as far as organs went. She still looked the same, though gaunt from the cascade of treatments. Lara was back to eating food now, but she still visibly looked sick. Vortison had no idea how much torment she was in, but he was aware of it. He didn’t want to be doing this to her, but there was no going back now. She was in a transitional state, and if he tried to stabilize her here she’d die. Her adaptation was the only thing holding her together, along with the regenerator, and if she stopped pushing forward the adaptation would slacken and her cells would literally rip apart.

She was in a state of flux, and thankfully she hadn’t asked to quit. Saving her life would require gutting her and essentially sending her back to the state she was in before becoming an Archon. It would destroy all her years of training if he was successful. There was a decent chance that he couldn’t even achieve that small victory. The only real path for her now was forward, and he didn’t want to even think about going backward. It would destroy her, one way or another.

He was doing a great many things to her, but the biggest change that all the others fed off of was her metabolism. Humans had a variable metabolism, but not on the level that the Archons needed. Adjustments like the psionic Inas that allowed them to need less sleep were an improvement, but nothing on the level that Lara had currently become, let alone what she was headed towards.

The Chixzon had detailed several races with hyperactive metabolisms, and it was from that basic knowledge that this crazy idea had started. Those races had to constantly keep moving or they’d die, because they were built for movement. Sedation would literally kill them, and it had been argued that since the Archons trained close to that anyway, this would be a massive upgrade for them.

The trouble was, Human cells were not built to sustain constant activity. They needed recharge, hence sleep, and that down time caused the cells to be structured differently than the few hyperactive races the galaxy fielded. The build-up and discharge model that Humans were built on had to be modified to a massive extent with overlapping functions so that a piece of them could rest while the others kept up the burden of activity.

To achieve that, the Human cells had to be completely redesigned. A design that neither Vortison nor the V’kit’no’sat possessed. You couldn’t have a regenerator build the new tissue without that design, and since the body was melded with the invisible Core that science hadn’t yet been able to probe, it didn’t always function as predicted and trying to academically design new body tissue had almost always been met with failure.

The body had to upgrade itself through adaptation, and when one had done so it could be copied to others. The Zak’de’ron had upgraded the various V’kit’no’sat races by similar methods over the long haul while implementing large changes immediately based off of tissues found in other races. Melding the two together was tricky, but it was far easier than just creating something new.

And adding something to the body, like the Hjar’at’s spines, was easy. Changing the basic cell structure of the body was damn hard, and every mistake that Vortison was making, Lara was paying the price for it.

And he was making lots of mistakes because he was essentially fumbling around in the dark until he found something that worked. When he did he latched onto it and then began prompting smaller changes to it, using that success as a baseline for further adaptation. In essence, he was walking into a room filled with buttons and had to learn how they worked by going around and pressing each one, only to figure out what it did by watching what happened. And that included a lot of bad things.

But he had a map now. Where Lara had gone he had charted it out and now knew how to avoid the pitfalls she’d dragged herself through. That would help others cross the same gap, but it did nothing for the new ground Lara was exploring with each step forward. A more apt analogy was walking through a mine field and setting one off with every few steps. It cleared a path for the others to follow later, but Lara had to take and survive each explosion along the way.

Without the regenerator she would have died a long time ago. Having it rebuild her diminished her adaptation, for the new tissue was weaker, but some of the bigger mistakes Vortison made would have killed her if he hadn’t been able to quickly rebuild the damage and change direction. He never would have done this to an unwilling person, but even with that said, he would have refused entirely if he had known it would be this bad.

But he wasn’t about to bail on her now. As long as she was making progress, he was going to do everything he could to help her get to a sustainable state. And the thing was, she wasn’t anywhere close to one yet. At least he didn’t think so. This was all so new he couldn’t say for sure, but he had a feeling she had just dipped her toe into the necessary changes, while from her perspective it probably felt like she’d dove into the pool in cannonball fashion.

Somehow she was not only surviving, but managing to get a handle on the unpredictable changes occurring to her. Right now she was running another challenge course, with her realtime biomed data being relayed via her eye piece to the computer systems. Vortison was monitoring them now even as he planned the next treatment, trying to figure out the puzzle before he saw all the pieces.

Failing constantly and seeing Lara take the punishment for it was something Vortison hadn’t been prepared for, but he too had adapted, because he had to. No one else in Star Force had his genetics knowledge. He couldn’t turn it over to them, for he was already getting their assistance constantly. Some were here, others were afar and he was bouncing ideas off them over the relay grid, but he was the point man and the one Lara had entrusted her life with. No matter how much this bothered him, he had to see it through for her, but he’d already promised himself that he would never sanction something so damaging as this again. This wasn’t science, it was bordering on barbarism.

A chime alerted him to an incoming message from outside his sphere of thought, and he almost ignored it before bringing up the text. He didn’t want to waste 30 seconds that he could be spending on Lara, but then he realized it was about her. She was having to consume so much ambrosia to feed the metabolism upgrades that had already been made that Vortison had had to include a feed on the machine to deliver it to her directly. Her digestive systems couldn’t handle the full amount she needed, and he’d decided to ask for a redesign to try and match the mixture to her growing needs.

He’d been waiting for months, but it appeared that Neandry had finally found a solution and Vortison was now looking at the extremely complex formula for Ambrosia 2.0 that, if the expectations held up, would contain 317% of the energy release per equal mass of regular ambrosia. It also was packaged differently so it could more easily enter the bloodstream through the digestive tract. The stated delay rate had decreased 23% when tested on other Archons, but how Lara’s new digestive tract would hold up was unknown. He’d already made a lot of adjustments trying to make it use regular ambrosia more effectively.

But there was a catch, with that being that the new formula was so potent that if accidentally taken by someone in large enough doses, it would kill them. Regular ambrosia had been theorized to potentially kill with a sufficient overdose, but no one had ever been stupid enough to take that much of it. But this new formula wouldn’t take too much to send someone’s metabolism to such high levels that it would literally tear the body apart.

Lara’s developing changes wouldn’t be affected, for her body would just gobble it up. Eventually she wouldn’t be damaged at all, in theory, if this experiment actually succeeded, for the other races the Chixzon had discovered could not overload on fuel. But Humans, as they were now, could. Hence the little Ambrosia 2.0 that had been produced was under heavy security to make sure none of it accidentally got mixed in with the regular supply, for it tasted nearly the same to those with sufficiently high metabolisms to drink it straight up.

“Finally some good news,” Vortison mumbled, filing the message away and getting back to the settings for Lara’s next upgrade. He had another 7 minutes to work before she walked in with her handler staying right behind her in case she fell. Right now she looked alright, not too wobbly, but she stumbled a couple times when she slowly took off her clothes, dropping them in her wake and not caring to pick them up into a pile, physically or telekinetically. She ignored them as soon as they were off and walked straight into the alteration chamber.

Her hair was now only two inches long, for she’d burnt the rest off multiple times and had eventually decided to just leave it short. She’d also burnt off her clothes more than 20 times during challenge course runs as her Rensiek malfunctioned and turned her into a glow rod. Right now her temperature was normal, but he could visibly see stress marks on her body where her blood vessels were surging harder than they should and swelling up on the surface.

Despite the sickly look to her, Lara was still strikingly attractive and that was never lost on Vortison. Somehow her inner strength affected her body, literally screaming superiority in a way that other attractive women did not. And it wasn’t just her pheromones either, which had a considerable effect on all men, for the more fit a person became the more desirable their rating as a mating partner became on a genetic level, which was then transmitted via the pheromones.

Her pheromones, along with all the other high level Archons, literally made her glow as far as scent was concerned. It wasn’t quite palpable, but there was always a buzz around her and the others. The male pheromones he couldn’t pick up in the same way, for they registered for women and not him, but there was something else about Lara that he couldn’t quite quantify. It didn’t distract him from his work, but it was there none the less and until today he could never put it to any scientifically verifiable source.

But when she connected to the machine…or rather its mandibles reached down and connected to her…something happened. The calibration programs he’d built to monitor even the slightest variables in her state were off. Not much, just a tiny amount, but they shouldn’t have been.

“Wait a minute, Lara. I’ve got to check on something,” he told her, but she didn’t respond. She rarely responded anymore, just going about her daily routing as a mute zombie and only speaking when absolutely necessary.

“Anders?” he asked, with his assistant already having seen the disparity.

“I don’t know. I can’t trace it.”

“Something is there,” he said, pouring through the massive amount of monitoring stats that Lara was providing beyond the eyepiece now that she was in the much more advanced monitoring machine. He never could have gotten through them all without the mental interfaces, but even they were not enough to immediately give him the information he required. It took almost ten minutes before they finally got their first clue.

“Ikrid tissue,” he noted for the sake of his assistants as the four of them in the room began looking at that particular part of her body, one that hadn’t undergone any changes during these treatments. “It’s registering at 138% maximum charge.”

“How?” Baker asked.

“I have no idea. Her cells are still reading level 17 and 18. Even with all 18s Aaron has never registered this high. Have we altered anything in her Ikrid?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, nothing,” Anders confirmed as he reviewed her current cell structure there. “It hasn’t been touched.”

“Then what has changed?”

“No clue.”

“Something has. Find it,” he said urgently.

“Lachka and Pefbar are also over 100%,” Baker noted.

“What the hell,” Vortison said as an epiphany hit him. “Verify equipment status.”

“Checking…all in the green. Computer analysis is not flawed. This is real data.”

“Back check when this started,” he said absent mindedly as he began analyzing something else.

“Scaling began 9 months ago,” one of them said, cursing under his breath for missing this. They hadn’t looked because they hadn’t been changing the structure of those cells because the psionic tissue was basically add-ons to the body rather than the default hardware and they didn’t want to damage them with the experiments and undo the training effect in them until they mastered the changes on the rest of her body. “Peak occurred 3 days ago after the last treatment.”

That clinched it for Vortison, though he double checked a few other things anyway before slowly backing away from the interface equipment.

“People, I want you to take a moment and burn this day into your permanent memory. I believe this is the first verifiable proof of an Essence effect.”

Everyone was dead silent, enough that it even got Lara’s attention through her permanent haze.

“What is that?” she croaked with a voice that had barely been used over the past 3 years.

“A Chixzon legend,” Vortison said, walking around the elaborate diagnostic setup and coming up directly in front of Lara where he looked her in her pained eyes. “Nefron said they could never confirm it, but there were reports of biology functioning beyond molecular capacity in rare cases. They could never locate a source, and they theorized that there may be a connection to the Core. That your life force, invisible as it always has been to our tools, was having an effect on the body in a way that defied science. They called the idea Essence, and had a number of encounters with individuals that displayed it. They tried to harness the power boost but failed, for they could not find the source.”

“Do you know how you triggered it?” she asked meekly.

“A rough theory at this point, but maybe. Either way, you’ve just gone where probably no Human has ever gone before. Can you feel it?”

“I feel like shit,” she reminded him. “You could punch me in the face and I wouldn’t notice.”

“This is more significant than you realize” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and nearly getting burnt by her heat level. It wasn’t enough to catch things on fire, but her body temperature was running an average of 132 degrees Fahrenheit nowadays. He’d never touched her before, and his mind had been so distracted he completely forgot. “This could be a huge discovery, Lara. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you now, but for us this is…or could be, the greatest scientific discovery ever.”

“Noted,” she said, making it clear she didn’t really care. Not that she should, in her current state.

“Are you strong enough to use your psionics?”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Use all of them.”

“Stand back.”

Vortison retreated away from the chamber and back to his equipment, seeing new data flowing in as Lara activated her psionics one at a time, eventually finishing with a small Jumat blast that blew a hole in the far wall away from any vital equipment.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “That was bigger than I thought.”

“No, no…that was just what we needed. You can stop now.”

“I need my treatment,” she said, her face scrunching up. “I can feel it slipping.”

“Stand by,” Vortison said, knowing what she meant by slipping. The active state she needed to remain in was satiated briefly by workouts, but if she didn’t at least start walking again soon her cells would begin to damage themselves with the lack of effort, and her psionic tissue didn’t count because those cells hadn’t been altered yet. To the rest of her body they were little more than mundane lumps of tissue that didn’t match the rest.

“Here we go,” he warned, numbing her body as much as he could, but it was never enough. She had to feel the changes in order for the adaptation to really kick in, and that meant at best he could only partially numb the lightning streaks of pain that were about to shoot through her.

She flinched when it began, but otherwise there was no visible indicator of anything happening inside her. Lara was so used to this now that she had it all bottled up inside, but as the changes continued her containment slipped and her body was shaking by the time it was finished. When the equipment released her she fell. In the past there had been someone there to catch her, but her bones were so hard from the Mebvat that she couldn’t really hurt herself.

Lara laid there for a minute or two, then pulled herself up when she was ready. In the past, picking her up had ticked her off even more, and Vortison knew now it was more than ego. She needed to be still for a few moments to collect herself, then she walked with a hand steadying her on various tables and equipment as she went past her clothing pile that the trainer had picked up for her and she laid down straight into the transit tube.

It auto-sealed over her, then the trainer pushed it out of the lab and back to the training courses where she would start all over again with little more than a crawl as she slowly adapted to the changes and got her strength back over the following days.

“We have to keep her going,” Vortison said once she was out the door. “We can’t get distracted with this. We need to bring in another team to help.”

“Get all the Master Medtechs,” Anders suggested. “This is entirely new territory. We don’t have any experts, and we need to make the most of it while it lasts.”

Vortison nodded. “I think you’re right. Monitor her closely while I send the messages. If this is just a fluke that goes away, I want every bit of data we can get.”

4

May 3, 4926

Astargari System (lizard territory)

Stellar Orbit

Six years ago Star Force had resumed their war against the lizards, not counting the perpetual combat in defense of the Wass’mat annex and three other V’kit’no’sat systems that, knowing they were going to be transferred to Star Force eventually and were facing imminent destruction, had requested immediate inclusion. Star Force had sent out expeditions to rescue them, but the main assault against the lizards had begun six years ago in their rimward border that had once belonged to the Skarron Empire.

The lizards had curiously held to it there while expanding in other directions. Paul figured that was to avoid drawing Star Force’s attention, as well as the V’kit’no’sat, since they were also at war with them and seemingly overlooked when the rogue Human splinter race was discovered. Attracting attention from other side would have been foolish, but it still surprised Paul that they had resisted taking on smaller races rimward during that time.

What the lizards had been doing was heavily fortifying Skarron territory after they had taken out the huge empire. Full scouting reports had not returned yet, but the incomplete ones indicated there wasn’t a single Skarron, Aronsic, or Jenipar discovered on any world. It was possible that some were still holding out further anti-spinward, but Paul had the sinking feeling that the lizards had completely annihilated their empire down to the last individual…meaning that the Aronsic in Star Force were the only remaining survivors.

That wasn’t unusual for the lizards. They rarely took on slaves, and total elimination of enemies was commonplace, but the Skarron empire had included 72,912 star systems according to captured navigation systems pre-crusade. How many more they took after that was guesswork, but it was looking more and more like the lizards had methodically conquered all of it and then stopped.

That stopping was not like them, but Paul was seeing the benefit of it in the layered system defenses they had built up…along with an alarming number of industrial facilities, many of which appeared to be mobile, but now that Star Force was pushing into the interior of Skarron territory like a knife blade on the starmap rather than nibbling around the edges, he was encountering the first shipyard ring thus far.

Right now Paul was involved in a pitched fight at the jumppoint, thankful he had gone the long way around, for the most direct jumppoint into the system had so many lizard ships stationed there that his fleet would have ran into them upon exit. They had placed themselves as a living minefield, but Paul’s redirect had caught them out of place and the fewer ships located on this jumpline had been unable to prevent a decent foothold from forming.

But now that they were here, the lizards were swarming to the foothold as Paul’s fleet gradually arrived a few ships at a time…and like before, there were millions of cruisers in the system around the shipyard ring and at least half a million near the other jumppoint, with most of those already enroute if not already here and engaged in the fighting.

Paul had seen the scouting report on this system, but being here and getting the live sensor data sent a chill up his spine. The power of the lizards had increased greatly, and with their ability to spam production to this level he was beginning to understand why they thought they could take on a severely weakened and distracted V’kit’no’sat empire on its outskirts. Their patience had paid off, and now more than ever Paul was beginning to realize the horrific potential in their enemy and why they had to be destroyed now before they could grow any larger.

The big question was who was feeding them. The Zak’de’ron or the Chixzon were the two main possibilities, but the galaxy was so large it could have been an unknown third. Whoever it was, they were turning the lizards into a weapon…no, more like a plague they could unleash against their enemies. Paul just wondered how they figured to control them as they grew larger and larger.

As he kept his growing fleet in a conical formation and fought off the lizards as they tried to backdoor and interpose themselves into the jumplane and kamikaze against the incoming ships, Paul had to kamikaze some of his own drones to keep them away. As it was, he wasn’t going to be able to hold this jumppoint much longer when the enemy was willing to use themselves as mobile mines, but he had to hold it long enough to get the transport here. After that he could divert the others into arcing deceleration curves around the star, which he was already plotting and ready to transmit once Bahamut arrived.

That would mean his reinforcements would dry up for more than an hour, but the lizards wouldn’t be able to block the varied jumplines as they splintered off the main line in and his ships utilized their V’kit’no’sat legacy engines that were tuned for just such curved maneuvering at high speeds.

Most races couldn’t handle that. Their sensors were not precise enough, but the V’kit’no’sat had mastered the art of moving past star systems rather than stopping in them, and using the star’s gravity to slingshot a course redirect. The destination system had to line up properly, so it wasn’t always doable, but maneuvering into long braking maneuvers around the perimeter of a star was easy by comparison given the ‘slower’ speeds involved.

The lizards weren’t cutting him any brakes, but it looked like he was going to be able to hold out just long enough to get the transport here, though he was losing a lot of drones in the process of blocking the blockers. He knew where in the line of incoming ships the Uriti transport was, and when it came within the window of receiving signals from the system, he began to update the jumpline splinters to the ships behind it, with them then relaying the signals back down the line to the ships behind them.

And that was all Paul had to do. As soon as the Uriti transport made its braking jump and arrived behind the spherical wall of drones, the other incoming Warship-class jumpships disappeared, leaving Paul a traditional battlefield to operate in so long as he didn’t veer too wide into one of the splinter lines. He knew where they were, the lizards did not, so he was the king of the jumppoint now as the rest of his ships began zipping by and braking far closer to the star, all of which appeared as nothing more than brief streaks of sensor echo that didn’t always make it through the cloud of cruisers surrounding Paul’s position.

“Wake him up,” Paul told Kacie-2512, who was standing beside him in the Excalibur’s command nexus in a small cupola built specifically for her and her gauntlet that allowed the Wrangler to communicate directly with the Uriti. Paul was too busy to do it himself, as were many other Archons spread throughout the fleet, leaving her responsible for coordinating between Bahamut and Paul for maximum efficiency.

“Waking,” she said, ordering the transport drone ship to begin cracking open. Bahamut contacted her as soon as he saw the crack opening, for from his point of view nothing had changed during the deceleration, for he couldn’t feel it inside. Kacie was getting tactical directions from Paul at the same time, which she then passed on in the unusual communication that occurred between Wranglers and Uriti, but one that was quite comfortable to her now.

Go, she said, giving him a heading on which the drones would peel away from and let the 53 mile wide juggernaut move through to engage the enemy directly.

The yellow-ish Uriti moved out of the opening jaws of the transport as soon as a gap large enough opened up and accelerated forward, pulling on the massive star that filled half the view ahead, and moving at his fastest possible speed, one that had been gradually enhanced with extensive training. It was slow compared to what the drones were capable of moving, but giving the more or less fixed positions of the battling ships the approach rate was clearly becoming ballistic.

As promised, the drones pulled back and a swarm of lizard cruisers pushed through in the gap, with Bahamut extending his telepathic aura out to maximum and firing his ‘head’ beam into the enemy. The Varot cannon punched through all those it hit, but it was tiny in width compared to what was coming at him. Had they been larger ships the damage would have been much more widespread, but the strength of the lizards in this engagement was their smallness and flexibility in numbers, even as those closest to the Uriti lost operational control and just became ballistic asteroids when their crews were suddenly mind locked.

As Bahamut pushed through the line of Star Force drones, plowing into many cruisers that couldn’t maneuver out of the way, he tilted his wings up and emitted a one-directional blast forward…with the golden energy wave taking some time to build up, then it moved out in an area of effect attack that swatted away thousands upon thousands of cruisers like they were nothing more than mosquitos.

“Turtle,” Paul said casually as he had his drones that were guarding the backdoor already repositioning to follow Bahamut through. When they got to the Uriti they began to form defensive wedges around him as he began recharging his primary attack while using his ‘lesser’ weaponry to savage a handful of ships at a time, but that was not going to be enough to deal with the swarm as they attacked both the drones and the Uriti, doing nothing more than scratching his hull with their insignificant weapons.

But those tiny hits, from millions of ships over the following weeks, could hurt him, and hurt him badly if they didn’t run away to save themselves…which the lizards never did. And the previous 38 assaults Paul and Bahamut had already made to get to this point had seen the Uriti take enough damage that he had to take some time sun bathing and eating ‘monster cubes’ that Star Force had shipped in for the Uriti to eat rather than having them planet dive to try and gather up enough scraps for what they needed.

The monster cubes were far more efficient, and Bahamut had fully healed his most recent wounds, but the number of lizard cruisers in this system was far beyond anything he had encountered previously, and Paul knew he had to shield the Uriti from some of the damage coming his way. He couldn’t let Bahamut get wore down and potentially killed in future assaults, and he couldn’t let the attack rate of all 74 Uriti deployed for this war be slowed, thus the damage to them had to be mitigated as Star Force drove straight towards the most densely populated lizard worlds…or at least what they suspected were, for their reconnaissance of the lizard empire was woefully incomplete.

Paul had shield ships flying in close to Bahamut and soaking up some damage while drones were blocking kamikaze runs of bomb ships that had started to pop up in alarming number the past 2 years once the lizards had started to try new ways to get through the aura jamming. The auto-piloted bomb ships didn’t do much more to the Uriti than smudge their hulls, but the energy saturation that they absorbed would eventually build up and make subsequent hits do more damage. Not much more, but the lizards were specifically attacking the same spots on Bahamut, and whenever they could get a kamikaze through at other locations, their ships would immediately target the location and try to chip away a little of the Uriti’s exterior hull/skin.

Beneath it was also weapon-resistant tissue, but not as good as the exterior. Fighting the Uriti was a numbers game, with attrition being the only way to take them down…and if they could flee to a star whenever they felt like it, killing one became virtually impossible.

Paul wasn’t going to let it go that far, and Davis was already committing a lot of industry to producing more drones that he had planned for other empire-building activities. He understood how badly they needed to take the lizards out now, along with a lot of other priorities, but this was a problem that would only grow with time, and while they weren’t going to abandon other races in need to their deaths, the top priority in the empire at the moment was this war.

Or rather, a shared top priority. Taking possession of the V’kit’no’sat Hula Hoop worlds and consolidating what was left of The Nexus were also top priorities, and the Director was definitely capable of multi-tasking, but he knew the loss of drones in this war would be massive, and keeping the Uriti intact was essential. And added to that the fact that the trailblazers intended this to be a ZERO casualty war, and you were going to have to devote a lot of resources to both ship replacement and feeding the Uriti…for they needed a good amount of mass in order to spawn spore colonies.

And those colonies were being put down in every system taken, after the surface was thoroughly bombarded, and tasked with hunting down and destroying any lizards remaining. A few ships would be left in orbit along with an Archon trained to interface and give orders to the minions. Fortunately that didn’t require as much experience as a Wrangler had, but it did require Wrangler gauntlets.

Star Force troops were not being used, except in some very rare circumstances, and the minions were also reproducing to the point where they could defend the planets taken against squatters. For Star Force wasn’t just taking out the lizards, they were laying claim to their territory as well…which was going to be a larger annex than the entirety of The Nexus, part of which was still operating under Sety control.

It was a huge undertaking, and Paul knew the long term outcomes would be a function of these battles and how much attrition his forces took. The more time that was spent, the more time there was for the lizards to produce more ships and lizards of their own. They needed to move quickly, and the shipyard ring waiting beyond was going to be the first big hit Paul had landed. The others he wasn’t aware of more than from very belated reports relayed via couriers. There were 74 different assault paths and there wasn’t much coordination needed between them yet, but the density of this star system was almost calling for two Uriti to be deployed simultaneously.

But not yet. Doing so would delay their conquest rate considerably, and Paul thought he could manage this one on his own. Bahamut was one of the best Uriti with regards to fleet coordination, and coupled with the best naval Archon they were a tough combo to beat, though millions of upgraded lizard cruisers was pushing it if they could gathered together at once.

Fortunately they weren’t, and if they did Paul would just reposition. Fleets of larger and larger size had movement issues, and Star Force engine technology could still run rings around the lizards. Bahamut couldn’t, but Paul had options other than just standing in place and slugging it out…though at the moment that’s exactly what he was doing with the ‘mismatch’ he was being presented.

For all the ship swarms currently attacking him and those nearby and coming to reinforce, they were going to need a lot more to wear down Bahamut, and as they tried with insufficient numbers he was going to lay waste to their swarms. If they spread out and tried to fight in smaller groups, their firepower would diminish to a level that it wouldn’t even tickle the Uriti…and Paul could use his superior technology to dance around and cut apart smaller lizard battle groups.

Their greatest advantage was the swarm, and luckily enough, that’s exactly what the Chixzon had designed the Uriti to counter.

Bahamut was a fleet killer, and the lizards were going to throw fleet after fleet against him, hoping to wear him down over time. That was the game they were playing, and it wasn’t hard to predict, though Paul was keeping his eyes open for any trickery, either of lizard cunning or from their sponsor, whoever that might be.

Star Force had to preserve the Uriti at all costs, even if it meant turning around and leaving the war behind. They were too valuable to lose, but in order to fight this war they had to dive head on into the enemy. That’s what they were built for, and Paul didn’t have a problem with that so long as Bahamut didn’t…and he was more aggressive than Paul was, with Kacie constantly having to tell him to hold back and not shoot the first enemy ship he saw.

The strategy The Admiral offered wasn’t lost on Bahamut, for he saw he was able to do more damage by picking his shots better. The synergy between the two of them was growing, and Paul expected to be spending many decades together with the Uriti, as other trailblazers were with their own. Relationships were forming that had never been expected, for they’d never planned on using the Uriti in this fashion. But now here they were, engaged in Chixzon-like warfare, and the more time that went on both the trailblazers and the Uriti gained a greater respect for each other.

But as they did the galaxy watched, through various scout ships trailing and sometimes preceding the Uriti fleets. Paul knew they were there, and had authorized some of them, but there was no keeping them away. The many races who had come to the Uriti Preserve were not happy with Star Force seeming to break their word and use the Uriti offensively, but this was the continuation of a defensive war and Star Force wasn’t dancing around that point. It wasn’t a violation of their promise, and many races had to grudgingly agree…as well as realize they had no leverage if Star Force ever did decide to break their promise.

And then there were others, from the Rim Consortium and beyond, that were here watching from the shadows for other reasons. They never got involved, and kept so far away that the pictures couldn’t be great, but Paul had noted a few echoes from ships he believed to be V’kit’no’sat. The others probably couldn’t pick them up, but he’d been looking for them. He was sure they wanted to know the full capability of the Uriti, and if there were some in this system, they were going to get a hell of a show, for Bahamut was going to have to really whoop ass to get anywhere near that shipyard ring.

5

June 19, 4926

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat capitol)

Wendigama

Mak’to’ran was running on one of the planet’s many subterranean training paths when another Era’tran came up behind him. He said nothing, verbally or telepathic, but Mak’to’ran knew it was Sar’to’san and he had something to tell him. His attendant did not want to disrupt his workout, and as he had done previous times, he came out onto the course and ran up behind the V’kit’no’sat leader, then carefully moved into sync beside him before delivering his news.

What is it? Mak’to’ran asked telepathically.

We’ve received additional reports from the Star Force warfront. The Li’vorkrachnika have abandoned their attacks against us entirely and are turning their full power against the incursion into their territory.

And? he pressed, knowing that there was something more urgent than that tidbit of good news.

We also received more battle data from our scouts following the Uriti campaigns. Disturbing would be an understatement.

They are more powerful than you expected, Mak’to’ran said definitively.

We’ve received images of the Uriti Hammer engaged in an intra-atmosphere surface attack. Somehow it tapped into the magnetic field of the planet and unleashed an electric storm of a magnitude we have never before recorded. It decimated the Li’vorkrachnika cities in a matter of hours over 1/18th of the planet, including shielded facilities.

That was not a weapon I was familiar with.

It gets worse. They used the Uriti Sivir to destroy an entire moon from the inside out.

Destroyed? Mak’to’ran asked, finally surprised. How?

It penetrated the crush and disappeared inside. Afterwards the moon ripped itself apart into fragments.

What was on the moon?

A defense matrix more dense than most planets. It’s as if it was built as a hard point against invasion, but with very little self-sustaining industry on it. There were also long range weaponry of a type unfamiliar to us. They were effective at nearly three quarters the range of a Tar’vem’jic and carried considerable knockdown power, though they were slow and globular.

And Star Force chose to take out the entire moon rather than defeat and capture it? That is alarming. Perhaps the threat of the Li’vorkrachnika is greater than we calculated.

They destroyed a moon, Sar’to’san reiterated.

How large?

Level 6.

Mak’to’ran slid to a halt, his foot claws dragging on the semi-soft floor as he leaned back far enough that even his small 4th toes touched the ground. Sar’to’san kept running a few steps before he realized that Mak’to’ran had stopped, then had to slow and turn around to get back to him.

They destroyed a level 6 planetoid? Mak’to’ran asked, referencing a mass slightly larger than Mercury.

Yes, and we do not know how or what their limit is. Nor do we know if this is only the capacity of one, or some Uriti, or if they can all do it.

Mak’to’ran ticked his 4thk toes against the floor in an irritated gesture, but also a pensive one. Era’tran had 4 digits on their feet, while only two on their hands, making it easier for them pre-Lachka to pick up objects with their feet. Both hands were required for most arm grasping, and Mak’to’ran really had to stretch his neck down to get something large into his mouth. It was much easier to side feed with one arm, which was why Era’tran cups were made with a triangular middle grasp indent that matched the angular splay between fingers.

Most Era’tran ate and drank using Lachka now, with some preferring to use their muscles as a novelty. As it was, Era’tran feet were more ambidextrous than their hands, which was why most of their computer interfaces had floor buttons when not using Ikrid links.

Mak’to’ran continued to tick his small, 4thk toes for several seconds, then stopped and turned his wayward gaze back on his attendant.

There are complaints? he guessed.

Many, and they are spreading. Despite the threat of the remaining Rim races, there is great concern that our rimward guards have more power than us, and the ability to destroy our planets if they can manage to poke a single hole through our planetary shields.

They will not attack us, Mak’to’ran assured him.

How can you be so sure?

I have met their supreme leader and taken the measure of the Human. They still behave as Zen’zat should, their duty to the galaxy is still imbued in their genetic code. They do not wish to fight us, Sar’to’san. They only did so because we tried to destroy them.

They should have accepted their punishment as a Zen’zat would.

Do they? Mak’to’ran challenged. Or do they realize they cannot win and simply accept their fate? If they had a chance of survival, would they fight back? Some have, but perhaps you are too young to remember. Zen’zat have not always gone to their punitive deaths willingly. Nor have we. When faced with execution, all instinctively resist. Give them a way to survive and they will take it. I have given it to Star Force and they are not only taking it, they are embracing it because I am relying on their instinctive duty to corral their power. They believe it is freedom.

Is it truly not freedom if there is no safeguard?

A matter of perspective, then. Star Force will not attack us because it is not in their best interest. They are like Dulu’thar ants scurrying to repair their nests after a storm, only their nest is the galaxy. Rather than consolidate their holdings they are even now pressing further rimward to rescue small and unimportant races because they are in need. Those are not the actions of an empire that is a threat to us. Those are the actions of an empire that is useful to us. They are a stabilizing force, one that the galaxy badly needs right now.

And if you are wrong, and they grow strong enough to protect their Uriti, they could destroy our planets at will.

As you said, they still have to penetrate the planetary shields.

The Hadarak have done so with ease, Mak’to’ran.

The Uriti are nowhere near as large. Tell me, did they break through the Li’vorkrachnika shields with physical contact or orbital bombardment?

Orbital bombardment, the other Era’tran said cautiously.

They are not strong enough to push through otherwise, or they will take too much damage that Star Force doesn’t want them to incur. If ramming was the most efficient option, Star Force would use it to avoid wasting their drone warships. That is why they destroyed the moon. To spare their naval losses.

This does not concern you at all? Sar’to’san asked in disbelief.

It concerns me a great deal, but not in the way you suggest. I fear others might see this power and try to take it from Star Force, or at least deny it to them. And either outcome would be bad for us.

How can you say that?

Because they are V’kit’no’sat, and not in formality only. Their methodology differs, and differs greatly, but the core mission is the same. Protect the galaxy.

And what if protecting the galaxy means destroying us one day?

We fight the Hadarak. And have done so for millions of years. The Uriti should not scare you so much.

The Uriti do not behave as Hadarak. They take orders from Star Force.

An important distinction, which makes me worry even less about them.

Others are not so trusting. They are adamant that we cannot let this power exist outside our control.

Mak’to’ran stomped his left foot against the ground, hard, and Sar’to’san promptly shut up.

I am fatigued with the stupidity of others. I am fatigued with having to remain here to constantly suppress moves against the empire from within. We should be fighting the Hadarak, where our primary duty lies, but everyone appears to find something else to occupy their effort. We must build a stronger fleet, Sar’to’san. We must build stronger planets. We must build a stronger empire. Yet I hear nothing but calls for more destruction. Star Force is my responsibility, and no one else’s. And the more powerful they become, the better it is for us.

They will take their vengeance someday. That is what the others say. Can you be sure they will not?

I can.

How?

Mercy is a luxury of the dominant. It is a quote they are fond of. They become savage when faced with no other options. But the more dominant they become, the more forgiving they are. Where we would kill one for a violation, they punish and offer a path back to significance. A hard path, but when one exists they are not disregarding the individual as we do. It is a strength that will manifest itself in the long run, and unless the rim turns against them because of this new revelation, they will live to see it become their backbone.

I do not understand what you say, but I trust your path for us. What will you do with the others?

The same as before. Bring them before me now and I will educate them. If they will not listen, they will be moved aside. If they will not move, they will be killed. But see how I learn? I offer them a path and let them choose rather than deciding their path for them. This tactic was lost on the empire, for in our vast numbers we saw the individual as expendable. I will not continue to make that mistake, and you and others must learn to not only obey, but to understand.

I am trying, Mak’to’ran. But sometimes your words seem to defy reason.

The galaxy is complex, Sar’to’san. The more you learn, the more you see the untapped potential for future learning. Only the naïve think they understand everything.

Then I am not naïve, for I am thoroughly confused.

Good. Admitting confusion rather than holding to doctrine is a necessary step forward. Who specifically is complaining this time?

The Oso’lon and J’gar have remained silent, as usual, though our J’gar here are adamant that we have some form of defense against such an attack. Beyond them, the Hjar’at and Les’i’kron are incensed, while others have deep concerns with less emotion attached.

Emotion is the key factor here. A calm mind would realize that Star Force is so busy destroying the Li’vorkrachnika that they cannot use this power against us anytime in the near future, so there is no reason for haste. And if we were to do something about it, we would first need to gage the full scope of this power…which means waiting and watching to see if they use it again. And taking measurements. Many measurements.

Then the threat is not immanent, Sar’to’san said, with some of his anxiety dispersing.

The threat is non-existent. If they truly wished to use this power against us, they would have done so before now.

They were not strong enough to attack our territory. But they could become so in the future.

Again, that means there is no need for haste, especially when they are engaged in another costly war.

Even we do not have the power to destroy planetoids.

But the Hadarak do. Perhaps not in the same fashion, or perhaps they see no reason to blow apart their feeding grounds. But this power is not as unfamiliar as others would have us believe.

You knew?

No, I did not, but I had my suspicions when they went to great effort to safeguard Terrax when they used a Uriti beneath the planet’s surface to destroy the planetary defense station. I knew then that Star Force had the ability to use them for more than naval combat, however I did not anticipate their destroying planetoids. But so much the better. The threat of their doing so will keep many races from challenging them. I just hope they do not behave as the others wish I would and turn against them now.

And if that happens?

We are not in a position to help them. They will have to stand alone, but that is a position they are well acquainted with and why I have no doubt that given enough time they will pacify the entirety of the outer Rim, leaving us free to confront the Hadarak directly.

I do not believe the others are thinking that far ahead.

Of course not. They are concerned with pettiness and driven by fear. They have forgotten that true dominance must be earned, and do not know how to respond when they are suddenly no longer dominant. Not that we ever were. Not against the Hadarak, Mak’to’ran said, glancing back down the path they’d come and determining that going back would be quicker than moving ahead to the next exit.

Let us go now, before this stupidity builds further, he said, taking off at a faster run than before that Sar’to’san had a difficult time matching and maintaining, but his attendant managed to stay with him all the way back to the exit, where the junior Era’tran was thankful that they returned to normal pedestrian speeds and boarded a Satu that carried them out across Wendigama’s surface to one of the grand chambers where Mak’to’ran and his subordinates were constantly having to deal with malcontents as they slowly began to rebuild the tattered bonds within the empire.

6

April 2, 4931

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

Lara’s previous life was a blur, almost as if it had been a dream rather than reality. The last time she’d had a real workout was so far gone her body didn’t want to remember it. All that there was for her now was alterations, pain, adjustment, partial normalization, then another alteration. The training she was doing wasn’t to increase her ability level, it was to recover some semblance of normalcy.

However, something that was lost on her and not on Vortison’s team was the fact that her ‘normalcy’ was increasing exponentially fast. She might feel like hell, but she was walking and running easier than before. Lara couldn’t see it, because inside it felt like a cascade of grenades were going off with regularity, and in the torrent of constant adjustments one’s mental image of ‘normal’ adjusted to what was most recent so long as it wasn’t a drastic change.

During Lara’s up and down swings, her middle point had gradually shifted, so now her ‘normal’ was far beyond what the rest of the Archons’ normal was. She wasn’t running as fast, lifting as much, or hitting as hard, but that was only because of how screwed up her body was right now. In essence, she was training with the ‘weight’ of the alterations on her, making her appear weaker than she actually was. Her new tissues, her ‘saiyan’ tissues, were base stronger than before, but she couldn’t feel her base within the torrent of changes taking place within her. It was the equivalent of trying to see a mile away in a snowstorm that reduced your vision down to a couple of meters.

And yet, even that torrent had changed. Lara was no longer puking. Or bleeding. Or spontaneously burning off her clothes. The sexual arousal backup plan was a distant memory, for it was no longer needed. She’d learned when to press and when not to, and despite the constant changes the Archon was ever so slowly dialing herself in to greater control. Add to that the fact that Vortison was refining her biology at the same time, learning from mistakes and concentrating beneficial gains while weeding out alterations that were detrimental, and Lara was making grinding progress upwards.

Her days were mostly activity now, but not a lot. A few workouts here and there involving running, light hand to hand combat, swimming, flying, and no skill work occurred at random intervals whenever Lara felt her strength return while the rest of the time she was walking…and walking…and walking. Her body now required activity, and she could only sleep for 20-40 minutes after an exhausting workout. After that she had to be busy doing something, even if on a low level, which left her having no need for chairs. Even when she played video games she was standing up.

And those video games were not leisure activities. Lara had forgotten what a leisure activity was, and these video games were designed to give certain aspects of her brain various types of training that Vortison was using to keep her mental processing power ahead of what her body required. If he let that invert Lara’s body was literally going to fly apart. The problem was the mind needed sleep as much as the body did to recharge and repair, and the changes made to her had it running wildly as well. If she didn’t use it enough she couldn’t sleep, even if she laid down. Her body could rest in that state, somewhat, but not to the level needed. So she had to be physically and mentally tired enough just to dip into a useful sleep state for a few minutes.

Without a regenerator her sleeplessness would have burnt her up, and Vortison knew that he had to get her stabilized before she could leave the lab permanently. Fortunately Lara wasn’t going anywhere, for the amount of changes her body was going to require had not even begun to reach halfway yet. There were years of constant changes left to go, and Vortison was just as dedicated to this as Lara was, though the more progress she made the more bits and pieces of time off Vortison had. A few hours here and there where he could pursue other work or just take some down time, but he couldn’t take a vacation. He wouldn’t. He didn’t trust his team to be able to keep leveling up Lara in the most efficient way without him, and with everything she was going through he wasn’t going to make it harder on her because he needed a break.

And he did need one. A big one. The rest of his staff cycled in and out, keeping them fresh, but Vortison was, in his own way, as fatigued as Lara. That wasn’t a fair comparison given when she was going through, but he was feeling the effects of this never ending adjustment, calibration, and study while he was constantly trying to learn things that had never been explored before…at least not as far as V’kit’no’sat and Chixzon knowledge was concerned. What the Zak’de’ron knew and what the Chixzon knew that they didn’t include in Nefron’s memories was a question mark, but without those very beneficial clues here, Vortison was having to trailblaze his own way forward and figure out how Lara’s body was responding to various changes when they didn’t add up.

A lot of the time he saw it instantly, but others he would get stuck on and would be forced to make alterations just to see what happened. He couldn’t tell Lara to take a week off, so he had to keep modifying her constantly even when he didn’t know what to do next. So a lot of her hardship was him randomly making changes and seeing what happened.

Every time he figured things out, sometimes enough to write a book on, he had to keep pressing forward with her pace, for her metabolism was not stable yet. It kept wanting to burn her up or self-frag if she went too slow, and every treatment was preceded by a regeneration sequence to essentially reset her body from the damage it was incurring.

Bottom line was, Lara was doing her part and not causing an overload, but Vortison was constantly trying to keep up with her pace and figure out things as fast as she could adapt to them…and he couldn’t. He feared getting brain fried more than anything, for it meant he would have to make more random changes to Lara, some of which may take her backward, and after all this time, the only thing holding both of them together was Lara’s gradual movement forward.

Then one day during a nap he woke up to a Raptor snout staring him in his groggy face.

He recoiled instinctively, not sure what was going on as his mind came back to focus. “Who are you?”

“Your relief. You are exhausted.”

Vortison glanced around, seeing no one else in the lab. Normally there should have been a few staff, at least one, in case Lara needed help with something. “Where is everyone else?”

“On the other side of the wall. You shouldn’t have to ask. You do have Pefbar, correct?”

Vortison stood up and looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”

“My name is Veer’na, and Director Davis sent me.”

“Davis?” Vortison asked, recognizing the other name vaguely. “Why?”

“He has been monitoring your progress beyond the periodic updates. He now has a direct link through encryption code for her status, fed through the relay network constantly. He has also been informed of your refusal to take a break while insisting that your servants do. He knows this is not sustainable.”

“I’ve been managing all these years,” the master medtech countered. “Why now?”

“Lara’s rate of advancement has slowed. The alterations are more harmful than beneficial. To be blunt, your team is causing the Archon far more problems than she deserves. So Davis sent me to assist.”

“Your name is familiar, but I do not know your credentials.”

“Nor should you. Most of my work was never made public knowledge, even amongst the Rit’ko’sor. And while I now understand how what I did was dishonorable, the knowledge I gained from it remains. Knowledge that the Director wants me to assist you with.”

“What knowledge?” Vortison asked, his curiosity and need to help Lara overriding his misgivings about this abrupt intrusion.

“During our rebellion against the V’kit’no’sat, we attacked them in many ways. Some of which were dishonorable, but we felt we could not hold back. We must hit them in every way possible, and we did so. Including the use of genetic weaponry.”

Vortison’s eyes grew dark. “How so?”

“We have been engineered to resist disease and create a very robust healing effect, even without a regenerator, Sesspik, or Haemra. You do not have this, for even with the advancements made in Zen’zat, your race was never at our level because you were not allowed to reproduce. All Zen’zat were made from the same template, and while that template was occasionally updated, there was no natural growth. In order to overcome our natural healing, we had to develop robust genetic weapons. Adaptive ones that would counteract, at least through a few permutations, exterior healing effects and immunities the V’kit’no’sat would create. I too have had to explore into the unknown depths of biology, whereas most V’kit’no’sat merely learn what others before have provided them.”

“What kind of weapons?”

“Death, confusion, slowness, overdrive,” he emphasized. “Something that you are continually fighting now, correct?”

“I am fighting to stabilize it, not stop it. We want the overdrive to normalize.”

“It never will. You must make it oscillate.”

“Why wasn’t I informed of you coming here?”

“There was no point in throwing an untouchable variable into your present confusion. Now that I am here, you can address it. It would have been a distraction had my arrival been announced. I informed your servants while you slept. I did not want to wake you when you desperately needed sleep, but now I do because of a blip in Lara’s status.”

“What blip?” Vortison said, racing past the Raptor to get at his equipment. He scanned the very familiar displays and tapped into the telepathic interlink for additional data, seeing nothing out of the ‘normal’ in the chaos that had become familiar, though never repeating. “She’s within predicted levels.”

“Her cellular cohesion has slipped. It is a precursor to dispersion when an overdrive ramps up.”

“She’s not in overload and knows how to avoid it. If it gets bad enough she’ll come straight here and I’ll reset her.”

“Wasteful. You need to alter the cellular membrane to create a lateral drift conduit. For that you will require Niterium.”

“Niterium?” Vortison asked, knowing it was a rare beta isotope of Sodium, meaning it had corovon added to the nucleus in addition to neutrons.

“For the localized magnetic field. It will create a conduit that will resist expulsion while facilitating sliding. I had to create Niterium-eating microbes to counteract the defense mechanism the V’kit’no’sat created to counteract my overdrive weapons.”

“I’ve seen no research on that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. The V’kit’no’sat ego is quite large. They did not want to admit that we could hurt them so badly, so they hid the attacks under various guises as they fought to counter them. With us simultaneously assaulting worlds through conventional means, the naval bombardments firmly held the empire’s attention.”

“You have access to secret medical files?”

“In my mind only. And the clues hidden within their, and our, genetic codes. The Rit’ko’sor did not hold to genetic medical attacks, so our small group operated in secret. I am the only one to survive, and I have 1.3 million years of experience to offer, though to be blunt, the majority of that experience comes from the war when we were pressed to go beyond V’kit’no’sat medical knowledge, and part of how we did so was to examine what remained of the Zak’de’ron weapons they used against us during the V’kit’no’sat rebellion. Not much remained, but there was enough to get us started.”

“They fought with genetic weapons?”

“They fought with everything they had. For those of us who were there to witness it, it was terrifying. They were far stronger than we assumed, some of which were in the most devious of ways, but we had numbers and enough strength to defeat them with an unending wave of our own blood. I was one of the few who survived a genetic attack, and it was from the remains in my own body that I started part of our research.”

“Why have I not been told any of this?”

“Because I have not discussed it with anyone other than Davis, and until recently I had never gone into the details. The more I learned of how Star Force operates, the more I learned that death is preferable to dishonor, and that what I had done, while right in wanting to strike back, was wrong in the method chosen. I had decided to keep my knowledge buried, for I would not be using it again to create such weapons, but the Director’s wisdom showed me another path. I can use what I wrongly gained to help shield Star Force against the Chixzon when they return. I have been working with Nefron for some time now, though no one knows it. Davis decided your project now has need of my shameful knowledge. And you are in need of a peer that can allow you to periodically rest and reset your mind. You do Lara little good without inspiration, for inspiration is the key to probing the unknown.”

“I’m not abandoning her, but if you can help nudge me forward I welcome your help. Lara’s persistence is staggering, but I am not assuming it is eternal. She is past the worst of it, but she is not near the level she needs to be to finish the transformation…and there is no going back.”

“There is no going back for any of us. Life is always forward, even if we turn around and head the opposite way, for we approach the same location from a different angle. Repetitiveness can only be accomplished when one individual treads another’s former path.”

“The blip you mentioned. Can you correct for it now?”

“We did not target Zen’zat genetics, for some of them remained loyal to us during the war. But customizing it to your cells should not be complicated.”

“Alright, let’s get to work on it and anything else that jumps out at you. A fresh set of eyes is what I need right now.”

“And when you become comfortable with my skills, you will then take some time away to get your mojo back.”

“Not yet,” Vortison cautioned. “But if you’re right, I will eventually. So show me where I’ve gone wrong so far.”

“You have not. It is a matter of seeing your way ahead. Even your mistakes provide data that further illuminates the state of the Zen’zat body, and are thus useful. I have studied them in depth during my trip here, but I did not have your research notes. When is she due for another adjustment?”

Vortison glanced at the nearest clock. “Six hours.”

“Go. Shower. Then return. We will have enough time.”

“Shower?” Vortison asked, sniffing his left arm.

“You reek. A sign you spend too much time here trying to solve problems overthinking. Inspiration cannot be forced. I insist.”

Vortison wiped a bit of drool off his face as he took stock of his present condition, which required his mind to come back from theoretical mode.

“No. I need to get a brief run in first. Then I’ll shower. When I’m gone, start putting together the cellular membrane alteration. I want it as complete as possible for my review.”

“A proper delegation. Go now. I am fresh.”

“Thank you,” Vortison said, suddenly feeling a large weight lift off him and realizing just how much pressure he’d been under. “But next time, don’t wake me up with your dino breath in my face,” he said as he walked off

“There is no need to be insulting…” Veer’na mildly objected, for the notion of brainless ‘dinosaurs’ had not sat well with the Raptors once they started digging into Star Force historical records. “Ter’nat.”

7

When Vortison had sent out his call for all the Master Medtechs, Marco Borelli had responded with the others and they all traveled to Vis to study this new discovery…which left every one of them stumped. No one could find any cause for it, nor was it stable. Sometimes Lara would read normally, other times she would exceed what was thought to be her physical capabilities with regard to the psionics. Her musculature was in such a state of disrepair that testing it at a high level was impossible, and it had been deemed necessary to figure out what was going on…thus the others had left, finding nothing they could do here, but Borelli had stayed.

He didn’t bother Vortison, for the other Human had far too much on his plate to deal with. Instead, he worked in parallel from another medbay trying to piece together what was happening with Lara. He could monitor her biomed stats from her eyepiece the same as Vortison, as well as the more direct measures from the array of equipment in the lab when they were in use. He had the same data, just not the ability to experiment with Lara herself, and he should have been able to find some correlation, but so far he couldn’t predict her future states at all.

What was happening to her was inexplicable…yet it was there. That meant his understanding of science was wrong, and that was fascinating to him. For if he had something wrong, when he got it right it could open up a vast array of new technologies or lead to additional discoveries like a domino wave. The trick was figuring out what was wrong, and in this case it was a simple fact of her psionic tissue producing more effect than they biomechanically could.

So he’d been hammering research into the tissue structure to determine if they’d been wrong about its potential output. Again and again he was coming up with the same answers, making him wonder if he was stuck in a rut and just not seeing the error, or if he was being confronted with the fact that there was no error and this effect was external to the tissue. He couldn’t align any of the changes to molecular or energy changes in her body or around it, and the more he studied the more it appeared that there was an external energy source.

But it was more than that, for her Pefbar fields were extending beyond her controlling function. Typically there was a power curve that diminished with range, meaning one could see further with more power, but to a point. You couldn’t just double up distance with power, and the ranges that, say, an Era’tran could see were greater than a Human simply because of the larger tissue size and raw power behind it. Lara wasn’t up to Era’tran range, but she was seeing farther than even Aaron had managed. Same too with the larger Arc Knights who had more tissue.

Her Pefbar fields were holding together at range more than her power allowed. It was as if she was using a different type of power with different rules, but he couldn’t detect it. He could see the extended range, so something was happening, but not what was causing it.

If this was a Core-related phenomenon then he had to find a way to measure it…and in order to measure an invisible force he had to measure something it moved. He could do that now, but since it was piggybacking on other things Morelli couldn’t get a clear reading. This was a very sneaky phenomenon, and it dawned on him that the Chixzon may have never been able to figure it out for just this reason. So how was Star Force going to?

If and when Lara stabilized he was going to ask her to help him probe this further, but as long as these anomalies were actively occurring he wasn’t going to waste them. Especially if he might hit on something that could assist Vortison in his work. What Lara was going through was extreme, and he didn’t feel like letting this wait until later.

But the question still remained, how was he going to tackle this? If he couldn’t directly measure it he had to find a way around the problem, and so far this mystery still had him thoroughly stumped.

“How many more planetoids do you intend to destroy?” the Knight of Quenar asked Davis across a table with a few hand-picked ambassadors from the Rim Consortium who were both influential and reasonable, for the Director wasn’t going to waste his limited time on people’s temper tantrums.

“As many as needed. We’re taking possession of lizard territory, so what we do with it is our prerogative.”

“Planets may be abundant, but they are not replaceable,” the Zeeross ambassador objected. “The eradication of the Li’vorkrachnika may be necessary…I am not arguing it is not…but the destruction of planets is not something that can be undone.”

“It can be,” Davis countered. “We intend to mine those planets we are destroying, but we can reform them if we wish to devote the resources to it.”

“You have that technological ability?” the Haf ambassador asked.

“As do all of you. It is simply a matter of time and pushing the necessary matter into a descending orbit. Gravity will do the rest.”

“That would result in hellish worlds, unstable and uninhabitable.”

“How you push matters,” Davis said ambiguously.

“What of the wildlife?” the Zeeross asked.

Davis’s face went grim. “If you note, we’re only striking at worlds that are heavily industrialized and configured to be battlefields. What wildlife is there would mostly be destroyed during orbital bombardment during a conventional assault. If we choose not to assault the world the lizards will kill them anyway as they expand their infrastructure. They do not use living shields like the V’kit’no’sat did. They destroy everything that is not of use to them. Fortunately these worlds do not have slave populations, or we would not be destroying them, but rodents and insects get caught in the crossfire regardless of how careful we are. They die on a regular basis on Star Force worlds despite measures meant to protect them.”

“I understand,” the Yioj ambassador said firmly. “If you do not take out the Li’vorkrachnika quickly, the delay could see other worlds invaded by them. You are trading damage for a net smaller effect.”

“Partially. But we do not make sacrifices for net totals. The planetoids we are destroying are carefully chosen. If you bothered to examine them you would see a pattern.”

“All are airless save two,” the Zeeross replied, indicating that someone was examining them closely. “And those two had no native populations or wildlife. It is the planets themselves that I am concerned with. Destroying them is reckless and shortsighted.”

“There are some wildlife, in small amounts scratching out an existence on those worlds. If we attack via orbital bombardment they are going to die from it. We do not like this, but the galaxy is a messy place. If you walk through a forest you may be killing dozens of critters in the dirt you step on. That’s why we build sidewalks, but still ants will crawl on top and be crushed. We will never intentionally target them, but if they get in the way, sometimes you just have to keep going. How much do you tolerate? That’s a question I constantly ask myself, and not just when destroying planets. When we bombard one deaths occur beyond just the lizards. The ants get killed then too.”

“For someone concerned about insignificant ants, I find your logic puzzling,” the Yioj noted.

“Because the logic is calculated along the lines of doing the right thing, and you do not have the math skills for it. But since you and everyone else here do not care about the fate of ants, let’s get to the crux of the matter. You don’t like us erasing geography.”

“That is the main point of the issue,” the Zeeross confirmed.

“If the situation was reversed, I’d be concerned as well,” Davis admitted. “But I’m not you. I’m better than you. And my judgement can be relied on. We will continue to eliminate select planets rather than suffer the naval losses to capture them. Either way, the lizards will die, but we are able to move on quicker to the next target and that can, as noted earlier, spare other planets about to fall into the grasp of the lizards.”

“You are better?” the Knight of Quenar asked, visibly offended.

“Yes, and I’m not shy about saying so. I have long record of evidence available for study, so I’m not making this claim blindly. You know I am, though your egos might not let you admit it. The reason I am talking to you now is because you are reasonable, but none of you are on my level. You would kill a small race to save a large one, because it would be a net gain. I would not, because it is the wrong thing to do. You do not understand why, and I could explain the intricacies of such applications in detail, but if you cannot grasp the concept of ‘the right thing’ the explanations would be pointless.”

“My experience,” Davis continued, “with various races has showed me that everyone…even the tiny ants…have an internal mechanism designed to point them in the direction of the right thing. They might not always end up there, but there is a subtle guidance that occasionally hammers you on the head. Some seek this out, others don’t care, and still others spite it. But it is there and I am in tune with it far more than any of you, and those around me are brought into alignment because of me and the effects spreads throughout our empire. It’s like a resonance that tells observers the status of your civilization. And your civilizations are not of such high resonance. In fact, they’re not even close.”

“Which is why we trust you with the Uriti,” the Knight of Quenar reminded the Director. “Your survival of the V’kit’no’sat and ability to turn their war of eradication into an armistice proves your cunning and wisdom. But you do not see everything, and in trying to do the right thing on a small scale you end up inviting devastation on a large one.”

“That has been my fear on many occasions,” the Human said. “But at the end of the day, death is preferable to dishonor.”

“I do not agree,” the Yioj said, “but however you run your empire internally, it is successful. The issue here is the removal of planets rather than removing their inhabitants. I do not believe you would ever do so against us, but when an empire can destroy the ground on which hundreds of empires existed over the ages, it is a crime against the galaxy itself. Natural formation of planets is slow, and we have never detected the emergence of life itself, so without an apparent source of replacement, what currently is must be preserved, for we do not know how they factor into the fabric of the galaxy.”

“Your caution is noted, but the truth is you just don’t like us having this power when you do not.”

“No, I don’t,” the Zeeross said bluntly. “How large of a planet can you destroy?”

“And how exactly are you doing it?” the Haf asked.

“The latter question I will not answer,” Davis said with an apologetic look. “I wouldn’t want any of you to have this ability, so I’m not giving you any hints. As to the first, it depends on the structure of the planet, but in some cases planetoids up to 2.4 gravity.”

The revelation silenced the room until the Knight of Quenar finally responded. “And what of stars?”

“No. Not that we’re aware of.”

“This is an abomination,” the Yioj swore, adding a few non-english words in the mix. “You can destroy any world you wish merely by getting the Uriti inside it? This cannot be tolerated. Once you finish destroying the Li’vorkrachnika, the Uriti must be killed…”

“No,” Davis said firmly, echoing the word telepathically like a hammer. “We do not fear power, and we will not kill those with it simply because they are powerful. And if you should attempt to do so, you will incur our wrath, so don’t try it.”

“The Hadarak also probably have this ability,” the Knight of Quenar speculated. “We’ve seen evidence of them tearing up planets, though they usually keep them intact while feeding on them. But if the Uriti can choose to completely destroy one, I would wager the Hadarak can too. Do you suggest we aid the V’kit’no’sat in destroying them as well? Or are they too far away to be an abomination?”

“How can you tolerate this power in their control?”

“It is more than we expected, but the Uriti are far more powerful than you ever guessed. We knew much of their power, so this new revelation isn’t so shocking. We have determined that Star Force is a neutral force that can be used to contain the Uriti. We have found no other, and any attempt to destroy the Uriti would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. I would greatly prefer them dead, but second to that we are content with them being in Star Force’s possession. Their choice to use them to destroy Li’vorkrachnika worlds we are not in agreement with.”

“Why not?” Davis asked.

“We are pragmatic, so the loss of a few worlds is of no consequence to us…but to them it is,” the Knight of Quenar said, pointing to the others. “The fear you strike in them will be shared by the rest of the galaxy. The ability to destroy planets is something they cannot tolerate, for it is even greater than what the Uriti were used for previously. Even the Chixzon did not make this mistake. They wanted to use fear as coercion. This…is something far more terrifying. They can remake the landscape of the galaxy, and that is something not seen before. As this spreads, and more people witness what you are doing, there will be a growing backlash.”

“And you think we should promise not to do so anymore and let this slowly fade away into legend?”

“You never should have done so, but now that you have, it is the only hope you have.”

“Hope to avoid what?” Davis asked as the others’ body language indicated they had become spectators in this spat between the normally two homogenous allies.

“Fear warps minds, and can induce stupidity. You could see it turning them all against you, despite the benefits you grant them and the galaxy. The Rim Consortium could even ally with the V’kit’no’sat against you.”

Davis glanced at the others carefully. “Is that your read…or your worry?”

“We have seen the effects of fear before. It turned a galaxy against the Uriti once. This could do so again.”

“The Chixzon were killing people with them,” Davis pointed out.

“So are you,” the Yioj added.

“People that did not attack them first,” the Director amended. “Our war against the lizards is defensive, despite a lull in the fighting.”

“You are not seeing the full implications,” the Knight of Quenar warned out of concern rather than threat. “They used the leverage of force, as you now do. For different reasons, but to those who only see power and dominion, there is little difference, and those differences will be washed away by the destruction of worlds themselves, rather than merely their inhabitants. It is a level of outrage we have never seen before, and it could be your undoing.”

“Your counsel is noted, and welcome,” Davis said, crossing his fingers in front of him as he rested his elbows on the table near the force field lines that separated him from his guests. “But this is my play to make, and there is one factor you’re not considering.”

“What is it?”

“The influence of the lightside. As you said, you are pragmatic. Your grasp of doing the right thing is limited, and because of that you underestimate its power. I will be able to control this, and I’m not referring to the Uriti, but to the backlash you’re predicting once word spreads around the galaxy. It will not become the quest you once fought in. There may be some bumps along the way, but I will stabilize it.”

“You speak as if we are not in the room with you,” the Zeeross said indignantly.

“If you wish to declare war on us, then do so and leave,” Davis said firmly. “If not, do not waste my time with threats you are unwilling to back up. The Uriti are not our possession, they are our allies. They have agreed to fight with us, and we are doing the galaxy a great service as an intermediary. They are so large and foreign to our type of life that they care nothing of it…until now. They care a little, because of us, and the relationship we have forged. None of you did, none of you could, but we did and we are growing that relationship. We are what allows the Uriti and the ‘little people’ to coexist. That’s what they refer to us as, little people. And if the Hadarak ever get this far out into the galaxy, you’re going to be damned welcome we bothered to keep the Uriti around.”

“Is that a legitimate threat?” the Haf asked.

“The Hadarak stay in the Core because they choose to do so. The V’kit’no’sat have compressed them in further, but the Hadarak mostly ignore them. The power they possess is clustered in the deep Core like a ticking time bomb. I do not know what it will take to bring them out, but their ability to do so worries me,” he emphasized. “And in a potential battle between little people and big ones, I want some big ones on our side. Don’t you?”

“Is there something you know that we do not?” the Yioj asked.

“A great many things, but more than anything, I think far, far ahead of the present. Farther than any of you do. Star Force does not fear power, but we are wary of it, and the greatest power known in this galaxy is not the V’kit’no’sat. It is the Hadarak. And they cannot be negotiated with.”

“In the meantime, you will face a more imminent threat from those that fear the Uriti,” the Knight of Quenar warned.

“I know. But while dominance has its perks, it also has its responsibilities. This one is mine, and I will attend to it in a fashion of my choosing…and that fashion is not to hide away the power of the Uriti when that power can be used to eliminate a scourge on the galaxy. And beyond that there is nothing more to say. I know what I’m doing and will not veer from the course because of complaints or fear. I will only alter it if there is something concrete to justify it. Is there anything else that any of you wish to inform me of?”

“Your disrespect is insulting,” the Yioj all but spat.

“Your lack of wisdom is annoying,” Davis countered. “Leave.”

The Yioj climbed up off its chair on its tentacles and slithered out of the room, leaving the other four ambassadors behind.

“Is there a threat of this ability to destroy worlds being stolen from you?” the Haf asked.

“Replicating it via technology is extremely unlikely,” Davis said, glad to have an intelligent question asked. “And taking the Uriti away from us is equally as unlikely.”

“You are confident of that?”

“I am.”

“Unless you destroy a world beyond Li’vorkrachnika territory, you will continue to have our support. Fear of power is a sign of inferiority, and the Haf are not inferior, but we are wary. While Star Force may not be a threat to us, others are, and we do not want them to obtain even a fraction of this power. That is our concern.”

“Noted.”

“This will change the balance in the galaxy,” the Lovipe ambassador said, finally breaking its silence. “How I do not know, but things will no longer be the same.”

“I agree,” Davis added. “And I intend to make it a beneficial change.”

“How so?”

“Those that know me and my empire well will not fear us, but outsiders who consider attacking Star Force will see the destruction of the lizards and fear us doing the same to them. And rather than that prompting them to attack, they will cower. That cowering will allow us more flexibility and the ability to shield others with a simple, unspoken threat. That is leverage I can use to great effect in areas where response times are slow. Fear covers all places, whereas fleets cannot.”

“Spoken like a Chixzon,” the Knight of Quenar pointed out.

“No, not like a Chixzon. A Chixzon would have already poisoned you to death and left the room to start working on their next target.”

8

June 29, 4936

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

Lara stopped swimming when she felt it again, floating with a small drift forward as she lay face-down in the water. Oxygen wasn’t an issue, for she had both Hanme, which was a backup supply of oxygen nodules throughout her body, and Lovo’nek, a tier 4 psionic that allowed her to breathe oxygen from the water directly through her skin. It wasn’t as good as getting it directly from the air, but it meant she couldn’t drown even if she got water into her lugs.

So Lara held still as the cool sensation hit her. This had happened 8 times before, and each time she’d reached for the sensation inside her it had disappeared. She wasn’t reaching this time, just trying to let whatever it was happen and soak in a little more before it disappeared again…except this time it didn’t.

It seemed to pool in the back of her mind, enough that she risked moving as she sank down to the bottom of the shallow swimming pool and knelt on both knees, sitting on her ankles and getting her head upright as she went into a Qui-gon-esk meditative pose. That didn’t shake the feeling free, so she held there and just let the sensation sit there.

It was hard, because it felt like an itch that demanded scratching, but every time she instinctively acted on it the Archon overrode the urge and forced herself to remain still, physically and mentally. It kept fighting her, but the more time she had to override it the easier it got, and the longer the sensation remained the more it seemed to be bleeding out into the rest of her.

Lara wasn’t sure what it was, and neither did Vortison, for none of the equipment had been able to identify what it was, but each time it happened her hyperactive state appeared to improve momentarily. She was still a long way away from getting it stabilized enough for her not to need treatments, but she was no longer Human, in that she couldn’t sit in a chair and do nothing without it damaging her. She was very high strung now, and the basic activity required to feed her need was mild compared to what Archons normally did on a daily basis, but it was totally alien to the basic Human civilian.

Laziness had always been an option for the Archons, one that they would never use. But now Lara didn’t have that choice. It had been stripped away from her biologically, which she was fine with. That was the entire point of this transition, but this moment of mediation was needed and thankfully Lara had been doing enough in the way of workouts to buy her a little quiet time before her body began screaming at her.

And in her moment of calmness the unidentified sensation continued to creep outward, taunting her to try and control it, but she knew it would disappear if she did, and the more she waited the more it eeked its way out into her appendages. It had been in the nothingness of her mental state, but now it was having a physical affect as her arms, legs, and torso burned…but it was a soothing burn, equivalent to someone pulling a thorn out of your leg. It hurt, but it was a vast improvement to leaving it in.

And Lara didn’t only ‘burn’ inside, but the water around her began to produce little bubbles off her skin as it literally started to boil in small streams…but she held still, forcing calmness and being rewarded by the sensation continuing to creep out further.

She held that constant tug of war with her instinct to reach for it over the following minutes that gradually crept into half an hour. Lara could sense others nearby, including Vortison, for they had apparently seen the changes on her stats and had come to see what was going on. Thankfully they knew better than to interrupt her, let alone stop her, for she was finally getting a feel for this.

She waited a long time, then when it felt like her entire body was aglow with an internal fire she very gently indulged her instinct and reached for it. Like dipping your toe into a pool when your inner badass told you to do a cannonball. That little effort was much harder to accomplish, for it required abandoning her calm trance and that almost vaulted her into a much larger effort, but she caught it and calibrated herself down as she felt the sensation try to flee again.

But it was too far out, and she got her first tentative hold on it. Fixing it in place inside her body with a huge swoon of heat pouring fourth that turned the water around her into a torrent of vaporizing steam that made it harder to breath, but she had her Hanme to draw on and did so, for there was no way she was letting this go.

Lara didn’t push. She knew that would lead to something very bad, for she had a feeling that it wouldn’t diminish now, but overload her. She had to go very, very slow, but she felt the intense heat inside her solidify in a tiny point, and from that the cool sensation ran parallel with the heat and expanded. It wasn’t actually cold temperature, but something in her biofeedback that was positive and the sensation came through as ‘coolness’ while the heat was a byproduct of damage correcting itself in an explosive fashion.

Slow down, she heard Vortison tell her telepathically. You’re nearing overload and I can’t heal you here.

Don’t worry, I’ve got this, she said, then ignored him and the others completely as the Archon slowly nudged the process forward, feeling like she was holding onto the end of a long rope that wanted to yank itself out of her hands. Lara fed that rope one inch at a time, and soon the pain began in earnest.

It felt like her body was going to fly apart, but even as it did something else inside her was realigning. One part of her wanted to stop it, another told her to make it blow up, but a third instinct said to be patient and let it creep on, and that’s the one she chose to go with. After all this time, there was no point in being hasty.

Two more hours passed, and when her Hanme ran out she had to split her focus and create a bioshield conduit up to the air to breathe through…but when she did the water level began to drop rapidly around her. It leveled out just below her chin, and she realized that was Vortison’s doing. The water was bleeding off her excess heat, which was why he didn’t want it all gone, but she needed to breath and really didn’t want to try moving, for she was sure it would knock her out of alignment if she tried.

Lara continued to burn up for another 3 hours with a cloud of steam surrounding her as she occasionally felt cold water being added to the pool to keep her from evaporating all of it off, though her clothes didn’t hold up that long. They melted into strands and even some of her hair burnt off when her Rensiek slipped off the edges, leaving it unprotected from the heat pooling on her skin and then being released. When she didn’t regulate it properly the buildup could poor back on her body and burn her, but so far only a bit of her hair had suffered that lapse.

The cool sensation continued to fight against the heat, and eventually it won out, completely consuming the pain and instability and leaving her calmer than she ever knew possible…while her head was pounding from a very intense heartbeat. Lara took a moment to collect herself and make sure it she was stable, then she slowly stood up above the water level and looked at Vortison.

“Well?” she asked, seeing a wide-eyed look on his and the others’ faces.

“Your hair,” he said, but she couldn’t see it. It was too short now to pull in front of her face and Pefbar couldn’t see colors, so she held up her left hand and pulsed a Jumat energy field around it…and saw that it was yellow/gold.

That confirmed what she felt inside, for the color change of her hair had been preprogrammed into her genetic code along with her Jumat to change when she reached the finished state Vortison had been gradually changing her toward…and that meant she had finally reached it.

Lara smiled, not wanting to do anything that might kick her out of it and having no idea what this actually was or how to use it, but eventually when nothing happened…no changes, no fluctuations…she started laughing and couldn’t stop. After everything she’d been through, she was finally here. She’d ascended up to superhuman level, or as far as she was concerned, a Saiyan level.

“Lara, we need to get you into the medbay,” Vortison said as the boiling water around Lara slowly cooled and new bubbles stopped forming. “There may be some small changes needed to lock it in.”

“I need ambrosia…and food,” she said, realizing how famished she was. “A lot of it.”

“Done. Now come with me. We don’t want to lose this.”

“I’m stable,” she said, floating up into the air above the water and hanging there as she pulsed her Jumat until she was aglow with golden energy that almost matched her short, yellow hair that was sticking out with what looked like static electricity, but that too had been preprogrammed into the follicles at Lara’s request, though it made her look like a spike ball right now.

“Please,” Vortison insisted. “You can play later.”

Lara sighed and her aura disappeared as she floated down next to the medtechs completely naked and with a red tint to her skin that was probably a result of the heat that had been passing through it, though the pounding veins visible everywhere on her musculature were a worrying sign even if Vortison didn’t have a datapad giving him more accurate warnings.

Lara walked through the assembled staff to the nearby door, but stumbled when she got there as her hair changed back to dark brown.

“Lara?”

“I’m ok. I think I just ran out of fuel. I can still feel the change.”

“Medbay, now,” Vortison insisted as the posse of medtechs escorted Lara out of the training area and back to the alteration chamber.

8,310 lightyears away…

Megan-026 flew in a skeet over the charred surface of Attatori, a world that once housed more than 3 billion of a race called the Sortia. They were an ally of the Skarrons and hadn’t been sparred when the lizards took them out on this world or any of their others. Recently there had been a large number of lizards here, but their numbers had just been drastically reduced along with their infrastructure. The planet and system were now Megan’s, but there were still pockets of lizards everywhere that had to be hunted down and destroyed.

She offered to let them surrender, as the Archons always did, but none had taken the offer and she knew the remaining ones wouldn’t either, which was why she had ordered Starkiller down into the atmosphere. Right now the Uriti was above her and to the right, with its four long spikey appendages reaching out from a very small midsection to caste a ‘+’ shaped shadow on the ruined surface.

As Megan flew she saw it slowly land, and from a pouch on each appendages a piece of it was pushed out and buried into the dirt and rock below. Once all four were deposited, Starkiller returned to space leaving the minion factories behind as a few already grown ones spread out like ants and began collecting bits of rock and other debris that they then carried back to the organic factories that digested them in a very Zerg-ish manner.

New minions would be produced within a day if the necessary resources were nearby, and Megan had made sure Starkiller had a full belly of the necessary monster cubes to stock the minion factories full before deploying them. That would allow many more minions to be grown without addition resources, but the growth pods required space and those minions could not all be grown prior to landing. That meant the resources being collected now would go to the development of minions weeks away from now, and Megan knew the process would quickly snowball far faster than the Paladin ever could.

But these minions weren’t alive. They were biological machines, but with no one inside, much like a tree, except these ‘trees’ were extremely advanced and capable of carrying out orders given to them by the Uriti or an Archon with a Wrangler gauntlet. Megan wouldn’t be staying here more than a couple of days, nor would Starkiller, but the minions would along with an Archon to finish cleansing the planet of lizards no matter how long it took.

And after that they would hold and defend the planet against squatters, but right now Megan was just having a closer look around than her command ship’s sensors would allow. Sometimes she needed to be physically here, and today was one of those days. Also, the sight of a Uriti landing and depositing biological factories wasn’t something the galaxy saw very often.

She could feel the Uriti’s telepathic aura, but her Ikrid block kept her safe from it despite a mild headache. Others couldn’t get this close without having serious problems, including the lizards, but from the looks of things there weren’t enough of them left to attack the factories when Starkiller left. None the less, Megan and others were going to remain on station in the air and on the ground until they got a decent foothold and perimeter established, just to be safe.

“Another down, a bazillion more to go,” the trailblazer whispered to herself as she sat on the pommel seat in the cockpit and looked out through the ‘window’ at the surface below as she lazily flew over top. “But not fast enough...”

9

July 3, 4941

Ennit System (Dagran Region)

Vis

Lara was in the middle of a sparring match with a machine when Aaron-010 walked up behind her and crossed his arms over his chest in a perturbed gestured.

“You guys were busy,” she said, not looking at him as she kept dodging and counter punching a series of robotic arms swiping at her.

Aaron telepathically interfaced with the sparring equipment and shut it down, prompting Lara to turn around and scowl at him…but his own expression was much more pissed.

“You nearly got yourself killed, youngling.”

“I made it,” she said defiantly. “And you’re welcome, by the way. You won’t have to go through that hell hole now that Vortison has a roadmap to follow. Don’t you have more lizards to kill?”

“I wasn’t in lizard territory. I was out in The Nexus cleaning things up. I’m done now.”

“Already? That was fast.”

“There wasn’t much left by the time we got to them.”

“And the Sety?”

“On my personal black list, but they’re still intact along with a few other races that stuck together at the expense of the others. We have loose control over most of what used to be The Nexus, and the follow-up work doesn’t require a trailblazer. I was heading to help the others with the lizards, then I found a report on an Ikrid breakthrough. Took some backtracking, but I eventually found your little program you hid from us.”

“As I said, you guys were busy and you weren’t going to let me do it, so I did it myself.”

“Davis says you really went through the grinder. How are you now?”

“Superhuman, which was the point. But a weak one. My body is trash, but my base attributes are so high it makes up for it somewhat. I had to rebuild myself once before. If someone was going to have to do this the hard way, it made sense for it to be me.”

“It’s the not telling us part that really has me steamed.”

“For your own good. Just because you guys came first doesn’t mean you’re the only ones that get to take risks.”

“You should have told us after you started.”

“You were all busy and didn’t need the distraction. And for the record, I was going to tell you guys once Vortison got everything smoothed out. We’re not quite there yet, hence the omission. The only person at risk here was me, and I don’t need your permission to do something stupid with my own ass.”

“You stole my medtech,” Aaron pointed out.

“Ok, you got me there,” she admitted.

Aaron sighed. “How far did you get?”

“All the way,” Lara said with a smile. “My efficiency is crap and I’m having a hard time slowing down, but the more control I get the more I can sleep. The hyperactivity is so high that I can only stretch it so far in the opposite way. Most of my rest is spent walking, and my workouts are getting so intense at the top end that I literally have bottles of ambrosia mixed with water and carbs to suck down. Vortison had to make a new ambrosia variant just for me, because the regular wasn’t intense enough.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Why the purple eyes?”

“I’ve gone beyond the V’kit’no’sat, so why keep their mark?”

“But why purple?”

“It’s not a natural color.”

“A lot of people have purple eyes by choice. It won’t completely stand out.”

“It makes a good contrast to the gold.”

Aaron glanced at her dark brown hair. “You can turn it on and off?”

She nodded. “My natural state is accelerated whether I like it or not, but when I choose to ramp up the effect coalesces and my efficiency skyrockets. It also drains the crap out of me, so Vortison has created a secondary psionic that has nodules that soak up ambrosia and store them for when my bloodstream saturation drops too low. Before that I couldn’t last more than 12 minutes.”

“And now?”

“Several hours before I’m completely out, but I have to eat snacks during. The ambrosia isn’t enough on its own. I’ve got my eye color set to change to blue when I start drawing on my reserves. I wanted that for Super Saiyan 2, but I’m nowhere close to that. I can feel it though, on the periphery. A hyper, hyper mode, but my body is going to need a lot of work before I can move that fast.”

“How fast are you now?”

“I was going slow,” she said, referencing the equipment behind her. “Defend yourself.”

Aaron uncrossed his arms but remained still as she dove at him with a single straight punch…that he caught in the palm of his hand. But Lara recoiled and punched with her other hand and began to machine gun punches at him that he blocked all with the same hand. She gradually sped up and made him use both to defend him, but there was no power behind her punches.

Then suddenly her hair turned gold and her speed blurred…with her landing a stiffened palm into Aaron’s chest, knocking him back two stumbling steps, but Lara didn’t relent. She moved with him and landed several more hits over the next two seconds, eventually sending him to the ground as she stepped over him and walked in a pacing circle, looking annoyed that she had to slow down.

“What the hell?” he asked, laughing. “That is insane speed, but your knockdown power is pathetic.”

“Damage effect. I’m slowly getting my strength back, but I have to rebuild what was lost in the transition. You will too, but Vortison thinks he’s found a way to reduce the trauma. Might want to let some more of us go first so you guys get the refined transformation.”

“What else you got?” he asked, rolling backwards through a somersault and up onto his feet.

“My Sav is off the charts. I have a lot of trouble slowing my brain down. I’m starting to learn how to sync my brain and body, but I’m so high strung I’m surprised the walls don’t start vibrating.”

“Are you on top of it?”

“It’s rough, but easy compared to what I went through to get here. So yeah, I’m on top of it, but I have a long learning curve to get through. The potential is worth it though.”

“Would you go through it again?”

“Don’t have to, I’m already here.”

“But would you?”

“No. I’d do it differently. Have Vortison change things more slowly. I really got messed up, Aaron. Which is why I wanted to spare you guys that.”

“You’re forgiven,” he said, dropping into a combat stance. “Now try and work me over just above my speed limits. I can’t learn much when I’m on the floor.”

“Happy to, but there’s one question you’re not asking me.”

“Ikrid?”

“I got a boost and no one knows how. Vortison thinks it’s something the Chixzon called ‘Essence’ but who knows. I have no control of it. No awareness of it. But I’m getting a power boost somehow.”

“Consistent?”

“Varied, with no detectable pattern, but now that I’ve gone Saiyan…and we are calling it Saiyan…I’m maintaining at least a few percent above maximum at all times, with peaks up to 42%.”

“Over physics as we know it?”

“Yeah. Pretty exciting, huh?”

“For those of us cranially challenged, we salute you.”

“It’s not just the mental psionics, Aaron,” she said with a smirk, then her Jumat aura formed, now golden/transparent.

“Seriously?” he asked.

A new target dropped down from the ceiling at her mental command, then Lara released a two-handed Kamehameha that hit the round target board…and ripped it off its bracing. It fell, then hung swinging back and forth by a power cord that was meant to supply the absorption shield that Lara had just over loaded.

“Show off,” he commented, seeing her eyes shift from purple to blue. “That was more than Essence. Your Saiyan state added power to it too, didn’t it?”

Lara nodded, breathing a little heavy. “My energy pathways are boosted so much its affected my Jumat cells. It started naturally, then Vortison spurred it on. They can take more power than I can give them right now, meaning I’ve got a very big, but very draining cannon shot when I want it.”

“Easy, blue eyes. Don’t want you passing out on me.”

“Not going to happen. I can sense my energy level extremely well. I know where I’m at and how much more I’ve got.”

“How about muscle strength?”

“I’ve got good recharge in Super Saiyan mode, but no power boost. Only speed.”

“So that’s why you hit like a girl,” he said, raising a hand and taunting her with two fingers gesturing towards him.

“Try and make me break a sweat…please,” Lara said, then dove at him with a flurry of almost invisible blows.

Borelli watched Lara’s stats while she was sparring with Aaron, seeing her Essence spike and diminish in an erratic pattern, but this was far more swings than she had ever displayed before. It was like the presence of the trailblazer was provoking a unique reaction, and he almost kicked himself for not having tried this sooner. Lara had insisted on sparing only with machines, because other Archons couldn’t keep up with her anymore, but the machines were predictable because they were set to complete basic moves at high speed with zero fatigue. They didn’t offer unpredictability the way a live opponent did.

The master medtech watched eagerly, trying to isolate when the spikes were occurring and why…then it hit him. It clear as could be once the thought occurred, and he immediately realized why it hadn’t before. He was a medtech, and biology was what he lived and breathed. He knew the Core existed and it drove the body and mind like a pilot in a dropship, but until this recent research he’d never dealt with the Core having any other effects, for it was irritatingly invisible as far as science was concerned.

Which was why he had missed this all along. Mostly because Lara was doing rudimentary, frankly boring training that didn’t require adaptation from her, just repetition. Now she had to adapt to Aaron as he adapted to her, and the reason for her Essence spikes was now obvious, for it was occurring when she was caught off guard and reacted…but only when she reacted. When she just balled up and took the hit nothing happened, but when she found a way to counteract him in the blink of an eye her stats surged for a brief moment, then diminished back into the ‘normal’ erraticness.

Instinct. It wasn’t something that was scientifically calculable, but it was something that Borelli was familiar with from his own training. A momentary spark of knowledge that seemingly comes out of nowhere when one has to react with no time to think. Most people simply fail, but every now and then one has a spark of instinct and does something seemingly magical before they even realize what they’re doing.

It had happened to him a few times during his life, and it had happened so fast it felt like it was just his imagination, but there had been one time when a friend had thrown a sensor rod across a medbay to another person. Maybe he’d signaled for it with a hand gesture, because nobody had said anything, and it had passed so close to Borelli that he had flinched…but instead of flinching away, his hand had shot up and he’d caught it before he realized what he was doing. The others had seen it and made quite a big deal out of his reflexes from that day on, so he knew that time it wasn’t his imagination.

It had been instinct, whatever that was. It didn’t calculate biologically, but Borelli was seeing it play out here and now, and each time Lara successfully reacted in an unanticipated way to something Aaron did, her stats would spike for a few seconds.

“So dumb. So dumb,” he said, referencing himself. “It’s the Core. Of course it’s not going to be linked to biology. Focus on personality and mentality. Not biology.”

“No. Focus on badass. That’s what Lara had to be to get here, and that’s probably why it’s spiking. I just wish I had a way to define ‘badass’ in a scientific sense. But if this is a training effect, then I’m not the one to handle it. The Archons are…or not. They’re on the inside, so maybe they’re not as well suited to this as the one who trained them. I don’t need more medtechs, I need a Head Trainer. The Head Trainer, if he’s willing,” Borelli said, abandoning his active monitoring of Lara and knowing that the computer would record everything for him to nitpick later. Right now he had to send a message to Davis and ask him if he would reassign the reclusive Wilson to the project, for if he asked himself the legend would probably turn him down.

Maybe not, if it involved the Archons, but better to have it come from the Director regardless. Borelli was now sure that he was in over his head here, and while he would assist as needed, he got the feeling that the answer to this riddle wasn’t going to be solved by science, but rather by ‘piloting’ experience, of which he had very little compared to the Archons and the other upper echelons in the lifeblood of Star Force…it’s training.

10

October 12, 4941

Jepiker System (Deu Region)

Forge

When Lara left the medbay training facility on Vis it had been uncomfortable, for the Saiyan Archon had essentially been reborn there. Her life before that medical gauntlet she’d had to run was a hazy memory, but once she had started to travel through space enroute to the new Archon planet things changed. Her ‘home’ on Vis, she realized, wasn’t that. She had just been hammered so hard she’d forgotten a lot about her life and now she was getting a wakeup call as the dropship took her off the Warship-class starship that had been her ride to get to Forge.

Lara hadn’t been paying attention to updates from outside during her transformation, and even when she could have been later she’d never bothered. It wasn’t until Vortison told her that she would have to leave to continue her tuning did Lara start to get curious as to what was going on out here…and the first thing that she discovered was that Davis had given Wilson an entire star system to renovate as an Archon/Maverick training center. And not just for the recruits, but for all of them at the varying levels of development they currently were, including her.

Morelli had already come here and talked to Wilson before Lara had got the summons from him ordering her here. And that’s how he had put it too. It was strange how she automatically did what he said, despite the fact that she outranked him and almost everyone else in the empire, but did she really? Wilson was the one who had made her an Archon, and ever since basic training she and the others had held him in the highest esteem.

And now he was going to help her master her new powers. It was going to be like back in basic all over again, except without peers. Yeah, that part was going to be weird, but with Wilson she wouldn’t have to worry about crafting her own workouts. Only surviving his.

But this place, as it turned out, was a lot more than a training center. There were five Clans here…Sangheili, Rwby, Apex, Croft, and Neon Squirrel…that served as system defense and resource manufacturing, then there was an army of Wilson’s training staff that were still busy adding new challenge courses, overseeing quartary construction, developing equipment for new races, and a million other things.

But there was no one else here, in the entire star system. The inhabitants of the third planet had been moved out entirely and relocated to one that better suited the Viroli. They preferred a dry climate and only small patches of that world had qualified. Now they had one big dust ball some 839 lightyears away where a Monarch was shaping them into what would one day be a sub-faction focusing on aerial combat that was natural for the winged Viroli.

Now though, there wasn’t a single one left on any of the 9 worlds or 14 moons. All those here were the elite of the elite of the elite, for the Clans had competed for the 5 guardian slots quite fiercely, and being posted here had quickly become almost a sacred duty as they helped to build the centralized birthplace of the Archons and Mavericks and expand it into what they truly needed.

All the Adepts and Acolytes were here now, going through their war games trials until they earned their Ranger status and were sent out on assignments across Star Force territory. Previously they had been scattered into small groups, and with the V’kit’no’sat gradually taking more and more territory away from Star Force, there hadn’t been a permanent home since Earth. Lara had wondered why Davis hadn’t moved them back there until she arrived and saw this place for the first time.

There was so much more room. Far beyond what Earth alone could offer even if it was uninhabited. Two of the rocky planets were massive. You wouldn’t need artificial gravity for training unless you were truly beastly, and one of those pair was a water world at that, with the pressures at the depths being the highest Star Force had ever seen. It was perfect for aquatics training, and the same could be said of the other worlds for the 5 divisions of the Star Force military that the Archons had to master.

And with the growth of the empire, there were more and more individuals being found that qualified for Maverick status. They had to go through the same training, but tailored for their race’s physical attributes. That was what occupied most of Wilson’s time now, and he hadn’t been on site for most of the Archon basic training for some time, though he always seemed to show up when one of the trainees wasn’t cutting it. They’d get the personal touch, for he hated to have anyone wash out, and few ever did, but the screening test wasn’t perfect and sometimes a lazy ass made their way through by accident.

Lara knew from personal experience that Wilson also blamed himself for every Archon that gave up the life after basic. Even those hundreds of years after. There had only been 129 of them, but they were all failures in his mind, and while she didn’t blame him, she didn’t understand how any Archon could stop being who and what they were. She really couldn’t. And those few that had were never honest about it. All they would offer was excuse after excuse, usually a ‘I’m too tired to do this’ or a ‘I didn’t sign up for all this’ line that didn’t explain anything. Endurance was the name of the game for Archons, and she was both sorry for and angry with those few that had cracked under the pressure.

There were a lot of others that just needed a vacation, and they took it. Got themselves recharged, patched up, whatever they needed, then they’d be back. Sometimes it took years of recovery after some of the things they’d been through, but Archons never quit. So how 129 of them could blew her mind to this day, and apparently it did Wilson’s as well, because the biggest thing to do to get his attention was fail as an Archon. Lara and the others were all his children, in some respects, and the Head Trainer didn’t like losing any of his children to death. But even more so he didn’t like losing them to laziness, for that, after a fashion, was treason.

And now he had called her here. Lara didn’t think it was because he was worried about her failing, but rather because there was new training to be trailblazed and he was the one person in the empire more able to do that than the Archons themselves. So as she descended down through the thick atmosphere of Forge to the huge pyramid rising 18 miles into the sky, Lara oddly felt like she was returning home despite the fact that she’d never been in this system before.

The pyramid though…that did it all. It was stair stepped like the one on Earth had been, and made of the same Yeg’gor armor. It was the only place in the empire that had it, and she could tell from her vantage point that it wasn’t completely covered yet. There was a huge swath on the western side still missing the cover stones, and perhaps more on the north, but she couldn’t see there for the dropship was landing on the third tier up on the southwestern tip that allowed her to see both the southern and western sides in their perfect geometry.

Lara stepped off the dropship and it departed immediately, leaving her to soak in the breeze and warm air from the jungle below despite the altitude. It should have been quite cold up this high, at nearly 2 miles above ground level, but then again the pyramid soaked up heat readily and released it at a standard 78.2 degrees Fahrenheit. So it must have been the heat plume around the pyramid that she was feeling, but the humidity was obviously coming from the lake to the south.

It wasn’t wide, but it stretched out past the horizon with multiple fingers running in different directions like a blue lightning bolt…and the trees were amazing. Some of them rose 3 miles high on their own, leaving her looking up underneath their top branches from a distance. Those nearest the pyramid were tiny in comparison, and that was no doubt due to the construction zone. But the others were awe inspiring, and she knew at a glance they were of V’kit’no’sat manufacture, for similar ones had once been on Earth before the Raptors razed the planet and took them all down along with the buildings.

They took a long time to grow this large too, which made her wonder how long Davis had been working on this location. It couldn’t have just been since the war ended, unless these trees were native here as well. She’d have to ask Wilson about that later.

Lara stood near the corner with the higher levels of the pyramid behind her, seeming to stretch into the northeastern sky as the pyramid sloped hard in that direction. The nearest stair-step wall was more than a mile away, then rose at least a half mile straight up to get to the next level, but she wouldn’t have to run that far, for there was a dip in the flat architecture only a couple hundred meters away that was a recessed entrance.

Lara could feel his presence before she saw Wilson walk up out of that stairway and into the light from the pair of binary stars setting in the eastern sky. He stood as tall and trim as ever, with far more muscles than Lara could ever hope for without losing her ability to walk. He waved at her to come over, despite the fact that he possessed Ikrid. In fact he had all the psionics now, after years of resistance and insisting that he learn to do things the way his body was originally intended, and the habit not to use the psionics unless absolutely necessary still apparently clung to him like a warm blanket, but it didn’t matter. When he waved her over, she would have jogged towards him even if her body wasn’t craving movement.

“Hello, Lara,” he said warmly, but firmly. “Take a lap.”

“What?” she asked, getting the feeling like she’d just done something wrong.

“One lap around the pyramid, this level. And make it quick. I need you sufficiently drained so we can talk without you getting jittery.”

“Same old, same old,” she said, sprinting off instantly along the southern edge and mentally calculating how long it would take her to run the perimeter at this level. Even with her advanced speed it was going to take a few hours…

I didn’t say you had to run, Wilson’s voice shot into her head before she was out of his telepathic range.

Lara cringed, realizing he was right. He just said take a lap, so she leaned forward and picked up her fleet, using her Yen’mer to levitate and then accelerate her movement into a bullet-like flight that required her to also use her bioshields to block the wind.

22 minutes later she streaked down the western side of the pyramid and braked heavily, stopping a few meters away from Wilson and dropped back to her feet.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much,” she said, a bit breathless, for she’d been pushing her pace hard.

“How do you like the new digs?” he asked, gesturing up at the pyramid.

“Perfect. How did you get Davis to do it?”

“It was his idea. He’s got some crazy plans for the future, as usual, but this time its galaxy-spanning stuff, and he needed a solid Archon and Maverick core to hold it all together. So he’s given us a permanent home where we can train away from the civies. Even civilian traffic is banned from the system. That’s why you had to take a warship to get her, though you probably travel on one anyway.”

“Wilson, I’m not the same as before. Everything seemed to get wiped away and I’m remembering things for the first time.”

“You should have consulted me before you tried it. I could have made the process smoother for you.”

“How?” she asked, wondering if a streak of stupidity had hit her.

“I could have modified your training to flush the toxins out of you better than running simple obstacle courses. You probably didn’t know what Vortison was doing to you, but I could have helped. I’ve been going over the records and the next person to try this is going to have a list a workouts to pull from.”

“I don’t think it would help in the beginning, but anything that minimizes would be much welcome.”

“You took the hit for the others,” he said matter-of-factly.

“The trailblazers didn’t need to deal with that. And I had to rebuild myself once before. That experience helped get me through it.”

“But you’re not through it yet.”

“My mind is still half missing, it seems.”

“Your body is crap too. I can tell that just standing here. You lost a lot.”

“I gained even more in the tradeoff, but yeah, I’ve got a lot to rebuild. What do you know about this Essence Morelli keeps talking about?”

“A little, but without any way to mechanically monitor it we’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way,” he said with a smirk. “Methods these medtechs will never understand. Science can’t tell you about curiosity or willpower, and I’m guessing this Essence falls into the same category.”

“I can’t even sense it.”

“Your mind is so muddled at this point I’m not surprised, but if it’s not a V’kit’no’sat or Zak’de’ron psionic, you might be searching for the wrong thing. Stay here long enough and we’ll get this figured out and you back into Archon shape.”

“I have nowhere else to go, so I’m all yours until you tell me I’m done.”

“I’ve got a load of new training courses for you. A lot of big ones we didn’t have room for in the past, and even more planned for construction. This is the Archon home you’ve always deserved, but we never had the time or resources to build. So, to the first of the old school to arrive, welcome home,” Wilson said, walking up and wrapping Lara in a big hug.

She leaned into him as she felt him in her mind, bypassing the Ikrid blocks with the skin to skin contact, then physically melted entirely as he worked his way into her memories and saw what she’d been through…and what she was still holding back. It didn’t take long for all her walls to come down in an avalanche with his reassuring presence in her head, and then the tears started to flow.

“Let it out,” he whispered. “You’re safe here. No need to tuck it away. You’ve been through hell, little one. And now you’re going to get the reward for surviving it. But first you need to let go and do what you couldn’t do before. Just stop and cry. There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday, there is only today. There is only this moment. You don’t have to do anything, just stand here and open up all the pain canisters you’ve been tucking away. And I’m not going to let you go until you do.”

She felt his arms tighten just a bit further, enough to reinforce him as point without making it uncomfortable, but oddly enough she didn’t even feel like fighting him. She needed the help, and was truly tired of fighting this alone.

It was good to have family. And what she’d done had been as much for them as it had been for her, but now it was her turn to get some help, and there wasn’t anyone in the galaxy better able to help the Archons than Wilson.

And true to form, he’d had her exhaust herself with that lap around the pyramid so she had no time limit on this moment. That let Lara go limp and turn into the mushy ball of pain she’d been fighting against for so many years, and by the time her advanced metabolism started clawing at her again the cathartic release would be over and she’d be well on her way into the future, but for right now she just let herself relish the immensely strong arms holding her up and the reassurance they offered.

As always, Wilson knew ways to approach training that no one else did, which was why the most advanced training required a trainer. You had to have someone to push you, to torment you, and to tell you when to back off and just…cry. You had to fully live in the moment, and you couldn’t do that when you were worried about what workout to do tomorrow or a month from now. You needed to take it one minute at a time while someone else took care of the planning.

And that was a luxury worth more than all the solari in the galaxy to an Archon.

When the Star Force warship entered the Itaru System it was met with the patrol fleet but not fired upon. They had known it was coming for some time, tracking its progress across V’kit’no’sat territory though it had not answered any questions about why it was here other than to say it was heading to Itaru. Per the terms of the agreement ending the war, Star Force had free movement throughout the V’kit’no’sat empire for their warrior class, but not their civilians, and this ship was definitely a warship, but now that it was here they were going to find out why.

Mak’to’ran got word as soon as it arrived that it was here to deliver a messenger to him in person, and he immediately granted approval. He had an Ari’tat delegation within Star Force territory to operate as a standing Ambassador, and the interlink between the Urrtren and the Star Force communications grid had been completed a few years ago, so there was no need for a messenger unless the subject matter couldn’t be trusted to the Urrtren…which meant it had something to do with the Zak’de’ron, or something that they couldn’t allow them to know about.

Mak’to’ran met the Archon when he arrived in a private chamber, finding it was one of their lesser ones. The Frieza-ranked Human he did not know, which suggested that this was indeed a message being transmitted in the most secure way possible rather than a discussion or negotiation, otherwise they would have sent one of their senior Archons.

“Why are you here, small one?” Mak’to’ran asked when the Archon slowly walked up to him.

“Is the chamber secure?”

“Only you and I will know what takes place here.”

“Good,” Hatron-1288333 said from his helmetless purple/white armor. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that we’ve analyzed the lizard genetics and technology compared to what they once were. We’ve confirmed they have been enhanced by a sponsor, though no record of that sponsor exists in any of their captured databases. However, we have spotted a subtle fingerprint on the enhancements they’ve been given.”

“The Zak’de’ron?” Mak’to’ran asked, almost seething with the confirmation that they had begun their war against the V’kit’no’sat, even if by proxy.

“No,” Hatron said coldly. “It’s not the Zak’de’ron. It’s the Chixzon. We don’t have thousands of years to prepare. They’ve already returned.”

Mak’to’ran took a step back, not having expected that, but finding it somehow worse. The Zak’de’ron were bad enough, but having two massively superior races working against you simultaneously was a nightmare beyond nightmares…not to mention the growing Hadarak threat. The V’kit’no’sat were soon to be in a 3-way vice grip that there was no way they could survive.

The Archon pulled a small datachip out of a hidden pouch and held it up to get Mak’to’ran’s attention.

“This is also for you. It’s the immunities for all the popular Chixzon bioweapons. You’ll have to adjust it to your races’ biologies, but we’ve already quietly inoculated our populations. It should make it more difficult to blindside you, but be warned that they are ingenious enough to find new ways of killing us. This should at least buy you some time against a biological threat.”

Mak’to’ran gripped the tiny device, built of V’kit’no’sat design, with his Lachka and brought it up in front of his face for closer inspection.

“Why are you giving us this?”

“Call it professional courtesy. You may be our enemy, but we’ve fought each other enough that some respect has been earned.”

“Is that your assessment or that of your masters’?”

“Mine, but the decision to give this and the warning to you is theirs.”

“And what else did they instruct you to give me?”

“Nothing more than the opportunity to send them a secure message. It was a long trip. No point in wasting it when I can carry it back.”

“Remain here,” Mak’to’ran said, then he walked off out of sight and eventually left the large chamber for many minutes before returning and floating down a much larger datachip that looked like a blue crystal. “Guard this with your life, and if your ship is compromised, destroy it before it can be captured.”

“What’s on it?”

“Everything I have been able to collect on the Zak’de’ron. Things that were not in your planetary defense station database, and some not kept even here in Itaru. In exchange, I ask that your masters learn from it and compare with the Chixzon knowledge that we lack. Perhaps it will offer some insights that will save both our empires.”

“I’ll make sure they get it,” Hatron said, melding it into his armor in a fashion that the pocket was completely hidden.

“Go now. The longer you wait the more chance there is of someone intercepting you.”

“Any personal message?”

“Tell them that they have done more for the empire than all other Zen’zat combined, and make sure they know I mean no insult. I no longer wish Star Force destroyed, by my hand or others. I hope you prosper long into the future, and if both the Zak’de’ron and Chixzon are in play for dominion of the galaxy, we are going to need each other, I think, simply to survive one of them. How we counter both is beyond my reckoning.”

“By growing too large for them to stop with hidden armies,” the Archon said as if it were common knowledge. “There’s only so much they can build without doing it in the open.”

“The galaxy is vast enough to hide empires, Archon.”

“Not when we both routinely search it. Give them less places to hide, and we force their hand early or keep them suppressed and using intermediaries while we grow larger and larger.”

“An overly simplistic approach.”

“But one hard to overcome. Numbers matter.”

“Numbers may be the only advantage we have at the moment, and they are continuously being whittled down.”

“Well, you’re not losing ships to us anymore, and vice versa. Do your thing and kick the crap out of everyone else attacking you. Aren’t you supposed to be the terrors of the galaxy or something like that?”

Mak’to’ran huffed, what little of his pride that remained momentarily sparked. “You believe we can win the coming war?”

“Remember who you’re talking to. Did we have a chance against you in the beginning? We survived because we decided to fight to the death, if nothing else out of spite. There is no surrender in our blood, and our persistence paid off.”

“It was more than persistence, though with a great deal of incompetence on our part included. Still, you have a point. You had no chance, yet here you remain and more powerful than ever. Your knowledge of the Chixzon may put you in a more advantageous position than we are in. Make use of it wisely. Once they know you have it…”

“We already think they know. Our ability to control the Uriti speaks pretty loudly.”

“Do they know how much you know?”

Hatron scrunched his face up in a hesitant gesture, deciding how to answer without giving away a secret. “There’s really only one way to get Chixzon knowledge, and it’s pretty much all or nothing, so we expect they know.”

“Interesting. Guard it well, or the Zak’de’ron may take it from you. If they manage to possess both knowledge bases, we are surely doomed.”

“Never give up, never surrender,” the Archon quoted. “But we know what we’ve got, and it’s well secured. Even I don’t have access to it.”

“You shouldn’t. As a messenger you’re extremely vulnerable.”

“A fast ship makes up for a lot of things. And as you said, time is precious for safety. Is there anything else before I leave?”

“There is not. Go now.”

“Going,” Hatron echoed, turning about and walking away.

Mak’to’ran watched him go, but didn’t move. He stood frozen in place thinking. The Chixzon were little more than a legend to him, while the Zak’de’ron he knew from experience, but he wondered which was the more powerful if the Chixzon had been able to harness the strength of the Hadarak to craft the Uriti for their own purposes. Two such massive powers arrayed against the V’kit’no’sat was ironic, and yet somehow deserved for the wasteful years they’d spent after the Zak’de’ron defeat. They should have been halfway through Hadarak territory by now, instead they had stagnated and fought each other to the point where the empire had nearly broken…and in truth it was now broken in secret. The J’gar and Oso’lon were gone, for the most part, and the few shreds that remained with Mak’to’ran wouldn’t grow large enough to replace them for a very long time.

He doubted they had that much time, but if the Li’vorkrachnika were not operating under the orders of the Zak’de’ron, then perhaps their old nemesis wasn’t as ready to strike them as he had assumed. Perhaps some of the other races they were currently engaged with were also operating on the orders of the Chixzon?

In some way that put him more at ease, despite the fact that the threat against him had now doubled. He needed time to retool the V’kit’no’sat and had been assuming the Zak’de’ron were already launching the first stages of their war of vengeance against him…but maybe that had been a miscalculation. Maybe he had more time.

Growth. That was what the young Archon had said. Growth would protect them both, and maybe, just maybe, they would have enough time to play that long game if all the Chixzon could do was throw lesser races at them.

And if they had planned on using a biological weapon to weaken the V’kit’no’sat further, Star Force might have just bought him the time he needed. Maybe there was a chance to survive this. One that he couldn’t currently see, but a pathway before him none the less.

And as the Archon had pointed out, if you’re doomed to die anyway, you might as well fight out of spite and take that impossible chance with full vigor. After all, what else did you have to lose by trying?

The answer was nothing, and for the first time in recent memory he felt a surge of resolve flow through him. If he was going to die, he would go down fighting as a V’kit’no’sat, not a broken warrior in a broken empire. So yes, growth it would be. He would wrangle what was left of the empire into form, even if he had to further reduce its size, then they would face the Hadarak and whatever else came at them with honor and either prevail or die trying, but they would not crumble. They would not self-destruct. They would not cave to the pressure and almost certain doom before them.

If either the Zak’de’ron or Chixzon were going to take dominion over the galaxy from the V’kit’no’sat, they were going to have to pay the price of blood to earn it. If the J’gar and Oso’lon wanted to forsake their pride, then the Era’tran would carry the empire in their stead. They would remain true V’kit’no’sat or die. There were no other options, for he would not let there be any other options.

And if they did fall, then perhaps Star Force would have a chance to carry on the work of the V’kit’no’sat under a different name. And they did not have the Hadarak border on their doorstep to guard, as he did, but the J’gar were right in one regard. If the V’kit’no’sat couldn’t survive the Zak’de’ron, then fighting the Hadarak was pointless. And if one of the two empires could survive what was coming, it might very well end up being Star Force, for they had one less enemy to fight than Mak’to’ran did.

www.aerkijyr.com

Dominance

Prologue

More than 120,000 years have passed and Star Force has grown to become the dominant force within the galaxy, even more powerful than the V’kit’no’sat, though to outsiders they are two parts of the same empire.

It took 67 years to defeat the lizards, though they were never completely eliminated. Always some ships would escape to set up shop elsewhere, and wherever they were found they had to be eradicated. They were a plague on the galaxy that would not completely go away, and to this day there are still a few out there surviving in the vastness of the galaxy trying to rebuild away from the eyes of the empire.

Star Force territory now stretches all around the galaxy, based off the completed Hula Hoop grid point network, with spurs running out towards the far rim that are continuing to be expanded upon. But even then, there are still vast tracks of unexplored space in the rim and much that Star Force has no control over, for even within its domain there are a multitude of systems and races that it does not control.

The Voku are one of those races, totally surrounded by Star Force territory now like many other civilizations, yet they have grown to be one of the stronger races with the Zak’de’ron quietly guiding them. The other wards that the Voku were charged with protecting have also grown, though not as far, but beyond those Star Force does not know how many other races the Zak’de’ron have in their thrall.

The return of the Zak’de’ron never occurred. Mak’to’ran’s coreward empire has recovered and grown, even without the rogue Oso’lon and J’gar civilizations that have completely forsaken that empire. They have been replaced by Oso’lon and J’gar factions within, grown from the few planets that remained loyal, but they are not dominant within the empire, for the Era’tran now reign supreme as the leading race within the V’kit’no’sat.

Under their guidance they have expanded, now occupying more than three times the number of worlds previously possessed, and have pushed the Hadarak border close to the deep core. The escalation of that war continued for some time until a courier escaped destruction and reported back to the Hadarak of the existence of the Harthur…at which point the Hadarak seemed not to care and diminished their patrols while augmenting them with pairings.

Whatever threat the Hadarak thought there had been quietly killing them had been disproven, so they’d gone back to their normal habits save for the pairing, which meant Mak’to’ran also had to go back to the normal warfare tactics, for Harthur were not applicable against two Hadarak simultaneously. The Hadarak had learned, so even when Mak’to’ran bought two Harthur to bear in the same system, it was almost impossible to pin both of them…and the one that was free would not run without the other, meaning it would come and destroy the Harthur pinning its companion, freeing it and forcing the blood-soaked conventional warfare the V’kit’no’sat had fought for millions of years to continue.

It was that constant attrition that kept the V’kit’no’sat from outgrowing Star Force, despite the fact that the rimward faction was engaged in nearly constant warfare itself…though against lesser opponents. The few major wars in the past were over, and no one now dared to challenge Star Force with their thousands of Uriti. All save 3 of the originals had been discovered and returned, meaning either two were still undiscovered or had been claimed by the Zak’de’ron along with Bulmuthal.

When Star Force had confronted the dragons about the theft of it from the Knights of Quenar, they basically had shrugged and said ‘finders keepers,’ which made many believe they also had the other two, but no one knows for certain. It was almost a moot point now, for while much smaller, Star Force now was able to produce more Uriti of its own, each a copy of the originals with some minor adjustments.

Gone was the Chixzon self-destruct programming from the new Uriti, though the originals could not be altered. Their genetics were protected against such alteration, and only when initially developing could one craft their genome. That mean the now much larger originals were at risk, but their offspring were not, though they still retained the necessary overrides to insure they didn’t accidentally destroy a planet or fleet if they had a temper tantrum, yet the new overrides were not ones the Chixzon could access, for the coding had been altered to prevent such interference.

But while the Zak’de’ron were nowhere to be seen, the Chixzon were everywhere. Never out in the open, but since the destruction of the lizards Star Force had been fighting a cold war against them with numerous battles against other enhanced races doing the Chixzon’s bidding. And it wasn’t just outright war, but backroom deals, negotiations, trade disputes, genetic and biological plagues…the Chixzon were working against Star Force at every turn, and the V’kit’no’sat as well, for Mak’to’ran had informed Davis of the many attempts to drive a wedge between the races and start another civil war, but the bonds Mak’to’ran had forged were holding solid and growing with time.

The Chixzon could not directly attack Star Force, and Star Force could not find them. They had gotten close many times, but their agents always managed to evade capture or detection, though the evidence of their manipulations were spread across the galaxy, and especially in the regions Star Force hadn’t yet pacified, but also in the gaps within the Star Force domain.

It was a long war, and one that hadn’t diminished one iota over time. The Chixzon were patient and persistent, but so far they hadn’t found a way to get at Star Force, though they and others had tried before. Once word spread of the Uriti’s ability to destroy planets an economic war was set in place against Star Force and its trading partners, but Star Force didn’t suffer for it. Davis had long dictated that Star Force systems had to be self-sufficient, so the economic warfare couldn’t damage them, but it did hurt their trading partners.

Many had to walk away from Star Force, but over the course of time they found their way back, and even some of the instigators finally saw the futility of the embargoes and revoked them, realizing they had more to gain from the trade than Star Force had to lose. After that point it was seen as hopeless to stop them, and even the eventual emergence of new Uriti, which enraged many across the galaxy, including the V’kit’no’sat, could not unseat Star Force, for no one could find a weakness to exploit, and even with a small Uriti accompanying a battle fleet there was no way to militarily defeat Star Force short of overwhelming numbers that could no longer be produced, for Star Force had simply grown too much to be outnumbered.

So the battles moved to the dark areas, the small worlds, the cracks in the Star Force empire. And it was there that Davis prosecuted his war against the Chixzon and others, for he knew well that the larger a civilization became the more difficult it was to maintain. And the greatest threat to Star Force was internal instability, which virtually all of Star Force’s opponents were trying to stoke whenever an opportunity arose.

Equally a threat, the ability to have so many worlds and so many people to hide events within the masses was something that worried Davis constantly. He had to have alert Star Force security forces who had their eyes and ears everywhere on their own planets, making sure someone didn’t stake out their own little turf inside Davis’s own cities, and now, after so many millennia of growth, Star Force security outnumbered the military that had fought during the V’kit’no’sat war, and still Davis was worried about what might be falling through the cracks.

There were always threats and worries, but on the whole Star Force was gobbling up the Rim and making more friends than enemies while doing it, and the Star Force military had grown into such a monster that almost no one could stand against their third tier troops, let alone the elite Knight races.

Whenever there was a war of conquest, it was the Knight races that would be called upon first, led by Archons and Mavericks that now numbered in the billions, yet for every one of them there were 12 systems owned or protected by Star Force, underscoring just how large their piece of the galaxy was and how rare the Archons and Mavericks still were.

Their numbers had grown greatly, as had their power, but their rarity put them in the position of being the Jedi of the galaxy, and they were just that revered and feared, but when it came to the warfare it was the Knight races that they led into battle, for they had been granted the psionics of the V’kit’no’sat as default, whereas the other races had to attain them by individual advancement. The tradeoff was that the Knight races had no civilians, and those that wished to leave their heritage duty had their psionics suppressed rather than removed, which many could not stand after living so many years with them.

Those that did leave formed their own worlds, loosely called the Cast-offs, that were part of Star Force, but the majority of those being born or hatched into the Knight races held to their duty, which was to be the first line of defense against invasion, and the first ones to seek out combat wherever it was deemed necessary. They were made up of the more advanced races, most of which had come from the V’kit’no’sat in the form of a few individuals here and there. Some of the races that did not voluntarily migrate to the rim Mak’to’ran had sent to Davis in the form of individuals sentenced for execution…who were given a choice of that fate or being exiled to Star Force.

Some chose death, but those that didn’t provided the eggs for Davis to add every single V’kit’no’sat race to Star Force save for the Les’i’kron, none of whom would allow the dishonor of leaving Itaru’s service. It was thought that was a side effect of the culling process when they’d been diminished and genetically engineered into service, but as for the rest of the original V’kit’no’sat races, all were now Knight races within Star Force, though Mak’to’ran had added several new ones since that Davis did not possess.

The Ziviri were one of them, though Star Force still had some of their own. They were not a Knight race, and the V’kit’no’sat had heavily upgraded them over time whereas Star Force had not, for Davis felt it was better to let a race prove itself before the enhancements rather than forcing them forward and hoping they accepted the mandate. The Meintre were a good example of a race who had earned their advancement, and they now stood as a Knight race along with a few others from outside the original V’kit’no’sat ranks, though none of the original Star Force races had ascended to that level other than the Kvash…and that was mostly because of Paul’s continuing pressure on them to break their stagnation. Once they did, their true potential showed through and Davis had been pleased to add them to the Knight ranks.

Star Force appeared to be unbeatable, as did the V’kit’no’sat, whom they were still separate from, but no longer had a quarrel with. In the lower levels of both empires they were seen as two sides of the same coin, with migration allowed in limited respects both ways and an enormous amount of trade occurring across the border where the Hula Hoop transportation network had been built. It was now the focal point of the galaxy, both rim and core, and Star Force held it tightly within their reigns.

Together, the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force now controlled most of the galaxy…but that control was an illusion, for there were too many systems and too many places for nefarious individuals and races to hide. While Star Force was working to diminish that number, they would never eliminate it entirely. Not when they allowed other civilizations to exist freely as long as they behaved themselves, and Davis wasn’t going to start invading planets simply because they were not part of Star Force.

But even if he did, he knew the galaxy was simply too vast to control, and the larger he grew his empire the harder it would be to maintain it. He had broken up Star Force territory into various Kingdoms and was relying on the other Monarchs and Archons/Mavericks to govern them, but they were few in number compared to the mass of worlds out there, and he couldn’t make the mistake of growing the empire too large too fast, especially when he had the Chixzon poking around for every weakness they could find to exploit.

Many things had changed since the V’kit’no’sat war, but neither Davis nor Mak’to’ran thought they were safe, and between the two of them they guessed that their enemies were working on some truly grandiose plan beyond simple invasion, now that both of them had grown strong enough to prevent that tactic from succeeding. So while the people in both their empires saw this as an era of stability and growth, the two leaders knew it to be otherwise.

The Zak’de’ron and Chixzon were waiting for something. What it was neither Davis nor Mak’to’ran could guess, nor did they know which one would strike first, but until then they would continue to grow the Rim and push into Hadarak territory as was their mutual responsibilities, but the more time that passed the more both became worried.

Something was going to happen. And the longer it took to come about, the bigger it would have to be in order to defeat them. But when that future day came to pass, no one would see it coming…

1

March 2, 128439

Grid Point Nenritor (Hula Hoop, Atavari Kingdom)

“Here you go,” Nari Imarti said, handing her boss/father a cylinder with various food cubes in it.

“Thank you,” he said as she sat down opposite him in a small booth on the edge of the starport’s café as they waited for their departure flight over to the grid ship that would make a magnetic jump off one of the nearby 3 massive constructs that had a string of installations between them, with this starport being just one grain of sand amongst the beach of infrastructure stretching between the huge rocks.

“I still can’t believe this,” Nari said, looking out the nearby ‘windows’ that were screens that showed the viewpoint of exterior cameras outside the starport’s layer of protective armor. The sea of various stations stretched as far as she could see with the nearest construct backdropping many of them, for it was as large as an entire planet. “How could anyone build something like this?”

“It’s Star Force,” Larson Degari said simply. “You get used to it after a few hundred years.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this. You said there are places even bigger?”

“Some of the grid point have more than 3 constructs, but it’s more about the traffic flow. The more business to be done, the more accompanying stations. Even the nearest star system is full of people benefiting from this transit point, and the next few systems beyond that. Each point on the Hula Hoop has a massive population and business footprint…and I’m sorry to say we’re not qualified to operate here. The leasing costs would put us out of business.”

“Really?” his 27 year old daughter asked. Up until 11 months ago he’d never met her, or vice versa, but when she’d graduated from the maturia he’d put in for an identification request. That meant Nari had gotten a message telling her that her biological parent or parents wanted to meet her. If she declined they would never know who she was, but Nari had said yes and Larson had immediately arranged to travel to the world where she was first assigned quarters as a civilian.

“I’m afraid so. These are the big players here. As rich as we are, we have to work hard to have a presence in the medium scale locations, but most of our activities are on the newer worlds where there is much more opportunity. They don’t have the traffic flow, but there’s a lot of wealth to be made within Star Force territory if you know where to look for it. And their fees are reasonable, even here, strange as that may sound.”

“Competition?” Nari asked as she distractedly watched a rather large Bsidd transport drift by the window.

“Value. The speed that the Grid Point system allows saves so much fuel and time that it’s worth the costs of operating here. We ship a few things, besides people, through it, but most of our operations are outside the Prime Zone, so we have to use conventional gravity drives.”

“Prime Zone is what you call the area around the Grid Points?” she asked, still trying to assimilate all the knowledge her father kept throwing at her, now that she had become his personal assistant overseeing a corporation that had more than 2 million employees spread across more than 350 star systems.

“It’s not an official term, but the commerce build up at the grid points and their companion systems, and the adjacent systems that have seen a spillover of infrastructure are all high value turf. When you do business, you go where the customers are…and as you can see,” he said, gesturing to the window, “there are so many people moving through these locations the customers literally come to you. There’s actually a shortage of resources here, meaning prices go up, up, up.”

Nari frowned. “A shortage?”

“Well not here. This is a Star Force starport and they maintain a stable supply grid. But the stations out there that are not Star Force operated have to get stuff shipped in, and that’s fine for the rare, small stuff, but the larger basic building materials take up volume and mass that is too damn expensive to ship on the grid point system itself. So they have to get it from the nearby star systems…which is why they also get rich…but even then it’s expensive because there are no planets here to draw resources from, so everything has to be shipped in. Do you understand the significance of that?”

“No, I don’t. We only had basic economics in the maturia.”

“I know. The maturia doesn’t teach you much unless you go in for the higher level stuff that’s optional, but even then it’s not the same thing as experiencing it firsthand, because people don’t always behave as you expect them to, and business is all about dealing with people. At last count there were 2.3 million races in Star Force’s economic catalog, and they each have their own intricacies. Then add in the personal ones and you have an environment that cannot be predicted. You have to feel it out as you go. That can’t be taught in a maturia.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to take the higher programs?”

“You said you didn’t want to.”

“I know, but why didn’t you insist I did before hiring me?”

“I want you with me. And Star Force can’t teach you about our business, so I figure you’ll learn more relevant stuff this way, but you’re free to go back and take a maturia program whenever you want.”

“No thanks. It’s too high strung for me. They don’t let you have any free time.”

“I know. Your mother felt the same way.”

“You said you met her in the maturia?”

“She was my sister,” he said, referencing the maturia classes that operated as family from birth, though they had no biological connection other than their race. “We’d been together forever,” he said, getting a bit misty eyed.

“I never hooked up with any of my brothers.”

“Never?”

“No. We just didn’t see eye to eye on anything.”

“Really?”

“They wanted to go into Star Force service and I didn’t. I was the only one that didn’t.”

“Most of them won’t stay in it. Less than 1% of all people in Star Force end up in service past the age of 100. A lot try it, but they end up preferring less stressful civilian life or the challenge of making money on their own. Service doesn’t get you rich. It gets you responsibilities. I prefer money.”

“You’re responsible for your corporation, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I choose who’s in it. Star Force has to be responsible for everyone born into it. That’s not a job I want. I like to pick and choose.”

“Like me?”

“I chose well, Nari. You’re very much like your mother, except that nose,” he said, tapping his own with a smile. “You’re also curious like us. I’m glad you’re here. I need you, badly.”

“Is there a problem?”

“I need someone I can trust to do it my way, and we think alike. More so than any other employee I have. Plus they come and go. I need someone who will stay around, and I think you will.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not going anywhere. You’re the only person in the galaxy that understands me.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Larson said, popping one of the smaller food cubes into his mouth and chewing hard. It was mint flavored, not one of his personal favorites, but the cylinder was a mixed bag, so you got what you got. He could have ordered more high end food cubes and other items, but he was perfectly content with the freebies Star Force handed out here. No sense in wasting extra credits on luxuries when magjump travel was so damn expensive to begin with.

A monthor walked by their booth, then sat down in another two spots ahead of Nari with its hairy mass nearly eclipsing the bench it sat on, but the tray of food cubes was identical to the one the two Humans had…except there were far more canisters on the alien’s tray.

“Do they all speak English?” she whispered.

“It’s the language of the Rim, and V’kit’no’sat is the language of the Core. If you operate inside Star Force territory, it’s expected you know it. Some of our trading partners on the frontier don’t, which is why we have to have linguists troubleshoot the shortfalls in the translation programs. The Star Force scouts get a decent feel for them, but they don’t spend a lot of time figuring out the intricacies. They’re more interested in providing a base from which to teach English to those who speak other languages rather than mastering theirs.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“Why would it be? If someone told you that you had to learn something different, would you want to?”

“No, but with 2.3 million races you can’t learn every language. Having just one makes sense, unless you don’t want to facilitate communication.”

Larson smiled, for Nari has passed his little test to see if she was agreeing with him or just echoing everything he said.

“Quite right, but you also have to realize that some planets don’t want outside contact, for the most part, and their interactions are limited to a few spaceports. When we work there, we learn their language and speak it as a courtesy. If we’re not very good at it we use the translators, but a lot of our clients prefer the personal touch. It’s gotten us a number of contracts over larger and better financed corporations.”

“Interesting,” Nari said, chewing food cubes at a rapid pace in between words whereas Larson was taking his time. That was another symptom of maturia training. You were always in a rush and trying to cram in as much work, or in this case, food, into the minimum amount of time possible. It was a trait that Nari would lose in time, but less than a year out of the maturia wasn’t enough to shed most of its habits.  “They really don’t want to interact with the galaxy?”

“Star Force is rather unique in that regard, and brings a lot of people together. Others would not do things the same way. Take the V’kit’no’sat. Their borders are closed to civilian traffic, at least those without permission. They have select trade deals with some of the truly huge corporations, but most of their commerce is through Star Force itself, and they don’t care to interact with the ‘lesser’ races in the Rim.”

“Lesser?”

“Frankly they’re snobs, and I wouldn’t do business with them even if I had the chance. There’s also still some bad blood between them and Star Force that I don’t want to get between, but some will risk it. Especially for a few V’kit’no’sat trinkets not available out here.”

Something out the window drew Nari’s attention as she sipped her blue drink, enough so that she half choked and spilled some on her thin shirt.

“Blast it,” she said, swiping away what she could and thankfully avoiding a stain thanks to the synthetic fabric.

“What?” Larson asked, glancing out the window at the hundreds of things visible.

“That’s a Knight ship, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the far left as it was entering view.

“Good eye. It is. And a magjump ship at that. They must be transiting between constructs.”

“They have their own grid ships?”

Larson nodded. “They can’t wait to hop a carrier, so they’ve got their own transit fleet,” he said, referencing the pyramid-shaped vessel that had a very elongated peak that doubled as a bow, making it look like a fat obelisk. “There’s probably 20-30 warships inside.”

“Can you tell which it is?”

“Hold on,” he said, using a small console on the table to bring up a hologram between them that mirrored the window view…except that he was able to zoom in until the Knight ship filled the screen. The dark hull had a green twinge to it, which was typical of Star Force’s advanced Tu’gor armor that the Knight vessels had, and all of their grid ships were covered in the stuff to ensure they couldn’t be destroyed in a quick ambush or by debris when traveling through space at magjump speeds higher than civilian transports were capable of.

“There,” he said, zooming in even further to a symbol on the side of the pyramid that was nearly a mile wide, but appeared tiny on the massive 268 mile long ship. “Do you recognize that shape?”

“It looks familiar, but no, I can’t place it.”

“It’s Bez. Star Force Bez. V’kit’no’sat races have similar icons, and Star Force modified them all to differentiate between the two. That’s a Bez Knight ship…and actually, there’s more than one. Looks like a convoy,” he said as he zoomed back out and rotated the camera angle around to see a long train of pyramids creeping through the dense traffic field with smaller ships zipping in and around them but staying respectfully out of the way within a decent perimeter.

“Why do they get the best ships?”

“They’re the first line of defense, and the ones going out into the deep frontier to look for problems to solve. I’m afraid you’ve been isolated from the truth being in a maturia,” he said looking her squarely in the eyes. “The galaxy is a very dark, horrific place outside of Star Force territory. And Star Force doesn’t accept that. They’re constantly pushing the borders out and civilizing the frontier, but the galaxy is huge and there’s no end to the threats out there.”

“What threats?”

“Nothing that can take down Star Force on the whole, but threats that can kill people just the same. And there are people out there born into those dark worlds with no knowledge of Star Force. Be grateful you were born here. Some of the things you will see out there will scare you shitless.”

Nari frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Oh…just a crude description of something that happens to some people. It’s never happened to me, but I’ve been close. Never mind about that. Just look at those Knight ships and remember, they’re going out to fight wars to free people from the darkness. Not to bring them back here, but to extend Star Force out to them, and the threats don’t like it. Make no mistake, those Knights are going into harm’s way, and that’s why they need the best ships.”

“But those ships don’t leave the Grid Point system.”

“True, but any delay means more people out there die, so they have to move fast when a mission is assigned. I’m not sure how it all works, but I know they don’t waste time and those grid ships are damn necessary, so they can’t risk losing them.”

“But who could damage them on the grid?”

“It’s rare, but sometimes there is debris between the stars. There have been cases where magjump ships simply don’t arrive, and it’s speculated that they ran into something.”

“I’ve never heard that.”

“Doesn’t happen much now, but in the past it did. The shields absorb most of the impacts, but the faster you go and the larger the object gets…well, physics will eventually get the best of you, and the Knight ships are designed to travel the grid much faster, so they’re in more harm’s way. Something the size of this,” he said, holding up a single food cube, “can destroy a ship without shielding because of the speeds involved.”

“Wouldn’t it just punch right through?”

“Yes, but it will spray debris along the way that will hollow out a cone that vaporizes everything in its path. And if systems are damaged, like fuel storage…boom.”

“What happens to the pieces?”

“They drift off the jumpline and miss the grid points…hopefully.”

“We were never taught that.”

“Pulse purges are performed on the jumplines at regular intervals. It’s a pain in the ass when they do them, because it has to be shut down for a few hours as the cone widens on its way out, but it tends to push away the little trash and highlight the big ones. If you see a travel delay noted, sometimes it’s because a big piece is floating through the corridor and the jumps are scheduled to let it move through.”

“Ugh…there’s so much I don’t know.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know, Nari. There’s too much to know it all. We just learn as we go and we pick up things. Over my 528 years I’ve picked up a lot. You haven’t had time to yet, but stick with me and I’ll get you there faster than most.”

Nari smiled. “I have no doubt about that.”

Larson returned the smile, then the view on the hologram suspended between them caused him to frown.

“What?”

“That’s not just a convoy,” he said, looking at the Knight ships. “There’s more than 100 of them.”

“100 grid ships?” she asked in awe.

“At least. That’s not normal, Nari. They’re either moving assets around or this is a war fleet heading across the galaxy.”

“How do you know it’s across the galaxy?”

“They’re on the Hula Hoop. If it was local they’d go straight there. If it’s around the curve of the galaxy, they come to the Hoop to get there faster than going around or cutting through V’kit’no’sat territory. They don’t have grid points. Only Star Force does and for some reason they haven’t shared.”

“Any idea where they are going?”

“No, but if it is a warfleet and not some scheduled rotation…which it might be, I’m not an expert on the Knight races…but if it is a warfleet, I’d bet they’ve found some larger than normal threat out there that needs pounding, and that’s one hell of a hammer they’re bringing.”

“That is so cool.”

“War isn’t cool, Nari. It’s ugly, even when Star Force fights it with stun weapons and takes everyone alive. Hopefully you never have to see it.”

“You have?”

“A little. I’ve been out on the frontier ahead of Star Force a few times. And when they come in and clean out a system it’s a major improvement, because whoever ticked them off had to be doing some very bad things. But the cleaning out process is ugly, because the bad guys don’t go down willingly.”

“And that’s not cool?”

“It’s serious, and necessary, but not cool. It’s downright terrifying.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes you wonder what the galaxy would be like without Star Force…and nothing gives me more nightmares than that casual thought. You’ll see, someday, and I don’t envy you that learning experience.”

“It’s that bad out there?”

“Worse,” he said, looking at the Knight ships now drifting by the starport with decent speed. “That’s why we won’t go very far out into the frontier. The deeper you go, the worse it gets, and only Knights or very stupid civilians go that far out.”

2

April 12, 128439

Quitassna System (Opaty territory)

Vinanakva

“They’re refusing to surrender,” a Calavari Knight standing at the comms station on the bridge of the Bez command ship announced. “In fact, they gave a very eloquent explanation of how we should go fuck ourselves.”

“At least they responded,” Chavarri, the Bez fleet commander, said. “Most don’t. Alright, let’s get this done. They’ve been warned. Now we fight.”

With a telepathic ping he signaled the entire bridge crew to bring the ship to battle stations as Chavarri signaled the other warships via the battlemap system that he was mentally linked into from the soft pedestal that he stood on. The Bez was the size of an Era’tran, but had a distinctive fin running high over his back that contained an array of psionic tissue, most notably Jumat, that gave them a far different ground combat profile than their ‘cousin’ race.

There were only three Bez on the bridge, with the other 52 personnel being smaller races indentured to the Bez as Esquires. These were the evolution of the original Knights, who focused on hand to hand combat and were a notch above the regular Commando. Now the term ‘Knight’ was reserved for those who sought out combat rather than waiting in defense, and applied to both the Knight races and the individuals from other races who volunteered for such duty.

The individuals had two choices if they wanted front line duty…join a Clan, if they were good enough, or serve one of the Knight races in their missions. The Esquires were also referred to as Knights, but the ‘Esquire’ title denoted that they had chosen this life rather than being born into it…whereas the Knight races were born into that duty and had to choose to leave it.

Most of the Esquires were the smaller races, but not all. There were a few larger ones too, but none in this fleet that was tasked with subjugating this Opaty system. No combat had occurred during entry, with the enemy fleet holding tight to low planetary orbit where the ground defenses could assist them in the combat to come. The Bez had laid down the terms for their surrender, but it appeared that the Opaty were going to fight to the death like the rest of their civilization in other systems.

Their race was an empire that held many other races as various types of servants, some of which were rather primitive and used for ritual sacrifices. As soon as Star Force found this out the Knights were tasked with ending their empire, and combat had been occurring over the past 8 years in a multitude of systems. The Opaty could not stop the invasions, yet they still refused to negotiate or surrender. Many of them were being taken prisoner with stun weapons, and the Bez intended to do so here as well, but they had to get through their defense fleet and penetrate the planetary shields before they could start capturing the population.

But this wasn’t going to be an easy fight. The Opaty had been a fairly advanced race in previous millennia, but they’d grown considerably as of late and Chixzon intervention had already been confirmed. They were trying to throw up yet another roadblock to Star Force, and the insistence of the Opaty to fight to the death and do as much damage as possible to the Knights probably had something to do with the wishes of their clandestine masters.

Chavarri had no Uriti in his fleet, for this wasn’t that large of a target, but he was going to lose a lot of drones getting through the mess ahead, for the planetary defense weaponry was showing more cannons than scouting reports had previously revealed, all of which were now rising up from hidden bunkers across the planet.

The Bez fully immersed himself in the battlemap system, and with his Sav psionic upgrade he could feel his entire fleet as the warships disgorged their hives of smaller drones, all of which were perfect cubes. The other militaries within Star Force had their own shapes, but the Knight races all had cubes, which was the second best geometry available after a sphere, but the spheres didn’t pack well into ships and left a lot of empty space between them. The cubes packed tight, as did the other geometric shapes, and had both advantages and disadvantages over the other designs.

They didn’t have a front or back, and could defend evenly against all angles of attack, but that was also a disadvantage when a flat rectangle could come in with its smallest side towards the enemy. A cube didn’t have a smaller side to use, but then again it didn’t have a larger side than the enemy could flank either.

Seeing the swarm of medium-sized vessels arrayed against them, Chavarri ordered his fleet pilots to combine the drones into clusters, physically interlocking and sharing shields, power, and more importantly putting physical mass in between them and some of the soon to be incoming fire. They linked up in a variety of formations, but most were spear shaped and had a body 3 wide by 3 tall, meaning the inside row was completely protected from the outside.

Those spears were sent forward ahead of the bulk of the drone hive, which was still in singles. The Bez commander also ordered the warships to move forward with them, for they wouldn’t be in significant danger given the technology gap, and their weaponry would help break through the opposing fleet quicker and get a hole in the planetary shields established so the drones could fly down and begin picking off the planetary defense cannons from close range.

As for the spear formations, they took the first incoming fire from both the fleet and the planet as they raced towards the Opaty ships, with their combined shields holding up almost all the way there before some of the cubes got hit and blown off the formations…but the rest remained intact as they got within pointblank range of the Opaty fleet, where they then broke apart into singles and began to attack on individual vectors, some of which put them in between ships and forced the Opaty to risk shooting their own vessels with rare misses.

However, the drones also had deflection shields that could bounce the energy attacks against them slightly, redirecting them into the ships directly behind them, meaning the Opaty had to get direct hits in order to make them fully stick, and the drones were moving around a lot in order to make it harder for the enemy gunners to do just that.

But with computer controlled weapons, most naval combat in this day and age didn’t see misses…especially with ships that were miles long. The drones were all under a mile and small in comparison, but without the deflection shields the enemy would not have been missing many shots at this close range.

Once the spears broke up and began to engage, the rest of the hive moved forward and joined in the assault with the warships interspersed amongst them. Those larger ships were what drew the attention of the ground-based weaponry…which was a mistake, for they could soak up a lot of shots that otherwise would have been killing the smaller drones. It was a common misjudgement in naval warfare to shoot the biggest, most appealing targets, but if you couldn’t actually kill them then you were wasting shots, and the Bez knew when to pull back just before their warships’ shields went down, thus depriving the Opaty of doing even a small amount of hull damage.

The fight went on for over an hour before the fleet was broken, then the bombardment of the shield began as the planetary defenses continued to pound the Star Force fleet. If they’d brought a Uriti with them it would have been much simpler to get through the shields, but all were currently occupied or too far away to call on, so this had to be an old school planetary invasion, though with a few new toys to help.

One of those was a shield buster, which wasn’t a warship or a transport…the latter of which were holding back out of firing range while the warships and drones did their thing…but it was a ship with one purpose, and one purpose only. Carry a big fat gun to batter down the shields of fixed targets.

This one carried a small Tar’vem’jic, and once the Opaty fleet was destroyed it was deployed to firing range just beyond the maximum range of the planetary defenses. Then it began adding its heavy hits along with the rest of the fleet as they poked down a section of the shield to the point where it snapped…then blinked back into place as the recharge rate kicked in.

Open, shut, open, shut. That’s how it went until some firepower got through the gaps and hit the shield generator below. Once it went down the gaps got longer, but there was still no clear window, for the Opaty had overlapped their generators so the loss of one wouldn’t open up a permanent hole. It took more pounding and shooting through the gaps before two more generators fell, then a small hole formed, and through that hole went the drones that then began eating away at the cannons and other shield generators now that they couldn’t hide behind their primary defense shield.

The Bez fleet retreated back up and out of range while the Tar’vem’jic continued to add some low power shots at precise points, but it was mostly the hive of drones that carried out the subsequent strikes, and when they’d cleared out a decent area and expanded on the hole in the shields, it was time to bring the transports down to either the surface or low orbit, depending on the type, and begin offloading the mass of Bez and their Esquire Knights to handle the face to face fighting that would end with the capture of the majority of the population and add yet another planet to Star Force’s holdings.

That planet appeared as an updated dot on Davis’s master empire map back on Earth weeks later, alerting him to a change in status once the information made its way across the galaxy through the relay grid. The Director noted the change and briefly analyzed the data packet accompanying it, seeing nothing out of the ordinary that would require his attention. Just another day of good work being done on the frontier, rescuing people from a barbaric civilization and giving the individuals trapped within it a chance at a real life.

The prisoners would be put into indoctrination facilities soon to be built on the planet by an army of Calavari already on the way there. The Opaty would then have a choice…learn from their mistakes and regain their individual freedom, or hold to their barbarism and remain in prison until such time they changed their minds or died, with the accompanying training facilities offering them the possibility of obtaining self-sufficiency if they tried. Which meant those truly stubborn ones could be imprisoned in perpetuity, and there was a fairly long track record of individuals in that situation that had eventually shifted after more than a century in captivity.

Davis doubted the Opaty would be any different, but you never knew until you faced that situation what one individual or race would do, but Davis had people to troubleshoot that without his getting involved and he trusted them to do what was necessary…as well as having the wisdom to ask for help if they did find a situation where they couldn’t get a handle on it.

No such requests or notations were accompanying this update, which Davis reviewed at lightning speed through the mental interface. He’d eeked his way up to Piccolo 234 in the Archon ranks, but he’d long had Sav before that, along with every other psionic and upgrade that he wanted. He wasn’t active enough to warrant a Saiyan biology, but he’d devoted enough time to develop some of the Essence skillset while he oversaw the juggernaut of an empire he’d created.

It never ended. No matter how big it grew, there was always something else that had to be done. Star Force territory now ringed the galaxy, but there were vast tracks of it that Star Force hadn’t even touched. In those threats remained…and within as well. The Chixzon were out there, and probably not keeping beyond the frontier border. They were within as well, lurking amongst the independent races dotting the interior of Davis’s domain. The big question was whether or not they were on Star Force worlds themselves, though that would have been difficult to accomplish, but not impossible.

Sensors across the empire were calibrated to their genetic code, and if they caught even a whiff of it Davis would get a direct message. So far none had ever been detected aside from where Nefron went, and it continually worried Davis that the Chixzon were so good at evading him. How had the Ancients destroyed them all so long ago? Were they overconfident and now, facing their failure, being far more cautious?

He didn’t think so, and he really wished he had more data on the previous fall of the Chixzon, but what he had learned since indicated that the great races that had become known as the Ancients had been sabotaged after their costly victory. It wasn’t just instability, but an active hand in their undoing. It was thought that the Chixzon had established agents that would enact various pre-planned campaigns in the event of their defeat, but sometimes Davis wondered if some of the Chixzon hadn’t survived all this time.

But that didn’t add up. As near as he could determine, they’d only been active in the galaxy for about 150,000 years. Now that he knew where to look, he could backtrack evidence of their ‘touch’ on many races and civilizations, and what he’d gathered told him that they truly had been gone, then come back, meaning that they had taken their vengeance on the Ancients through some other means.

Then there was the Zak’de’ron, who had been very quiet over the millennia. They’d been surprised at the resolution to the V’kit’no’sat war, and not all too happy with it. Whether or not they’d extend their ‘grace’ upon the V’kit’no’sat races in Star Force or not hadn’t been covered, but at this point it didn’t matter. Star Force wasn’t taking orders from anyone at this point, and if the Zak’de’ron wanted to move against Star Force they’d pay the price for it.

The missing Uriti was concerning, but with the fleet of new Uriti slowly growing to size the missing 3 weren’t a huge threat to Star Force. A surprise attack against a few systems would be costly, but once the Uriti fleet got moving they couldn’t hide and the rogue Uriti would either be killed or confiscated, so he wasn’t sure what the Zak’de’ron’s long term plans were. He was worried about them too, but in some ways he felt the Chixzon were the greater threat.

Davis sighed and leaned back in his office chair, looking out the panoramic windows at the Pacific Ocean beyond the rebuild Atlantis. His office was in the exact same position as it had once been, and the city wasn’t much bigger either, though this one had the capability of lifting off and moving if needed. It even doubled as a space ship, though not a very good one, and could move around Earth orbit or even out to the other planets at a slow clip, but Davis had never used it for that. It was just a backup capability that would allow it to move inside the planetary shields if someone wanted to bombard them directly over the city.

But good luck getting through the shields. They were 109 layers deep, each of which was far stronger than the original shield covering Earth when it first fell. Earth was a fortress world now, but one with low population. More of a resort world for the Star Force elite than a major population center, it was still the functional capitol of the empire and setting foot on the surface was a major accomplishment for most people, for there was no tourism allowed.

It was home to Davis, but it felt empty. Those he considered to be ‘family’ were gone, spread across the galaxy overseeing the empire and leaving the Solar System familiar, but hollow. He hadn’t seen his closest associates in a very long time, and even Wilson, who had been by his side constantly in the early years making sure he didn’t succumb to old age, was gone to his own personal training system for the Archons and Mavericks. That was his home now, which left Davis feeling very old and alone despite his physical youth.

It was quiet here, and Davis knew that was a problem if he let himself get complacent. The war being fought now was a quiet one, with the victories and defeats occurring in small measure here and there. It appeared like he was winning, but he felt otherwise. Something was going to happen, and the longer he didn’t figure it out the more he worried. The Chixzon and the Zak’de’ron were not two races that admitted defeat. They had to dominate, and they would never accept a subservient positon in the galaxy.

Right now it was the twin empires that ruled, Star Force in the Rim and the V’kit’no’sat in the Core while the true power of the Hadarak slept in the deep core, dismissively ignoring the two empires as insignificant. If something happened there it would be the V’kit’no’sat who took the hit long before they ever got to the Rim, so he wasn’t concerned about them.

No, there was something brewing. He could feel it in his bones while everyone else felt things were fine. It was just that type of an environment he’d use to his advantage if he were in the Chixzon’s position and had their lack of morality.

Davis stood up and took a lap around his office, eventually ending at his desk again but standing and looking out the window instead, seeing the cityscape far below his tower office that eventually ended at the blue wall of the ocean beyond with waves so small they barely registered to his enhanced vision.

“You’ve let me set the chess board as I liked. So what do you know that I don’t?” he whispered. “What am I missing?”

The answer wouldn’t come to him today, nor tomorrow, but the Director would never let it go. He had to see ahead while others focused on the here and now. That was his job, one among many, and his family was depending on him to catch as many threats on the horizon that he could before they manifested themselves, but this one continued to elude him.

But it was there. The feeling would not go away, and Davis felt that the more time went by the worse the situation was actually getting. The Chixzon should have acted by now. The Zak’de’ron should have acted by now. Why hadn’t they? What long term plan were they pursuing?

“Come on, Sean. Figure this out. If you wait until they tell you, it’ll probably be too late.”

3

April 23, 128439

Jaroon System (Terraxia Kingdom)

Mid stellar orbit

Jessica Parval sat in a waiting room on the space station alone. She’d arrived on a dropship from the planet of Dforan and had been nervous to the point of shaking ever since. This was the personal residence/ship of Starchaser and even setting foot onboard it was an insane honor. The fact that Mina Delari herself had requested that Jessica come was still something she couldn’t quite fully contemplate. She’d submitted her application, along with probably billions of other singers, but the idea that she might actually get an interview was…well, it shouldn’t have happened, but here she was.

The ship/station was huge. More than 30 miles long and capable of traveling around the system under its own power if need be, but it rarely moved from its parking orbit that was off limits to other traffic. It was in a band of stations owned by individuals who wanted their privacy, and within Star Force where everyone lived in cities built by Star Force and leased out facilities, the only way you could get any sort of ‘land’ of your own was to build a ship or station.

You could lease a large structure on a planet and build the inside as you liked, but there was no option of buying a tract of land and putting what you wanted on it. You couldn’t even construct a building within the cities. Star Force built everything the way they liked and let the civilians operate out of that structure, meaning those that had the credits to do more had to go to space and essentially construct their own ‘land’ in order to gain the privacy they wished for.

While Star Force was heavily populated, it wasn’t too bad. Jessica had gotten used to walking amongst crowds within cities, and when she retreated back to her private quarters she had them to herself. That was where she could disappear and get away from everyone, but if you left your quarters you just had to accept living amongst strangers. Some people didn’t want to, and this section of the Jaroon System had been reserved for private slots that the normal traffic lanes were routed around. Jessica’s dropship had to get special permission even to approach, and only those living within the zone could offer those passes.

The station she sat on now was so far from the others that you couldn’t see them, for space was huge and even a little bit of it on a system map was very widely spaced. So Starchaser had her own little realm out here in the form of this ship/station and no one else in sight to contest with. Even the nearby planets were only small dots of light in the sky. It felt lonely to Jessica, but a holy loneliness. So few people had ever been here she felt immensely honored just to have been given permission to sit in the waiting room.

Starchaser was a legend in the music industry. 125,000 years old, she had toured the galaxy many times over then disappeared for long tracts of time, only to resurface again at a random point later. Her fan base found this to be both annoying and enigmatic, and when the call for backup signers had gone out, Jessica had submitted her application with all the others…but for some reason she had been picked to make the interview process. Meaning she was about to meet Starchaser in person.

Jessica’s knees started to knock together, so she put her hands on them to steady her jitteriness. She couldn’t face her like this. No matter how nervous she was, she had to compose herself. This was the chance of a lifetime, and she’d never forgive herself is she ended up acting like an idiot when the moment came.

A nearby door swished open and Jessica jumped, seeing a man enter and smile at her. She sat back down as he gave her a knowing look.

“Relax. You’re not the first person to be nervous meeting Mina.”

“Is she ready for me?”

“Yes, but I need to prepare you for a few things first.”

“Like what?”

“Mina has the habit of not wearing clothes. Not just on stage, but here as well. Some people find that upsetting, but to her it’s just normal. If you know that going in you’ll act less skittish. Also, don’t try to predict what she’ll ask or want. Just be yourself. Mina has been around long enough to see through liars, so just be honest.”

“Ok. Anything else?”

“Some people find the ship disturbing because it’s so empty. There’s only a crew of 278 onboard. Mina wants privacy, so most of the ship is hers to roam around. She’s in the gardens now. That’s where she will meet you. Follow this tracker and it’ll take you right to her,” the man said, handing Jessica a small orb. “Do you know how to use it?”

She pressed the button and it floated up to hover just in front of her head, then painted a holographic trail of dots in front of her directing her which way to go.

“I see you do,” the man said. “Off with you then. And good luck.”

“Thanks,” Jessica said, walking out the door in a hurry and following the path as it materialized one dot at a time as she walked, gobbling them up with her body as she passed through them. The tracker floated just ahead of her and led her on a wild path through the ship. Jessica only passed two people as she spent more than 20 minutes traveling through the ship, including 3 different lift cars, until she got to the entrance to the gardens.

“Wow,” she whispered as she passed through a force field and immediately felt the heat and humidity ratchet up as she stepped onto a stone slab that looked out and down into a valley full of rock, water, and greenery. Jessica could have sworn she was on a planet, but this was all inside the space station, though she couldn’t have known that from the view, for the sky looked real, as did the overhead sun that did not match the one in the Jaroon System.

The tracker was pointing her to a nearby dirt path that led down the grass-covered slope into the forest below, so Jessica took off at a slight jog, not wanting to make Starchaser wait. She had to navigate through a maze of crisscrossing trails that were so confusing she would have gotten lost without the tracker, but it knew the way and she just followed the dots until she came to a hidden courtyard made of stone with a square pool in the center next to a grey statue of an Archon in full armor that stood some 15 meters high…tall enough to look over the nearby hedgerows.

And at the base of that statue was a nude Human female laying back on the Archon’s boot as she was soaking in the intense sunlight that was directly overhead.

“Uh…hello?” Jessica asked meekly, not sure if she should disturb her or not.

The woman tilted her head up and smiled, rolling forward with a cascade of long, thin, blonde hair following her. “You must be Jessica.”

“Yes,” was all she could manage to utter.

“Frozen stiff, huh?” she asked as she walked up to the slightly taller women. “Typical. It’ll wear off in a moment. I still don’t see what’s so impressive about me. I’m just popular, that’s all. You’re probably reacting to the legend more than the person, so try and see the girl in front of you and not the hype.”

“I’m sorry,” Jessica apologized, glancing at the ground. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“You’re not. You’re star struck,” Mina pointed out. “Let’s walk. The activity will help you get your spine back,” she said, pointing to one of many gaps in the hedgerows that led to the maze of trails.

“Sure,” Jessica said, with Mina grabbing her by the arm when she didn’t move fast enough and locked it with hers so they stayed side by side. “How many people are you interviewing?”

“A question? That’s good. Most people don’t get that far for at least 10 to 15 minutes. I’ve picked out a handful of people to look at. I’ve got plenty to choose from, but your private entourage needs to be more than fans. They need to become family, and I’m choosey about my family.”

“Why me then?”

“It’s not your voice…well, I mean it is but there are millions of people out there that can sing as good as you or me. I’m not much better than you, just more experienced. Your voice is solid, otherwise you wouldn’t even be considered, but I need more than your voice. I need personality. Do you know why?”

“You travel with people, so they need to mesh with you, I guess.”

“True enough, but as far as the music goes, why?”

“I guess my voice harmonizes with yours?”

“No,” Mina said with an old smile, for this was a conversation she’d had thousands of times before. “You need to realize that I’m not rich because I’m the best singer in the galaxy. I’m not. There are many people that can do more vocally than I can. And don’t even get me started on the other races. The Bsidd totally blow Humans out of the water. Their range makes me feel like a newb. No. What I am is a singer who entertains. And you are here to help me with the entertainment. Now, can you guess how?”

“Um. No,” she said honestly, but with a cringe.

“I don’t like to use recordings, so if I need multiple voices they can’t all be mine overlaid. But more than that, I need people for comparison sake. Me alone on stage works, but its far less interesting than if I can interact with others. A concert isn’t so much about singing as it is an experience, and people need to be enthralled. If they don’t leave with a buzz, you didn’t do your job.”

“Is that why you don’t wear clothes?”

“For them, yes. But being naked is nothing new. Lots of people are naked, so you gotta give them something else. For me it’s about connectivity. Not hiding anything from them. They get to see the real me…or so they think.”

“A hologram?” Jessica asked, a bit disappointed.

“No, no, it’s really me out there on stage. I meant that you can be naked in public but still closed off to people. And you can wear clothes and still be exposed. Do you know how?”

“Emotionally?”

“That’s a simplistic, yet essentially accurate answer,” she said as they turned another corner in the hedge maze and suddenly found a staircase made of stone dropping them a few meters underground. “Emotions are your current mode. They reflect your state rather than being your state,” she explained as they passed through a tunnel of small waterfalls trickling down the stone walls that were bracketing them and lit with small glowing pebbles scattered erratically on the floor. Jessica had to watch her step not to trip, but Starchaser’s bare feet seemed to glide over them with ease.

“You can have all kinds of armor. Physical is the most obvious. Emotional is another. But a third is vision. You can dull your vision without realizing it as a countermeasure to other people getting too close. That’s why I live alone. So I can really expose myself to my surroundings without having to be defensive. It’s a much better way to live, and you can’t do that inside a city as much as you might think.”

“Groppers?” Jessica asked.

Starchaser laughed. “That’s just part of life. The thing is, when someone pats you on the butt when you walk by, they think they’re the only one to do that all day, so it’s no big deal. They don’t realize it’s already happened 12 times in the last 5 minutes and it’s getting annoying. So they’re not the villains as your tone suggests. And don’t tell me you’ve never intentionally bumped into an attractive guy to grab a quick feel.”

“I don’t do that…much,” she admitted, remembering what the man had said about being honest.

“It’s harmless, and just a part of living in a community. If you see it coming you can swat them away…and that’s also part of the game. It’s just a game. But you’re right that I don’t have to worry about that here.”

“It’s not always a game when they do it hard,” Jessica lightly argued.

“So you do have a backbone…good. Yes, there will always be jerks, but most taps are a compliment. The others…well, that’s why you have fists. If you’re of a mindset that your body is a temple that no one should touch without permission then you’re an idiot who should stay in your quarters round the clock. When you’re out amongst people, physical contact is going to happen, and saying parts of your body are off limits is juvenile.”

“You really don’t mind people touching you?”

“You get used to it, like all new things. Sexuality has to be tuned. If you avoid it then it can twist into some very nasty things. And you can’t tune it if you don’t have interaction. It takes two, you know. One is not enough, because procing off of imagination doesn’t allow you to calibrate. You need real experiences. And once you learn your sexuality you realize it’s not as important as you think. Why do you wear clothes?”

“I…don’t like exposing myself.”

“And my being naked and hanging onto your arm is bothering you? Isn’t it?”

“A little. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Starchaser said, still hanging onto her arm. “Opposites attract, likes repel. Most people don’t realize that likes repel. You’re a girl, so am I, so there’s no sexual attraction. Your personal comfort range is probably really far from your Core, if I can guess. You don’t like anyone touching you at all, do you?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Do you flinch a little whenever someone bumps into you?”

“Isn’t that normal?”

“If you’re around threats, then yes, you have to be on guard. But if you’re around friends, then it’s a sign that you’re not calibrated well. That’s why you’re not repelling me. My sensitive range has been pulled inside my body. Yours is outside your body. That way when someone touches me they don’t violate my boundaries. Yours they do. If you pull in more, then you won’t get so upset by physical contact.”

“Is that important?”

“For the profession? No, but it comes in useful. It’s important for life, Jessica,” she said as they came to another stone staircase that led them back up into the daylight and more hedge maze. “You need to figure out what is actually private and what is public. And if you view your skin as private you’re not going to interact well with people.”

“Is that why you live here alone?”

“Not at all. I prefer this, but it’s not because I’m incompatible with people. Here I can think more clearly without the distraction. And even when you are used to physical contact, you still have to watch your back. Here I don’t have to. That’s a luxury worth buying.”

“Do you still get laid? I mean, if there aren’t many people here…”

“I could if I want, but I don’t. It’s an Archon thing I learned a long time ago from a friend.”

“You have an Archon friend?”

“Yes I do, and I owe her my life in more ways than one. All of my competition in the music industry from when I first began is gone. They’re all dead. A few died during the V’kit’no’sat war, but most just came to a point in their lives where they quit trying. They’d go to the medtechs and ask what was wrong with them, the medtechs would tell them what they needed to do to regain their self-sufficiency, then they would just not do it. They gave up on life for a variety of reasons and just let themselves die. Some even said that death would be a great adventure.”

“That’s sad. But not you?”

“I would have probably ended up that way too if not for my friend. She explained to me that life is like a pyramid. When you’re born the amount of what you don’t know is huge, like the base of a pyramid. Then as you go through life learning you rise up to the next level, which is not so wide. As you pass through the years you get higher and higher and it seems like there’s less and less to learn. You can’t see more than a couple levels above you, as if the higher levels are shrouded in clouds, but you can see the angle of the pyramid going up and you know you’ll hit the peak before too long, and when you do the galaxy will seem a very boring place.”

“The others got bored to death?”

“That’s one way of putting it. But the Archons are curious by default, and even though it looks like there’s not much left to learn they want to explore every last bit of it. And when they did, and they came to that peak, the angle on the walls reversed and started to get wider. They couldn’t see it until they were right on top of it, but there wasn’t a peak to the pyramid. It was a choke point that, after going through, you realized the true scope of the universe is more than you could ever fully learn. And when the Archons found that, they could never be bored again. And thanks to my friend, neither can I.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you can’t. You’re still near the base of the pyramid. How old are you?”

“127.”

“Yes, you’ve got a long way to go before you approach the peak. So it probably looks like you’re experienced and know what you’re doing. The galaxy is behaving as expected, no surprises here or there…except today meeting me,” Starchaser said with a smile, “and same old, same old. With that outlook you will get bored, eventually, unless you learn enough to climb to the peak and see through it at what lies beyond. And that beyond is what I probe here,” she said, gesturing the ship around her.

“Is that why you take so much time off from touring?”

“I don’t need the money. I’ve got enough credits to last me another 1000 years before I would need to go on tour again. And it’s so easy to make money now. Star Force is so much larger than it used to be. Even if I only performed for Humans I would not have a problem, but the other races regard Humans as special, so they want to see us perform for them even if we’re vocally challenged compared to their race. No, I don’t do it for the money. And I don’t do it for the fans either. It’s just fun. But fun can’t sustain you throughout life. You have to have a purpose, and thanks to the Archon I’ve found mine.”

“What is it if it’s not singing?”

“Where did the first Humans come from?”

“Zen’zat left behind on Earth.”

“Where did the Zen’zat come from?”

“From the Ter’nat.”

“And where did the Ter’nat come from?”

“Um…I don’t know that.”

“Nobody does. Nobody knows where the Era’tran came from, or the Bsidd, or the Tusonec. Nobody knows where any of the races come from. We’re just all here, not worrying about the past and going about our daily lives. But if you stop and think about you, you wonder just what the hell is going on. We can’t just pop into existence, or can we? When a planet gets destroyed, does one arise to replace it? What about the races on it? Eventually you come to question what the fuck is going on in the universe, and the quest to learn more about that mystery has become my purpose. What is yours?”

“I guess I just want to do what you did. Even if I’m only a little successful I’ll be rich.”

“You’re already a little successful, you just haven’t established a fan base yet. To most you’re just another Human singer rather than having a specific identity. To a lot of other races I’m the naked Human, though I’m not the only one. I’m just the one known for it. They don’t care, because they’re not attracted to Humans, but it’s still an oddity to those that normally wear clothes and their reverence for Humans adds extra attention. I have an identity that the galaxy knows, mildly, and that allows me to do a lot. You need to establish a professional identity if you want to make it big, but at the end of the day it won’t be enough. You’ll grow bored if you ever succeed, and if you don’t you’ll work yourself to death trying or just give up when it seems like it’s impossible.”

“Or become content at having a micro-career.”

“Are you now?”

“I dream big, but I’m not unhappy. Especially now that I’ve met you.”

“That will wear off. But do you have a purpose that doesn’t involve others?”

“Not really.”

“Keep an eye out for one, if it ever comes your way. At the end of the day your life has to be about you, not others. Which is why singers often lose their way. It’s sad, but true for others as well. Did you know that 98.9% of all people who survived the V’kit’no’sat war have died since?”

“No I didn’t. Is it because they got bored?”

“Most, yes. They got to a point where they just stopped trying. Maybe just for the change of routine. You have to have a purpose, or life doesn’t seem worth living. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Because we’re on a quest. We need to pursue that quest. Staying alive is essential to doing that, but if we get stuck in a rut we’re basically abandoning the quest and subconsciously we cannot handle that. We need new stuff, and…”

“Death is new to people who think they’ve learned it all,” Jessica interrupted, then cringed. “Sorry.”

“Well said, though it’s a great deal more complicated than I can explain. It’s more complicated than even I know. Each year I learn a little more, and most of that learning is by looking internally. Why do you wear clothes?”

“Warmth?”

“Not in Star Force cities. I haven’t been outside on a planet for more than 400 years. That was the last time I did an outdoor concert, and it was sweltering. I was covered in sweat even before I got drenched with water.”

“Why do you start out the concert in clothes then?”

“So they can see me take them off. It’s all about what is normal. If naked is normal, you can’t feel exposed. But if you start with clothes you can take them off, and when normal changes you get the feeling of nudity. If you’re always naked, you’re never nude. That’s why you and the other singers with me will always wear clothes. To set up the contrast.”

“Me?” Jessica asked, not sure she heard her right.

“You’ve passed inspection. Welcome to the tour.”

“Seriously! You don’t even want to hear me sing?”

“Already checked out. But you haven’t answered my question. Why do you wear clothes?”

“I guess I haven’t thought about it. Lots of little reasons, but mainly because…”

“Yes?”

“Because everyone else is?”

“Because it’s normal. But your normal has made the sight of your body not normal. What you actually are has become lost to you. That’s why I don’t wear clothes in private. I need to see the real me. If I hide from it, cover it up, then I can’t probe the mysteries of the universe because I’m already lying to myself. And that’s another reason people wear clothes. They cover up how out of shape they are. This way, if I start to slip, it will become obvious.”

“You are in really good shape. But if you learned that from the Archons, why do they wear clothes?”

“Excellent question. I think we’re going to get along well. I actually asked the same thing to my friend. She told me it was about function. Have you ever tried to run naked?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, my breasts aren’t super big, but they’re big enough to bounce. Archons wear bras to stabilize themselves so they can run faster, dodge better, and just all around perform at a higher level. Being naked would be a disadvantage for them, including the guys. They bounce more than we do. Originally I thought Archons were shy about being naked, but they’re not. They wear clothes for a reason, whereas everyone else does just because it’s become normal.”

“Should I strip down then?”

“I think you’ve had enough shocks for today as it is, so no, not now. But when you’re alone in your quarters, try it. See if it alters your perceptions. But if you’re shy, that’s not something you get over quickly. Those that think they do really just go numb, and that’s not the same thing.”

“I get the feeling I’m going to learn a lot from you.”

“That’s the idea. So when your tour is done and you get the notoriety of being associated with me to start your own fan base, you don’t end up like the others and get bored to death. That’s a requirement, you know. I’m not going to invest time in someone who’s just going to give up at some point.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“Promise me that if you ever do you’ll come back and talk to me before you start to waste away.”

“Done deal.”

“Good. Now we need to work on your galactic identity, and let’s start with seeing what you can do better than me.”

“Better? I don’t think I can…”

“Yes you can. I already checked,” Starchaser said with a smirk. “I suck at trilling. So you’re going to develop yours further and add it to my show. Then when you go off on your own, you can take that identity with you, but it doesn’t have to just be trilling. We’re going to look at everything you can do better than me and get you a nice identity package to work on. But I’m the only one that gets to be naked at shows.”

“Fair enough. Can you also help me with my workout routine? You are really ripped.”

“I had some Archon help with that too,” she confided. “And I’m willing to share.”

“How often do you see this friend?”

“Every few centuries. She’s very busy out there, keeping weaklings like us safe so we can go play without worry. She makes time for me, even though I can tell it’s boring for her, so I try to learn as much as I can and not waste minutes on small talk. I like to think I’m her apprentice, even if I only get a lesson every now and then.”

“That is so cool.”

“I’m very lucky in that regard. They understand things in a way we can’t, and once I got a few lectures I started to be able to see things differently. The information Star Force gives us in the maturia looks totally different through Archon eyes. The wisdom is there, we just can’t fully understand it when we’re newbs. Even now I still pick up new things from the same training videos I first saw thousands of years ago. There’s a huge hidden learning curve.”

“So where do I start?”

Starchaser reached out and grabbed the tracker that was floating just behind Jessica’s shoulder in standby mode. She reprogrammed it and handed it back to the new addition to her entourage. “Follow this to your new quarters and you’ll find instructions and assignments. I’ll check back in with you in a few days to make sure you are settling in, but most of my time will be spent alone. We’ll get to know each other gradually over time.”

“Works for me. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me.”

“Get going,” Starchaser said, slapping Jessica lightly on the butt.

Taking note of that small lesson there, she pressed the activation button on the tracker and took off jogging along the holographic trail, eager to begin this crazy new life that just opened up for her, and also not to overstay her welcome and intrude on Starchaser’s private time any more.

Mina watched her go, then reached her arms up high above her head and stretched as a yawn worked its way out.

“Three down, six to go,” she said, pulling a tiny hidden clip out of her hair and holding it up in front of her face as she pressed the only button on the comm device. “Send the next one.”

4

May 3, 128439

Shangri-La System (Zavrex Kingdom)

Titon

Vraka scurried along the floor, with the Zendas Bsidd’s appendage nubs making dull thuds on the hard surface as he hurried up to one of the actual viewports along the promenade. Unlike space stations that had holographic ‘windows,’ the land-based spaceport had a series of real ones lining the half arc the cradled one of the larger landing pad clusters.

Vraka shoved his way between the legs of larger individuals until he got to an open window and stretched up to his full height of 1.3 meters so he could look out at the calm air around the landing pads…an extreme rarity given the amount of traffic on Titon, let alone in the rest of the system that contained 306 planets and 1832 moons. It was the largest system in Star Force possession, but not in the galaxy. 19 larger ones had been discovered, but they were all occupied to some extent and none of them had chosen to join the empire for varying reasons.

They were called ‘Omega’ systems, and while the lower limit was somewhat foggy, these huge systems were rare. Star Force had accumulated 207 smaller ones, but Shangri-La was by far the crown jewel in the empire, and not just because it held the largest Human population. It was also the most developed, with every single planet and moon sporting heavy infrastructure, including the gas giants that had Star Force Hycre colonies within them.

That meant an insane amount of traffic coming and going constantly, with the pause above this section of the Haedera 128 spaceport…which spanned more than 10,000 square miles…being due to the arrival of Lord Daegan. The Protovic monarch was replacing outgoing Lord Jeyron, who had been in Shangri-La since the system was first colonized. The Human had built it up from nothing into what was referred to as the ‘outer capitol’ of Star Force.

Lord Jeyron had already left two months ago to become the new ruler of the Platarro Kingdom, which was a splinter of the existing and overgrown Neonis Kingdom as new territory was constantly being added to it. The Star Force empire was so large that it had to be broken down into manageable units, called Kingdoms, and if they got too large the commerce within became stretched and the oversight and defense lagged, for the communications delays simply became too long to effectively manage.

Even a Kingdom was a huge empire of its own, and the Zavrex Kingdom was one of the oldest. Lord Daegan had been one of the original Lords when they were first created when the Grand Dukes became insufficient, and his being assigned to Zavrex now had been a surprise to many who thought he’d be transferred to a developing expansion of the empire as well while a less experienced Lord, assuming there even was such a thing, would be sent to oversee Zavrex.

But Director Davis had surprised everyone with the appointment, and many people on Titon were here and cramming the spaceport in order to catch a glimpse of the Lord’s ship when it arrived for the first time. There were all kinds of rumors as to why the Protovic monarch had been sent here, but the prevailing ones were that a rebuild was coming.

Such things had been seen elsewhere, and Daegan had been involved in several of them, but Zavrex was so old and stable that it didn’t make sense to Vraka…but what did he know? He was just a Bsidd pilot that ferried people up and down from the planet on dropships, and he’d had to work long and hard to achieve that position. The Bsidd contingent in Shangri-La was the largest by population, with the Kiritak, Paladin, and Verreti coming next, but after that it was the Humans, which was crazy because they reproduced so slow.

But they’d been coming here for so long to escape the ancient wars that their numbers had snowballed to the point where Shangri-La was known as Human territory even if they only made up 13% of the population…though that 13% accounted for 14.2 trillion individuals. The fact that a Protovic Lord was replacing a Human one also seemed a bit odd for the primary Human system, though some would argue Sol still claimed that title, and had many people confused as to what was going on.

Vraka had picked a good spot, accidentally, for when Lord Daegan’s ship descended and he caught his first glimpse of it, his piloting skills instantly confirmed it was heading almost precisely for his position. The golden-colored starship floated down to the landing pad slightly to Vraka’s left and blotted out the single white sun in the sky. It landed only 2 kilometers away and gave Vraka the opportunity to see not only the ship in exacting detail, but also the boarding ramp when it lowered.

It wasn’t close enough to see faces, but with the Bsidd’s enhanced eyesight he could make out uniforms…and when the black/gold uniform of a Lord appeared with a glowing blue head poking out of it a shiver ran through Vraka’s body, for he was looking at Lord Daegan in person. He hadn’t expected to get that lucky, but he was sure that was him while a number of other monarchs were accompanying him. Their uniforms were also notable, each for their varying ranks, including one that looked to be a Grand Duke.

Which would make sense. A Lord ran a Kingdom with a lot of help as they broke down those Kingdoms into Regions and Clusters. Regions were the designation for a geographic area that Star Force held dominance over, while not actually owning all the systems in it. A Cluster was a grouping of systems in close proximity and high in population density. Grand Dukes were responsible for Regions and policing territory that was not Star Force’s, ensuring that the independent civilizations that existed like a shotgun spread throughout Star Force’s domain held to the basic principles of independence. If they did not, they would be forcibly annexed into the empire rather than allowed to continue their bad behavior.

Arch Dukes were given Clusters to oversee, or sometimes a single race within a Region. Empire-wide racial direction was accomplished by a special appointment of Princes, who held a lesser position than Lord, but their duties were drastically different to the point that they didn’t truly hold a fixed position in the hierarchy. The Prince of the Bsidd, for example, was Karthen. The Human directed no world other than the one he was based on, which in his case was a planet called Char in the Zerus System. It was the defacto homeworld of the Bsidd, and from there Prince Karthen monitored Bsidd across the empire, trouble-shooted problems, and worked on developing their future.

Currently there were 9 different Bsidd variants, and there were rumors of a 10th being worked on. Vraka was a Zendas, and Zendas had been around for nearly the entire life of the empire. His forbearers were not as advanced, for his genome had been advanced at several points along the history of the Bsidd, and it was future enhancements that the Princes of all races worked hard on while avoiding pitfalls associated with becoming too powerful.

Vraka was a civilian who had worked for a number of private corporations. The dropships he piloted were not Star Force ones, though the design was the same. But civilian or in Star Force service, all Bsidd were looked after by their Prince, and the same was true of the other major races in the empire…not counting the Knights, who were directly overseen by the Archons along with the Clans.

They had Monarchs too, but not the higher ranking ones, and the ones that were there assisted the Archons in their leadership. Both the Clans and the Knight races were tooled for warfare, while the Monarchs were more about growth. At least that’s the way most people described them. What actually happened in their very secretive lives was beyond Vraka.

But now he could say he had actually seen one, and a Lord at that. Lords were second only to Director Davis in the hierarchy, and Vraka felt truly honored to have been this close to one.

The moment didn’t last long, for Lord Daegan disappeared from view into one of the upraised cupolas on the landing pad and moved down into the undercity beneath the landing grid. The crowd around Vraka didn’t disperse very quickly, rather still enamored by the sight of the Lord’s ship. Maybe their eyesight wasn’t as good as his and they hadn’t seen the Lord himself, but that wasn’t uncommon. Bsidd pilots had been given extra good eyesight, whereas the other Bsidd and especially Humans lacked in that regard, though there was a mix of just about everyone here now, with more races than he could count.

Vraka sunk back down and began pushing his way between the taller race’s legs until he finally got into the semi-clear area away from the windows. From there he made his way across the spaceport to a security station where he scanned his credentials and was allowed access to a private grid that his corporation owned. Vertias Unlimited had a great number of ships and dedicated pads for them, and he was due to report to work within the next half hour, glad that he’d been able to glimpse the new Lord’s arrival before his first flight of the day went up.

What was in store for Shangri-La and the Zavrex Kingdom he didn’t know, but whatever the new Lord had been assigned here to do, it wasn’t just minding the store, for it was rumored that Daegan was the Director’s favorite troubleshooter, and where he went, changes were going to be made.

Whatever was going to happen, Vraka figured he’d have a good seat to watch from, considering that Lord Daegan had chosen Titon as his capitol, whereas Jeyron had based out of Kaemro. And that shift was probably going to bring even more business to Vertias Unlimited on Titon, as people wanted to be close to wherever the Monarchs were, especially the highest ranking ones, even if they didn’t have access to them. They wanted to be seen and maybe attract their attention, for no one requested an audience with a Monarch. If a meeting was to take place, the Monarch would call for you, not the other way around.

None of them would ever call on Vraka, but he had now seen Lord Daegan and that freak moment was something he would remember for the rest of his life.

5

May 12, 128439

Vborati System (Leona Kingdom)

Sistior

The Nestafar had once been an independent race stronger than Star Force. That was a bit of history that the Nestafar of today clung to with a bit of pride, but it also served as a lesson of how they had failed in the past and Star Force had chosen to rescue and revive their race rather than let them be destroyed by their corruption.

Those two facts had driven the Nestafar of 3,000 years ago to push out of their ward status, push away from a legacy of timid apathy, and embrace Star Force philosophy as they worked to regain their status within the galaxy. It had been a long, hard road, for most Nestafar didn’t care to do anything at all. They just existed, reproduced, died, and the cycle continued until a group of brave individuals began to challenge that status quo and take on the challenges Star Force had waiting for them.

All along there had been a pathway for individuals to rise out of the doldrums, and the few that did eventually left the Nestafar worlds to join Star Force society at large. But 3 millenia ago the revolution began as those who woke from their stupor refused to leave. They wanted to rework the Nestafar race and become more than a ward that existed at the benevolence of the Star Force empire. Rather, they wanted to contribute to it in more than just a logistical fashion. They wanted to become a major player, and the first step in doing that required that they be assigned a Monarch of their own.

Previously they had been offered inclusion into the Beacon Faction, but the Nestafar had refused, wanting to maintain their simple ward status and not interact with the other races. Star Force had allowed them to do so while new races being brought in that couldn’t support themselves were defaultly added to Beacon, which now was the 6th largest faction by territory. The Nestafar had limped on as a single planet whose population never grew much, and their race became a footnote in history as Star Force grew to encompass the majority of the Rim half of the galaxy.

But 3,000 years ago that changed, and their race took up the challenge of growth. They began training in earnest, asking for additional responsibilities, and recruiting other Nestafar that, honestly, just wanted to do whatever the group was doing. That was how most Nestafar thought, and when this group of individuals had grown large enough the ‘winds’ shifted and the whole of their single planet fell in line with the new order.

Many steps had to be taken to get even a little allowance from Star Force for growth, but when they passed the initial tests a Baron was assigned to their race to see just how far they were willing to go.

And over the past 3 millennia the Nestafar had transformed themselves into a respectable Sub-Faction within the empire. They wanted to reach Faction status, but the Nestafar had serious trouble, as many races did, with the aquatics requirements. Not only could they not swim well, they had a hard time mentally adjusting to the slower nature of water combat because they were geared for the fast movements in air. Many aerial races had this problem, and the Nestafar hadn’t overcome it yet, but they were still trying as their substandard aquatics division continued to aspire to become more.

But as a Sub-faction they had a higher position within the empire than 98% of the other races, most of whom were either part of Beacon or Axius. Some of those would eventually work their way up to Province status, which was a self-sufficient civilization that operated independently but didn’t have military responsibilities beyond their own worlds. Sub-factions did, and as a Faction Beacon did as well, but each piece of Beacon only contributed a small amount of a valuable attribute from each race, with Prince Avril weaving all those together into a formidable whole.

Axius was somewhat different, in that each race did not live on separate worlds, rather they shared cities based on size, with 3 different categories. The largest races occupied the Alpha worlds, the approximately Human-sized races occupied the Beta worlds, and the smaller races under 2 foot tall or so occupied the Gamma worlds. The Nestafar that had left to join Axius lived on the Betas. They had maturias just for them, but they were taught to integrate and form teams with the other races rather than remain in their racial units. Axius was, in fact, the strongest Faction within Star Force if not the largest population wise, but the Nestafar wanted more than to just be part of a combined force. They wanted their own bit of turf and the responsibilities that went along with it.

And they weren’t alone. Many other races aspired to Faction status, while many more were content to lesser roles. At present, there were 1,398 Factions within Star Force, and another 18,439 Sub-Factions. There were also 5,319 Provinces and 723 wards, but most races within Star Force were within Beacon, numbering at 142,838 while the latest racial count within Axius…where even a single individual qualified as a race…was at more than 2.7 million.

Add in another 7,498,126 Sanctuary races that were well below Ward status and had to be fully taken care of round the clock by their handlers, and the Star Force empire was truly mind-boggling in its scope. Having risen to a Sub-Faction was a truly grand accomplishment for the Nestafar, but they did not have their own Prince. They had a Duke assigned to them that oversaw their 28 systems, all of which were located within the Leona Kingdom in a tight cluster of stars.

Duke Charri was an Ari’tat, having come to them from one of the Star Force Knight races that were beyond even the Factions. The Nestafar and others often dreamed of rising to that level, but the requirements were so high only 6 races that had not originally been V’kit’no’sat had made that transition.

Those Knight races were given the combat assignments, but every now and then one of the Factions or Sub-Factions were included, and even the Nestafar naval forces had been able to assist with the primary combat out in the frontier, but most of their combat experience came from hunting pirates, smugglers, and other malcontents that operated in the cracks of Star Force territory, and there were many. The Nestafar fleet spent part of its time guarding Nestafar systems, and part of it assigned to various task forces led by High Admirals assigned to patrol duties.

If not for those patrols a large black market would have existed, and was continuously trying to develop, where people could behave badly in all manner of horrors where Star Force couldn’t see them. They often tried to set up clandestine bases in asteroid fields, nebulas, and on uninhabited planets. They couldn’t make any real traction on Star Force worlds, for the security forces would shut it down if it grew large enough to become a significant problem…but there were crumbs of problems everywhere that could not completely be eliminated.

Star Force had cameras everywhere in their cities except private quarters. This made it very hard to commit crimes and get away with it, and that fact discouraged a lot of bad behavior, but for others it just gave them a challenge and some twisted minds rose to meet it. Small stuff happened all the time, but the key to it going unnoticed was there being no report. If there was no report, then no one would review that particular piece of surveillance footage, and in that fog of mass population the criminal element existed.

But it could not thrive under such scrutiny, which led those with bad intentions to collaborate and plan within Star Force cities, then go out into space where they could get the anonymity they needed to behave badly. They still had to work hard to get the resources to operate ships and stations of their own, but those that were skilled enough were able to elude Star Force here and there within their own systems, but it was the uninhabited ones where the criminal element showed its true colors.

Those systems had to be patrolled and routinely cleaned out, and the Nestafar had participated on many such hunts, but they never got much of a naval threat to deal with except on those rare missions alongside the Knight races. But when they did, they realized the truth of the galaxy…and how without Star Force, things would be drastically different. Despite the bits of criminality living within the cracks of Star Force territory, it was peaceful compared to what lay outside the empire’s borders.

The Nestafar weren’t discouraged by this, as many others had been and declined future cooperation with the Knights. No, the Nestafar saw the threats beyond as a reason why they needed to grow stronger and provide the empire with yet another weapon to use against them, and that’s why today there was a small convoy of Knight vessels entering the Vborati System.

They were Ari’tat, and thanks to the Nestafar’s Monarch they got a few extra missions with that particular Knight race because they were purposely trying to match the avians with them. Ari’tat were small, and had to rely on mechs in combat the other Knight races could accomplish with personal armor, but they did well enough on their own. However, they liked to incorporate others with different attributes, and Duke Charri had taken a personal stake in making the Nestafar into a significant aerial asset to complement the Ari’tat.

Today was the beginning of another mission to the frontier, and the ring-shaped Ari’tat warships were here to pick up the smaller Nestafar vessels. Most Knight warships were traditional Star Force design…elongated and smooth, concentrating mass while allowing for a narrow silhouette in one direction, useful for both attack runs and interstellar jumps where you could heavily reinforce your shields over that smaller area.

The Ari’tat were one of the few who had a different design. They built huge vessels, each more than 50 miles wide, that could carry others inside the donut-hole cavity via IDF fields and clear shields. They could also carry drones there if they wished, and carry a whole lot of them. The Ari’tat ships were more like mobile battle stations than attack vessels, but for the work they were doing that strategy worked out well, and it made it easy to bring along smaller ships that couldn’t jump quite as fast.

Star Force didn’t withhold technology, and the Nestafar ships had the newest gravity drive designs available, but the Ari’tat had designed their dreadnaughts with less firepower and more speed/shields. As such, they could move around the galaxy much faster and get to threats quicker than the other Knight races. Right now there were 4 such vessels here to pick up the Nestafar ships, with some 36 of them moving out now to dock inside the partial openings, for clusters of drones were already packed around the edges of the donut holes.

The Nestafar ships carried their own drones inside, but half of them were troop ships carrying an army of Nestafar aerial assets, both craft and the infantry in their powered suits. They would be the biggest asset to the Ari’tat once they blew an access hole in the planetary defenses of whoever they were going up against.

The Nestafar didn’t know yet, but they’d be informed enroute as they always were. But whenever the request came from one of the Knight races for assistance, the Nestafar always eagerly responded. These battles helped give their race more experience and was a way to help pay back Star Force for their immense generosity they had bestowed upon them in not only saving their race from extinction so long ago, but in allowing the Nestafar to live off of the empire’s success for so long without earning their place.

No longer. The Nestafar would always be in Star Force’s debt, but they would earn their keep from here on out, and if they had it their way they’d do more than that. A lot more. They had their sights set on the impossible goal of becoming a Knight race, and they were committed to doing the work required to get there, no matter how long it took. They just wished for more of these Knight cooperation missions so they’d have an chance to advance their position faster, not knowing that in the near future they’d have more than they could possibly handle.

And then they’d see if they were really cut out to be a Knight race or not as they struggled to help the galaxy survive.

6

May 18, 128439

Nemo System (Uriti Preserve #8)

Maanna

Poallo sat on a ledge, hanging his Humanish legs over the edge of the dirt bank as the Verreti took a break from his routine scouting mission to check on the army of minions deployed on the planet. He reached a very flexible arm backwards and pulled out a food bar from his backpack, held between the two gelatinous fingers at the end of his arm. Both were wide, looking like playing cards, but could curl up into a roll that allowed for a considerable amount of dexterity that gave the Verreti the ability to hold the bar and chew on it at the same time.

Paollo’s skin was translucent, soaking in the sunlight at various spots of green that contained chlorophyll. He’s wasn’t a plant, but his body was capable of absorbing energy rather than just burning it from digested food, giving him far more endurance in long term missions where supplies were limited.

That wasn’t the case here, for the planet was a Star Force one, but because it was in one of the 12 Uriti Preserves spread across the galaxy, there were a high number of worlds that contained almost all minions that mined valuable materials out of the planet’s crust with which to feed the Uriti in the form of creating monster cubes rather than having the Uriti tear up the planet by landing and feeding on it directly.

Those minions were not people, but biological machines, and they had to be watched to ensure they were doing what they were supposed to do, just like you would do periodic maintenance on mechanical machines looking for malfunctions. There was a telepathic function that allowed the Uriti to interface and check on the status of every minion in existence, but the ability of the Wranglers to do that was much more limited due to their small brain size and infantile telepathy. Also, you didn’t want to preoccupy those extremely important individuals with routine checks, so Poallo and other Wardens were commissioned to maintain and direct the minions.

Poallo wore a gauntlet that would let him interface with and issue orders to the minions, but not the Uriti. It also had a very short range…no more than 6 miles with clear line of sight. He’d need a booster to go beyond that, but most of his work was up close and personal, so the range was more than adequate.

The Verreti’s job was to roam the planet, tend to the minions, and ensure that the flow of monster cubes continued. Most were not produced here, for there simply wasn’t enough resources within the Preserves to feed the Uriti indefinitely, and there were many mining sites elsewhere in the galaxy that produced the bulk of the monster cubes, but this planet in particular had a high concentration of valuable compounds in the deep core that most other worlds did not.

Rather than have the Uriti travel down into the planet and suck up the widely spread material slowly and inefficiently, Star Force had decided to only harvest what bits came up into the crust slowly over time, and there was enough volcanic activity to ensure a thorough shifting of material high enough for the heat-resistant minions to be able to harvest it from mine shafts that actually ended in molten lava.

It required some specialty buildings grown at those spots, but the minions could actually siphon material out of the upper magma so long as they didn’t go too deep. They were resistant to heat, not immune like the Uriti were, but that meant they could mine the very lower edge of the crust where most races in the galaxy could not.

Poallo was not inspecting those areas, but rather the huge amount of surface operations on the planet. Minions moved over the huge world’s high gravity surface like ants, gathering resources and processing them into useful compounds, some of which were for the Uriti and some that were used by Star Force within the star system. Altogether there were 3.9 trillion minions on the planet, and they had to eat too, so there was a huge supply system established that had to be looked after, and that’s where Poallo and the other Wardens factored in. The minions were pretty good at doing their jobs without oversight, but every now and then something would go wrong and the stupid machines would make trouble snowball because they could not adapt to new parameters.

Poallo liked his job, which was a lonely one. He was able to roam the planet wherever he wanted to go, doing random spot checks until he got a heads up that he got assigned a mission to a detected problem. Usually it was just a defective minion, which he could fix using the other gear in his pack. A combination of a regenerator and a complete genetic makeup of a functioning minion meant he could attach a device to a broken one and it would fix it within a few seconds.

Other problems occurred within the hive mind, and those were more complicated to spot and correct, but he was an old hand at this, having spent the past 783 years on the planet doing this very task on his own for most of that time.

Today he was on a hike which would last 9 days before he got to a Warden outpost, which was a little city with training facilities, a few ships, supply crates, and anything else they needed from civilization to recharge themselves and refill their packs…then they were off roaming the landscape amongst the swarms of minions who didn’t bother them at all. They just kept going on their business like the machines they were, making the crowded planet a very lonely one.

Above the planet was another story, but down here it was calm chaos as the minion industrial machine churned out a wealth of supplies for the Uriti and the Star Force facilities that dotted the Preserve, giving Poallo his own little corner of the galaxy to lose himself in, as opposed to the crowded Verreti world where he had been born. It was too much metal and synthetics. Here the planet was raw and alive, with all the minion facilities being alive themselves. Everything was biological here aside from the outposts and a small city on the southern pole, and if Poallo had his way, he’d never leave. This was his sweet spot in the galaxy, and the fact that he was providing Star Force a service made his job a perfect fit for him and many other Wardens scattered across the planet that he hardly ever ran into.

In orbit it was different, for there were more minion facilities floating in the void soaking up sunlight and using it to charge biological slush that worked as a battery. Those batteries were then supplied like blood into nearby facilities that served a variety of purposes, including defense, and Star Force had advanced the minions far beyond what the Chixzon had ever dreamed of in that regard. To them they had been crude instruments of conquest, but Star Force had turned them into a refined biological technology that had a mix of strengths and weaknesses compared to standard synthetic tech.

The biggest advantage was that everything could be grown from a few ‘seed’ capsules. Star Force had similar technological devices, but they were starship sized as opposed to a mass equal about to a Brat’mar that could be deposited onto a planet’s surface and then slowly expand out into every bit of minion technology ever designed.

It had become so useful that the Paladin had incorporated some of it for their own uses, but here it was just the minions synthesizing some key compounds that were then handed over to mechanical machines that operated similar to the minions. These worker ‘drones’ took the compounds to nearby standard Star Force stations and put them into mechanical processes that worked more efficiently than the biological ones.

Some of those resulted in artificially produced solari, which otherwise was only present within stars. A few curious quirks of minion biology allowed for the production of pieces of the stellar process to occur in a mundane way, then Star Force handled the rest of the conversion in specially created facilities, cheating nature and allowing the solari production to occur artificially outside a massive gravity well.

But that was just one of many things happening in orbit around Maanna, and hidden amongst that throng of production were two special and highly classified processes. There was no obvious security around them, but the system defense fleet monitored them closely and if anyone even drifted in their direction without permission they’d get intercepted immediately. Anonymity of those factories was their first and best defense, for those factories were producing the extremely complicated and costly spawning fluid use to produce new Uriti.

Within each of the 12 Preserves there was a planet-sized biological construction in its own orbit, guarded with more ships than anyone in their right minds would ever approach, and located within a star system that was off limits to everyone without the highest classification. This system was one of those locations, which was also why so many minions were used instead of traditional workers, for the less people involved the less chance of a security breach, and the ability to produce new Uriti was arguably the most sought after secret that Star Force had, with even the Zak’de’ron having tried to steal it, unsuccessfully, at a previous point in history.

They hadn’t come in with a battle fleet, but rather a number of stealth vessels that they probably thought Star Force couldn’t detect. They’d gotten closer than everyone else, but sensor technology had also advanced over time and the strong Zak’de’ron telepathy had been their undoing, for a telepathic sensor had picked up their presence before the ships were discovered, and when they were the Zak’de’ron had not fought, merely fleeing to avoid a confrontation, but the incident had underscored how valued the Uriti were…as well as indicating that the efforts to purge the galaxy of the dormant Chixzon coding within the Protovic had been successful and the Zak’de’ron had not been able to acquire their own Nefron.

The process to create new Uriti was not a Chixzon one, but during the course of study it had been determined that the part of Nefron’s mind that had been preserved by the Archons during his transformation also meant that some data had been lost. Within it was the process used to create the Uriti in the first place. Star Force had rediscovered it on their own, but rather than use the horrific methods of capturing a Hadarak and forcing it to spawn a Uriti, they’d figured out how to clone the existing ones.

The process still required extremely high gravity, which was the primary function of the biological planet-sized spawning ‘cradles’ that used artificial gravity concentrated inward and onto a very small volume of space to spur the reproductive process. That process had to use some Hadarak genetic material recovered from some of the V’kit’no’sat kills to create the reproductive chambers that Uriti did not possess in their genome, but now that Star Force had it they did not need the Hadarak themselves. What they needed was the original Uriti, which would take the place of the Hadarak and physically bind to the cradle and take control of it as if it were a part of its body.

The process was not easy to teach them, and there were so many failures in the beginning that the Uriti almost told the Wranglers to go screw themselves, but their desire to increase their pack kept them at it until they got the correct protocols established, then they made their first attempt at actually spawning a new Uriti.

Bahamut had insisted on being the first, and after 137 failed attempts he was finally able to spawn a tiny replica of himself. Bahamut then became known as Bahamut Zero, with the newly born Uriti becoming known as Bahamut One.

It was only 14 meters long, whereas Bahamut Zero was now over 600 miles wide and restricting additional size increases to focus on training adaptation. If not regulated, the Uriti would continue to grow in size like the Hadarak did, yet they were not built for that, especially Bahamut with his winged shape. When you were round and lumpy like the Hadarak it truly didn’t matter, but for the Uriti it did and when they started to have problems with movement Star Force responded with the enhanced training programs.

As such, all the Uriti had reached what they determined to be peak size, and any future enlargement would have to be tied to performance benchmarks. Some of the Uriti wanted to grow larger, others like Bahamut Zero did not, instead wanting Star Force to help him get faster, which they had, helping him grow more gravity drive nodules rather than increasing total size. Bahamut had to do that himself, for Star Force couldn’t alter their genetics due to anti-tampering programming the Chixzon had put in, but Star Force could alter the genetics of the new Uriti before they were spawned, and that’s where the Chixzon self-destruct had been eliminated for the new ones, though it still remained in the originals.

After they were spawned the genetics were set in stone, with the anti-tampering methods kept in place for a reason. If the Chixzon or Zak’de’ron or anyone else tried to mess with them in that manner it would most likely fail, but if they removed it they’d leave the Uriti vulnerable, so they had to keep it in place. That meant regenerators wouldn’t work on them, but they had such impressive self-regeneration methods that they truly did not need them…save for the new ones when they were tiny and very vulnerable.

Star Force had never lost a Uriti, but they’d come close several times with the new ones. Each cloning was different amongst the originals, and some came with a lot of headaches. All the failures had never been alive to begin with, but those that did actually spawn Star Force worked hard to save, as did the Uriti, and so far their record had been spotless.

But during the spawning process the original Uriti had to remain physically linked with the cradle for more than a year, meaning it was vulnerable and had to be protected, as well as supplied with an insane amount of supplies. The whole process was not one the Uriti could do often, and when it happened Star Force locked down the system to such a degree that it had more defenses than Earth had during that time.

No one was allowed in to even watch, though there was nothing that could be seen anyway. The Uriti would disappear inside the biological planet and no visible changes were evident until it left again with a tiny copy of itself alongside. However, the Wranglers could see what was happening through their telepathic links to both the Uriti and the giant minion that was the cradle.

The gravity field had to be so intense and maintained for so long that a constant train of minion supply transports were feeding the cradle, and those supplies had to be built up over the course of centuries to get enough of them, including the spawning fluid that filled the center of the cradle. It responded in a very curious way to gravity, and somewhat simulated the interior of black holes, where Hadarak typically spawned. It wasn’t the same, but enough elements were similar that Star Force was able to make it work.

And a lot of the work the minions did in between spawnings was creating that fluid, for it was destroyed rapidly during the spawning process. That was why there weren’t millions of Uriti around the galaxy, but Star Force didn’t push the Uriti to spawn as soon as possible. Rather it was the Uriti pushing Star Force to let them reproduce faster, but the trailblazers kept them on a lethargic schedule, ensuring they were not hurting themselves with the synergy with the cradle. Too many uses did hurt them, so they had to have time to rebuild themselves, for while there were not obvious injuries, their skills suffered greatly after a year of no training and the stress of the spawning process.

Star Force made them wait until they were ready, then they’d add another Uriti to their pack, which was split up across the galaxy into groups centered on each of the 12 Preserves. From there they’d be sent out on field trips to various stars, black holes, or other massive gravity wells, but they were always based out of the Preserves. Then they would also go on combat missions singly, returning to their group after a period of time.

And those groups would rotate individuals in and out, so all the Uriti would be able to meet and greet the rest while still helping Star Force expand into the frontier regions of the Rim. Even a small Uriti no more than 10 miles long was a huge boon to an invasion force taking down a planetary shield…for the Uriti could simply ram it, using its mass and gravity drives to instantaneously break the small ones or push against it for a while, draining it along with the firepower of a fleet, until it broke much sooner than with fleet bombardment alone. Then it would be beneath the shield and able to attack surface targets even if the shield reformed overtop of it.

They also helped out with fleet combat, meaning Star Force had to send far less ships when they had a Uriti helping them out. Or, more likely than not, when Star Force showed up with a Uriti many systems simply surrendered, for the galaxy feared even the smallest of them, knowing that if one went inside their planet it could destroy it and they would have no way to fight back once it got below ground.

So the Uriti were constantly deployed around the galaxy, but they were given breaks where they could cluster with other Uriti, which was something they needed. They could operate individually, but once they knew there were others out there they didn’t want to be separated from them. To accomplish the mission they would, and volunteered gladly to help their little brothers, but Star Force knew to keep them together in groups and away from the rest of the galaxy.

Right now there were 113 different Uriti breeds within Star Force, and most amongst them were the Bahamut line at 36 individuals. Sometimes they were grouped together, other times they were spit up and grouped with other Uriti. To them it didn’t matter what shape they were, they were all Uriti and there wasn’t much extra loyalty to their spawn beyond the fact that they had the same weaponry and movement issues.

Right now there was no Uriti spawning going on in this system, nor in the others, but in 8 years another one would start in the original Preserve. No one would know about it, for such things were not announced to the galaxy. Star Force hadn’t even told the public how many Uriti there were, and the fact they all looked the same made it hard to count, though people did monitor sizes in an attempt to identify them.

With the Bahamut line, Bahamut 3 was the biggest at 18 miles wide…which ironically was still smaller than Bahamut Zero had been when Star Force had rescued him from imprisonment. The same was true of the other Uriti breeds. The originals were monsters in comparison and millions of years old, though they had not grown during their imprisonment. In fact they’d shrunk somewhat due to the lack of sufficient feeding. Star Force, on the other hand, was giving them donuts and candy round the clock trying to increase their size as fast as possible, but when you only start out a few meters long, getting up to a mile wide took forever.

There were many places within Star Force where the public could not go, and amongst all the off limit systems there were many still where most Star Force personnel were not allowed. The Preserves all had a single system for public access, but the other systems within were off limits, and the ones where the cradles were located were amongst the most closely guarded and highest scanned systems within the empire, for the Uriti were the bedrock upon which Star Force’s power was built…as far as the galaxy was concerned.

In reality the Uriti were a bonus, not the basis, but they were the primary deterrent for any of the major powers in the galaxy moving against Star Force. No one dared to touch them, aside from the smaller, stupid races that were acting out in defiance as they were swept up along with the other bad actors beyond the frontier.

In truth, the mere existence of the Uriti and the threat they posed caused so many planets in the galaxy to shape up for fear of being invaded and forcibly annexed with no hope of holding out that the Uriti were saving more lives than could be calculated…all out of simple fear at their insane power.

Yet that power was tiny compared to the Hadarak, which the V’kit’no’sat were doing a good job of keeping bottled up within the Deep Core of the galaxy where most people did not even know they existed. There was a huge, ongoing war there that Mak’to’ran was pressing, but the peace that afforded those in the former ‘grazing’ zone that Hadarak once roamed were ignorant of the ancient threat. They only knew of the Uriti, and many races from the Rim had actually emigrated to the Core of the galaxy to escape Star Force’s domain, figuring they would take their chances with the V’kit’no’sat…or at least hope to remain unnoticed by them so long as they stayed away from their systems.

Star Force was the ruler of the Rim even without the Uriti, but the Uriti cemented that fact in a way even a fleet ten times their current size could not have. A fleet of ships could be fought. A space monster that shrugged off weaponsfire and could destroy planets from the inside out could not be, so despite the high level of small scale combat going on in the frontier as Star Force continued to expand, their current domain was extremely peaceful on the large scale. No one dared to challenge them, nor did they risk going after smaller unaligned races within Star Force territory, knowing that would draw their ire as well.

The Rim was experiencing a golden age wherever Star Force extended its presence, so much so that most of the Rim forgot what war was, or why Star Force was so badly needed. They didn’t understand the horrors that crept through the dark places in the galaxy or the behavior of those that appeared ‘peaceful’ until the strong good guys suddenly disappeared and the true nature of those being suppressed came to the surface.

But so long as the Uriti were there, those cowards behaved themselves except in places they figured were too small to take notice. Star Force had done as Mak’to’ran had sent them out to do…pacify the Rim and keep the threats there off his back while he fought the Hadarak. But neither he nor anyone else had anticipated how successful the Human-led empire would be…nor had anyone even considered the possibility of Star Force growing a Uriti fleet thousands strong that now made a V’kit’no’sat conquest of Star Force completely impossible.

No one could take on Star Force…and that’s what worried Davis. The Zak’de’ron and the Chixzon hadn’t made themselves known and sought a diplomatic relationship that would allow them to coexist. No, they were waiting and lurking out there, meaning they had something planned to take on Star Force and the Uriti, as impossible as that may seem.

7

May 26, 128439

Farscanava System (Dovagno territory)

Beu

The Dovagno were a bipedal race, thick in build and slightly slow in movement. They had an empire consisting of 17 systems inside of Star Force’s domain, but they had no trade agreement with the Rim ruler, no embassy, no ambassadors. They were independent and wanted to remain that way…except with regards to non-Star Force civilizations. Those they did interact with, and Dovagno territory was a region that saw a lot of varied races passing through and trading with each other, but Star Force was decidedly not welcome there.

Korav Henderson was on the planet, but no one knew he was Human. He was wearing a simple robe/cloak that hid most of his body while his face had a hologram over it making him look like a blue-skinned Fortinav that were essentially vagabonds with no place to call their home. They were spread across the Rim and appeared to like it that way, for despite offers from Star Force to include them in Axius or even Beacon on a large scale had met with few takers. For whatever reason, the Fortinav did not want to come out of the shadows, but seeing them roaming about taking care of private business was not uncommon, even if it was a bit rare given their low population estimates.

The cover allowed Korav to travel without attracting attention as he roamed the busy streets of the port of Kaloo, which was a major trade hub and, more importantly, a transit point for a lot of smugglers moving people that did not want to be found. And when someone wanted to disappear for various reasons, Korav knew that many did not go far from their arrival point on a new planet, but comfortably away from the spaceport that they arrived at.

Given the history of Kaloo and the lawlessness inherent, coupled with a thieves code of honor, people could disappear here with ease as the only security forces were to prevent ship theft or mass murder. Anything less than that and you were expected to handle it yourself, and privacy was respected as a rule, because Kaloo wanted all kinds of illicit money coming their way. Crime was the one commodity that was not available in Star Force, and worlds like Beu thrived on it.

Korav’s task of finding one individual seemed impossible amongst the millions of people in the port city, many of which were not native Dovagno, but this wasn’t Korav’s first hunting assignment, and the Arc Commando had already tracked him to Kaloo. As long as he went to ground and didn’t move on, this wasn’t going to be too complicated, for he had Charro Foret Badado’s genetic profile on record, and the device Korav was wearing on his left wrist was constantly sampling the air to check for any trace of it.

He’d gotten a hit at the spaceport, but it had been quickly lost on the streets. Korav had to use his intuition and be patient, as well as his telepathy to search the minds of the various vendors and other individuals holding position rather than roaming. Protovic like Charro were easy to spot if they didn’t have a faceplate on, and there weren’t that many races that did wear full armor on an oxygen world, so it was likely that someone might have spotted something.

Korav kept scanning minds lightly as he moved, picking individuals that appeared to be attentive but he wasn’t getting any hits today. He’d been on planet for three days already and was watching what shipping records were available for passenger transports and arrivals/departures of cargo and unidentified ships. He’d been camping out around the main spaceport and the subsidiaries whenever a ship was due to leave, but he hadn’t gotten any hits, suggesting that Charro had indeed gone to ground somewhere on the planet.

That meant Korav had to leave the spaceport behind and start exploring, and less than an hour ago he’d picked up a faint trace in a public restroom…which was one of the best areas for picking up genetic material. He couldn’t find an active trail from that location, but the point on the map was logged and the Arc Commando began searching the most likely hideouts in the area while quietly interrogating locals without them even knowing it, for the Dovagno were not telepathic, nor were any of the other races here, and unless he pushed really hard they’d never know he had been in their heads.

Finally one of his Ikrid searches had paid off, for a local Dovagno prostitute hanging out on the street had noticed a glowing hand briefly appearing when a customer at a nearby food vendor paid with Feersa chips…the widest currency in the Rim after Star Force credits and a favorite of galactic travelers. The sight of the hand had been so surprising it stuck out in the Dovagno’s mind, making it easy for Korav to spot, and when he crossed the street near that particular vendor his equipment alerted him with a mental ping that it had detected the desired genetic material.

Korav walked around a bit, letting the sensor work and mapped out two directions that the trail led. Based off the prostitute’s memories, he’d seen the strange individual move to the west, so that was the way Korav went and luckily there was just enough of a trail left for him to follow with the air sensor. He switched to a short range scanner, but wasn’t able to pick up any footprints or handprints. Charro must have been buttoned up pretty tight, which made sense if he was trying to hide his glowing skin.

Korav reached out with his telepathy, looking for the Protovic’s mind, but he was either shielded or out of range. Taking his best guess after the trail disappeared at an intersection, Korav headed into the shadier undercity that ran beneath the streets, knowing from his mental scans that that was where people on the run often went to find cheap rooms where the only redeeming value was that they were unseen and the occupants would not be in a position to complain about the run down and unsanitary condition of the accommodations.

His intuition proved right as he picked up another trace that eventually led him close enough to pick up a mental ping…which immediately sent his quarry running, for the Protovic was also telepathic and could sense the contact.

Korav cursed, not having thought the Protovic that skilled, for he was a non-Star Force Protovic whose genetics had been mixed with rogues that had fled from Star Force. They were not permitted to reproduce with non-blues, because of the psionics they possessed and a biological block on the genetic sharing, but some had undergone illegal genetic alteration to allow the reproduction and now there were greens in the galaxy that possessed bits and pieces of psionics, some of which actually killed their offspring when they didn’t mesh properly.

Charro was one that had survived and used his abilities for a wide range of unsanctioned behavior, including additional recruitment and reproduction of other rogue Protovic in order to develop a splinter race that could rule the criminal regions of the Rim with their telepathy. Star Force had eventually taken notice, and that criminal family had been targeted for psionic wipe, meaning that they had to be caught and have their genetics reworked to eliminate the out of place coding to protect future offspring and to remove the psionics that they hadn’t earned.

Charro had been one of the hardest to catch, for he was smart and knew how to avoid Star Force and their associates, which was why Korav had been assigned to go after him when he got outside monitored territory, and now the Arc Commando took off running before the Protovic could get outside his telepathic range and escape again.

The blue-skinned Fortinav sprinted between people, knocking aside a few that moved in the wrong direction at the wrong time, but thankfully the undercity was not as crowded as up top and he was able to reel in the distance between them as he sensed the Protovic’s mental signature get stronger and stronger, though he was still out of sight.

A couple minutes more and he finally saw the backside of the running figure in tight fitting robes and full armor underneath, but it was heavy and clunky and not well suited to running, making Korav’s pursuit easier than it should have been…at least until Charro headed back up to surface level and tried to lose himself in the mass of pedestrian and vehicular traffic underneath the heavy sunlight.

Korav couldn’t let that happen, so when he got up onto the street he jumped up onto a nearby wall and climbed it until he got to the nearby roof and used the vantage point to spot his target. It took him a moment to plan out his route, then he ran across the low building and jumped to the next one that was much taller, requiring him to stick to the side and crawl up it, then he continued to jump/climb over the rooftops until he was able to get ahead of the Protovic.

He wasn’t sensing any counter probing telepathically, so Charro didn’t know where he was when the Protovic rounded a corner and tripped over an extended foot that sent him falling to the ground so hard that his mask popped off and his green/purple skin bathed the sidewalk in a shower of color.

“Hello, Charro,” Korav said calmly as the man tried to clear his head that was obviously pounding from the impact. “You’re coming with me.”

“Star Force!” Charro yelled, pointing at Korav. “Star Force!”

“Fine,” he said, running over to him in two steps and grabbing him by the back of the neck as he hauled him to his feet, though he tried to squirm away futilely. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

“Star Force! Help!” Charro continued to yell, with the nearby pedestrians recoiling quickly and clearing out the area around the two as Korav half dragged Charro with him. When he got his fingers on the skin of Charro’s neck the outbursts stopped as he hacked into the Protovic’s mind and took control, for Charro’s telepathic skills are mostly untrained, otherwise Korav would have had a tug of war on his hands that could have been hard to win.

But it was too late, for soon a Dovagno security patrol caught up with the pair and stopped them at gunpoint.

“Release him!” they demanded in their local language, though most Dovagno knew passable English.

“This one is coming with me,” Korav said, working his way into the mind of the three guards. “Turn around and leave us be.”

The three hesitated, lowering their weapons as they glanced at each other, but they didn’t leave fast enough and another two Dovagno, these not security, came forward shouting.

“Mind rapper!” they accused, pulling up a pair of pistols and aiming them at Korav as Charro tried to twist out of their firing line behind him.

“Shit,” the Arc Commando said, letting go his telepathic trance and ripping the weapons out of the hands of all 5 of them before they realized what he was capable of…but that didn’t stop the confrontation, for more Dovagno on the streets began stepping forward in a rage as they saw the Star Force magic being used.

Korav dug his fingers into Charro’s neck, holding him in place and focused, rendering him unconscious and dropping to the ground as more pistols were popping up and aiming at him. A couple shots got off, missing him, but the third hit and dissipated on an energy shield.

The Arc Commando shook off his robe and deactivated his hologram, letting everyone see his Human face for a moment before the gauntlets he wore on either arm suddenly melted and covered his body in Star Force scout armor colored a mix of blues ranging from a pair of bright stripes on the outside of the arms and legs to very dark blues almost to the point of grey over the chest and helmet that now obscured his face in a smooth material that had no visor.

When the locals saw the transformation they went into a rage, for Dovagno hated Star Force and every one of them that was armed opened fire, bathing the Arc Commando in a wide variety of energy discharges as Korav raised both forearms and fired back with stun weapons that arced out into area of effect hits, knocking down 3, 4, or 5 people with each shot. He mowed down everyone nearby, then grabbed Charro’s unconscious body and slung it over his shoulder as he started to run through the streets that were quickly exchanging non-Dovagno for the planet’s natives as the area turned into a free fire zone.

Korav covered Charro with his shields, but he couldn’t keep taking hits all day and when they went down he’d have to rely on his armor…which Charro didn’t have. His objective was to return him to Star Force custody, not kill him, and he intended to do just that, though the Dovagno clearly didn’t care if they killed him in the process of taking down the Star Forcer.

“Chip, get down here now,” he said over his personal comm.

“What location do you wish to rendezvous at?”

“Come down on my position,” he said, firing more stun blasts as the streets swarmed with Dovagno.

“ETA is 2 minutes 34 seconds.”

“Wonderful,” he said to himself as he picked a nearby wall alcove and dumped his prisoner there as he strode back out onto the street where he held position and bathed the approaching Dovagno in stun blasts while dodging a lot of the incoming fire now that Charro wasn’t weighing him down. Some of the Dovagno got shot with friendly fire, for they were attacking him from both directions and didn’t seem to care about anything other than taking him down.

About a minute later a ship appeared overhead, but it wasn’t Korav’s. The Dovagno patrol ship fired down on him and he had to crouch down and form a static shield over his head to take the blasts, then he jumped to the side of the street opposite Charro to draw fire away from him. From there Korav launched himself into the air and up to the underside of the two person craft where he clung inside the firing arc of its main weapons.

A brilliant blade formed from his armor’s wrist, with him slashing the flat blue energy ribbon into the underside of the ship, cutting through the weapon power lines before letting go and dropping back down to ground in time to shoot a pair of Dovagno that were picking up Charro. He had to fight another couple dozen that had amassed below, but he held his position while the now impudent patrol ship hovered overhead.

He picked up Charro again and backed into the nook, doubling up his shields from the outside and leaving his rear mostly exposed as it faced a hard stone wall. He kept firing and piled up a stack of unconscious bodies in front of him until a grenade came flying towards him and the incapacitated Dovagno.

He telekinetically grabbed it and threw it high into the sky where it exploded, throwing some small bits of shrapnel down onto those below.

“Seriously?” he yelled, then he summoned up a Fornax wave and launched it out as wide as he could in a cone ahead of him, dropping everyone to the ground twitching for a moment, but they got back up as soon as it ended.

“Targets identified. Do you wish to engage?” Chip asked as a slew of targeting options popped up on his helmet’s HUD.

Korav selected one, and suddenly a huge wave of stun energy cascaded down onto the street for more than 100 meters in either direction, destabilizing the cloaking device of the Star Force ship that was hovering overhead in a series of ripples through otherwise empty air.

“Retrieval,” he said as he jumped upward with Charro held over his shoulder and his shields evening out. His flight path angled forward as a doorway opened in mid air and he flew inside the cloaked ship as numerous additional patrol ships fired on him and the spot where he disappeared.

The cloaking field partially held, then the disruption moved off, accelerating quickly as it made a visible shockwave in the air enroute to orbit.

Korav dumped Charro into a cell box that would keep him in virtual stasis during the trip back as his automated ship continued to climb to orbit as the Dovagno tracked the disruption and brought down some of their warships to intercept, but as soon as the Star Force Trimaxion left the atmosphere behind it adjusted course and the Dovagno could no longer see it. They fired along its previous course, and Korav gave them points for effort, but he was beyond their reach now.

He deactivated his armor, with it retracting back down into two gauntlets that he took off and laid on a small table jutting out from the right side of the cockpit chamber.

“Pursuit has been lost,” the Trimaxion’s computer noted.

“Set course for the Neomis jumppoint,” he instructed rather than mentally interfacing with the ship’s systems and doing it himself. “Is the prisoner secure?”

“Statis protocols active and steady. Virtual environment is active. Prisoner is secure.”

“He was a stubborn one. Add another mark to the scoreboard.”

A hologram of dart board appeared with an array of feather-tipped and very short arrows in it. Another one came flying in and stuck with an audible ‘pling’ on impact. The image lingered for another half minute, then disappeared as the Arc Commando retreated from the cockpit to the living quarters on the one-man scout vessel, confident that the automated programming would get him to the exit jumppoint for the system on its own.

After that, it was another 3 jumps to get back to the nearest Star Force planet where he would hand over his quarry for psionic removal and an 8 month prison sentence for the fiasco he’d caused 2 years ago in the Plinth System. After that he’d be free to go, but no longer able to reproduce Protovic with the restrictive psionics.

Before then Korav hoped to have his entire crime family swept up, and as the scoreboard attested, he didn’t have that many left to find.

8

October 4, 128439

Quitassna System (Opaty territory)

Vinanakva

A large spherical mass jumped into the system, braking against the central star and coming to a stop in low orbit. It was a perfect sphere 327 miles wide and colored deep green, with heavy armor plating half a kilometer deep and numerous weapon ports spread around the thin Tu’gor outer armor layer, which was a lighter, cheaper version of Yeg’gor. The green of the Tu’gor was enhanced further, getting rid of the black the material naturally had and turning it into true Canderous green, marking it as a seda and not a Mach’nel, which this small invasion did not warrant.

It wasn’t as fast as a warship, and could barely keep up with Star Force civilian ships, but the mobile battlestation wasn’t meant to go chasing enemies around the galaxy. The Knight races and Clans had the specialized ships for that, while Canderous’s little niche within the empire was their ability to move their homes with them and set up operations in new systems instantaneously…which is why they often followed the frontier invasions to take over once the major battles were completed and the native populations were in need of annexation.

Jumping into the system a few minutes behind the seda were a multitude of ships and transports belonging to the Calavari, who would be taking possession of this system and beginning the indoctrination process for the Opaty while Canderous was responsible for security. It would take time for the Calavari to build infrastructure on the planet, and until they got up and running Canderous troops would be keeping the captive planet in line as the Bez would soon be leaving for another invasion elsewhere.

Ard Ri Esna-58321JOR-18 was onboard the seda and soon to be in charge of system security. The Human’s rank within Canderous was a rare one, for it denoted the highest rank of warrior, but one that did not wish to be an organizer…but rather a field commander. Esna didn’t want to sit safely inside well defended perimeters and use her massive experience to direct others to fight. She wanted to lead from the front and do the fighting herself, and with the Knights and Clans taking all the good fights, cleanup work such as this was as close as she could get.

Esna was one of only a few Canderians that had been born outside the faction, and she was also in the rare group of those over 100,000 years old. She kept to herself for the most part, interacting with her fellow Canderians whenever duty required, but staying inside her personal chambers onboard the seda whenever she didn’t have workouts to do. What she did in those private hours no one knew, but no one dared ask either, for an Ard Ri was the equivalent of a Khan, which was the highest rank within Canderous, and she was extremely over-qualified for a mission like this.

But that’s the way Esna preferred it. The losses Star Force suffered nowadays were not in the form of big fights, but individuals lost here and there in the small ones. That meant she had to be where she could make a difference, and taming enemy populations was about as rough as it got. Though a Canderian typically stayed in space whenever possible, once her seda made it to planetary orbit she would be going down to the surface with the army and staying down there as a venator while others handled the oversight duties.

She would pull rank if they messed something up or her experience knew a better way, but if that wasn’t required she would roam the danger zones solo, looking for trouble and heading it off before it could hit her troops or those they were tasked to protect. That proclivity had earned her the right to choose the Ard Ri rank rather than Khan, as a few others had, because they didn’t want to lose their edge in the golden age of Star Force.

Canderians were built for battle, and they needed it. Training wasn’t enough for them, and after all these years Esna wasn’t going to let her skills slip, for she knew better than the others what a shithole the galaxy could become if things went the wrong way. And to be perfectly honest, she didn’t feel at home in the sedas. They were a refuge, to be sure, and intimately familiar, but Esna was a venator in heart, never staying in the same place, always on the move, and always in danger.

Her brief experience with the Calavari Rammak had changed her in a way that had stuck, and part of her mind was still with him on the run. Peace didn’t feel right. As if the war wasn’t over. It had taken her a long time to figure out why, but eventually she realized the truth that the war never ends. Somewhere, even in the peaceful areas, someone was being hurt. Star Force couldn’t banish bad people from being born, or prevent accidents from happening, and the danger of the galaxy was something that Esna embraced rather than denied, and she preferred not to be around those that did.

Part of her still didn’t feel like she deserved to be alive, and if it wasn’t for Rammak she would have died. It wasn’t fair that he hadn’t made it and she had, and despite all the contributions she’d made to Canderous since then, it wasn’t enough to repay that debt. Nothing ever would be.

Others had become tired of life and diminished, but that wasn’t an option for Esna. Everything she did was a quest, and when she got fatigued Esna would think of Rammak lecturing her to keep going. He had seen something in her that no one else had, and she still felt like she hadn’t fully unlocked her potential.

After the V’kit’no’sat war was over she had returned to Mace and lived there a while, leaving Canderous behind as she sought to find her ‘home,’ but that world, while familiar, felt empty. The rebuilding took forever, but during that time she would run the wilds, retracing Rammak’s camps until they were eventually claimed in the new construction. After that point there was nothing left for her there, and she had returned to Canderous, but not contently. She belonged with Rammak, learning from him as they traveled and fought to survive, and nothing short of that was going to satisfy her.

It was strange, because she was far more powerful now than Rammak had been, even with his extra muscle mass and four arms. She’d beaten numerous Calavari stronger than he had been, but she still felt inferior. She often wondered if she was chasing a mirage, but if Rammak had been here he would have advanced as well, staying ahead of her the whole way. And in truth, it wasn’t the power you attained that mattered, but what you did with it, and when the time came Rammak had shown his immense superiority. So no, Esna was not chasing a mirage. She was chasing a superior that had gone beyond her reach.

So she was alone, but Rammak’s lessons were with her and she would not lose them. And that meant getting out into the wilds and breathing the raw air and experiencing the fear, death, and horrors that plagued this galaxy. It was then and only then that she felt at home, in brief blips here and there, fighting those horrors and saving someone the way Rammak had saved her, but then she had to move on. The danger didn’t stay put, and she had to keep chasing after it in a never-ending game that few others chose to play.

So when the seda made orbit she headed to the hangar bays along with the troops heading to ground as Kit Legat Bard organized the transfer of control with the Bez. She didn’t tell him what to do and he didn’t give her orders. She just tagged along where she liked, and the competent Legat usually didn’t need any overrides from the Ard Ri, but she was willing and able to do so if needed.

She wore heavy armor, which required her to walk into a hard, standing suit that then melded to her body once she was inside. It was made of the same cellular design that old V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat armor had used, though now Star Force had improved upon the design and incorporated it along with the old school fixed armor that they preferred. Her gold/black/chrome suit had thick plates, some of which contained large hardware components, while others were blocks of the moveable cells, meaning that whenever her armor got a hole in it they would flow to the breach and refill it, giving the heavy armor an insane durability.

Lesser versions of armor allowed a person to work with their skin exposed and activate the armor when needed, but Esna had first learned to use the fixed armor with Rammak, and she preferred having it now and staying behind a helmet during the down times when others relied only on their passive shields to protect them from the unexpected. Right now about half of the troops boarding the dropships had skin exposed, while the others had the heavy armor like Esna’s, except not made of the same material. Hers had extra heavy Tu’gor fibers added, but she had the musculature to handle it, and it made her a literal tank against enemy infantry in fights.

She rode the dropship down to the surface, then when the boarding ramp dropped she walked out with the others amidst the sounds of a firefight somewhere to the west. While the Canderous troops activated their armor, obscuring their skin behind Canderous green stone-like sand particles that made up the ‘flexible’ parts of their suits, Esna lazily ran off to the side and began exploring the new planet on her own while monitoring updates on the battlemap.

There was a small insurrection taking place that the Bez would quickly get under control, but whose futile attempt had been to attack and down at least one of the newly arrived dropships. They hadn’t even come close, but if there was a fight to be had Esna wasn’t going to miss it, so once she got her bearings in the swampy forest she headed straight towards the sound of energy weapons.

Well, not entirely straight, for because of her armor’s weight her footsteps were sinking in heavily in spots, forcing her to zigzag from better footing to tree branch to rock until she came to a shallow lake in trees that she couldn’t run through.

“Err,” she groaned, activating her armor’s limited flight ability and jumping off a rock that half sunk into the soft ground beneath her feet and Esna flew across the gap to land on a thick dead tree trunk. She paused a moment, letting her capacitors recharge a bit, then she jumped again…and again…and again until she got past the wetness, saving her remaining power in case she needed it later and returned to her zig zag run all the way up to the edge of what was left of the battlefield.

9

The Bez and their Esquires were small in number here, with only two of the giant bipeds and a few dozen smaller infantry. They had no mechs, nor did they need them, but the Opaty were not small. They stood 9-10 feet tall and had huge arms as wide as Esna’s body. They somewhat resembled gorillas, but with longer legs, and their temperament was tribal. What one did, the others did as well, and when combat began they would all fight or all run. There was little individuality with them, which was going to be a problem with indoctrination, but right now it made them easy targets as they all charged whatever their nearest opponent was.

Esna was approaching from a flank and didn’t get noticed until she was nearly upon the melee as small groups of Opaty were periodically being added, coming from the northwest. She wasn’t sure what their point of origin was, but the Ard Ri knew that the Opaty used tunnel networks to travel great distances rather than surface roads, and she bet there was a tunnel entrance nearby. It wasn’t marked on the battlemap yet, so she grudgingly turned to the left and away from the Opaty that had spotted her and roared at the prospect of smashing the small opponent, but when she seemed to run away they had to choose between breaking off and following her or staying with the others…and they didn’t want to leave the group.

Esna continued to run/hop through the swampy ground, passing by more Opaty going the other way save for one that did come after her. She waited until he got close, then used her Fornax to trip him up. He lost all body control for half a second, which was enough to send him falling face first into the ground. Before he could stand back up she closed ranged and pumped several stun shots into his thick chest from her forearm gauntlets that held the weapons. Unless there was a need, Canderians didn’t carry free weapons anymore, and with the Bez already here there wasn’t a lack of firepower. The weapons built into her armor would be sufficient, leaving her arms free to thrash as much as needed to overcome the muck she was running through.

When she got to the now stunned Opaty she rolled him over face up so he wouldn’t suffocate in the mud, then Esna kept working her way back along the approach the reinforcements were coming from until she found an odd rhythm in the pools of water. There were small waves forming, and when she backtracked them to their epicenter she found a reed wall out of which two more Opaty were coming.

Esna engaged her armor’s cloaking field so she wouldn’t have to fight them, then waded out into the water towards the reeds, sinking in up to her hips as she moved slowly. The cloaking field did nothing to disguise the hole in the water that she made, so she was hoping a lack of quick movement wouldn’t get the enraged Opaty’s attention. Several more emerged from the reeds and ran out of the water towards the ongoing fight by the time she got to the thick tube plants that rose well above her head, then she began to squeeze through the gaps with her hole in the water now becoming almost unnoticeable.

She got caught multiple times, for the reeds weren’t spaced far enough apart to allow her to walk through and there were clumps thicker than others. Once she had to fully come out of the water to slide through a higher gap, but eventually she came to the inner edge of the reed field. Her cloaked head poked out, seeing that the sky was not visible, for the reeds had bent over top like a canopy, hiding the clear pond the size of a dropship from view.

A large bubble emerged from below, creating a wall of water that pushed out to Esna and rocked her back into the reeds. That was obviously the source of the waves, and following it came an Opaty rising out of the water. Another bubble formed and a second emerged from below, then the pair began pushing their way through a path in the reeds that the others had partially beaten down enroute to the battlefield.

Esna backtracked into the reeds and sank all the way down into the water where she deactivated her cloak so her comm system would function. She marked the location on the battlemap and uploaded images from her helmet so everyone else would know what type of exit this was. Then she waited for the next pair to come up, and just before they left she hit them with a Fornax wave.

They both fell into the water, then when they came back up she hit them again, delaying their leaving. More continued to rise up with the water bubbles, and she kept dunking them all but allowing them to stand back up so they wouldn’t drown…if that was even possible. She didn’t know enough about their biology to be sure, but she suspected they might be able to breath under water, or at least hold their breath for a while, for this exit point was odd for an non-amphibian race.

She kept a total of 12 in the small pond before she finally let them go, but she stayed in place and kept forcing the Opaty into larger groups, giving the Bez and Canderous some more time to round up the others. After 6 large groups had been formed and released, heavy footfalls came crashing through the reeds just before the head of a Bez broke through the reed canopy and poked its thin armored snout down towards the next bubble as he shot the four Opaty already here as they peppered the copper-colored Bez armor with little effect.

Suddenly the stunned Opaty flew up into the air and were thrown out through the reeds as another bubble formed…only this time the water didn’t come rushing back down to cover the entrance. It moved further out and magically held there as a single Opaty flew into the air, was shot by the Bez’s arm cannon, then throw back out of view with the others.

“Go down,” the Bez ordered Esna.

She didn’t hesitate, jumping out of cover with her armor’s flight capabilities and landing in the center of the hole in the water. She dropped down on top of another Opaty standing in some sort of an airlock and knocked him aside as she fell…then she scurried away down a side tube into a large tunnel where dozens more Opaty waited for their lift to the surface.

Esna produced a large Fornax field and held it, knocking them all down as she ran to the left, for there were many more than a few dozen to her right beyond her knockdown range. She fired multiple stun blasts at them and those on the ground as her head began to hurt with the sustained effort. Esna had to release it as multiple orange energy blasts came her way, most of them missing, but she still engaged the heavy shield her left arm sported, creating a rectangular second shield out in front of her body and locked to her forearm. It would take a lot of hits before her skin-tight shields would once again have to take the blows, but the heavy shield operated off a capacitor, and once it was drained it would be gone.

Esna wasn’t worried though, for on the battlemap she could see the Esquires approaching quickly. The Canderian continued to fire off shots with her right gauntlet, stunning more Opaty but having to hit them multiple times to knock them fully unconscious. The others were tripping on the downed ones as they rushed her, but when they got close she sent multiple Fornax waves into them, dropping them momentarily and making it easy for her to pump shots into them.

There were too many for her to handle on her own, but before she got overwhelmed with huge calloused bodies a H’kar Esquire dropped down and opened fire from their flank, followed by a Protovic and a couple of Humans. They dove right into the mass of them, giving Esna a brief break as she finished off those closest to her…but not before one punched into her heavy shield and knocked her back 3 meters in an awkward roll as her heavy shield impacted the ground.

She turned it off after two rolls, then got her arms under her and her head reoriented just in time to dodge another fist that smashed into the ground. She flashed a Fornax orb into the single Opaty, then rolled up onto her feet where she punched into his leg with her armored fist. He didn’t collapse, but his leg did wobble a bit, and in that moment Esna jumped up, using the full power of her flight engine, and impaled the Opaty in the chest with her helmet and crossed arms, lifting him off the ground in an arc before smashing him back-first onto the tunnel floor where Esna finished him with 6 point blank stun blasts.

“Nice move,” one of the Humans said, then pointed behind her. “You up for some more?”

“After you,” Esna deferred, not sure how good these Esquires were compared to her, but they did have psionics that she lacked so it made sense to let them take the lead.

Esna dropped into a run half a step behind and to the right of the Human, with him sending her some telepathic instructions for how he wanted to charge the Opaty. She’d trained to interface with telepathic soldiers, so this wasn’t something new, and she fell into step with the Human who, right before they got to a charging wall of 4 Opaty with many more behind them, telekinetically threw Esna forward as she simultaneously jumped, turning her into a projectile that rammed the larger bipeds, then she detonated her Fornax field and dropped them 6 rows deep while the Esquire dumped area of effect stun blasts on them.

Some of those hit Esna, but her shields absorbed them. The Opaty had no shields or armor, just their muscle and the fairly advanced rifles they carried. That made them easy to take down, despite their intimidating mass.

More Esquires followed, stunning the lot as Esna helped keep them down, then the flow of reinforcements was over and they were left standing in a wide tunnel full of smelly bodies.

“I’ll scout it,” she volunteered, running down one direction while the Esquires policed the unconscious. She couldn’t match their psionics, especially their battlemeld, but she could scout as well as them, if not a little better, so that’s what she assigned herself to before anyone else did, engaging her cloaking field and relying on her eyes and her armor’s passive sensors only as she backtracked to wherever the Opaty troops had come from.

She could have been in an office on a seda right now, as many other highly ranked Canderians were, but this was where she truly belonged, with her armor being her only real home…and it went wherever she did. And Esna went where the danger was, for that was where she was needed, even if she was overshadowed by the Knights and Esquires. She’d help them when she could, then she’d venture out to the flanks where they were not, finding the mismatches she could take advantage of, for the galaxy was a huge place and there were never enough Star Force troops to deal with everything.

But Esna could take care of some of those threats, and that was far more noble than overseeing training missions and cargo transfers. She wanted to be a warrior, not a sentinel who waited for threats to come to her. And right now, policing the stunned ones was sentinel work. Scouting out the unknown tunnel was warrior work.

So off she went into the unknown again, chasing after the ghost of a Calavari that forever lived on the frontier.

10

October 19, 128439

Jepiker System (Home Two Kingdom)

Forge

Leon-4293772103 had finished his final challenges yesterday, earning him a rise in rank from Acolyte 99 to Ranger 1. With that transition he earned his green armor and his days fighting in the Trials were over. He’d spent the past 158 years training and fighting in the war games along with the other Adepts and Acolytes, but now he had finally earned the right to field work and had been flown over to the main pyramid on the planet to await transit out of the system.

He wasn’t alone either, for there were hundreds of other newly minted Rangers who would be leaving with him. They’d all finished their challenges within a past week, but only a handful of them were Human. The others were Mavericks from many different races, but he hadn’t fought any of them in the Trials. Those were Human-only for the Archons, while the Mavericks had their own versions. When asked, he’d been told that was because each race had different tactics they needed to focus on, and throwing in more variables beyond your own biology would have interfered with the emphasis of their training.

But the Mavericks had the same ranks as the Archons, at least up through Padawan. Beyond that they differed somewhat, as did the psionics their bodies could handle, but the basic principles of the early ranks were all the same, hence the identical ranks.

When a Dragon-class dropship landed on one of the flat tiers of the pyramid, Leon and the others walked/flew/hopped onboard and took their seats, with him sitting down next to a Vgora…which was basically a Human frame with rock-hard skin. He was glad he didn’t have to fight them in the Trials, for punching that body with his sometimes bare hands would have been extremely painful given all the little knobby growths that made for a dull form of thornmail.

He and others sat quietly and waited for the dropship to deposit them on a starport in orbit, then they broke up into smaller groups, each heading to different terminals that led to waiting ferries that would take them out to parked starships. The one Leon was assigned to left the system with 43 of the Archons/Mavericks and began a long trip around the galaxy, dropping them off one at a time at their destinations with Leon being 12th in line.

He got in some sparring matches with the Mavericks before it was his time to leave, finding some easy to beat and others impossible. The differences in biology were staggering, and he could see why incorporating them into the Trials would have been nonsense. Humans had to learn how to fight and improve as Humans, then take those skills onward later in their development, and the same was true of the Mavericks, especially the flyers. Having them go hand to hand with a Human was ridiculous, for they simply couldn’t. They had to stay out of range and fight from the sky, where Humans couldn’t go without a jump harness.

Leon’s stop was in the Manticora System in the Pretora Kingdom, a quarter way around the galaxy from Home Two. He’d been born in Shangri-La, and the trip out to Home Two had seemed so far away, but Pretora made that trip look short by comparison. When he arrived a dropship took him down to the only inhabited planet, Warcoren, and then the starship left enroute to dropping off the other Rangers across the galaxy.

Leon was met at the starport on the Bsidd planet by another Archon, this one a Striker judging by her armor which she wore in retracted mode, but the gauntlets on her arm that reached all the way up to her shoulders were colored according to her rank and had multiple holes that exposed her skin to the air, making the retracted armor look more like elaborate jewelry than anything. She also had a headband with a triangular jewel on it that Leon didn’t recognize, but it appeared to be built on cellular technology that could expand into different shapes at will.

“Hello, newb. Welcome to Warcoren,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb and not walking out to greet him as he carried his personal duffle over his shoulder.

“And you are?”

“Brie. The others are Fred and Darren, but they’re busy. I’m your reception party.”

“The others in our team?” Leon asked.

The Striker laughed. “Team? No, newb. We’re the only Archons in the system. We were three, now we’re four counting you.”

Leon’s jaw dropped open. “Four of us for an entire planet?”

“It’s not exactly a war zone. And have you done the math? Number of planets divided by number of Archons and Mavericks?”

“I know its low, but I didn’t think a Star Force world would only have four of us. Are there any Mavericks here?”

“Nope. Just us.”

“What rank are the others?” he asked, glancing around at the empty terminal and wondering why it wasn’t packed with traffic.

“Fred is a Striker and Darren was the newb until you showed up. He’s a Ranger 12. You looking for something?”

“Is this starport shut down?”

“No, it’s just a private one. We don’t get very many VIPs here, and the cargo goes through the others unless they get overloaded, then this one takes the extra. Warcoren is only half built and under orders to go no further until certain benchmarks are obtained. Count Visto doesn’t want us building lower level structures only to have to tear them down to build better ones later.”

“We have a Count here?” he asked, not expecting a single planet system to rate higher than a Baron.

“No, we have a planetary Administrator. We don’t rate a Monarch. Count Visto oversees this system and a few other small ones, operating out of Magenton. Bring your duffle and follow me. We’re not exactly overburdened here, but we are busy round the clock.”

“Doing what?” he asked, following her as she disappeared through the door and he had to run a few steps to catch up.

“Troubleshooting everything from security issues to building codes. If you were expecting combat, you’re going to be highly disappointed. Without a Monarch we have to take control of a lot of the planning duties. This planet is supposed to be built into a fortress world eventually. Do you know what that means?”

“Hardened world in case of invasion.”

“More or less. It also means less civilians and more workers, hence the empty starport,” she said, gesturing to structure they were walking through.

“How long has this planet been colonized?”

“About half a millennia. It’s got better than 40 billion Bsidd squeezed in, but we’re not increasing the population any further until we get the necessary infrastructure. The main problem is solari, and we haven’t got the funding yet for a Star Forge. Even when we do, the pair of suns returned a lack luster survey, so we’re still going to have to trade for the rest and we don’t have anything that’s standout here to work with. Hence our development has been slow.”

“How long have you been here?”

“73 years. This is my second assignment. I spent 12 years on Vitticor, which makes this place look small in comparison, but we’ve got plenty to do. In addition to builder work, we get a fair amount of pass through traffic this close to the Hula Hoop and the defense fleet has to ward off poachers. We’re the weakest link on three different trade routes, and when they get bold the scumbags try to ambush the civilian transports here.”

“But they don’t bother the planet?”

“Nope. Nobody comes down here, because we don’t have a public market. Everything is self-contained.”

“Is that permanent?”

“To be a stronghold you have to be self-sufficient, so we’re not encouraging public trade. Most of the civilians here operate local functions, and if they want to engage in interstellar trade they relocate to another system.”

“What’s the civilian breakdown?”

“Less than 2%. If you’re not here to build the planet, then there’s not much of a place for you. Those civilians are almost all lazy asses. Businessmen are non-existent, and we have a few artists.”

“All Bsidd?”

“The entire planet is Bsidd. Even the defense fleet. We four are the only non-Bsidd in the system.”

“Why Archons and not Bsidd Mavericks?”

“Beats me. I just go where they tell me.”

“And?” Leon pressed.

“I’m guessing its part of our training. We have to learn to deal with non-Humans while we still have other Archons to work with, maintaining the foundation we’ve already built.”

“Boring?”

“Not at all. Everything here functions like a bee hive, and we have to choose how much to micromanage and what not to. We’re here to enhance the planet, not run it. The Administrators can do that decent enough, but it’s ours to make improvements to wherever we can.”

“To get to the higher benchmarks?”

“Exactly,” Brie said as they left the spaceport and walked into the heavy sunlight from the binary stars in the system. The air was also dry, seeming to suck the moisture out of Leon’s mouth, but it wasn’t quite what he’d call a desert. Not with all the tall, blue/purple building spires surrounding them looking like flutes stuck into the ground or maybe giant grass stalks. “Over here.”

Leon followed her to a nearby mongoose, similar to what Leon had used in the Trials, but this one was larger and built for at least three people. The bench looked like you could squeeze four on it, plus a couple of footholds that would allow flankers to ride with one foot supporting them on the sides. Brie stepped on one of those, then leaned over and hit a switch causing the rear half of the seat to transform into a small cargo compartment.

“Put your duffle in there. We’ve got a ways to go and you don’t want to hold it.”

Leon slid it inside then closed the lid before hopping onto the pommel seat behind Brie a few inches, finding a pair of hand holds that he gripped tightly as she accelerated them down the fairly busy street on the four big tires that whined slightly when they got up to speed.

“You ever seen Bsidd before?” she asked as a force field popped up over top the mongoose to keep the air from hitting them in the face and making it hard to talk.

“Seen yes. Talked to, no.”

“They have a slight accent that takes some time to get used to, and their body movements will freak you out more than a snake until you get a lot of experience with them, but after that they’re not hard to predict. They give a lot of cues in their joint bends.”

“Security?”

“Not much is needed, but occasionally they will fight each other. Especially the younger ones.”

“About what?”

“Adherence to the rules. The Bsidd are born expecting no individuality, so as they gain it the others react badly to them going off the reservation. Once they grow up there isn’t a problem, but that takes a couple centuries.”

“Do they kill each other?”

“No, they just beat them up until they comply. The hive mind doesn’t let them kill unless they kill first. I’m told it’s a lot better than it used to be, but there are still some negatives in their genome that can’t be fixed without causing other problems. Same way Humans fight over mating rights.”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“Who’s they?”

“Good point,” Leon said, remembering that there had only been 3 Humans on the entire planet before he’d arrived. “Who do we report to?”

“We’re Archons. We don’t report to anyone. We’re an independent planet as far as military assignments go, so we’re all Warcoren has got.”

“Why?”

“We’re sent here to take care of it. If we need superiors then we’re not Archons. If we had heavy combat to deal with it would be different, but there’s nothing here we can’t handle, so we’re on our own. We work with the Count on various things, but since this is a classified as a stronghold we’ve pretty much got the run of the place.”

“Is that normal?”

“On the smaller worlds, yeah. The higher ranking Archons have bigger stuff to do, so they leave the little ones to us. Kind of funny isn’t it? This entire planet is considered ‘little’ as far as Star Force is concerned.”

“Yeah,” Leon agreed, impressed with the size and complexity of the Bsidd city they were ripping through at decent speed. Forge had a lot of people on it, but they were all spaced out in different locations with a lot of raw planet in between where the Archons held training sessions. Here it was all city, with the insect-like Bsidd scurrying around at slightly better than pedestrian speeds.

It did feel like a bee hive, and it took more than half an hour before they got out of it at the edge of the city where the road ended at a gate. The Bsidd security guards passed the Archons through at a glance, then the mongoose crossed a half mile of paved surface before hitting the rough and very dry dirt beyond, bouncing him on his seat as they didn’t slow down at all…in fact, Brie was accelerating them now that they were out of the city traffic.

In the distance he could see more cities, looking like clumps of grass here and there with no direction being immune. They weren’t touching each other, but there were cities everywhere with a few major links between them that appeared to be clear tubes slightly elevated off the ground and some 400 meters or more wide, through which streets and trains traveled.

But not for the Archons. They were now outside the network and headed where he couldn’t see.

“Exactly where are we going?” he asked.

“Our little retreat from the Bsidd. It’s a couple miles ahead.”

Leon looked, but couldn’t see anything other than a few low hills and small rocks sporadically thrown around the landscape.

“I don’t see anything.”

“You shouldn’t. Just wait.”

Leon held onto the handles as they were continually hitting bumps, but he appreciated the rough ride as opposed to just flying. The wheeled vehicle was much more power efficient than flying, but Leon liked the mongooses because of the wild way they handled, requiring some piloting skill whereas flying transports were basically just point and click.

“Here we go,” Brie said, with Leon still seeing nothing. A moment later an energy field hit him in the face, and suddenly a small tower appeared right in front of him.

“A cloak?”

“We like our privacy.”

“What about the wheel trail in the dirt?”

“Nobody comes out here, so we’re not paranoid about it,” Brie said, slowing them down as a hangar door at the base of the tower began to rise up at her command. “Pretty cool though, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered as they slid underneath the meter wide door and curved to the right, stopping next to a few other mongooses in addition to a lot of other ships parked around the rather large hangar. Some were starships, others were aerial craft, and a couple looked like diggers.

“Welcome home. We don’t stay here much, but this is where we eventually return to when we have downtime. There’s a full Archon Sanctum here, so that’s where you’ll be doing your training. We leave the Bsidd facilities alone, for the most part.”

“You don’t spar against them?” Leon asked, pulling out his duffle and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Not anymore. Once you figure out how to not let them get within grapple range, there isn’t much to work on. You can’t fight them hand to hand without more psionics. Too many limbs.”

“I can imagine,” he said, following her through a nearby doorway and into architecture that was definitely not Bsidd. In fact, it was almost identical to what was on Forge. Squarish hallways with rounded corners, a lot of white accents and a clean, precise look as opposed to the purple/blue ovoids that seemed to dominate everything Bsidd.

“Are there Essence chambers here?”

“No. None of us is close to reaching that level, so we didn’t build any. Why? Were you going to try?” Brie asked with a smirk.

“Why not?”

“If you can’t touch your Essence yet, you can’t train with it.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Not any more than you do. We have the blueprints available to us, but honestly it’s not our place to meddle with stuff we’re not ready for.”

“But we could if we wanted to?” he asked.

“That’s part of being an Archon. Nobody is looking over your shoulder, so we can do what we want. But you’re the newb, so I’m looking over your shoulder until you get your field legs. Being out here is a lot different than the Trials.”

“I already got that impression.”

“Drop your gear there,” she said, pointing to the floor outside a door that she opened. “Time to get you your new armor.”

“Good. I didn’t like traveling without it.”

“Not that training crap,” Brie said with disgust as they walked into a very impressive mechanical room. “This is real armor.”

Leon’s eyes widened as he saw the array of fabrication equipment and the various statue-like armor suits arrayed for display.

“Spares,” she noted. “Some are standard, but one of each is for us in case we need a quick swap-out. Can you tell which one is mine?”

“That one,” Leon said, pointing to the one on the left. “Unless Fred and Darren have boobs.”

“Don’t use mine unless you have to, but in case there are no others you can trigger all of them to return to defaults and they will adapt to your shape. However, customization adds more power because we can arrange all the critical components around your body position. Step onto that pedestal and hold still.”

“Do I need to strip?” Leon asked while doing as told and hopping up on the circular silver platform 10 inches higher than the floor and set into a corner of the hexagonal room.

“The sensors can see through your clothes,” she said, working a nearby console. “What kind do you want?”

“What options are there?”

“All of them.”

“Am I stuck with just one?”

“No. You can build as many as you like and try them out. Where do you want to start?”

“Braxis.”

“Standby,” she said, selecting the armor option that had full flight capability and enhanced shields, designed for high agility but lower defense rating. Braxis was for dodgers and rovers, not heavy hitting, which made it a decent choice for a world where heavy fights were most likely not going to occur.

The machine scanned him for several moments, shifting through millions of various microscopic alignments until it found the best ones suited for Leon, then the machinery began to come alive with a flurry of sounds and lights.

“You can step down now,” Brie said. “This will take a few minutes.”

“What’s my first assignment going to be?”

“Hanging out with me until you get adjusted. After that you’ll pick your own assignments. Basically look for problems or ways to make improvements and be ready to respond to alerts. But don’t work so much you neglect your training. You gotta balance it out.”

“Do we train together?”

“Most of the time no, but when we need to spar we do. The machines are good and will kick your ass with ease, but they lack the personal touch and get predictable over time. It’s their reaction speed that you need to test yourself against, not their creativity.”

“So you’re saying I just went from highly regulated schedules to pick my own?”

“Pretty much. It’s time for you to grow up.”

“I thought I already had.”

“So did I until I got out here. Then you realize there is so much road ahead and so little behind…and that’s when you really grow up. When you realize you’re still a newb, and yet you know more than almost everyone else out there. Take us. Four Archons for a planet of 40 billion, and yet we’re still younglings compared to the Mages…let alone the Saiyans, Neos, or Borg. It’s here where you realize that we’re the tip of the spear. No one outranks us, no one is there to turn to when we can’t handle something. We have to lead, we have to find a way, and it’s here where you look out into the void of the galaxy and realize how lonely it is at the top. Just be glad there are four of us here. Some planets only get one Archon, if any.”

“There are some with none?”

“Yeah there are. Usually in systems where there are multiple planets. But there are some systems with no Archons at all because of special circumstances.”

“That’s not wise.”

“No it’s not, but there are only so many of us and when you have more worlds than Archons, that’s what happens. Then you have Archons out patrolling non-Star Force worlds and spacelanes, etc. We’re a rare commodity, even with the Mavericks added in,” she said, for the Mavericks even used the same numbering system with the Archons, despite not being trained together.

“So if this system gets hit, we’re it?”

“We can always call for help. That’s what an empire is for. But until the help gets here, yep, we’re it. Kind of scary, isn’t it?”

“It’s what I became an Archon for. I’m just surprised it’s thrown at us all at once.”

“Sink or swim, bro. No training wheels for Archons,” she said as the fabrication machine finished and a pair of silver gauntlets floated out of a wall slot with a little residual steam rising off them until they landed on the central pedestal that connected to the ceiling in a light shaft.

“Are they hot?”

“A little. All it takes is a few seconds to normalize. You can touch them now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep. Go ahead.”

Leon reached out and touched one with his finger experimentally, finding it remarkably lukewarm. He then grabbed it and slid it on over his hand, fastening the simple clasp that triggered it to melt into a single piece covering the first half of his forearm only, as opposed to Brie’s that traveled all the way up to her shoulder. He put the second one on, then held them out in front of him so he could get a good look.

“They fit like a glove,” he noted, mentally signaling them to activate. The two gauntlets quickly melted and covered him head to toe in silver armor that had various portions thicker than others, but all of it was tailored for mobility and flexibility, with the joints and other crunch points reforming as he moved to keep the solid nature of the armor intact without hindering him.

“Change the color,” Brie told him.

“Um, right,” he said, sifting through the myriad of controls until he found the color setting and selected ‘Ranger,’ which caused the silver to disappear and become replaced with the appropriate green.

“Alright, now you’re official. Stuff your gear in your quarters then we’ll get to work on the southern continent.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Learn as you go, newb.”

“And I’m the newb until someone else gets assigned here?”

“You’re the newb until I can stop answering questions.”

“Fair enough. Where are my quarters?”

37,309 lightyears away…

“We have no choice,” the Chixzon noted calmly. “This is the only way. Star Force will not crumble from within.”

“I concur, but once started this cannot be undone.”

“That we know of,” a third Chixzon added.

“Is there any other recourse possible?”

“We have exhausted all options. It is this or we cede control of the galaxy to them and the V’kit’no’sat. We have been gone too long, and this is the repercussion of it.”

“It is not a matter of time. Star Force is an unusually formidable enemy, the V’kit’no’sat are not. It is their unity that is their strongest asset, and that is not a function of time. We have never had a worthy opponent before, and if we are to best this one we must use whatever methods are available, and there is but one. We can continue our search for more, or act now. I choose to act.”

“We are all in agreement. Send the ship...”

www.aerkijyr.com

Essence

1

October 22, 128439

Aquaman System (Chexva Kingdom)

Trident

Three long oceans dominated the planet of Trident, hence the name given to it by Director Davis, stretching from a communal fourth ocean on the equator around the planet up to a long mountain chain that separated the tips from the base ocean. The planet was 52% water, making it far from being a true waterworld with oceans covering the entire surface, but Trident was one of six planets in this star system that had vast amounts of water on them.

That was rare, and made the Aquaman system the defacto capitol of Star Force’s aquatic races, with Trident holding the deepest water at more than 17 miles deep at the bottom of the three ‘prongs.’ The pressure there was too much for most of the aquatic races to bear, but a handful actually preferred it and had been relocated here from other worlds for a number of reasons. The J’gar were one race that did inhabit these depths, but the Elarioni were not. So the tiny, fast moving form of Ariel swimming through the crushing water pressure in an armor suit was an unusual sight for the large bodied denizens of the hot water that was almost to the point of becoming steam.

That was because of the closeness to the magma layer of the planet…but the pressure resisted the expansion into a gas, so there was a constant tug of war that resulted in random plums of steam forming on the bedrock and shooting up towards the distant atmosphere above, making it look like the seafloor was under attack.

But the real attack had happened long ago, and Ariel was here to continue her study of it. The long gashes in the planet that had formed the 3 oceans were not natural. They were the result of weapons damage made by something that Star Force couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a Hadarak, that much they’d been able to determine, but the lingering mystery was one they weren’t going to ignore and Ariel had spent many years here and traveling across the galaxy to try and match up what residue there was to other sites. So far she’d done little more than eliminating possibilities, and while the source of the attack was still unknown, they’d learned that this planet used to be closer to a true waterworld and the deep trenches gouged out of the crust had drawn in enough water for some continents to form.

Beyond that it was estimated that a lot of water had been lost during the attack, thrust up into space and settling into a thin set of icy rings around the planet. There was also wayward chunks of ice all across the system, probably having been thrown out when whatever happened here went down over a million years ago…at least.

Solving this mystery was the oldest living Elarioni’s passion, and one of the few things that could keep her interest after spending so much time helping her race grow, and then helping other aquatic races to do the same within the Star Force empire. Continued growth now bored her, for there was no challenge in it. The successes of the past were simply repeated on new worlds, with few wrinkles to keep her attention. But the devastation of a waterworld such as this, long ago by a weapon and enemy unknown to Star Force…that was something she could not pass up, for if it could happen before it could happen again, and Star Force needed to figure out how it was done in order to defend against it.

Ariel’s body would be crushed at this depth without her armor suit, but she wasn’t afraid in the least. She’d been exploring the trenches on her own for decades and could outswim any of the larger denizens…including the primitives that also lived here and tried to eat anything they could get their teeth on. Star Force fed them real food at various points, but old habits still existed in the stragglers so she had to be careful.

That said, between her armor’s systems and her telepathy gifted to her as an advanced scout, she could see everything around her despite the blackness, for there was no light out here away from the cities and the bulb fields that Star Force had planted around them. No, there was just rock, rock, and more rock, but within that rock was sometimes something else…

Ariel was unique amongst the Elarioni, for she was friends with the trailblazers and the only one whom they’d taught the secrets of Essence. And since her eyes had been opened, she could sense it in others. It was literally the glue that held one’s Core to their body, forming the bridge between that which couldn’t be sensed to the classical physics. And now that Star Force could sense Essence it had opened up a treasure trove of new research into technologies that others literally could not even see, but the deeper mysteries of Essence were beyond Ariel, and her skills were limited, though she was developed enough to be able to sense the traces of a very powerful Essence still trapped in the rocks in a few places deep within the trenches on Trident.

There wasn’t much left, and there shouldn’t have been any after all this time, but whatever had attacked this planet had to have a huge Essence effect. Something far larger than a Hadarak, for the Uriti had informed the Archons that they were on the lookout for those that glowed, and one nearly horrific accident was barely avoided using the Uriti override when one took notice of a command ship on which Blade-097 was training his Essence skills. He’d created enough of an Essence rush that the Uriti had felt it and instinctively moved towards it, intent on destroying the ‘glow’ before being stopped by the Wrangler on site.

A lengthy discussion followed, because all living beings possessed Essence, and how could one as small as Blade attract the Uriti when larger ones, like the Oso’lon, did not. The Uriti had informed them that they did not glow, nor the Hadarak, and after a lot of awkward communication about things that there was no a common vocabulary on, the Uriti had confirmed that the ‘glow’ was not the presence of Essence, but the ‘rush’ of it.

‘Rush’ was what the Archons called the agitation of Essence, causing it to surge forth beyond one’s body or enhance within. Basically anything that wasn’t the normal state was defined as a ‘glow’ to the Uriti, and even something as small as a Human apparently stood out like a beacon to them.

It also deposited itself on other objects, lingering there for some time before dissipating out of existence. That meant whatever had gouged out these oceans had been experiencing an Essence ‘rush’ or had been an Essence weapon. Neither truly made sense, for there was no reason for Essence to still exist here after all this time. Most residual Essence dissipated after a few hours or days, or in some cases could linger for years in very small amounts where repeated inundations occurred…such as the trailblazers’ training facilities.

Why it was still here was another part of this mystery Ariel had not yet solved, but each time she found a pocket of Essence she got a little closer to understanding…and today would be a watershed moment in her search.

She was swimming along, her senses open for even a hint of Essence present in the rocks or in a living being when she got a faint trace far to her left. Ariel turned immediately and tracked it down, feeling it emanating from a flat section of seafloor. Her senses weren’t tuned enough to pick out its precise location, and when she got close it seemed to feel as if it was coming from all around, but when she caused her own Essence to rush, drawing from a point inside her like opening an air valve and having the gas rush forth, she expanded her Essence field beyond her body as if into two large wings that she swept the area with until she brushed upon the trace.

When her Essence crossed the trace it absorbed into her, letting her feel the Essence as if it were her own. Once again the power it had once been attached to was so massive it defied quantity, but as the seconds passed the Essence blended with hers and the feeling diminished…except that it allowed her to see another pocket of identical Essence nearby that slowly faded from view.

Ariel frowned, not sure what was happening. Her senses shouldn’t have been altered by the interaction, so was this a mirage that came with the merging? The Elarioni swam to the location the larger ‘glow’ had been but couldn’t see anything, so she swept the area, getting nothing.

On impulse she reached her armored hand down and surged a physical connection through it, allowing her Essence to saturate there and provide a link, almost as if the armor was temporarily becoming part of her body. She could feel the gauntlet on her hand more than she ever could before, and began dragging it through the silt on the seafloor until the fingertips touched the rock below. She did that for several minutes searching for the mystery glow, then when she was about to give up and try something else she made contact with something she had never experienced before.

It was an Essence contact, but so intense that it blinded her far more than her training sessions with the trailblazers. Theirs was so bright she could hardly stand it, but what she touched now completely overwhelmed her.

Ariel went limp and began to drift in the water unconscious.

When she woke it was hours later, but her handprint trenches on the seafloor were still visible in her armor’s lights, for there were no currents this deep to move Ariel around, yet she felt as if she was moving at lightspeed.

She didn’t know where she was, or who she was, for several minutes as her mind regained its clarity, but even then the memories were so vivid that they overlapped her real senses. Ariel could feel the rock melting under an insane pressure, compacting down into the ultra dense plates that she knew dominated the bottom of the trenches. A few cracks had formed through which magma traveled, but most of the plates held firm and transferred the heat up through their structure rather than succumbing to it.

They’d been analyzed before, finding an immense density that was better than a lot of the primitive civilizations’ starship armor plating, but otherwise there was nothing special about it. Now Ariel knew it had been Essence fused, which was a technique the trailblazers used to melt molecules and atoms together in a variety of ways technology had a hard time doing, or could not do entirely. It had been a breakthrough that led them to the invention of Tu’gor armor and a number of other things that they now crafted machines to do after they first learned to do it with Essence.

Ariel swam in a twirl, trying to get her feel for the water again as she tried to make her Essence calm down. It was overwhelmed with foreign Essence and her Core was having trouble absorbing it all. Thankfully Jason had taught her a simple trick to bleed off Essence, and she raised her right arm out in front of her and pushed it out through her fingertips, causing a vortex of water to form and shoot out away from her.

The undisturbed silt on the seafloor kicked up into a dust-storm, obscuring the lights on her armor to the point where she couldn’t even see them, but her Pefbar was still intact and that allowed her to remain upright and aligned with gravity as her head was still spinning. She had so much Essence in her, far more than ever before, that her body didn’t want to take it all in. That left her aglow in a pool that was inundating her, but the vortex was slowly bleeding it away.

Ariel did not use her Lachka, knowing that wouldn’t be as power hungry as a direct Essence effect. She was using the mysterious energy field to move the water itself rather than piggybacking on her psionics and enhancing them. That was how the trailblazers got the most use out of their Essence, but right now she just needed to empty out and return to inner calm, but the bubble she was in seemed to have no end. It was cloying in a way she’d never experienced before, but the intact part of her mind realized this was why it had persisted for so long.

There were no living beings this deep to graft onto. If there had been the Essence wouldn’t have lasted a week until something brushed up against it and absorbed it. It didn’t take one skilled in its use to absorb it, for any living being could by accident, but this deep where no one lived aside from the larger races that never bothered to touch the seafloor, there was no one to graft onto.

And whatever this cloyingness was, it was keeping the Essence together in a way that Ariel thought was impossible. It took a Core for Essence to exist with, and whenever Essence was separated from a person…like Ariel was doing now via the Vortex…it would slowly dissipate and disappear, but this glut had not and now it was clinging to her hard.

But patience was a skill Ariel had learned long ago, and she waited as the Vortex slowly cleared her mind enough that she shut it down and let the remainder of the Essence bubble soak into her, trying to learn from it.

Sometimes memories would come with it, other times new insights or senses that a person did not regularly have. Essence melded to the Core it was attached to and took on those attributes of the individual, with the trailblazers able to briefly give non-telepathic people telepathy by bathing them in their Essence. Those people didn’t know how to use it, at first, but repeat it enough times and they were able to develop some rudimentary skills even though they lacked the Ikrid tissue.

When the Essence reformed to their Core they lost that ability, which was why Ariel knew she only had a limited amount of time. She felt more alive now than ever, as if her body was too small and she needed to grow to match the energy within her, but Ariel held still and tried to glean as much from the Essence’s former owner as she could.

But she was confused. There was a mix here, of biology and metal, that obscured any fine detail. She was so obsessed with getting a feel for the former owner that she almost missed the obvious. When she stopped trying so hard it crystalized in her mind…and a sense of dread hit her. A moment later she summoned up the largest Vortex she could, trying to clear the Essence from her like a nightmare until just her own remained, but it still carried the taint that made her feel so vile she wanted to die.

Ariel pushed her own Essence out to near depletion, feeling so lightheaded she half passed out again, but she was free of the nightmare in a real sense, though the memory remained. She pushed it away, trying to become herself again before even thinking about analyzing it. Ariel wanted to take her armor off and feel the free water on her skin, but she couldn’t at this depth so she swam upward, racing towards the distant atmosphere not fast enough. She couldn’t speed up using her Essence, for it would take time to gradually bubble up from within and replace what was lost, so she relied on her armor to propel her upward until she got to a depth where hundreds of thousands of Elarioni swam in great swarms through the cool water moving from one outpost to another.

Ariel retracted her armor into two gauntlets that she tore off her arms and threw away, then she swam in circles, trying to peel the taint off her body and she squirmed internally, having held it together long enough to get up here, but now she couldn’t bare it any longer. She was in such a fuss that the nearest Elarioni took notice and swam to help, encircling her in a ball as she twisted and contorted herself, fighting something they could not see.

She was bombarded with telepathic questions that she didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, but that contact helped steady her until she curled up in a ball and just floated in the water, drifting upward slightly as the others swam in close with one touching her…then recoiling instantly as a black haze seemed to jump from her mind to the other.

The other Elarioni shook it off after a few moments, but no more touched her or tried to pry too deeply with their limited telepathy, for Ariel was poisoned somehow. Poisoned of the mind, but none of them understood the importance of what they had briefly touched in her. But she did. She understood all too well what had happened to this planet.

A great claw had impacted the surface, scooping out rock and water alike, and taking with it all those swimming in the water. This planet had been harvested. How and why she didn’t know, but it had been mass murder. The death echoes of those caught had emitted their own inadvertent Essence Rush, which was impossible, yet it was there, in the background of the rest…the death of billions like a faint echo, as the planet underneath them was suddenly lifted up and swallowed by some terror Ariel couldn’t see.

As the minutes passed the horror was replaced with anger, and Ariel used that anger to center herself. She flapped her tail and cut the drift she was experiencing, then she extended her Pefbar to find her gauntlets…which were sinking lower in the water. Ariel swam past the other Elarioni and reclaimed them, then told the others she was alright and took off as fast as she could towards the nearest transit tube…but her Essence was low and that fatigued her, so she reactivated her armor and let it swim her to the closest entrance to the tube network that shot travelers through high pressure water channels, allowing them to cross miles far faster than through natural swimming.

Ariel surfed those tubes until she came to a city, and within that she went to the first secure comm terminal she could find and sent a message to the trailblazers, telling them what she had discovered.

There was a planet-eating monster out there, and it wasn’t a Hadarak. It was something else that used Essence, and may very well be what the Hadarak were searching for and guarding against.

2

November 30, 128439

Aquaman System (Chexva Kingdom)

Trident

Paul-024 and Dina-077 landed in one of the water-based cities on Trident that was partly above the ocean and stretching deep down into it like a carrot. Their dropship landed on a lower tier of the pyramid-shaped upper side, opening its boarding ramp as four blurs flew out across the landing pad and over the edge of the next tier. They continued to stair step drop until they got over water, then they flew out across the ocean for half an hour before they turned down and plunged in where they wouldn’t run into any of the shallow water infrastructure around an artificial island chain.

The four Archons…two trailblazers and their apprentices…wove a path down through a mix of auxiliary habitats branching off from the outpost, bypassing a lot of Elarioni, Dogiv, Shevati, and Fpom until they got low enough where they passed by a number of Garas’tox and J’gar. They were easier to avoid, given their larger size, but their rendezvous was in the deep water where few went without augmentation.

Finding Ariel wasn’t difficult with her homing beacon active, and Paul was able to pick up her telepathic presence from several miles away even without it. The four Archons swam using their armor’s systems in conjunction with their Lachka, giving them the maximum speed possible through the water, though the two trailblazers had to slow a bit to not lose their apprentices.

Hello Ariel, Dina said telepathically when they got within sight of one another.

Hello, sister. Follow me, Ariel said, immediately twisting over in the water and swimming straight down faster than the Archons could match.

“She’s in a hurry,” Veeron-938221 said over the Archon’s private comms.

“She’s rattled,” Paul told his apprentice. “Otherwise we’d be catching up first. Try to keep up.”

“I am trying,” the Neo 2380 Archon insisted as he continued to create Lachka ripples around his armor and push them backwards to add propulsion to that his shields and armor jets were also producing. “She’s too damn fast.”

“Catch up when you can,” Paul smirked, then began to pull away from the two apprentices as he and Dina chased after Ariel.

“We’re still the newbs,” Nathan-1300433 noted as he fell in behind Veeron to catch his slipstream and make sure he didn’t fall behind any further. “And they’re reminding us of that fact.”

“I didn’t realize they were that fast.”

“They’re getting their ass kicked by Ariel, so expect them to find a little more than normal.”

“Why are you drafting off of me?”

“Why waste it?”

“Jerk…”

Up ahead Dina and Paul were doing the same thing, with Dina in the lead and Paul linked to her in battlemeld with a Bataf conduit between them so Paul could add his speed differential to Dina’s body, pushing her along a little bit in exchange for the draft relief she was giving him. Together they had left their apprentices behind, but Ariel was still playing with them, staying out of reach and occasionally weaving back and forth as the race to the seafloor seemed to break her serious mood a bit.

“Feel like cheating?” Paul asked.

“What do you mean…oh, right,” Dina said, sensing his thoughts through the link. “Yeah, let’s try.”

The pair’s speed slowed considerably, but Dina stretched out a bioshield in front of her, thinning it into a needle and stretching it out as far ahead of her as she could. That didn’t do much to change their movement through the water, for she’d been using one this entire time, but now Dina stretched it out to maximum ahead of her as she made sure they were heading straight down towards the planet, taking them a little out of alignment with Ariel.

Then they used their Cerden, with Paul’s power being added through the battlemeld psionic to increase the strength and range…then when the needle pushed out further it stopped dragging water along the inside, with the Archons simultaneously using their Nemsa to double up their Lachka and create a plate inside the needle that stopped the water from moving forward with them. It started in the tip, creating a small vacuum that pulled all the way up through it, further stressing their shields to hold back the weight of the ocean water and forcing them to shrink them, but when the plug came up on Dina she and Paul released it and let themselves drop along with the water around them down through the bioshield conduit that now had no water or air in it.

The pair stayed together, linked by their Bataf conduit, and dropped some 28 meters before they hit the bottom of their own shields with the water crashing down behind them. They deactivated the shields and let the current push them further down, then Dina extended the needle out again and they repeated the tactic, gaining ground on Ariel each time.

You cheat the water, Ariel’s voice echoed in their minds rather than coming through the comm which she also possessed in her armor.

That’s the idea, Paul confirmed, only to see her increase speed and shoot ahead of them again.

It is not enough.

“Damn it,” Dina said where Ariel couldn’t hear them. “We’re going to have to pull out the big guns.”

“The water’s too dense to fly through, unless you can…”

“No I can’t,” Dina confirmed, referring to the ripple technique in her bioshields and Lachka that was too intense to use the same time as her Yen’mer. The overlap was too confusing, and the deeper they went the worse it got with the density of the water. “We gotta blast it.”

“Worth a try,” Paul said as Dina signaled him to take the lead as she slipped in behind him, losing time to Ariel who was still pulling away. “But we’re gonna have to pull on Essence to move enough.”

“Fine with me. Do it before she gets away.”

“Alright, here goes,” Paul said, extending his Essence out from his body slightly and intermixing it with Dina’s. The two didn’t completely mesh, as if they were slightly different colors, but they were both Human and both Archons, so there wasn’t much of an incompatibility, and in order to upgrade their Jumatran with it they had to pool together as one to match the battlemeld ability draw.

Paul reached his arms out in front of him inside the bioshield needle he was swimming behind, then his propulsion stopped entirely along with Dina’s and they drifted down a moment before a thin Jumat blast shot out ahead of Paul, punching into the dense water and forcing it away from the column. A second shot followed less than .3 seconds later, traveling through the short lived vacuum and adding to it. More continued and the pair followed through the gap as the water behind them pushed them forward.

The two trailblazers maintained the rapid fire rhythm and punched it up to maximum, seeing that they were gaining on Ariel slightly, but not enough. That was when they added their Essence to their Jumat cells, enhancing their output with a bang…literally…as the concussive nature of the Jumat energy increased significantly, pushing more water out of the way to the sides and ahead of them, cutting off some of the pinching action of the water acting laterally on them and allowing them to shoot straight down with gravity pulling them in addition to the push of the water behind.

It took several seconds to smooth it out, for they’d never tried this before with anyone else, let alone each other, but the Archons adapted fast and soon shot straight by Ariel with them giving her a telepathic raspberry as they passed her.

The Elarioni was shocked and confused as to what was happening, then she got hit with the shockwave and bounced around a bit as she began swimming as fast as she possibly could, trying to catch back up with them. She engaged her armor’s maximum propulsion in addition to her own tail flips, but it wasn’t quite enough. Somehow they’d actually managed to outswim her, and despite the fact that she was losing it brought a smile to her face.

A few minutes later she got to the seafloor where they were waiting for her, though the other two Archons were far behind and descending at a much slower pace.

How did you do that? she asked them.

We pushed the water out of the way with Jumat, enhanced with Essence, Dina answered. Worked better than I thought it would.

Indeed it did. That’s the first time you’ve ever beat me. I’m impressed.

It was 2v1, Paul pointed out. How are you doing?

The memory is disturbing, but I’ve assimilated the Essence and dispersed most of it, though some is still remaining. My natural level is elevated even after pushing myself to exhaustion. I do not know if it is permanent or temporary.

May I? Dina asked, holding her hand out to Ariel

Of course, the Elarioni said, interlocking armored fingers with the Archons and pushing her Essence through them to meet the trailblazer’s. When they mixed it wasn’t quite a telepathic connection, but more of a taste test as to the person’s character rather than their thoughts. It was like a fingerprint, but one that could change somewhat over time, and it also reflected one’s current state, with her realizing just how much that cheat of theirs had cost them.

You’re exhausted, Ariel noted.

We really wanted to beat you, Dina admitted as she let Paul sneak a peek through their battlemeld link. But we’re not even trying on the way up. You’ve grown considerably since we last met. How much of that is you?

Very little, Ariel said with a touch of worry. I didn’t know Essence contact permanently altered someone.

It doesn’t that we know of, Paul said, but it has been known to grant someone experience they haven’t earned. Once the body and mind experience the higher levels you try to mimic it and your own advancement skips forward in some ways.

Once you increase your Essence, we don’t know of any way to shrink it back down, Dina added. It’s possible you got such a surge that it opened you up, hopefully in a beneficial way. You feel like you’re glowing.

How so? Ariel asked. You have far more Essence than me.

The newness has a different flavor to it, and it’s a way you can tell if someone is old or recently upgraded. Think of it as a growth mark, and you’re glowing in it.

Do you see a problem?

Not right now. Show me the memory.

Ariel cringed, then dug it out of her mind and telepathically transmitted it to both trailblazers as she released Dina’s hand. Both of them were silent for several seconds, then Paul swam over and put a hand on Ariel’s hip, pulling her into an armor on armor hug.

Thank you for enduring that.

I didn’t have a choice, but you’re welcome.

I think I’m going to be sick, Dina said, fighting her own gag reflex as she tried to dull out the memory.

I’ve felt this before, with the lizards, Paul explained his resilience. When so many die at once, and you feel it, it hits you in a way you’re not prepared for.

Why could I feel it after this long of a time? Ariel asked.

That’s a very good question. I don’t know. Essence should dissipate without a Core to hold it in place. We have to cheat that with our Materia weapons, but even then it won’t last forever. I have never seen Essence that cloys like this. It normally seeks out any other Essence to bond with or just fades away. What you experienced is like a capsule where the Essence bonds to itself and resists other Essence.

That’s why you couldn’t find it earlier, Dina explained. You had to physically touch it before it bled into you. How close are we to the location?

2.4 miles. I didn’t want to come down on it in case there was more left, she said as the two Archon apprentices finally caught up and swung their feet down below their heads as they drifted over towards Paul.

“You’re late,” he admonished them. “Drop and give me 2,000.”

“Funny,” Veeron said, breathing heavily.

“Hello, Ariel,” Nathan said, waving a hand. “My name is Nathan-1300433.”

“Hello,” she answered using her comm, which came through as a computer translation, for the aquatic Elarioni did not have the vocal capability to speak English. “And you are?”

“Veeron-938221.”

“Follow me and sense the area with your Essence. I do not know if any pockets remain, but you will be able to find them sooner than I can,” Ariel said, lightly swimming in place in a circle before heading across the seafloor towards a point she now marked on the battlemap so all four Archons could see it.

“We’ll take the wings,” Dina said, with her and Paul moving to the outside of their 5 person formation. “Boys, stretch out as wide as you can around Ariel and we’ll take it from there. Keep a little cushion so we don’t miss anything.”

“Got it,” Nathan said as he felt Ariel’s ‘wings’ fan out. He overlapped his own Essence aura with hers slightly, then stretched out his range as he swam to the side. When he got to maximum Dina connected with him outside that and made up the end of a 5 person chain that was scanning the rocks in the seafloor dozens of meters below them as they slowly swam forward.

The trailblazers’ depth was far more, but it didn’t take long until they started picking up faint traces of the old Essence. The sucked it in like a vacuum, getting a feel for it but not gaining any valuable information. Other trailblazers had been here before, and they could confirm it felt the same as their reports indicated, but they weren’t picking up on anything the size of which Ariel had encountered.

“Here,” Ariel said over the comm. “This is where it happened.”

“Hold up,” Paul said. “I can feel it.”

Ariel frowned. “I cannot.”

“Neither can I,” Veeron admitted. “My field is empty.”

“So is mine,” Paul admitted. “A little too empty.”

“I feel it now,” Dina added.

“I don’t,” Nathan said, checking again. “There’s nothing here.”

“My Essence isn’t steady, it’s being drained over there,” Paul said, pointing to a spot ahead of Dina. “It’s not much, but there is a light sucking over there.”

“Ariel, stay back,” Dina warned. “No need for you to go through this twice.”

The Elarioni gladly swam backwards a bit, then spun around to watch what happened as Paul moved towards he spot and extended a hand down…then Ariel jerked as a telepathic something hit her. It had come from Paul and didn’t last more than a split second, but it made her entire body go numb like a Fornax blast, yet it was somehow more than that.

“Paul?” Dina asked.

“Don’t connect to it,” he warned. “Siphon it off.”

“What is it?”

“Some sort of a containment orb.”

“Whoa,” Dina said in a low voice. “Are you saying it’s a container…as in harvest container?”

“I think so,” Paul said darkly. “There’s nobody in there, but the memories are fresh.”

“Harvest,” Ariel said. “Is that possible?”

“We can’t pull Essence out of someone,” Dina told her. “But maybe someone figured out how.”

“They’d have to store it, or it’d bleed off into the planet,” Paul said, staring at the blank spot in the rock that appeared to the rest of his senses and psionics as nothing out of the ordinary. “I think this is a collection orb that was left behind.”

“Can you see who it was?” Ariel asked.

“Fragments, but it wasn’t the Hadarak. Something else just as big.”

“Something the Hadarak hunt?” Nathan asked.

“Are you sure we don’t want to keep this around?” Dina asked as she came right over the spot.

“It’s stolen Essence laced with memories of their deaths. I’m surprised Ariel isn’t catatonic. Don’t let anyone else go through that. Drain the fucker,” Paul said angrily.

“Are you alright?” she asked him.

“No, but I’ll get a handle on it. Get rid of that abomination.”

“Done,” Dina said, reaching out her hand and hardening her Essence so it wouldn’t easily merge with another, but could be used to corral it. She’d done it multiple times when charging Materia-class weapons fed by hundreds of Archons simultaneously so they wouldn’t have to waste time doing it one by one.

She created a conduit the width of a baseball and stretching it upwards like a straw some 20 meters or so, then dipped it down towards the blank spot, holding off just above it as she sent out a warning notification via the battlemap, declaring the section of ocean directly over them as temporarily off limits. There were no signals up there, but the waring would also be sent out telepathically from mechanical repeaters so people without comms devices or armor would be able to pick it up. They also didn’t show on the battlemap in all locations, but she was fairly sure they were clear as her Ikrid wasn’t picking up anyone for several miles around them.

“Might want to get back in case this bleeds wrong,” she said, with the other three swimming off as Nathan stayed.

You want help?

No, just get clear. If Paul’s having trouble with this I don’t want you anywhere near it. Shoo.

Shooing, he said, swimming off and catching up with the others as they pulled away but kept low to the seafloor, knowing Dina was going to bleed this off straight up.

“Here goes,” she said, lowering her Essence ‘straw’ down into the blank spot and feeling a tug. It drew it down then it hit something hard…at least that’s how it felt. The Essence passed through the physical rock as if it wasn’t there, but something in that quasi-physicality resisted her until she pressed harder.

Then all hell broke loose as she penetrated the containment shell, however it worked, and she felt the bleed-off from around the base of the ‘straw’ as the huge plume of Essence shot up through it, headed skyward and bleeding off through the water like a giant mushroom cloud that she pushed upwards on to keep it from falling back down on the others even as she began to feel sick to her stomach as some of what Paul had experienced leached into her.

3

Above her the Essence spread out through the water, searching for a Core to attach to but finding none as Dina kept the barrier tight between herself and the flow. The invisible energy mushroomed out in a way that the five surrounding people could see, but only because they were all Essence sensitive. Anyone else watching, either in person or through a sensor, would have seen nothing at all, for neither the rock nor the water moved as the Essence passed through it and began to disappear as it spread out.

Dina kept it from circling back on top of her, but the small bits leaking through her barrier were revolting. She tried to numb it out as best she could, but by the time the ‘orb’ had finished depleting itself she felt thoroughly sick to her stomach, though the trailblazer was far better off than Paul was. Yet as her Essence straw remained, now empty, she still felt the tug at the base of it.

“The orb is still here,” she told the others, releasing her control on the straw and seeing part of it get sucked inside as it dissipated. “I can’t see what’s creating it.”

“If it lingers, we should isolate this area for study,” Ariel suggested as Paul still struggled to purge himself of the foreign essence with erratic twitches that betrayed the inner fight he was going through.

“How many more of these things are there?” Nathan wondered.

“I want to know what ‘these things’ are first,” Dina said, internally twisting like Paul was, but in a far weaker fashion as her Essence fought against the foreign Essence to see which pattern would dominate. Since there was no Core for the foreign Essence to form on the winner was inevitable, but the shake out process left her with a wicked shiver running down her spine. “Paul?”

“Working on it,” he mumbled just before the water around him began to churn. The Archon was turning it into a vortex using his own Essence as he drew more out of himself to compensate for the foreign while also using it to power the vortex. The draining process would help him skip over some of the absorption issues, meaning he was finally getting a handle on it and draining the toxicity faster now.

“I don’t envy you that,” Dina mentioned, then looked at the Elarioni. “Or you.”

“We need a construction crew immediately. I cannot see the Orb, and unless you want to stay here and monitor it constantly, we need an artificial sensor that can do the same.”

“Best we could do is an Essence stream and monitor it when it gets sucked in. That’s gonna be expensive. Do you think this thing can move?”

“I do not know how it is attached, thus I cannot answer.”

“Good point,” Dina said, reaching out another hardened Essence rod and poking the orb…which resisted just like it had the first time. “It seems fixed to the rock.”

“I didn’t think Essence clung to anything that hard,” Veeron asked.

“This isn’t clinging…it’s something new. Call for a construction crew. I want a full outpost built around this location within the next 6 hours.”

“I’ll start sweeping the area,” Paul said, no longer churning the water or twitching, “and see if there are any more of these things.”

“Wait,” Dina said, holding up an armored hand. “I can understand how this Orb survived if it’s containment, but what about the small traces Ariel’s been picking up for years?”

“I think there’s your answer,” Nathan said, pointing above them to the Essence cloud that had shrunk considerably.

“There’s what?” Dina asked.

“Part is acting normally and dissipating, but I can feel strands that are not.”

Dina stretched her Essence field up and washed across it, feeling the sickness inside her kick up a notch in response, but Nathan was right. There were filaments that were Essence, but they were different in a way she’d never encountered before.”

“Ariel, are these what you encountered before? I’ve never been here.”

“One moment,” she said, swimming up towards them and gritting her teeth as she passed through the light amount of Essence around the edges. It pulled towards her like a magnet, soaking in and adding itself to her own aura, but when she got to the nearest ‘strand’ it didn’t move until she extended her aura over it, then on contact it merged with her along with a torrent of the ‘regular’ Essence.

Ariel turned and swam away fast, with some of the Essence chasing after her, but she broke free and gradually returned in a long circle to the others.

“I believe it is the same, but far more potent. It is unreactive unless touched by an Essence field. I cannot explain it.”

“Has anyone picked up a Core?” Paul asked.

“No,” Dina answered, with the others signaling they had not through a series of head shakes and telepathic pings. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re still newbs with Essence and just got a master lesson. But whatever did this was big. Very big. I have no idea what something of that size could do with so much Essence.”

“Kill Hadarak,” Veeron offered.

“Something big is going on,” Dina added, “and we just stumbled onto a piece of it. Let’s get this site locked down and hushed up. We don’t want people snooping around.”

“You are referring to outsiders?” Ariel asked.

“If you tell people we found evidence of something potentially stronger than Hadarak…”

“She’s right,” Paul agreed. “And while we wait, Dina and I are doing perimeter sweeps. Veeron and Nathan hold here. Do not lose this position. Ariel, where were the other small hits near here?”

“Both ways through the valley, but not up the ridge.”

“All in the rock? None floating?”

“All were fixed in rock.”

“Alright. You go wide and scout out a security perimeter. Make it generous and give it to the construction team when they arrive.”

“I will,” she said, turning and swimming off quickly to get started.

“Boys,” Dina said as she and Paul both left and began spiraling around the site in an expanding corkscrew fashion as they scanned, “take a nap. And don’t touch it…or the Essence cloud.”

“Don’t touch the creep black hole or the pain field…got it,” Nathan agreed wholeheartedly as he swam down to the rock nearby and latched onto it with his foot so he couldn’t drift away.

The next day the seafloor was totally transformed with a series of small prefab structures and shield pylons setting up a hemispherical bubble to keep everyone and everything out, not that there were many people all the way down at these depths, but several had come to look at what was happening and Paul assumed more would make their way down eventually just to nose around.

Those that were part of Star Force could be told to move off and most would stay away, but the less advanced natives couldn’t be communicated with in a similar fashion and Paul didn’t want them being attracted to all the attention and then brush up against the mysterious orb or anything else in the area. He and Dina had found a lot of smaller filaments in the underwater valley, soaking them up just as Ariel had before, but they were much more sensitive to their existence and picked up a lot that she hadn’t found.

All of them were slightly ‘sticky,’ with that being the term Paul and Dina had settled on. Rather than clinging to other things or dispersing, these Essence filaments stuck to each other and persisted, much like Kip’s log indicated when he had investigated this planet before. Why they were imbedded in the rock he wasn’t sure, but the research team that was being brought in from across the galaxy would hopefully figure it out in the coming years. He had little hope of them finding anything initially, because he and Dina were amongst the tops in the Essence department and no tech, Master or otherwise, had been able to achieve even the most rudimentary Essence skills.

And it wasn’t for a lack of trying. They badly wanted the Borg ability that Paul possessed, but it was a high level Essence skill amongst the Archons that only 403 had achieved. The Mastertechs all used advanced computer interfaces to do a lot of their work, partially melding their minds with the technology, but only the Borg Archons could actually create a second brain for themselves that they could link to and unlink from at will over the course of an hour initially, though Paul had got his transition time down to 8 minutes in and 17 minutes out.

The second brains weren’t common knowledge, rather a closely guarded secret within Star Force, but the Archons referred to them as Astromechs and Paul’s was onboard the Excalibur, one of the newest Borg-class warships that was shaped as a perfect cube 327 miles on a side. It was black/green, covered with Yeg’gor equal to that of a Mach’nel, and smooth to the eye unlike the namesake from Star Trek that were covered in pipes and plates and all kinds of gismos.

He hadn’t traveled to Trident in it. The Excalibur and the other Borg vessels were tucked away in storage for when they would be needed, with Paul traveling on a more reasonable sized, donut-shaped command ship named Rubi. He had a small Astromech onboard it, about the size of a basketball, but his primary one onboard Excalibur was 26 feet high and shaped like a sword with his body node being in the hilt as it pointed upward.

When merging with it he became extremely vulnerable, meaning he had to basically lock himself in a vault with additional guards placed outside to protect him in case anyone got onboard the ship. He also had a lot of automated defenses that he could remotely control, but the Borg technique was not something that could be flipped on and off rapidly, for it involved mentally linking with the custom-made computer system of the Astromech and extending your Essence out into it. When that happened, it ceased to be a computer and became part of your body. Technology and biology bound together by Essence and allowing Paul’s Core to inhabit both.

It took time to extend himself outward, but even more to withdraw. Expanding your capabilities was easier than giving them up, and every time Paul came out of the melding he felt greatly diminished, but he eventually reset himself and the more he melded with a particular Astromech the easier it became, for his Core somehow made adjustments to it that couldn’t entirely be explained by physics, as well as leaving traces of his Essence behind that were reluctant to fade quickly.

As such, each Borg’s Astromech was a personal one, and Paul used the small one onboard Rubi when he needed the extra brain power for processing data or to just practice his Borg skill. In the beginning he had only been able to meld with a palm-sized device, but had worked his way up to the monstrosity that was the Excalibur within the Excalibur, and it allowed him to control massive fleets all by himself and plan out detailed blueprints for experimental technology in remarkably fast time. The Astromech was the Archon’s fix for the cranial limitations they encountered as their psionic tissues peaked out, and the Lachka ‘tissue’ that the Astromech had made Paul stronger than an Oso’lon, but he was still vulnerable to a skilled assassin.

That was because when melded with the Astromech he couldn’t leave the interface node without it killing him. His Core, however it managed it, spread out into both the technological and the biological, and pulling them apart before a withdraw could happen…well, it had never been tested, but all the Archons that had achieved Borg level knew it would be bad, perhaps fatal, so they had to do a ‘power down’ sequence that took a lot of time and left them vulnerable during it, for they couldn’t operate the ship while scaling down.

But in naval warfare, being inside the heart of your command ship was about the safest place you could get, and the Borg vessels had almost no crew at all. Paul could operate his all by himself if needed, but he kept a good detail of guards onboard at the minimum to protect him when he interfaced with the node, though he hadn’t needed to use Excalibur in a long time, for it was built for massive fleet combat that was rare these days.

Borg-level Archons were optional, as were Saiyans, who could not become Borg because of all the downtime within the node. Their bodies wouldn’t handle it, which was why Paul had only achieved Super Saiyan level 1 after it had been refined so much that he could turn it on and off at will…mostly. The base Saiyan transformation didn’t have to be as extreme as it once was, but still, when inside the Borg node, Paul’s body would vibrate with small muscle contractions to feed the itch that the inactivity created in him, but the mild muscle activity was enough. The higher level Saiyans, however, could not stay still for hours on end and Paul knew he couldn’t go there. Not without giving up his naval endurance for the grandiose battles that went on for days straight.

So he had only stuck his toe in the Saiyan branch, as far as he could without losing anything else. When needed he could go Super Saiyan and get a speed burst, but the higher level transformations require too much of a base alteration. That’s why Saiyan was optional beyond Goku level, which was when the Archons reached their peak regarding cellular density of their psionic tissue. That’s when they were considered to be ‘mature’ Archons and they went into intense training to open up their Essence vision.

Not all could, because before you made that first breakthrough you couldn’t sense or control your Essence. It was like it didn’t even exist. But Master Trainer Wilson had found a way to provoke the breakthrough for many Archons, though each one took on a slightly different route that Wilson personally oversaw. Once that breakthrough was made, if it was made, you became a Neo and opened up a whole new world of skills. Paul was currently a Neo 4311, with there being no current limit on levels like the previous ones had. The highest Neo at the moment was Greg, at level 4482, and new level testing had to be devised as he continued to progress onward, like it had always been for the trailblazers.

To become a Borg you had to be a Neo first, and the melding technique didn’t always manifest itself in a predictable manner, but on the rankings you had to have the rudimentary ability to achieve Neo 3682, which was why so few Archons had achieved it.

So beyond Goku there was the Essence skills of the Neo level with a Borg branch off. Saiyan ran parallel to it, and there were many Saiyans that had not been able to break through to their Essence skills, at least not yet. Some didn’t care to, focusing on increasing their rank amongst the Saiyans, while still there were other Archons that never went beyond Goku level…but rather abandoned their advancement in order to pick up specializations.

Specializations were certain fields of work. Archons had to be good in everything, and these were up through Goku level, but after they reached ‘maturity’ some said that was good enough and decided to focus on certain areas only while maintaining their skills in others. The current specializations were Brawler, Jedi, Rambler, Beerus, Inquisitor, Vanguard, Architect, and Commodore, but each Archon could basically detail their own mission parameters after reaching Goku level and not all fit into a predefined niche.

Paul was an Archon that refused to specialize and kept advancing his skills in all areas, but he didn’t begrudge those that wanted to focus their attention in one or more specialties. There were enough Archons now that having specialists actually enhanced them all, but there always needed to be a foundational group that could do everything at an elite level, and that was the niche that Paul fit into.

Others would say he was a Commodore, focusing on naval and other duties that put him as the organizer coordinating things from afar, but one look at his test marks said otherwise. He kept up his levels in all disciplines while somehow finding time to add more…and the fact that he only slept once every 5 days, and then for only a few hours after intense workout, gave him pretty much an open ended schedule that he had mastered long ago to give him the flexibility needed for these spontaneous missions, for an Archon trained not to just train, but to act when the need arose, whether it be combat, troubleshooting, or probing yet another mystery of the universe.

And this one, in the grand scheme of things, was a big one that Paul wouldn’t completely figure out for a very long time.

4

March 13, 128440

Vilchad System (Jumanji Kingdom)

Twer

“Hello, trailblazer,” the Hjar’at said as Paul flew down out of the sky and landed on the grassy plain. “What do you require of me?”

“Information,” Paul said, wearing his armor in jewelry mode and having it covering both his forearms in gleaming white/chrome metal. “Something that must be kept between us.”

“As you wish,” Virokor said as the old Hjar’at continued to walk along a trail with Paul keeping pace beside him at a hop/walk to match the quadruped. The former V’kit’no’sat commander who had led the last war against Star Force had, after finishing the defeat of their rimward enemies, transferred along with a sizeable contingent of Hjar’at to Star Force while the rest of their race went to war with the Hadarak. Virokor had made that choice for several reasons, one being the lure of combat in the Rim that didn’t involve near suicide missions and offered far more ground combat that the mostly naval battles in the Inner Core.

Another reason was distaste and distrust of Itaru, even after Mak’to’ran took full control. Others just wanted a change and Virokor’s transfer was their excuse to make the transition, but the primary reason was the debt Virokor felt he owed Star Force for their revealing the existence of the Zak’de’ron and the shame he’d felt at foolishly trying to destroy their rimward brothers. Virokor and the other Hjar’at were now part of Star Force’s Knight race, but this 2 million year old Elder was the most ancient individual within Star Force and he came with a wealth of knowledge about the V’kit’no’sat that did not appear in the pyramid database.

“What do you want to know?” Virokor asked.

“We have discovered something disturbing and have been searching our records for similar occurrences. We have found none within Star Force, but there are two possibilities in V’kit’no’sat territory. Berto’dor and Scarret.”

“Both are Hjar’at worlds. What specifically did you find there?”

“Evidence of ancient cataclysm. As if giant claw marks were cut across the surface of the planet.”

“Many V’kit’no’sat worlds bore the mark of Hadarak damage. We have tried to erase most of it.”

“I am not talking of Hadarak damage. I fear it is evidence of something worse.”

Virokor stopped and turned his large head until it was two meters away from Paul’s seemingly small body.

“What have you found?”

“What do you know of Essence?”

“Only that it is something Archons hold tightly to and will not discuss with me.”

Paul reached out his hand and levitated a rock up off the ground and held the palm-sized stone steady between them. “How am I doing this?”

Virokor hesitated, activating his Pefbar to confirm there were no Lachka tendrils involved.

“Some type of invisible shield matrix?”

“Invisible is correct, but it’s not a shield. It’s Essence. You can’t track it unless you can feel Essence, and few can. Only one other race in the galaxy has been known to have this ability, and since it can’t be detected it’s a close secret that we intend to keep that way.”

“What other race?”

“The Knights of Quenar can use Essence, we think, but they’re not exactly talkative about these things.”

“Quenar,” Virokor said, a mix of curiosity and disgust in his voice.

“Life creates Essence. All life. You have Essence binding your Core to your body. If your Essence becomes depleted you die, but you do not know how to use it so it does not become depleted except in times of extreme stress. Some people die even though others live with identical injuries, and those people die because their Essence was diminished. This is why regenerators cannot revive all those who are recently dead. When the Core leaves, the body becomes a simple machine. And a Core cannot inhabit a body without Essence.”

“And you are using this Essence to lift the stone?”

“I am. It is like a Lachka tendril and extending out from me, at some effort, but what Essence I lose I will regenerate with rest. I can do a great many things with it. Things I will not reveal. But let me be clear that Essence is an order of power higher than the V’kit’no’sat have ever achieved. Perhaps higher than the Zak’de’ron. And the Hadarak fear it.”

Virokor flinched. “I did not believe the Hadarak fear anything. Did the Uriti tell you this?”

“Yes, and they nearly killed an Archon who used their Essence within proximity of one. We had to use the override to stop the attack. It seems they are hard wired to purge any Essence use. Passive Essence is immaterial. All living beings, including the Hadarak and Uriti have it, but the active use of it, which we call a ‘Rush,’ is like lighting a flare that attracts them into a rage. Ours is so small it got their attention more than enraging them, but we learned not to light even a spark in a system with them.”

“Very interesting. I thank you for sharing it with me, but what does this have to do with planetary damage?”

“The Uriti call the Essence use the ‘glowing ones.’ They say they cannot defeat the glowing ones. They are to slow them down, dying in the process, but they insisted they could not win. And we just found an Essence residue in one of those planetary claw marks.”

That sent a shiver down Virokor’s spine, but at the same time it explained a great deal.

“Their patrols and their ignoring the V’kit’no’sat are now laid bare. So there truly is an enemy that supersedes them? That is both encouraging and frightening. And only one who can use Essence can see it?”

“Yes, though it seems the Hadarak have been programmed to sense it. Have you ever encountered anything that might be responsible for this? Something the size of a Hadarak?”

Virokor huffed as he recalled distant memories. “Nothing that strong, but I remember that there were once other races that roamed the stars. They could not be influenced by Ikrid, and they interfered with transit as well as eating chunks of planets. A few still remained when I was hatched. The V’kit’no’sat were tasked with hunting them down and destroying any that crossed into our spacelanes. I do not think any have been seen since.”

“Why is that not in the database?”

“It wasn’t a secret. They were simply vermin that had to be eradicated…or so we thought back then,” he added, now having rethought many such assumptions after joining Star Force. “Their only effective attack was collision, but they were no threat to our warships. Were these claw marks you speak of smooth or ridged?”

“They are so old it is hard to tell, but I would guess smooth.”

“The feeding of planets by these beasts made ridges when they chose to skim the surface. That much I remember. They would push, collect, digest, then push again and not always in the same direction.”

“Nothing else of that size?”

“Not that I am aware of, and those older than me I would not trust with this knowledge. I am grateful you have entrusted me with it.”

“I haven’t told you everything,” Paul said grimly. “Essence disappears when a Core does. It cannot linger for long without the Core and seems to be sucked down the same ‘hole’ the Core goes through afterwards, metaphorically speaking. The Essence we found may be over a million years old, which is impossible based on what we knew of Essence. There was also a repository of it, beyond our understanding, and when one picks up traces of Essence from someone who has recently died, sometimes memories come with it. There were memories in this ancient Essence, and they involved a harvest of the planet. The rock, water, and people all scooped up and devoured with a giant tool of some sort. And the Essence of the people drained from them in a way we do not understand.”

“A Hadarak-sized creature that feeds on Essence?” Virokor asked. “And this Essence allows you to do combat oriented things?”

“Very much so.”

“Things that could kill a Hadarak?”

“It’s hard to say for a being of that size, but I would guess yes, and I would even go as far to say that they might have abilities that we haven’t even discovered yet. If the Uriti fear them so, I would expect them to be able to slaughter the Hadarak…and if they can harvest their Essence, we’re looking at a nightmare situation. Are you familiar with Materia weaponry?”

“You used one during the Dkan mission that I led. It pulled their ships together into a ball with no gravity or grapple fields detected.”

“Materia weapons are charged with Essence that Archons slowly fill them with. It takes a long time, but for a few select uses it gives us a huge advantage. Now imagine a Hadarak that can do the same with its own Essence, or by sucking up the Essence of others to use as fuel for its weaponry.”

Virokor stared at the rock Paul was continuing to levitate as his mind began to imagine the horrors of a type of warfare that could not be seen or defended against. At least the V’kit’no’sat knew how to kill Hadarak, as difficult as it was, but to fight an enemy with invisible weapons…

“Can it bypass all shields and armor?”

“Only Essence-laced technology can prevent it.”

“A Hadarak with a new type of psionics…and the Hadarak are meant to fight them, knowing they’ll lose, but delaying them from what? What are the Hadarak protecting?”

“My more immediate question is where are these things? I know the galaxy is vast, but if they’re scooping chunks out of planets that’s not going to go unnoticed. If our guess is correct, and it may be way off, there was one roaming the Chexva Kingdom around a million years ago. Did you hear nothing of this at the time?”

“We did not explore beyond our borders, but if the planets you mentioned were attacked in such a manner, then they are either far older or we should have noticed something of that size within our dominion. Would examining the site be of use to you?”

“The Essence we found was luck. The container is almost invisible to us, and the other bits of Essence are at the bottom of a mostly uninhabited ocean. If a living being brushes near them, their Core will attract the Essence and it will meld with them. So on inhabited worlds the traces would have been absorbed by the denizens long ago.”

“Can we feel this happen?”

Paul dropped the stone to the ground, then looked at Virokor silently for a few seconds. “Well?”

“I feel nothing.”

“Then no, you can’t. I just threw some of my Essence on you. You’re absorbing it,” Paul said, telepathically transmitting his sense of it so the Hjar’at could see through his ‘eyes’ what was happening. “It still has my pattern to it, and it’s altering yours with the contact, but since my Core is no longer connected to it yours will win out eventually and it will become assimilated.”

“You can give other Archons a power boost in this way?”

“Yes, when needed. We can also use it to heal in a way the regenerator cannot…and then some,” Paul said, kneeling down in the grass and grabbing a clump of it, but not pulling it out of the ground. Virokor watched closely with his own eyes and Pefbar now that Paul cut the telepathic feed, and almost magically the grass grew taller and thicker at a rate only a regenerator could have managed.

It was three times as tall by the time Paul finished, then he released it to sway gently in the wind above all the rest.

“How did you add mass?”

“I didn’t. It was pulled from the air and ground. My Essence allowed me to accelerate the growth, and in a similar way I can help others heal injuries lightning fast, so long as necessary mass is available.”

“Did you also use Haemra?”

“No, this was all Essence, and I don’t have much direction with it. I just deliver the Essence and it does the work on its own.”

“Residual damage?”

“It leaves you stronger than before, unlike a regenerator.”

“Amazing. And in theory this super Hadarak could do the same?”

“Honestly I hadn’t considered that.”

“Could this be a seeder of planets?”

“If there’s a way to attract a Core into a new body, I don’t know what it is, but we’re in over our heads here so I’m not ruling anything out. But something that harvests planets doesn’t strike me as the builder type.”

“All possibilities need to be explored, but your initial worry concerns me as well. Where are these beasts? Or are we talking of a single one?”

“The Uriti referred to them as plural, but it also seemed to include anyone who learns to use Essence. I think it could be standing orders to destroy anything that delves into that combat realm, because they probably have no defense against it. Well, no effective defense. If they can see them and slow them down, I doubt they’re totally helpless.”

“Does Essence allow you to survive without food for extended periods of time?”

“It will allow you to cling to a body that should be dead for longer, but it doesn’t cheat physics as far as the body is concerned. You still need fuel.”

“So what is this super Hadarak eating in present times?”

“I don’t know. We’ve just tripped into a massive mystery and I’m trying to piece together as much as I can. I’m still young compared to you, so I wanted to see if I could glean anything from your experience and wisdom. These spacefaring beasts are one such thing.”

“Have you not encountered any others in the Rim?”

“No, we haven’t. And my gut says they’re local to the Core.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps the Vexifad enslaved them into their biological warships?”

Paul frowned darkly. “If that’s the case we’re going to have another war to fight.”

“I cite it as a possibility, because my sense was these beasts were quite numerous in ancient times, and their lack in the Rim is disturbing. Could this super Hadarak be feeding on them?”

“Ugh,” Paul groaned. “I guess it could be. We’ve got so little data that it’s just guesswork at this point. We don’t even know what it looks like, just that it’s big.”

“Your memories didn’t see it?”

“No, just the tsunami of rock and water when the surface was gouged out.”

“Have you discussed this with the Zak’de’ron?”

“No and I don’t plan to. We haven’t had reason to talk to them in a long time and they don’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.”

“But you could if you wanted?”

“I know how to get a message to them through their servant races, and if they intended to play nice they’d have established diplomatic contact by now. I think they’re just waiting to find an opportunity to do something clever. I don’t think they’ll hit us with a brute force attack until they have an advantage.”

“I agree. Do not underestimate their patience.”

“I’m not. But if we’re got some super Hadarak out there lurking to strike, I’m not sure if the Uriti can defeat it.”

“Can you not craft large materia weapons?”

“We have to fill them from our own bodies, and we’re a lot smaller than you. But even if Hjar’at had Essence skills, filling a weapon to take down a small planet would take forever.”

“But it’s not impossible?”

“Not impossible, just very hard and time consuming to do. Especially if we don’t know for sure if the target can block it.”

“Essence allows defense as well?”

“Somewhat. It may be that we’re not advanced enough yet to fully understand our capabilities.”

“Is it possible to teach other races this ability?”

“Not all Archons can do it, and not because we hold it back from them. Making the first transition to gaining the ability to even feel it in the smallest amount is a significant barrier. Once you can see it you have something to work with, even if it’s tiny. To everyone else it appears not to exist. We have to go through some crazy training to just get to that point, and a lot fail for reasons we don’t understand.”

“When you learn more, do you plan to keep it to Archons or expand to the Knight races?”

“We’re keeping this one close for now, but there are a handful of individuals that are not Human that we’ve managed to get over the hump. Not enough to do the amount of materia charging that you’re inferring.”

“Do you have any idea how to fight this super Hadarak?”

“Hard to say. I have Essence skills and a body. You can still kill my body the usual ways. Why this is so dangerous to the Hadarak may be that it can affect them in a way that bypasses their armor. Long range Lachka effect maybe, but the memories suggested physical claws ripping into the planet and not an Essence effect.”

“If they are harvesting Essence, they would not want to waste it in the process.”

“Point.”

“And if it is as rare as you suggest, I would expect they would hoard Essence…and in that may be the key to the Hadarak. They are so large that it would take a huge expenditure to kill. The super Hadarak would deplenish its stores as more Hadarak arrive to oppose it, even if it could siphon Essence off the dead ones. Am I right in assuming passive Essence is less than Rush Essence?”

“It works like your spit, if that helps.”

Virokor worked his mouth around a bit, then sent a wad of saliva out into the grass, after which his glands started to replace what his mouth lost. “So it would take more Essence to kill a Hadarak than it would gain harvesting the corpse, assuming it took Essence to make the kill.”

“We’re branching out heavily into a weak theory, but I can’t argue that analysis.”

“Can Essence work as a cloaking device?”

Paul cringed. “I don’t know. We’ve been able to disrupt light, but hiding entirely…I just don’t know.”

“Gravity silhouette cannot be hidden,” Virokor declared. “We need to set up a detection net outside inhabited systems and find this beast before it finds us.”

“That will not be a quick process, and if it can hibernate then we’re not going to find it.”

“We must begin to prepare regardless. If the Hadarak fear it, then it may be able to defeat the Uriti as well. We must maintain dominance, or all you have built could crumble.”

“Are you volunteering to help?”

“I would be honored if you allowed me to explore this threat and potential countermeasures.”

Paul smiled. “I thought you might. I don’t think there will be anything to find on Berto’dor and Scarret, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t look.”

“Only those two?”

“Yes, and they’re both Hjar’at. Is there a reason for that?”

“We took the most badly damaged worlds with potential and made them our own as an act of vengeance against the attackers. I will arrange for as in depth a search as you require.”

“Without telling them why we’re there?”

“They will not refuse me. They dare not.”

“Good. How soon can you leave?”

5

March 17, 128440

Megatron 429 System (Mekora Kingdom)

Inner Zone

Kara-317 sat attached to a bulkhead with her armored legs hanging off the metallic/stone beam as a swarm of Ghostblade techs worked to add more pieces to the warehouse station they were constructing. She wasn’t helping, just sitting and starring into the dark void of the black hole they were orbiting as she pondered the significance of what Paul had found. Beside her, off in the distance, there were glowing lines reaching down into the blackness and pulling material up and into the nearby Ghostblade Star Forges, and above them in higher orbits was the mass of traffic passing through the system.

This low of orbit was banned from traffic, for they were sitting well within the murky zone where sensor signals had to fight the intense gravity to make their way out and back to the ships sending them. Those that did make it got bent and distorted, making positioning hard to fathom and even the light here was messed up. The stars were out of place and skewed into new positions as the black hole bent their visible trajectories. Even the glowing straws were bent, though in reality the shield columns were perfectly straight.

The construction site was encased in an IDF field so the workers and Kara didn’t have to fight the gravity, but the engines on the warehouse superstructure constantly did, for they were not in orbit. Had they been, they would have been lapping the black hole rapidly in order to keep from getting sucked in, but thanks to anti-grav technology the strength of the black hole made their engines exponentially stronger and sitting in this position was rather easy from a technological standpoint…unless you had a breakdown or ran out of fuel, then you were all going to die quite fast.

Kara wouldn’t, for her armor allowed her to fly using her own anti-grav and so did those of the workers in suits out assisting the small assembly drones being flown by nearby remote pilots. The warehouse/ship was being constructed to store more of the valuable materials that Ghostblade was getting out of the black hole, some of which the galaxy did not even know existed. There was some truly rare stuff down there that Star Force had come across accidentally and now they were sifting for it on purpose. Ghostblade more than anyone else, for they were well suited to roaming the black holes within Star Force’s domain and harvesting what they could from them, as well as hitting various planets not yet inhabited across the galaxy.

Kara was once again in command of her Clan, now that she’d figured out how to shut down the remote control of her Vorch’nas, but the interface with her genetic code could not be undone. Even the Zak’de’ron probably couldn’t undo it, based on what she’d learned over the years. It seemed it had been designed to be permanent, underscoring that the Dragons thought of the Zen’zat as slaves that didn’t need a choice. The genetic safeguards also meant Kara couldn’t become a Saiyan, for the Vorch’nas would just reset her genetic code to what it originally was. Essence skills were available to her, and she held out some hope for one day using them to fix her sabotaged genetics, but she’d made her peace with the Vorch’nas now that it no longer obeyed the Zak’de’ron.

It was part of her now, stretching from the back of her right hand all the way up her arm to her shoulder, though at the moment the white armor was fully deployed to protect her from the vacuum. She could use her shields and free float in space with the armor retracted, but there was no point to risk it. Her Vorch’nas felt like a second skin now, and since she could reprogram it as she liked, it was now her Vorch’nas, and for better or worse she was stuck with it.

It was a level 12, the most advanced version possible, and Kara had explored every bit of it, every function, every setting. She probably knew more about it now than most of the Zak’de’ron did, and with her help Star Force had learned everything they could about Dragon technology. Even the genetic coding had been broken, the secrets of the alternate code revealed, but knowing how the Zak’de’ron had done it did not mean Star Force could undo it. What it did mean was that there were no longer any part of Zen’zat coding unknown to Star Force. The tier 4 psionics had all been discovered and unlocked, plus the most important piece of coding possible, loosely referred to as the tier 5 psionic.

But it wasn’t a psionic, it was a transformation mechanism designed to activate when all the psionics had been unlocked, and fortunately Star Force had discovered it before anyone had achieved that. The last of the 12 tier 4s had to be activated genetically, for no one had been able to unlock the Alchemy psionic via dream state. The knowledge to do that had been the same knowledge needed to identify the tier 5 psionic that would turn a Zen’zat into a Zak’de’ron.

That discovery had shocked everyone, but from their point of view it made sense. Any individual so extraordinarily skilled to unlock all the psionics naturally…which seemed like an impossibility…the Zak’de’ron would wish to have added to their race. Then again, it might also be a hidden fallback in case they were all wiped out. Someday, far in the future when the V’kit’no’sat advanced further, maybe one would have found all the psionics, at which point they would begin to change races and slowly become a Zak’de’ron. How it would happen wasn’t totally known, but it was thought that some sort of chrysalis would be formed after the individual escaped to a place of safety.

Star Force had, once realizing this, begun the process of eradicating that fifth psionic from the Human genome as well as informing Mak’to’ran so he would allow Star Force to cleanse the Zen’zat of it as well. Davis had not chosen to give the V’kit’no’sat the genetic knowledge necessary to do it themselves, and in a large part due to Kara’s Vorch’nas, Star Force had more knowledge of the Zak’de’ron technology than Mak’to’ran did.

58,399 years ago the Zak’de’ron had found her and forced a conversation. Fortunately at that point she had already locked out their possible override of the device, and while they did not try to fight and subdue her, she knew they were not happy. To them, she was now beyond their control, but they weren’t ready to pick a fight with Star Force so they had grudgingly allowed it, but since then they had not attempted to contact her. The few discussions they had with Star Force they sent through the Voku, and none in recent history. They were quiet, very quiet, and Kara knew that was bad. They were not cohabitating the galaxy, and in time she knew they’d attack Star Force. How was the question, but she knew they hadn’t given up and that they had at least one Uriti. If they wanted to make nice they would have given it back to Star Force, but to this day it was missing in the galaxy, hidden so well that neither Star Force nor the Knights of Quenar could find it, and Kara knew that wasn’t an accident.

So now her Clan was tasked with preparing for the Zak’de’ron and whatever avenue they would use to strike at Star Force. Ghostblade wasn’t hiding, but they still didn’t own any planets. Everything they had was mobile, and far more so than Canderous. Ghostblade was based on speed, not bulk, and when they did have large constructs like these Star Forges, they had to add a lot more engine power, making them smaller than what Canderous used, and far smaller than the permanent Star Forges in other locations.

This black hole had none, though, except the Ghost Blade mobile ones. Right now Kara had 138 of them sucking material out of it, and one of the rarified materials was what they used to build Materia weapons. It had the unique property of maintaining Essence longer than any other material…far longer, allowing it to exist for months before even starting to disappear. All Materia weapons had casings made of the Magicite, then when that material was filled with a special alteration of Essence that made it reflective to other Essence, you then had a bottle to store it in, for Essence only disappeared when it could expand out through other material, as if seeking its host body and thinning when not finding it.

Essence in a vacuum disappeared almost instantaneously. Kara could extend hers out, but it had to have a conduit back to her Core in order to be viable. If she tried to throw Essence across to one of the Ghostblade workers, some of it would disappear before it hit them, and if the distance was far enough it would disappear entirely. On a planet pushing it through atmosphere made it last minutes, and liquids and solids lasted longer, but nothing could permanently hold it, which was why what Paul had found was so confounding. Even the Magicite had to be periodically recharged, and if it got too low the Essence contained within the bottle would breach and leach out to the surrounding environment.

But something that could hold Essence for over a million years? That was beyond Kara’s understanding, but if black holes contained Magicite, then perhaps there were more secrets in there that had an effect on Essence, which made her searches of them all that more important, but Magicite wasn’t the only thing that had been found.

While Solari appeared to be created within dense gravity wells, there were other things that survived them. Magicite’s origin was unknown, but black holes also served as trash dumps, collecting everything around them and some things actually survived the crushing pressure. Things that Star Force had never even thought about making on their own, but apparently some other race in the distant past did. Not in the form of technology, for nothing would survive that galactic trash compactor, but as far as base atoms and molecules were concerned, there was quite a few surprises down there.

But the sight of it, that pure blackness, made it one of Kara’s favorite places to think. It seemed too black, and she knew that was because there was literally nothing coming out of it. When you typically slept in the dark, with your eyes closed, there was still radiation getting to them. Sometimes people would see spots from more intense radiation bursts, but here there was literally nothing coming out of the black hole, making it seem like smooth blackness that was almost hypnotic to look at with the kaleidoscope of twisted lights bracketing it.

Her eyes saw nothing down there, and her Pefbar couldn’t reach, so it was if she was looking into infinity save for the tiny spec of ‘red’ far below, though it wasn’t actually a color.

That spec was actually Buu Zero, one of the original Uriti, and the most flexible of them all. He was shaped like a sphere, but could compress and twist into other shapes. His Yeg’gor armor was weaker than others, but not by much, and the more time they spent in black holes or other extreme gravity wells, the stronger it became through adaptation. Buu didn’t lose flexibility in the exchange, and thankfully that allowed Kara to use him to help her fish for valuable materials too deep for the Star Forges’ straws to reach.

She couldn’t see him with her eyes, but he had such a huge Essence presence that she could feel him. Her Essence ‘sight’ didn’t follow any known physics, for she wasn’t brushing him with her Essence or vice versa, but large amounts of Essence were detectable at very long range by those with the ‘eyes’ to see it. So down in that sea of blackness a tiny, tiny red spec slowly moved back towards the surface with another ‘catch’ carried within a cavity that Buu had created on its surface and covered over, forming an impromptu cargo hold.

Kara watched as his dot grew larger and larger, then eventually she started to see with her real eyes a disruption in the blackness. Eventually it became a shape, but it was heavily red shifted and required her helmet to make the adjustment. The image of the Uriti coming up to one of the warehouses near the Star Forges never fully smoothed out, for the gravity was dragging the light as it bounced off it, which wasn’t much to begin with since there was no star nearby.

The Uriti eventually passed within the IDF field of the warehouse and the cameras there were able to finally see a clear picture, but Kara could not from her position. She could see the spew of pressurized material coming out of the pouch as Buu opened it up a bit and a large net-shield shield array caught it. The Uriti unloaded over the next half hour, then began moving back down into the black hole in search of more compounds useful to Star Force.

The Uriti could sense gravity in a very fine sense, so the density of various materials stood out, allowing them a little ranged radar, but most of Buu’s hunting involved feeling the atoms and molecules on its surface and in essence ‘breathing’ them in to figure out what they were. When he found a concentration he collected it by absorbing it if it was small, but if it was large he just took a huge bite out of the surrounding area and carried it back up here to blow out.

The small Buu’s weren’t well suited for this yet, and only Buu Zero was truly effective. The other Uriti could absorb material, but they couldn’t scoop it out, which was why Kara took up as much of Buu Zero’s time as she could get. The others would absorb and then secrete the various materials, giving her access to a lot of very important material, but not as much as a properly set up Star Forge could if the material was at the proper depth. It was the deep deposits that the Uriti needed to reach for them, and she wondered if the Zak’de’ron weren’t using theirs for mining as well.

But the biggest question of all on her mind, and the reason she was taking this time out to think about it, was these ‘Super Hadarak’ that could mine Essence…or so Paul thought. How they could have gone unnoticed all this time was troubling, and she wondered if the Hadarak hadn’t managed to kill them and they were all gone now. That was probably wishful thinking, and as much as Kara was worried about this like the others, she knew the trailblazers would deal with this. Her mission was to deal with the Zak’de’ron, figure out what they were doing and find a way to stop it before they did. Ghostblade was now the tip of the spear in that regard, while others focused on the Chixzon and pushing out into the frontier.

Star Force was so big it had a bazillion things on its plate, but the Zak’de’ron were the one that worried Kara the most. And with this new revelation of Super Hadarak, it underscored how much of the galaxy they still did not know about, and Kara was very concerned that the Zak’de’ron might know something about this, or Essence for that matter. There was nothing in her Vorch’nas to suggest that, but they only gave her the information they wanted, and the Knights of Quenar had been very secretive about their Essence knowledge. If the Zak’de’ron also had it, it wasn’t something they would likely reveal.

It was literally the magic of the galaxy, and if a type of Hadarak, or something like it, could not only use it, but harvest it, then maybe the Zak’de’ron had been grooming the V’kit’no’sat for more than just the war in the galactic Core. Maybe they had even found and destroyed one of these new monsters long ago…or maybe they were completely clueless as well and Star Force had found something new to them as well.

Regardless, there was a lot to think about and too few facts to work with. Hopefully either Paul or Dina’s research team would find out more. Until then she had some thinking to do, and one thing she’d already figure out was that at least the Neos would be able to see these things coming, when technology wouldn’t, for Kara had a deep suspicion that if these things were still out there, they were very good at hiding. Maybe cloaking good.

Hopefully there was no way to cloak an Essence signature, but who knew? Kara wasn’t sure of anything since she’d gotten Paul’s message. And the thought of Essence harvesting still chilled her to the bone despite her armor’s ample heating units.

6

March 19, 128440

Hlek System (Dengor Region, V’kit’no’sat domain)

Larsu

Mon’ren piloted the small Bo’ja ship down through the sea of craft clogging Larsu’s skies. Orbit wasn’t much better, and the traffic control grids were virtually non-existent, but this wasn’t his first trip in and out of the world. Mon’ren was been in the service of the Zak’de’ron for over 60,000 years and was just returning from another of the missions they’d tasked for him and a small team of other Bo’ja, all of which had formerly been Voku, but that fact had ceased to be the moment they entered Zak’de’ron service.

His body looked like a Voku, deep black skin, biped, with a trio of tiny eyes held behind an artificial visor that appeared as a red crystal, but Mon’ren and the others were far more advanced than their former race, who also served the ‘Elders’ without knowing who and what they truly were.

The Bo’ja knew, and with that trust bestowed upon them also came the realization that they could never return to the Voku. Their elevation came at a price of exclusivity, and it was a decision that none of them regretted. The work of the Zak’de’ron was of the highest order, and Mon’ren had long since stopped thinking of it as an honor, but rather now it was his everyday purpose, as had been the capture mission he’d just completed.

The pair of Dengari were currently stored in stasis in the rear cargo hold of the ship, which on the outside looked like a native vessel of this world, made by the Chestarimo, but that was just camouflage. Inside there was more advanced technology that allowed the Bo’ja to roam the galaxy quietly, moving through the cracks of commerce and geography to carry out their missions inside either V’kit’no’sat or Star Force domain without either one knowing about it. Both were enemies of the Zak’de’ron, but the Bo’ja knew the time to move against them was not close, and these missions were laying the groundwork for the new order to come. It would do no good to defeat the current rulers of the galaxy if one did not have something to replace them with, and as far as Mon’ren could tell, the Zak’de’ron’s forces, while ample, were not up to the task of galactic dominance.

What these two prisoners had to do with it he didn’t know, nor did he need to. His mission had been to locate and quietly retrieve them, and once they got back to the Bo’ja colony in Larsu they’d be handing them over to others who would deal with them as the Zak’de’ron directed, though he was pretty sure none of the Elders were on the planet.

Or to be more exact, within the planet, for as Mon’ren drew his ship down to a surface city he approached not a hangar, but a cleverly hidden access port that would allow his vessel to move more than 400 miles underground and down into the molten layers of the planet where the natives could not go or even look, giving the Bo’ja a planet of their own with the perfect cover above them.

The entrance shaft would only open once the hangar was sealed, and then a holographic image of their ship would remain on the deck while the real ship traveled below, just in case some interloper got into the hangar or used a flying probe to catch a peak at what was inside. It was unlikely to occur, given the fact that the Bo’ja operated the hangar and had good security at the site, but a extra measure was a small price to pay for their anonymity, not to mention it had been done on the order of the Zak’de’ron that had created this colony.

But now there were only Bo’ja here, upwards of 12 million, and every one of them had originally been a Voku birthed in cloning chambers, though their genetic codes were not identical. They were all tweaked in the manner the Zak’de’ron had instructed them, but now Mon’ren’s genetics had been altered first when he became a Bo’ja and then multiples times afterward as his new race was continually redefined and modified as they proved themselves.

He now possessed 9 psionics…Ikrid, Lachka, Pefbar, Sesspik, Fornax, Rensiek, Ensek, Nakane, and Pa’no’semak…and each one of them put him in an altogether different league than the Voku. The power that had been entrusted to him could not be passed on to another, but that wasn’t an issue for the Bo’ja because they could not reproduce and had no instinctive drive to do so, as other races did. Nor could they leave Zak’de’ron service, not that any of them ever would want to. They’d been elevated so far, now none wished to return to what they once had been, for being Voku again would be virtually unbearable.

When Mon’ren finally landed their ship in the huge subterranean hangar filled with hundreds of vessels, his teammates took the prisoners out before he had finished powering down the vessel. He exited last, and seeing how they were already well ahead of him and capable of finishing the handover themselves, he headed off in a different direction, eventually finding his way to the training grounds where he immediately jumped in with the Bo’ja doing various drills, course runs, and other training designed to increase their skill and abilities.

When finished with that some 39 hours later, he would hibernate in a sleep pod for another 12, then be good to go for the next 238 hours. That was a typical Bo’ja day, as opposed to the 79 hours Voku operated off of, and it was yet another tangible difference between their races…yet his could not exist without theirs, for each Bo’ja had to prove themselves worthy first as a Voku, for the Zak’de’ron had forbid Bo’ja birthing chambers.

That said, it wasn’t like the Zak’de’ron ran their daily lives. They wouldn’t be useful servants if their masters had to be watching over them day in and day out. The Bo’ja operated out of general parameters set for them, but beyond that they were on their own out here, at least as far as this colony was concerned. He’d first become a Bo’ja onboard a Zak’de’ron Hive ship where there were many different servant races, but since then he had never encountered another except on special missions, and he knew part of the reason for that was security.

If Mon’ren was ever taken captive, his neural implants would make his memories unrecoverable and so long as he didn’t consciously betray the Zak’de’ron only knowledge of the Bo’ja would be compromised. But if the various servant races worked together, multiple ones could be exposed on a single mission. So far no Bo’ja had ever gone missing, so it was a safe bet the galaxy didn’t even know they existed, and he assumed the same was true of the others, for the Zak’de’ron were extremely wise, cautious, and patient. They knew their time of dominance would return, but it was going to have to be earned and they were going to need the Bo’ja and others to accomplish it.

The betrayal of the V’kit’no’sat would be dealt with, and even though Mon’ren had not lived through it, the memories given to him still burned him up with hatred for those that had betrayed their oaths. They may not have been fully servants, but their duty to the Zak’de’ron had been the same as that of the Bo’ja and they had not only abandoned it, they had betrayed and destroyed all but the last few Zak’de’ron that had been hidden away just in case that holocaust came to pass.

Mon’ren would help them get vengeance and return to their rightful place as the galaxy’s guardians, but it was not that simple. Now there were two powers out there, with Star Force being the other. No information had been given to the Bo’ja concerning them, but they were under orders to avoid and hide from them in such a way that it was clear they were not an ally of the Zak’de’ron. They may not have betrayed his masters the same way the V’kit’no’sat did, but they were now, at the minimum, an impediment to the domination of the Zak’de’ron, and Mon’ren had gone on many scouting missions into Star Force territory to learn more about them, their technology, and most importantly their Uriti…which were fearsome beasts.

The power they contained was greater than that of the Hadarak, whom the Zak’de’ron had sworn to one day eradicate from the galaxy. Yet the Hadarak were masters of their own and the Uriti obeyed Star Force, making them in many ways more dangerous than the V’kit’no’sat, and that danger would have to be dealt with at some point.

Other Bo’ja had been tasked with running simulations against both Star Force, the V’kit’no’sat, and the lesser powers in the galaxy. War games designed to probe for weaknesses and make the Bo’ja familiar with their future opponents before the first combat arose, using testing systems designed by the Zak’de’ron and operated by a few specially trained Bo’ja while the rest of them, Mon’ren included, did their best to beat the scenarios and learn how to defeat their opponents not only in the long run, but to do so as efficiently as possible. Information Mon’ren and others had brought back about Star Force was input into the simulations to make them more accurate as well as allow the Bo’ja to come up with new strategies to test out, but Mon’ren knew from his previous experience as a Voku that when one went to war no one, not even the Zak’de’ron, would know what was going to happen before it actually happened.

And they knew that too, otherwise they would not have the Bo’ja constantly running war games and pulling information runs against low level Star Force personnel whose minds the Bo’ja could invade and then wipe so that they would never know what happened. And from Mon’ren’s work he had personally confirmed what others suspected, in that Star Force had a very strict security mechanism in place that essentially bifurcated their empire between the masses and the elite few who contained their most valuable secrets.

Those the Bo’ja could not risk trying to mind raid, for they were either on Star Force strongholds or were too skilled to grapple with. Only perfect anonymity was acceptable, and if someone put up a fight and realized it after the fact, then the secret of the Bo’ja would be exposed, and that was something that could not be allowed.

So there was a barrier of information beyond which the Bo’ja could not penetrate, but outside of that Star Force was very liberal with information, meaning there was a lot to collect if one was careful about it and didn’t try to pull a download or hack that could be traced. But to try and pierce the elite barrier of security the Bo’ja had to pull memories from support personnel close to those elites and hope to find a few words spoken in confidence or innocuous comments that could be put together like puzzle pieces to figure out what they would not reveal to the public.

The secret of how they managed to reproduce Uriti was something that nobody knew, though a lot of people had their own personal theories. None of them were legit and Mon’ren doubted any of the other Zak’de’ron servant races would be able to find out either, assuming they were also going on information raid missions, because it was as if Star Force had known they would be coming and had sanitized everything that might give them away to those that had the power to read minds.

The list of those that could was extremely short, and even Star Force’s own Protovic couldn’t actually raid a person’s mind, just transmit into it. Those that could typically chose to avoid Star Force, for they would not be allowed to live inside it without precautions, such as a neural inhibitor for temporary visits or genetic deactivation for permanent ones. Star Force wisely only allowed Ikrid-level telepathy for their agents, so anyone who had similar skills naturally steered clear of them or sought to become one of their agents.

That was how they treated the V’kit’no’sat converts, not allowing any civilian ranks with Ikrid whereas the whole of the V’kit’no’sat empire had it. Star Force’s choice to diminish itself save for select branches was a curious one, but Mon’ren thought he understood part of it, for it allowed Star Force to grow to such monstrous size on the backs of the lesser races. The V’kit’no’sat, on the other hand, ignored the lesser races except when they became a nuisance, keeping their empire at a very elite level.

Star Force had their own elite level, but it was segregated within an empire that was very averse to psionics. There was a multitude of evidence for them having experimented with such advancements, but each time they did they turned away from that course and incorporated those individuals or races into the empire in a reduced capacity, such as the Protovic, who had a watered down version of psionics.

The V’kit’no’sat were far older, but Star Force was the more complex and confusing empire. The Bo’ja did not have a handle on how it truly functioned at its core, but they were learning more with every decade that passed. What the Zak’de’ron knew was bound to be far more extensive, but Mon’ren felt they too did not truly understand Star Force, for while they used their V’kit’no’sat legacy to great effect, they were a self-created empire rather than one designed by the Zak’de’ron, so they weren’t always going to do things as expected.

That said, their behavior was very predictable, and deliberately so. Their Director Davis had a unique methodology of diplomacy that didn’t require any actual conversation. He would communicate with other races through consistency of behavior that underscored a system of fairness. That ‘fairness’ was a common language of the galaxy co-equal to mathematics, and so far the Bo’ja had not found even a single instance of the Director deviating from it. Either he held to the principles of fairness out of a misguided morality, or it was a deliberate mechanism to communicate with those he had not even met yet.

Mon’ren believed it to be the latter, for no empire of such scope truly put the well-being of others above its own survival, and he had to give them credit for their form of diplomacy, for it had made them many friends and associates…while simultaneously drawing out their enemies in such a way that they identified themselves freely rather than remaining under the guise of friends that could one day stab you in the back.

Such a shakeout had caused many confrontations and even a few large scale wars, but in the end the result was the same…predictable stability, making the enigmatic Star Force empire more behaviorally well-known than the V’kit’no’sat who were a jumble of cross purposes bound together by the rule of the Era’tran and, more specifically, Mak’to’ran. When he was eliminated the empire would either rally together in a rage of vengeance, or it would crumble in the ashes of internecine, for the unnatural state of quasi-servants with no master could not sustain itself indefinitely.

In that way the V’kit’no’sat were doomed, for they had been designed to serve…or rather serve with the Zak’de’ron. Without them the empire ceased to function as intended, with all the upheavals and civil wars that had occurred since originating from that simple and unfixable flaw. Scouting missions to V’kit’no’sat worlds for information raids were harder to manage, but when successful they showed a myriad of possible vectors for invasion, division, and the sowing of confusion and anarchy. So long as you didn’t stand in the open and challenge them, the V’kit’no’sat were ripe to be picked apart slowly while denying them a visible opponent to strike back at.

Star Force was completely different. They were geared to fight back and dominate in the small skirmishes. The ones involving not planets, nor cities, but individuals here and there. Their entire civilization was based around the individual and they did not believe in sacrifices, so they were geared to protect all individuals, with their specially trained hunters, known as Arc Commandos, seeking out and confronting the ‘picking’ attacks before they could have any measureable effect.

Mon’ren had had to evade an Arc Commando once, when he let the hunter get too close on his trail. The Bo’ja had not been seen nor captured, but the pursuit was there, like a monster gobbling up his trail and ready to pounce on him if he got lazy or delayed. The Arc Commandos were everywhere, and they did not announce their presence either. They were the invisible guardians that the Bo’ja sparred with regularly, though without ever actually meeting face to face.

Both empires were going to be hard to topple, and Mon’ren had faith in the Zak’de’ron to find ways that he and his kin never could, but between the two of them it was general consensus amongst the Bo’ja that it was Star Force that was going to be the harder empire to take down, and he, along with the other Voku, still had some lingering mixed feelings considering that the Voku and Star Force were allies.

If they didn’t come to an agreement with the Zak’de’ron about who had ultimate control over the galaxy, and the Zak’de’ron decided to have them eliminated, then the Bo’ja would fight that war without hesitation…but they would not do so eagerly, for while the V’kit’no’sat had betrayed the Zak’de’ron, Star Force had never been anything but helpful to the Voku, who considered them to be the closest thing to brothers in a galaxy where they had to stand alone to serve the Zak’de’ron.

7

March 21, 128440

Szequat System (Voku territory, Home One Kingdom)

Nergthen

Cal-com, Dafchor of the Voku, was not happy. He wasn’t angry, but as the centuries passed he had begun to feel dissatisfied and suspicious, until now when he was privately questioning the wisdom of the Elders. When he’d first been made the Dafchor of the Voku it had been a great honor and an even greater challenge. The Voku had to safeguard Star Force, then they had to safeguard other servant races of the Elders while they stayed hidden from the galaxy. Then they had to defend themselves from the Skarron Crusade, which they would not have been able to without the direct intervention of the Elders.

It was true that the Li’vorkrachnika had diverted the Crusade with their own invasion, which was what finally ended the threat to the Voku, but the Elders had been there when they most needed them and that had solidified the bond between Cal-com and those he knew to be Zak’de’ron. Ever since he’d been steadfastly loyal and unquestioning of their decisions, but he was not a blind follower who trusted without verification. No, he was one who actually believed in the Elders and had no reason to avert his eyes on subject matter that might challenge his belief…because he actually believed in them. Only someone who suspected a lie would know where not to look for fear of their belief being in jeopardy, but if that was the case then you didn’t truly believe in the first place. Rather, you were a ‘make-believer.’

Cal-com was a true believer. He had seen the work of the Elders. He had seen their wisdom proven over the long haul, showing him things early that he could not have fully understood until later. The power of the Elders was beyond his understanding…but something wasn’t right and he could sense it. He felt it in his heart more than anything, but even the logical part of his mind was now objecting to what the Voku had become.

On the orders of the Elders he had been fortifying Voku territory extensively. They now had stronger defenses in a number of systems than Star Force most likely had, though the extent of his ally’s weaponry wasn’t totally revealed to him. Voku technology was different, but they weren’t quite on par to some of the wonders Star Force had developed. That said, you could still build up a superior force with inferior technology if you had the necessary numerical advantage.

And that’s what Voku territory had become. A numerical advantage. Systems that were well protected were being stacked with additional defenses, fleets were being doubled and tripled in size, resource production developed at 450% of requirements, deep warehouses with reserves continually stockpiling up, and a population increase that was testing the limits of Voku territory.

The Voku were ready to act…but no action was allowed. The Voku, on the orders of the Elders, were not to expand beyond their outer borders. And while Cal-com had been colonizing less desirable systems within those boundaries, the only other option for expansion was orbital installations, which he was delving into heavily and having to trade with Star Force for some of the rarer raw materials that he couldn’t use up, but rather had to stock pile on the orders of the Elders.

And this had been going on for thousands of years. No war had come. Star Force now surrounded every bit of Voku territory, and thankfully they had respected their loose borders and not chosen to colonize empty star systems within. If they had then Cal-com would be in a much worse place now, but still, he and the Voku were capped.

He’d asked the Elder who lived in the capitol what they were to do, what were they preparing for, but he was never told, only instructed to ‘deepen your defenses and wait.’

Cal-com had been waiting, patiently, loyally, but now he was beginning to sense the truth.

The Voku were not planned for some grand endeavor. They were a storehouse that the Elders were pulling resources from, both materiel and personnel, for the best of Cal-com’s warriors were being recruited and never returned. He was constantly having to train replacements and that was all he could do. There were no wars to fight, and the Voku had been instructed not to help Star Force with their battles civilizing the Rim.

Cal-com had originally thought that was because there was another threat the Elders needed the Voku ready and able to fight…but that had never happened and now Cal-com was beginning to suspect the truth. The Elders did not intend for the Voku to be warriors, but rather a training ground from which warriors would be born and then recruited directly into Elder service.

But Cal-com had never been called. When he had become the first Dafchor, he had assumed there would be others in time, but there weren’t. He was the only one, and the Elders insisted that he was where he needed to be while others were pulled from their posts to go and serve the Elders in whatever battles were being fought out in the galaxy while Cal-com was left behind tending to the safe systems and making them safer.

He had expected the Elders to be saving him for something special, but he doubted that now. He had served his purpose initially, when the Voku and other races were in jeopardy, but now that the Elders had returned and firmly established their power they no longer needed Cal-com in that regard. They didn’t need a warlord anymore, and with every batch of new recruits going out to serve the Elders, he felt more and more dissatisfied.

The Elder here knew of his feelings and had addressed them directly, citing that his service to the Voku was critical even if it wasn’t in direct combat, and that such service was not to serve one’s ego but to serve the Elders however was necessary. He had agreed with that in principle, but now he was suspecting the truth that they simply didn’t care about him anymore so long as he kept the Voku safe and the flow of recruits coming.

The grand plan for the Voku was a sham of his own imagination.

Star Force now ruled the Rim, and while the V’kit’no’sat were still dominant in the Core and the Elders no doubt had plans to avenge themselves on the traitorous empire, it was clear that the only fighting Cal-com would do would be if they came after the Voku…then he would defend the stream of recruits going to the Elders. He would not be leading armies to attack the V’kit’no’sat. He would remain here. Remain behind.

Meanwhile his peer within Star Force, Paul-024, was out fighting battles and expanding his empire by leaps and bounds. The two of them kept in contact, meeting every now and then, and Cal-com had shared some of his feelings on the matter, for he hated having to turn down Paul when he asked for help on a mission…though he was sure Star Force didn’t really need it. But like Paul, Cal-com did not like to sit on the sidelines while others created the peace that the bulk of the Rim was now enjoying. He needed to be in the action, facing the danger and taking the damage while shielding others. But the Elders would not permit it and he had asked so many times they’d ordered him to stop asking.

He obeyed, and while they could read his mind at will and know his thoughts, he no longer spoke of it with them. Part of him hoped that war would break out with the V’kit’no’sat and they’d invade Voku territory just so he would have something to do, but such thoughts did him discredit. He had a valuable mission here that he was accomplishing. He was just accomplishing it too easily and he sought the constant challenges that Paul lived and breathed.

And therein was the problem. Cal-com was alive but he wasn’t living, and like many other older warriors who had left the military after having been passed over by the Elders for recruitment time and again, he was feeling old and worn out from the constant stagnation and uselessness.

Cal-com was in his private chambers reviewing intelligence data on what Star Force was accomplishing when the summons came. It was a ping in his mind, delivered through his implants, and it instructed him to come to the Elder in the Recluse of the Hall of Majesty.

The Dafchor went immediately, traveling across two cities in a private aerial craft, then landing in the Hall of Majesty where most of the secret duties of the capitol took place. Cal-com had once lived here, but the lack of activity had turned the location bittersweet, so he had built his personal retreat elsewhere on the planet but not so far away that he couldn’t return quickly if need be, and today, apparently, was one such day.

Cal-com passed through an array of guards before being granted access to an unguarded door many times his height that opened on his approach and closed again when he stepped inside the large audience chamber. He walked across it to the traditional position of one granted an audience and stopped on the elaborate markings on the floor as a giant blue dragon crawled into view from behind a low wall that blocked Cal-com’s view of the rear portion of the chamber and wherever the passages behind it led.

“What do you require of me?” Cal-com asked.

“Devotion, which you are seriously lacking,” the Elder admonished as he fully came into view with his tail slithering over the wall. He stood five times Cal-com’s height, large enough to fit the Voku fully in his mouth if he chose to, but he had never seen nor heard of any of the Elders ever once doing such a barbaric thing.

“I wish to do more in service,” Cal-com admitted. “Do I not have skills sufficient for a greater purpose?”

“You have outgrown your position, and it is time for another to take your place. The Voku will need multiple Dafchors, and you are correct in that your skills are now complete.”

“What is my next assignment?”

“To wait, which is a task I feel you are no longer able to do.”

“Wait for what?”

“For the time you are needed. You no longer have any responsibilities other than to maintain yourself for future need, but your longing for adventure will not allow that, will it?”

“I do not understand, Elder. I wish to serve, and to do so utilizing my full abilities. Am I wrong for wishing this?”

“No, Cal-com, you are loyal to your duty…but your former duty is not your present duty. We are not in a time of war, and you are a Dafchor built for one. Now we must groom a Dafchor for a time of preparation, and while the new Dafchor learns you will wait without assignment. Are you unable to do this?”

Cal-com was silent for a moment, then just blurted out the honesty that was required when one was already in your mind.

“No, I am not.”

The Elder nodded. “Thus you are no longer fit to be a Dafchor, for one must do what is required of his duty, and duties change over time.”

“If waiting is required for something, then let me know what that something is and I will adjust to the task at hand, but having no task is not something I can tolerate. My entire life has been based on purpose. Do not strip it from me now.”

“There is always purpose, Cal-com, even if you cannot see it. I offer you a choice. Remain as Dafchor with the mission to wait as long as is required until you are needed, or choose to leave the Voku behind and seek your adventure across the galaxy.”

“Leave?”

“You cannot remain as you have been. Another Dafchor will take on your duties and grow from the position. You cannot grow any further in it, and if you are unable to master the art of waiting, then you must seek your advancement elsewhere. You are loyal and have guided the Voku admirably through difficult situations. For this I am rewarding you with this choice. You can remain and wait, or I can relieve you of all responsibilities and duties and set you free on the galaxy to do what you like, but with no position or rank within the Voku. If you remain with your race, you must wait. If you leave to seek adventure, you cannot return.”

“If I choose to go, will you have missions for me beyond our borders?”

“No, little Voku. There will be no missions. If you go, you will be dead to me, but you will have your freedom to do what you wish. Continued service requires you to master the art of waiting. It is something we learned long ago, and now it is your opportunity to advance beyond Dafchor, if you can master it. I leave you no status quo to cling to. You must change, and I offer you two paths to do so.”

Cal-com couldn’t speak. He couldn’t comprehend not serving the Elders, but the idea of waiting with nothing to do at all was a horror he could not embrace.

“It is not disloyal,” the Elder told him, sensing his thoughts. “You can leave with my blessing. The time of the Voku being at war is far in the past and far in the future. This is an era I do not think you are suited for. Thus you must wait until you are needed again, or you must leave. And you know you do not have the superiority necessary to embrace the art of waiting.”

“I do not,” Cal-com admitted.

“So I offer you another path as reward for your unflinching service,” the Elder said, with just a hint of sarcasm at the term ‘unflinching’ so that Cal-com would know it was an indication of his failure to live up to expectations. “But you must make the choice. I cannot do so for you.”

“I wish to serve…but I do not know how to do so waiting.”

“Take the reward for past service, Cal-com. What lies ahead requires a level of skill that you are lacking…and I will not be forgiving of incompetence if you take on the assignment. Go now with honor at what you have accomplished and continue your life setting your own priorities. Very few in the galaxy have that luxury, and I bestow it upon you now. If you wish to take it, step forward. If you wish to embrace the art of waiting, leave the chamber and begin. The choice must be made now.”

Cal-com was not ready for this. Not at all. And he felt the Elder had surprised him with it so he could not think about it…so he had to make an honest choice in the moment.

The Voku searched his own feelings and thoughts, picking up the trend that the Elder must have seen for some time. His duty had become a burden to bear, while his heart desired more. He was in conflict with his duty, and it was making him unfit for service. He either had to become fit, or leave and allow someone else to replace him before he failed in his duty.

He had wanted a challenge, but waiting was not it. And he knew now, looking up into the face of the Elder, that he did not have their patience in the face of no task, no timetable, no purpose. He could wait forever with a reason, but not without one.

“I cannot embrace waiting,” he said, stepping forward with a huge wave of trepidation making his arms shake slightly.

“Kneel,” the Elder said, with Cal-com complying as one of the large talons was brought forth to touch the Voku’s head just above his eye piece. “For years of faithful service I now release you from all duties and associations with the Voku. You are forever barred from returning to Voku territory, but in your exile you will gain a great gift on par with the Zak’de’ron,” the Elder said, for the first time ever using their true name to him. “You will be the master of your own future, and in this small sense will become our peer. Do not return, but go forth with our gratitude and shape your own destiny as we continue to shape the destiny of the galaxy.”

Cal-com felt a mild burning as his implant was pulled out along with his eye piece, revealing his 3 very dark and tiny eyes to the chamber’s natural light…then in a wash of disorientation he passed out, waking a moment later somewhere else.

Cal-com was wearing different clothes and the architecture of the buildings around him was not Voku. It was Star Force.

The former Dafchor stood, feeling a wealth of information in his head underscoring the fact that he was no longer associated with the Voku or the Zak’de’ron, and that he could not return or do a long list of other things that would interfere with them, but beyond that he was the master of his own destiny and what he did with himself was no longer their concern.

He heard footsteps coming down the hall, for he was inside a building, then a group of Trinx rounded the corner and looked at him oddly, but they just kept walking. Cal-com watched them pass then backtracked the way they had come, nearly bumping into a Gfatt as it walked by on its massive arms and thin single leg in tri-pod fashion as the Voku rounded a corner that led to a stub of a hallway that exited out onto a large promenade filled with hundreds of different Star Force races.

Cal-com swallowed hard. He had been in the Elder’s chamber a moment ago, now it seemed he was in another system entirely…and he could never go back. His new memories made that clear, and as he reached a hand up to his face he felt for his visor, realizing there was none. Nor was there the input slots between his eyes that had been there his entire life. Now there was only smooth skin with no sign that there had ever been any mechanical alteration.

A deep sadness spread throughout Cal-com. His entire life had been spent in the service of the Elders, and to be discarded in such a way dug deep…but at the same time there was a lesser feeling attached to it. It wasn’t enough to overcome what had just happened to him, but the sense of freedom was new to the Voku, and was actually something that none of his race had experienced within his lifetime.

It was scary and exhilarating at the same time, but that did not overcome the sense of failure and abandonment racking him. What he was going to do now he did not know, but the fact that the Elders had put him here was an indication that they knew him better than he knew himself.

This was a Star Force world. And his next mission, now self-assigned, was to find Paul…

8

November 19, 128440

Ittinarello System (Vex Kingdom border)

Stellar Orbit

Paul had been inside V’kit’no’sat territory for several months and away from the Star Force relay grid, so when Rubi came back into it in the Ittinarello System his ship got a massive download of new data from across the empire as it transitioned around the central star towards its outgoing jumppoint. He was curious to pick up where he’d left off with a number of projects, namely Dina’s research into the mysterious Essence-sucking Orb.

Paul and Virokor had not found much in their investigation, but they had confirmed a few things. First was the monster gashes in the planets. All were similar in scope, but not in number. Trident had 3, Berto’dor 4 and Scarret 4 and a half. The half was an extra scoop out of the southern pole that wasn’t elongated into a gash, and by comparing all three it appeared that the placement of the gouges were more or less consistent with planetary size. They weren’t removing everything on a planet’s surface, but rather 1/3rd of it.

Virokor had suggested, and Paul agreed, that it looked more like a culling than a harvest, leaving enough lifeforms behind to regrow and enough land for them to exist on while the watershed on the planet would fill in the gashes and open up new land elsewhere.

That made Paul revisit the memories he’d gained from his interaction with the Essence Orb. They were hazy, but he had seen water in them. He’d thought it had been within the ocean, but now he thought it had been in the shallows near a shore or perhaps a lake. It was definitely an aquatic race with a lot of bodies nearby…he could remember the feeling of swarms and a closeness of them, but when he went back and analyzed planetary dynamics he was able to loosely confirm that the gashes on Trident were not naturally into water.

The gashes themselves had not gone all the way down into the magma in most places, just skimming the top layer of crust in a way that seemed too precise for a Hadarak’s clumsy surface penetrations. If he had to bet, they were targeted at population centers and oceans were not well suited for such things save for shore-bound aquatic cities.

Paul and Virokor didn’t have much to work on, but they’d been speculating a lot and there was no apparent reason not to scoop up the entire surface. Only taking a third seemed intentional, as was the spacing between the gouges, and the similarities between the three planets were undeniable. That said, the width of the gouges was not uniform, as if the scoops were of different sizes.

That meant they were either able to adjust it for their target, or this damage was done by different sized Super Hadarak, which Paul had now decided to refer to as ‘Unicrons’ based off the fictitious planet-sized Transformer. The problem was, looking through both V’kit’no’sat and Star Force records, they could only find the three planets that had the very noticeable trenches. He and Virokor had gone through various permutations about how they could alter over time, but so far they hadn’t come up with anything.

That said, there were many star systems out there that neither empire had explored, especially in the Deep Core, but the lack of a true ‘feeding ground’ didn’t make sense to either of them and Paul was interested to see what Dina’s team had come up with when he accessed the updates…but a priority personal message for him caught his eye first.

Virokor, Paul asked telepathically across the ship to the Hjar’at’s modular quarters that were not too far from his own where Paul had just gotten out of the shower after a long workout session, do you mind if we take a detour?

A detour where?

The leader of the Voku is in Star Force territory and looking specifically for me. I need to get to him soon.

Is there a threat present?

I think it has to do with the Zak’de’ron. The message doesn’t say, but I know he wasn’t supposed to leave Voku territory. I always had to come to him. Whatever this is, it’s important and he mysteriously showed up on one of our worlds. No one knows how he got there and he has no escort or ship. The list of races capable of bypassing our security is slim.

But the Zak’de’ron can?

I doubt they can in our secure regions, but the public ones, yes, I believe they can.

But not the Voku?

I doubt it.

Let us find out.

Thank you. Diverting now. It will take 2 months and 16 days to arrive at his current location.

Well worth the wait if we gain information on the Zak’de’ron’s actions.

This is very unusual. I think we’ll find something, but it will delay your return considerably.

My mission is now mobile. I do not need to be on a Hjar’at world, and I would very much like to hear what this Voku has to say. He is a friend of yours, is he not?

Yes he is.

Fighting the Voku, if the Zak’de’ron order them to attack us, would put you in an uncomfortable confrontation, wouldn’t it?

That’s not a fight I look forward to, but I expect it to come at some point. The Voku have been heavily fortifying their territory.

I am aware of this. I have studied them closely, as I have the other 37 known servant races of the Zak’de’ron. I note that you have also fortified the surrounding systems in preparation for a Voku attack?

We have, and the surrounding systems of the others within our domain.

Are you convinced they will strike the V’kit’no’sat first?

I think they will do something we do not expect, but I do not think they will strike us and allow the V’kit’no’sat the warning and time to prepare.

Unless they know the V’kit’no’sat already know.

The V’kit’no’sat people do not know. If they did there would be a call to war and away from the Hadarak border. Do you disagree?

Only with your understatement. Every world would gear up for war production. That has not happened in the obvious fashion, though Mak’to’ran has been quietly layering on the empire’s defenses. He is no fool, but more cannot be done without telling people why. I think you are correct in that the Zak’de’ron would not want to give him that time, and if he did so now, on his own volition, the Zak’de’ron might strike in response. If they do strike the V’kit’no’sat, will you assist them or wait until the Zak’de’ron worlds can be located?

We’ll make it up as we go, but we cannot let the V’kit’no’sat be eliminated and the Zak’de’ron to consolidate power in the aftermath only to come after us later. If and when they strike, we have to fight them together or in parallel.

I concur. I am pleased you and Mak’to’ran think alike. We may actually stand a chance.

You sound worried?

They never showed us their true power, and what pieces of it we witnessed during the war were horrifying. They will not fight in the open, strength against strength, the way they instructed us to fight. And if they now have time to prepare and pick the opportune moment, I believe we will see a power far beyond what we witnessed when we caught them unaware.

I’m not disagreeing with that, but we have a few secret powers you’re not aware of as well.

It is a war I and the Hjar’at will be pleased to fight alongside you.

It’s one that has me worried because I’m not totally sure how to prepare for it. They also have at least one Uriti.

And you are convinced they did not acquire all the Protovic strands before they were neutralized?

Relatively sure, but it’s not impossible that they found a way to do what the Chixzon did initially and create their own. Especially if they have a Uriti to work with rather than a captured Hadarak.

A war of Uriti versus Uriti would be cataclysmic.

That I know how to fight. It’s the unknown that concerns me and how many losses we will take before we realize the nature of the battlefield the Zak’de’ron choose.

The attacker has the advantage of surprise, the defender the advantage of planetary defenses. You have created an empire that is very hard to defeat, but easy to attack given its widespread size. Vengeance is not the Zak’de’ron’s ultimate aim. Not against you. They wish to resume dominion, and to do that they must not just hurt you, they must totally destroy or absorb you. I can see no way to do this given what you’ve built.

Neither can I, but they’re working on something. If they thought we were unbeatable, they’d ally with us before going after the V’kit’no’sat. They started to do so long ago, but veered off when we weren’t developing as they liked.

Did something happen between you that I have not been made aware of?

Kara, Paul admitted. She’s safe now, but they left programming in her Vorch’nas to kill her if she ever disconnected from it. To the Zak’de’ron, you are a servant or you are dead, there is no other choice. That showed their true nature to us, as did their theft of a Uriti and their slaughtering of the Knights of Quenar to do it and keep us from knowing it was them. They figured out we knew something and the relationship grew cold, and the fact that they have not tried to develop a new one tells me they’re coming after us eventually. They have a plan, I just don’t know what the hell it is.

Perhaps the Voku will offer a clue.

Maybe he will. He’s not one to make casual talk, and if he’s come to Star Force territory then there’s something going on that he specifically needs me for.

2 months later…

When Rubi entered the Beewoo System Paul arranged to have Cal-com transported up to him from the guest quarters he’d been given while waiting. He hadn’t told anyone why he was here, citing it was a matter between himself and Paul, so the trailblazer figured it was best to bring him up to his personal ship so they could have a meeting in private with Virokor politely not being there when Cal-com’s dropship flew into the hangar bay.

Paul frowned immediately when he saw his friend come into view of his Pefbar and he saw he had no visor…nor implant for that matter. The Voku’s three small eyes were visible, and Paul had only seen them once before when he specifically asked Cal-com to see them. Otherwise the Voku wore their visors round the clock save for hibernating/sleeping.

“Save us both the effort of talking and look into my mind freely,” Cal-com said gravely.

Paul immediately did as his friend requested, using his Ikrid to access the strong mind, yet one with absolutely no defenses against such invasion. The Archon’s face went through several changes from curiosity to disgust to anger and back again as he searched through a great deal of material, including some things from long, long ago.

When he finally finished he was frowning hard. “Art of waiting my ass. He discarded you because you had outgrown pure servitude and were starting to become an equal. I’m glad he didn’t kill you though. You are most welcome in Star Force.”

“I am broken. I do not know what to do.”

“That was intentional. He made you feel like a failure, but the Zak’de’ron set you up. There was no way to do what he asked. Either you would fail and he would get rid of you then, or you would have to blindly accept whatever order he gave you, including stupid ones, and you’re too wise for that. Trust is one thing, but allowing stagnation to tear you apart because they say so is crossing a line and I’m proud you had the bravery to resist that.”

“I am a servant of the Elders. Now I cannot serve them. My mind can logically analyze, but my inner being is damaged in a way I cannot explain. I do not know if I erred or…”

“No,” Paul said firmly. “You did not. The Zak’de’ron want tools, not peers. You succeeded more than they expected, so they had to get rid of you. They are very clever manipulators pretending to be interested in your well being, but at the end of the day you are nothing more than servants. If you grow beyond that you become peers, and to the Zak’de’ron, I think, peerdom means a threat.”

“Why then did they not kill me?”

“They did kill you…by taking away your purpose. They figure your death will be a slow and torturous one now. They do not think you can accept freedom, so they gave it to you so you could kill yourself with it.”

“How can you know that?”

“It’s obvious from an outside point of view. They also put a message for me inside your memories. Something you can’t access, and only someone pulling an Ikrid scan could. They claim I corrupted you, and now that you are no longer valuable to them I can have you.”

“Why would they do that? To assist Star Force?”

“Hold on a moment before I answer that,” Paul said, procuring a device out of his pocket and using the scanner on Cal-com. He pulled a full body scan, linking the results to the ship’s computer, and got back a negative result. “You’re clean of any transmitters, so they’re not using you as an inadvertent spy. We’ll pull a genetic analysis just in case they added something that shouldn’t be there, but I’m glad I can finally speak with you freely. The Zak’de’ron are our enemy, and one day they’re going to invade us. I don’t know when or where or how, but that war is coming and they know that we know, hence the message that is a taunt.”

“I do not understand.”

“They once gave me a gift. I rejected it, for there was a chance it was a means for them to control me as they tried to do with another Archon. The fact that I didn’t fall for it seems to be a sore spot for them, and they’ve come to regard me as an opponent that they like to play games with. This is the first obvious taunt, but they’ve done other things that required a high level of intelligence to understand, and were plausibly deniable, but I’ve got their messages for some time. We’re their prey and they’re toying with us to see how much of a threat we truly are. Them sending you has escalated this greatly.”

Cal-com considered what he said, but that offered him very few answers, and those spawned yet more questions, but despite his ‘deer in the headlights’ mental state, the wise leader was able to ascertain his own weakness and address it.

“Tell me everything you can and help me to understand, Paul, for right now I am lost.”

“I know,” he said, walking beside him and putting a hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “Come with me and I’ll show you what’s really going on…but if I do so you won’t be able to share this information with others.”

“I have nowhere to go and no one to share it with. Your secrets will not be voluntarily revealed by me.”

“That’s all I ask. This way,” Paul said, pointing to the doorway out of the hangar, and from there he took Cal-com to an empty set of quarters that were now to be his own.

9

“Easy,” Paul said, raising his hands for emphasis as he sat on the end of his bed and Cal-com in his desk chair. “This has hit you hard, and I know you can’t see it yet, but this is not as bad as it seems. It’s going to take time, because they outright backstabbed you, but tell me this, why did you serve them? I know your entire race has, but for you, personally, why did you? What did it mean to you? Why them and not some other race?”

“They were responsible for the elevation of my race,” the now exiled Voku explained. “We owe them everything.”

“And?” Paul pressed.

“They are wise…” he said, almost choking on the word. “More powerful than us. And just.”

“Obviously not, or are you questioning whether you were in the wrong?”

“You can see inside my mind, so why ask what you already know?”

“You need to work this through, so answer me. Are you doubting yourself and wondering if they were not correct in kicking you out?”

“I am so unsure of what happened that I am considering that possibility, but I cannot reconcile it with the facts.”

“Because it’s not true. Why did you believe the Zak’de’ron are just? Their interactions with you have been very few.”

“They wrote our legal code. Taught us to work together, value others’ lives, and helped us build a stable civilization where our ancestors had been savages.”

Paul nodded. “Perhaps they taught you to behave better than they behave themselves. Often times doing the wrong thing gives you short term gains. Many unscrupulous people see an opportunity and take it, not caring whether it is right or wrong but in how it is advantageous to them. Now, if I were in the Zak’de’ron’s position and didn’t care about anything other than my own people, I wouldn’t instruct yours to be dishonest, insidious, or reckless. I’d teach you to be solid, reliable, and honest so that you would make the best servants.”

“You infer they are hypocritical.”

“I know they are. And I think I have a pretty good sense of their position, though I’ve had far less personal contact than you, but their fingerprints are everywhere on the Voku and the other servant races we’ve identified. They do not think any other race is their equal, but that assessment is not based out of fact, rather out of fear.”

“Fear?”

“I am superior, Cal-com. I don’t have to imagine,” Paul said, lifting a hand, palm-up, into the air and subsequently having everything in his room levitate a few inches off the floor or shelves. Even the Voku’s chair lifted up with him in it, then Paul calmly set everything back down where it had been. “My superiority isn’t something I have to protect. It can be challenged and tested. I do not fear testing because I actually am superior, but here is the key point. I want to find people superior to me so I can learn from them and improve myself further. The Zak’de’ron do not behave in this way. They want to assert that they are the top race, the Ultra race, and they seek to destroy or suppress any other competition for that title. This is done out of fear of losing their position, and they’d rather have less skills and be tops than be more skilled yet inferior to someone else. Can you understand that distinction?”

“I am intimately familiar with half of it. We have long sought to learn from the Elders, mimic them, glean anything we could from their superiority. We eagerly welcomed any knowledge or technology they offered us, for we knew it would enhance our race.”

“You seek improvement, just as I do. But do the Zak’de’ron if it meant learning from someone else? Could they handle being an apprentice, let alone a servant? I don’t think so.”

“You speak as if they are all the same and not individuals? Doesn’t that run counter to the foundation of Star Force?”

“Not counter, just an advanced application. Individuals are always present, but if you deliberately eliminate dissenters you end up with a homogenous group, more or less. And though you’re not a Zak’de’ron, that’s what they did with you. I am very glad they didn’t outright kill you, as they have done with others.”

“He said it was a reward for my service. It was not contentious, just a dismissal.”

“But you had to be gotten rid of one way or another, and based on the emotions in you now, they are torturing you by ripping away everything that you had based your life on rather than allowing you to become a frontier agent for them…but I’m telling you that they miscalculated, and they did so because of their ego. They think they are the entire reason you exist and don’t realize you saw embodied in them some fundamentals of the universe, and part of your loyalty is to those fundamentals, such as justice, order, self-defense, self-improvement. The rest is a massive wound, because they did rip away your own race and the heritage of servitude, but you’re feeling like everything is gone because you mentally packaged everything around the identity of the Zak’de’ron, and now you must go through the long, hard process of unpacking it.”

“How would you feel if Star Force exiled you?”

“I’d be royally pissed, but my associations with the empire are only part of who I am. The other part is an individual. A loner. And the loner part of me would be empowered by the exile. The Zak’de’ron did not want Voku to develop this ability any more than they wanted the Zen’zat to.”

“You still believe we are their replacement?”

Paul nodded. “It’s even more obvious now. Ter’nat do not fight. Ter’nat do not build. Ter’nat sit and breed, and the Voku are obviously an enhanced version of this. You can defend yourself, you can provide material resources and take limited military action as needed, but your purpose is to breed and supply the Zak’de’ron with new Zen’zat. That’s why they didn’t want you expanding, or helping me fight on the Rim. Your purpose is to sit, maintain, and produce. You began to realize this so they got rid of you rather than just telling you the truth. Why do you think they didn’t?”

“If they had I could have understood the mission. It’s as if they deliberately refused to inform me because I failed in some way.”

“Succeeded in some way,” Paul corrected him. “They needed you to fight and grow early on when they had nothing. Then they change your mandate without telling you. You can’t ungrow, Cal-com. So they either had to let you grow further or remove you, and I know why they didn’t promote you.”

Cal-com’s brow furrowed. His three eyes had no lids, and were always open, but he could crinkle the skin around them to all but closed over the eyes to protect them when needed, and he nearly did so now, leaving only a thin open line to look through.

“Why not?”

“Zen’zat,” Paul said simply. “They need to be smart, but not independent. You operated independently for so long, you would not make a good Zen’zat because no matter how loyal you are, you were away from their control for too long. You grew too large to be confined back into that smaller role. Basically, you outrank Zen’zat in a way that even if you chose to become one, you could not any more than I could become a Star Force Commando. Even if I had my psionics removed, I would always think like an Archon. Archons would be my peers, never my superiors. I can’t go backwards, Cal-com, and neither can you. They groomed you into what they needed at the time, but they no longer need Dafchors. They need guardians to protect their breeding grounds. They may use the same term for the new Voku leader, but he won’t be a real Dafchor. Only you are.”

“When they made me Dafchor they said I would be the first. Did they alter their plans or were they duplicitous from the beginning?”

“I’d guess duplicitous, or they thought you might die in battle and would have to replace you long ago.”

“I cannot understand how they can do so much to help us and then do this now.”

“I help people because they need help. The Zak’de’ron help people because they view that help as a tool to use to accomplish a mission. Once the mission is accomplished, they have no further need of the tools. To put it simply, they use justice when it’s useful to them and abandon it when it’s not. You deserve better than exile, but giving you what you deserve would work contrary to what they’re building, so justice no longer matters in your case…although, ironically, they have done you justice without realizing it.”

“How so?”

“Because they sent you to me. They put you down in Star Force territory, and because of our relationship they knew you’d probably come find me or I would find you. They did it as a taunt to me, but we’re going to turn the tables on them. You are a warlord, and if you can no longer be one in the service of the Zak’de’ron, then I will turn you into one within Star Force and allow you to continue to grow beyond the limits they imposed upon you.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Voku territory exists within our domain. If the Zak’de’ron move against us, do you truly think they won’t have the Voku attack at least some of our worlds?”

Cal-com was hesitant for a moment. “If we are to be breeding stock, they would not.”

“Tools,” Paul corrected him. “Tools that can be used to attack and be breeding stock simultaneously if we’re on the defensive. Or, tools that can be expendable. If you really are to replace the Zen’zat, then they will most likely create multiple Voku civilizations around the galaxy. They may have started others already.”

Cal-com suddenly grew angry. “If those who went to serve them in battle were sent to become colonists on new worlds, then I am not the only one betrayed. They did not specify what the volunteers would be doing, but taking warriors and turning them into laborers is a betrayal of purpose. We sent only the best to analysis, and the ones they chose deserve better than founding new breeding colonies. They would have to retread paths already taken,” the Voku said, referencing the fact that ‘breeding’ referred more to training and experience than it did reproduction, for Voku did not ‘breed’ in the traditional sense.

“Possibly. And some day they may order them to attack me. How do you think they would fare in that battle?”

Cal-com’s anger spiked, but in a cold and very lethal manner reaching down into a deep, dark pit inside him.

“We would do you damage, but you have grown beyond us. What would you do if the Voku attacked you?”

“That should be obvious, as we have done with many other races. We would fight, win, and annex you. We would not obliterate Voku worlds out of anger or vengeance. Doing so would be the easy path, but we choose the hard path because it is the right one.”

“I cannot fathom what that war would be like, but it would be eviscerating. We are inherent allies. The Elders ordered me to protect you so you could grow stronger. Now that you have, it is inconceivable that they would order the Voku to attack.”

“They sought to use us, maybe just to irritate the V’kit’no’sat a bit, maybe to become another of their tools. But we’ve outgrown them, and like you, we cannot fit into the parameters they wish, so we must be eliminated. And they cannot exile us.”

“I do not understand their animosity. You should be natural allies against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“We’re not the issue. It’s them. They don’t want peers, only servants. And based on what they taught the V’kit’no’sat, they will not tolerate any civilization that rivals their own power, for they fear losing their superiority. They would rather be weak and rule than be strong and live in the shadow of another’s domain. I’d bet ten planets that I’m right about that assessment.”

“I have trusted them for so long that I never feared them. Now…I cannot tolerate being outside their good graces. I feel vulnerable in a way I never have before.”

“You will recover your balance in time, and for you I think its best if you get assigned a mission immediately and work through these things on the side.”

“A mission for you?”

“Partially, but also for you. If the Zak’de’ron mount a massive assault against Star Force using their servant races, many of whom I suspect we know nothing about, and those servant races are sacrificed merely to do us enough damage to set up the final assault from the Zak’de’ron fleets, the Voku may be destroyed. Do you want to walk away from them in exile and let the Zak’de’ron send them to their deaths…or do you want to find a way to save them?”

“Save them? I’ve been exiled. I have no command authority left.”

“Do you know what they told the others about your absence?”

“I do not.”

“What do you suspect they will say?”

“That I have been exiled.”

Paul shook his head. “I think not. That would undermine their authority if someone such as you was rewarded for millennia of faithful service with exile. Think. What could they lie about that would allow a smooth transition?”

Cal-com was silent for a long time, as if the thought of the Elders lying was something he had never considered before, but eventually he came to the same conclusion that Paul had.

“That I was recruited with the other volunteers. No one is told where they go or what they do, and none return, so my absence would not be questioned.”

“So the first thing we do is find out if that’s true. We have enough trade assets that we can get information about such a public announce without having to actually poke around. Assuming that’s true, and the Voku later found out what really happened to you, how would your race react?”

“They would be confused. They might think that Star Force also worked for the Elders and that was where they had assigned me, which is accurate.”

“No,” Paul said firmly. “They did not assign you here. They threw you out onto my doorstep and don’t care if I send you away or kill you. You are dead to them now and they expect you to exist in a long, painful, broken mess that will eventually expire. This was not a reassignment. It was a clever form of execution. See for yourself.”

Paul telepathically showed Cal-com the hidden message in his own mind meant for Paul, essentially mocking the Archon and hinting of the conflict to come while referring to Cal-com as nothing more than a pawn…one that Paul valued and had tainted, thus he was being discarded.

Cal-com’s mind immediately tried to twist it into something respectable, but with Paul’s thoughts interpreting the message he couldn’t. He saw it through Paul’s eyes, and for the first time got a glimpse of who the Zak’de’ron truly were.

Cal-com began to breathe heavily, then he slipped out of his too small chair and dropped to a knee on the floor, his hands sinking into the carpet as he stared at nothing.

“I have been blind, Paul. I do not know how I could be so blind.”

“Take it slow,” the Human said, remaining sitting the foot of the bed a couple meters away. “When I first learned the truth of the V’kit’no’sat it took several days to work through it. Everything I had been taught previously had been a lie, and since I had grown up within that lie I had not thought beyond it. My mind had been shaped into a wedge, and when I had to open it up into a sphere it was not a pleasant experience. What you are going through is far worse, but you will get through it. I promise you will, but right now you need to embrace the pain, the disgust, and the fear…let it soak into you, for with it comes the freedom of truth, and that is worth the effort a thousand times over. But you have to take it slow or you can get overwhelmed.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Cal-com said, still on the floor and not moving. “If you can guide me, I will endeavor to learn.”

“Good. Because I do not want to fight the Voku. I want to free them from the Zak’de’ron, and if I’m going to have any chance of doing it, I need you. They need you. This may not be possible, and if it is I doubt the Zak’de’ron will let the Voku go as easily as they did you. I think they would sooner kill them all out of spite than let them leave their service, so this is going to be tricky to say the least, but I think we have time. Time to figure out how to save the Voku before they are ordered to their deaths in a suicide attack against Star Force.”

Cal-com seemed to harden at that prospect, and a moment later he slowly stood up to his full height, looking down at where Paul sat.

“That I cannot allow. I have served the Elders my entire life, but at the same time I have also served my people. The two tasks were one and the same before, but if they must now be split, I still have a responsibility to my race and to those who have directly served under my command. Show me how I can acquit this responsibility, Archon, and I will dedicate my life to serving Star Force.”

“No. No more serving,” Paul said, standing as well as he grabbed Cal-com’s arm, gripping it in a wrist-lock handshake. “We’re friends, and now you’re family. We fight together, side by side, because we choose to. Not because of an oath or servitude. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, and because together we are stronger than we are fighting on our own. That’s called a ‘team’ and it is something Star Force does very well.”

“Then I will join your team,” Cal-com said, grabbing Paul’s wrist and completing the lock with his larger hand. “That you lead.”

“Well, I am an Archon. That literally means ‘leader.’”

“It suits you well. And thank you for the distinction. Serving someone so small would be…odd.”

Paul laughed. “Good. Very good. Now, let’s discuss something you haven’t been exposed to yet. A little thing called Essence that I would very much like to know if any of the Zak’de’ron you have encountered have demonstrated…”

10

November 20, 128440

Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

Earth

Davis tapped on his desk, a frustrated tap that amounted to a small version of punching a wall as he read the latest report from Dina’s research project. She had nothing new to show for it other than a long list of things they’d tried that had no effect whatsoever. The Orb seemed to not exist, yet it was absorbing Essence like a sponge. Only hardened Essence could penetrate it, and even then it took Dina’s level of skill to manage even a short breach. Lesser skilled Archons couldn’t even get through the dense ‘material’ and nobody had any idea what it was, how it worked, or what it could do.

To put it bluntly, they were stumped. Someone out there had Essence technology far beyond what Star Force could understand, and while he wanted answers he knew better than to ask the Knights of Quenar to assist. He doubted they would be able to help, but their level of Essence skill wasn’t fully known. It might be lower than Star Force, or perhaps higher, but Davis had the feeling this was beyond both of them, and that left the question of who the Orb belonged to?

The galaxy was vast, that was a given, but something that literally ate chunks out of planets shouldn’t have been able to hide this well. Was it destroyed? Were they destroyed? Or was it so terrible that it destroyed all its victims before they had a chance to tell others what happened? And why weren’t there more worlds out there showing evidence of being harvested?

There were too many questions and almost no answers. And if Ariel hadn’t stumbled across this Star Force would have continued to be completely blind to this mysterious threat.

Davis’s eyes darted to a small hologram in a niche on the far wall of his massive office. It depicted an Archon, Keli-172, who had died. She was the most senior Archon ever lost, and it hadn’t been in combat. When Star Force’s knowledge of Essence was limited and numerous Archons had broken through the barrier to the point where they could cause an Essence Rush and actually use it to do various things they, of course, pushed their limits. The trailblazers had been slightly more cautious, and Keli had been the first one to encounter Essence suction.

She’d been working on creating shapes with her Essence, the kind that Davis could now use to lift objects without his Lachka. His own control was wobbly, but he could manage small items that didn’t require a precise grip. Keli had been pushing Essence into larger and larger objects, noting that the larger they became the easier it was to fill them up, for the Essence clung to itself somewhat, and Davis had learned himself that pushing your Essence away from your body required an effort.

That effort diminished with the more of your Essence that existed outside your body yet it was always connected to you by a conduit. Without a conduit you lost control of it and the Essence would return to you if your body crossed it or came close enough, but if not it would gradually disappear while floating around like a cloud.

But if you maintained a link you could control it with your Core and make it do various things. However, as Keli discovered for the rest of Star Force, if you put more Essence in your objects than you have within your body, the Essence in your body wants to flow towards the larger amount and a suction occurs. It had been drained from her without effort, and never having experienced this before she didn’t know how to hold her Essence inside and fight the suction.

Now, Davis knew, if he accidentally crossed into a suction situation he needed to bring the Essence object back to his body and remerge it. If he didn’t, what happened to Keli could happen to him…with the suction pulling so much Essence away from her body that her Core detached from it. Essence was the glue that connected a Core to a body, and if the amount got too low you would simply die.

Keli paid the ultimate price for that lesson, but to this day no other Archon had died to suction because they now had the knowledge of it, the threat it posed, and had come up with ways to counter it. Davis kept her hologram in his office as a reminder of how the unknown can kill even the most prepared and wise among us because it can catch us off guard.

And now Davis feared they were blundering into another such situation. The Orb was so far beyond them he had no idea if it was dangerous or what danger might be in the technology or skills that created it, or from the people that wielded them. This was an entirely blank canvas for Star Force, and Keli was a reminder how dangerous such ignorance could be.

That didn’t sit well with Davis, hence the tapping on the desk as he tried to piece this mystery together going through every experiment that Dina’s team was conducting and hoping to gain some insight from their failures…before someone else paid the price of discovery with their life.

It had taken a year to get here, but the Chixzon ship had finally penetrated the outer defense ring of the Hadarak Zone. They had never been here before due to the danger, but they had gained knowledge of some of the inner workings of the Hadarak race from the one they had captured long, long ago. They’d used that Hadarak to spawn the Uriti, the galaxy now knew, but they did not know the extent of the information they had gained from the process.

The Hadarak used to patrol halfway out to the Rim, but were now compressed into the Deep Core thanks to the V’kit’no’sat, though that empire didn’t understand the power they were up against. No one did, as far as the Chixzon knew, and that knowledge was why they had never tried to conquer the coreward half of the galaxy. They had sought to dominate the Rim where the Hadarak would not go except under extraordinary circumstances, for it was the massive black holes near the center of the galaxy that were most important to them.

Going outward from them were several layers of defense, with the outermost ring being a band of star systems surrounding the Core in a sphere where they permanently inhabited them. There was no way to make a jump past those systems as far as the Hadarak knew, but they were slow and heavy in comparison to the Chixzon starships, and if one was patient and had strong enough gravity drives you could limp through a few small weaknesses in the outer ring if you knew the geography of what was inside.

The Chixzon did not, because no one had gotten that far to map it, so all they had was the distant light of the stars to guestimate on. If this mission did not return successfully within another two and a half years it would be deemed a failure and another sent, but the 6 mile long vessel had made it through, dodging the Hadarak on its approach to the outer ring then launching off into the void between the stars that made up the ring hoping to catch enough gravity enroute to steer their way to land at another star.

The slower one jumped the more ability you had to steer out in interstellar space because you had more time to pull on the distant stars. The Chixzon had managed to curve this way and that, getting more and more of a tug that allowed them to gradually throw the ship towards one of the closely packed stars this deep into the Core. Had they tried this in the Rim they most likely would have been lost forever in space, but there were so many stars here it was viable, though unpredictable, because you didn’t know where you would end up or if you’d run through a nebula or other debris.

This ship and its crew were expendable and they knew it, but their bravery had paid off and they now sat in a very high orbit around a massive single star that they had slingshotted around, unable to directly brake against, but they’d clung to its gravity field long enough to curve them into a full stop well beyond the inner planets…or what was left of them.

The Chixzon had never been able to get this far before, not even on deep range scans. They were in completely unexplored territory aside from what knowledge they’d gotten from the captured Hadarak. But as they began recording passive scans of the system what they saw was mind boggling.

There were four planets in this system, all of which had been rocky, but now they were hollowed out with living tissue replacing the holes in a grotesque weed-like chaotic arrangement that extended far beyond the once natural sphere. Those growths were massive minion colonies, doing what the Chixzon were not entirely sure. Their information was not complete, but they knew these were well protected and critical to the interconnectivity of the Hadarak civilization…which was why the Chixzon ship had to breach the outer ring to get to one.

They were lucky to find a system with one the first time out, though their information suggested most star systems within the outer boundary line had them in a ratio of something like 6/10. And there were so many warship-scale minions floating around the four infested planets and stellar orbit that the Chixzon doubted they would be able to make it in to the star to make a jump out at any decent speed. Unless they limped out, making slow jumps from high orbit like were they currently were, those minions were going to run them down and destroy them…and as soon as the passive sensors caught up on the lag, they would most likely see those minions already coming at them thanks to the gravity sensors the Hadarak operated primarily on.

Their arrival here was no doubt detected, despite the fact they were operating one of the best cloaking devices in the galaxy. But it was no matter. They were here where they needed to be and close to accomplishing their mission. Their surviving it was extraneous, but there was still a chance of failure they had to act quickly to banish.

The Chixzon ship gripped hard on the star’s gravity, launching it towards it on a trajectory away from the planets. If they headed towards them the minions would cluster there even more, but if they pulled them off then cut back it would increase their chances of making it to one of the minion colonies.

The problem was, the warship-class minions were not as slow as the Hadarak, and there were many varieties here never before seen elsewhere in the galaxy. The Chixzon knew they were stronger and specifically held back to allow the Hadarak to analyze threats based on how far they pushed into the Hadarak patrols. If the V’kit’no’sat realized what their continual war into Hadarak territory would ultimately result in…if they were successful…then they would have abandoned the Core like the Chixzon had and left it to the Hadarak. There was no defeating them, and the little traction the V’kit’no’sat had gained was only because the Hadarak allowed it. Push too far and you would awaken a power beyond measure that would snuff you out with little contest.

But the V’kit’no’sat were nowhere near the outer defense ring, let alone getting to these minion colonies. If and when they got to the defense ring a powerful response would surge forth from within, destroying the V’kit’no’sat and pushing the patrols back out to their mid galaxy line…but that wasn’t enough for the Chixzon, nor would it happen fast enough. There was another function the Hadarak had, among many, and if the ‘little beings’ every became strong enough to get to the minion colonies it would trigger a purge of them all from the galaxy…a task that would take a million years to fully realize, but it was deemed absolutely necessary to keep the ‘little beings’ from reaching the inner defense rings.

The Chixzon did not know what they were or what they protected, but they knew if the outer defense ring was broken it would trigger the galactic purge. The V’kit’no’sat were not strong enough to provoke that response, nor were the Chixzon, and even if this ship rammed the colony and did damage to it, that would not be enough to trigger the purge. However, they’d gained knowledge of the signal that would be sent out if such an attack were successful, but it had to go out through the intricate communications network that these minion colonies supported.

The Chixzon ship did not have a powerful transmitter, so it was going to have to get very, very close in order to get the minion colonies to receive and then transmit it back out across the Deep Core as if it had come from one of their own colonies in another system. This was not something the Chixzon wanted to do, for it would destroy the Rim as well over time, but they no longer had any choice. They could survive it in the massive colony ships they had built, hidden within various nebulas that the Hadarak would never take notice of. It would take an extremely long time for the Hadarak to confirm the galaxy was free of little beings, but if their information was right, when that confirmation was finally made, they would retreat back to the Core and resume their normal patrols, leaving the Chixzon to dominate the rubble left behind.

It was a drastic tactic and one that had been debated for a very long time, but now there was no other possible method of defeating both the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force. Even if the V’kit’no’sat got to the outer defense ring and triggered a response, it would not reach to the outer Rim where Star Force was now dug in. The only way to take both of them out was a total galactic purge.

Compared to what the Chixzon had survived previously this was easy, requiring only a vast amount of patience…which they had. It was the end result that mattered, and for some unspecified reason the Hadarak seemed to think that the galaxy would eventually repopulate with little beings. The Chixzon did not know how that was possible, but then again they did not know the origin of life in the galaxy either. Regardless, they would preserve enough servant races to slowly repopulate the Rim with after this was over, but now all that mattered was starting it.

The Chixzon ship continued on its fast approach to the star, then coasted a while as the minions closed in. They used the coast to charge their capacitors back up to full, and when they reached that level banked as hard left as they could and headed straight for the 3rd planet in the system.

They did not get within range before the first of the minions caught them…or more precisely got in their way and made them zigzag their approach. The swarm got so large they couldn’t avoid some collisions, so they dropped their ineffective cloaking device and put all their power into their shields and engines, plowing through the small collisions as each one slowed them further.

The Chixzon modulated their shields to remove the IDF-laden goo that was eating into their engine power, cleaning it off like a windshield wiper and restoring propulsion as more hit and smeared onto the shields again and again…but the Chixzon did make it within transmitting range and cut their engine power by 13% to get full effect from the transmitter.

It wasn’t a single pulse, but a recurring transmission similar to the beating of war drums. They kept transmitting until they picked up the deafening mimicry by the organic transmitters in the minion colony, at which point they altered course and gradually plowed their way out of the minion swarms, though they were loath to let them go.

Shields were hit and miss and there were multiple hull breaches by the time the Chixzon ship got outside the mass of the minions and made a slow microjump towards the star, leaving most behind and trailing them, but when they eventually got to the star the Chixzon ship dove through the converging swarms there and into the outermost layer, burning multiple spots on its hull, including some interior decks, along with the clinging minion goo. They emerged back into space clean of it with full engine power minus one gravity drive that had been damaged, but that was more than enough to run faster than the minions could follow around the curve of the star until they found a hole in the overhead swarms and jumped out at an angle heading for far orbit.

It was 50/50 whether they would make it or not, and there were so many minions around the star that there was no way they were getting a clear jumppoint out, but if they could make it to the outer reaches of the star system they could make a slow jump that would take months to get to the next star and try to stay alive…but ultimately it didn’t matter. The mission was a success, the war drums were beating on all 4 planets now and transmitting to the Hadarak within the star and across interstellar space where other colonies would pick them up, spreading the call for a galactic purge in to the center of the galaxy and whatever lay there.

How soon the purge would begin was unknown, but it was now coming and nothing could stop it. Dominion of the galaxy would not be won by warfare, but rather by those who managed to survive the coming apocalypse.

And amongst all the races in the galaxy, the Chixzon were by far the best survivors, as well as the only ones to have already prepared for nightmare…

www.aerkijyr.com

Dawn of the Apocalypse

1

November 20, 128456

System 88219317 (Hadarak Zone)

Middle Orbit

A Lir’nen Kaeper-class scout ship sat in the void of space far from any planet or the two stars at the center of the system. It wasn’t cloaked, for the Hadarak could see ships from their gravity silhouette and so could their minions to a lesser extent. This Kaeper, like most of the V’kit’no’sat ships, didn’t even have a cloaking device. Instead the hull space that would have contained that equipment held an additional gravity drive, making the ship faster, which was the best defense against the Hadarak minions.

Right now there were a few on the 2nd planet, but no Hadarak had been in this system for some time…unless it was buried deep in the stars and had stayed down there since the Kaeper arrived 4 months ago. That was unlikely but not impossible, and it was the job of the Lir’nen to keep track of their movements through this system if/when they passed so the scout could alert nearby systems and get the word out long before a Hadarak could arrive at the border worlds.

Those border worlds did not hold civilians, but rather were aggressive construction sites to collect raw materials and build defensive platforms, shipyards, sensor arrays, and everything else being used on the border as the V’kit’no’sat continued to inch the Hadarak back and free more systems from their reign of terror.

This system actually had a native population on the 6th planet, so primitive that they could not even travel into space, but it looked like the Hadarak had ignored them and chosen to feed on the 2nd planet at some point, leaving behind minion facilities when it left as if they were crumbs attesting to the feast they’d made of the planet.

The Lir’nen had made a detailed analysis of the damage done to the planet from afar, and the minions had not bothered to come out after them. If they’d gotten closer that probably would have changed and patience, which Mak’to’ran continuously underscored, would gain more valuable data than bravado against the Hadarak. Though they hadn’t gotten as close as they would have liked, the impact crater of a Hadarak landing on the planet was clearly visible with newly formed mountain chains ringing it, some of which were still oozing lava.

That didn’t mean it had been too recent, for when plates were bent out of position they could bleed the planet for decades before gravity finally pulled the mass into some semblance of shape and the coldness of space hardened over the cracks. Best estimate on this one was about two years ago and a level 3 Hadarak. I had not sank into the magma layer of the planet, but rather stayed on the surface and extended taps down to suck on it while also producing minion colonies to mine other parts of the planetary crust.

This wasn’t unusual, for Hadarak needed the materials within planets to grow larger. Stars were mostly used for their version of ‘water’ while planetary rock was their ‘food.’ They needed both, but unless a star had swallowed up a planet or two they had to seek out the cooler and smaller gravity wells to feed, much as the V’kit’no’sat empire did, though their harvesting efforts were much more precise and didn’t damage the planet in the process.

That damage had been fixed on many planets, with Mak’to’ran insisting that they try to repair as many as possible as an additional insult to their sworn enemy. They would not be colonized by the V’kit’no’sat, but that didn’t stop other races from following in the wake of the warring powers and setting up residence in what was now a ‘safe’ zone behind the V’kit’no’sat border where the Hadarak used to roam and feed almost at random.

They typically didn’t target inhabited worlds unless you started shooting at them…but then again, they didn’t avoid them either. That left the Hadarak Zone with a lot of denizens that periodically got culled when a Hadarak happened to choose their world to snack on. It was that horrific and random threat that the V’kit’no’sat had been created to push back, and while they had the Hadarak in slow retreat, the Lir’nen definitely knew that this ‘safe’ zone could easily reverse itself. Others, it seemed, did not care nor thought as far into the future as they should, for many were moving into the region and setting up colonies despite the nearby danger.

The V’kit’no’sat were not going to stop them…nor would they defend them if the Hadarak landed on their worlds. They would have to take their chances if they wanted the reward of the unclaimed worlds, but the wiser races knew to not encroach beyond the original V’kit’no’sat border, for they saw the dominant empire was not doing so itself…and if the V’kit’no’sat would not push their colonies further, why would anyone else dare to?

But there were still populations in the Hadarak Zone that were native to it, such as in this system. They’d probably always been here or were a degraded colony of another star system. Either way, they didn’t have a choice of leaving, and the race in this system probably didn’t even know how perilously close they were to the Hadarak. If they were lucky they’d never know, but the threat was still right here in their own backyard.

The Lir’nen were holding position and monitoring the pair of stars with their active and passive sensors along with a series of probes they had previously positioned around the system. Those signals gave them a view opposite the stars where they couldn’t see themselves, and two of those probes suddenly began transmitting an alert.

“Hadarak arrival,” one of the bridge crew said, flicking its tongue out distastefully. “Tier 2.”

“Identify,” the commander of the small vessel said as the first blurry images of the decelerating Hadarak appeared, though the probes had been able to pick up the hyper-accelerated stellar radiation bouncing off it and preceding the Hadarak far earlier, giving them an approximate diameter.

“Negative,” another of the Lir’nen said. “This is a new one…” it trailed off as another alarm began going off.

“Second Hadarak in extremely close spacing,” the other warned.

The commander sneered. The only time Hadarak traveled together was when they were convoying to another location or were paired up for patrols…but when they patrolled they didn’t stick close together during jumps, often giving each other a half an hour gap while they slowly coasted through interstellar space. The only times they moved close together was when they were in larger groups.

“Tier 1. Identity processing…”

Then a different alarm sounded. One triggered off a slight repositioning of the arrival star itself. Whenever a Hadarak arrived in system, its own gravity tugged on the star by proximity. The deceleration didn’t push the star away, for gravity emissions were like light, and once released they free flew through space. Pulling or pushing on them didn’t move the emitter, but once the massive Hadarak got nearby their own emissions could nudge a star ever so slightly…but the alarm hadn’t triggered for the tier 2 and tier 1 Hadarak.

“Massive object approaching. Estimated Tier 5,” the Lir’nen said, looking warily at the commander, as if he didn’t believe the computer calculation.

“Let’s see it,” he said, waiting for the first true images to come through as a fourth smaller Hadarak was detected on approach behind it.

“No identity match on any of the three,” he heard another say, but his eyes were glued to the hourglass-shaped monster that looked like two spheres smashed together with ridges spidering out from the collision point. Those ridges were something new to the V’kit’no’sat, but they’d been picking up several tier 4s and up that had them, though they’d never engaged one to find out exactly what the surface features were.

Only now they were activating, almost as soon as the Hadarak finished its deceleration, with the massive 2,312 mile wide beast flaying out those ridges like flower petals and releasing hundreds of objects, each bigger than the 1.1 mile long Kaeper.

“New minion classes detected. Size is larger than previously encountered. They appear to be warships or transports.”

“Don’t speculate. Analyze,” the commander reminded them as another alert pinged, indicating a 5th Hadarak arrival, this one a tier 2.

“New minions are heading away from stellar orbit. Initial tracts indicate the first two planets.”

“That rules out a simple pass through. Launch a probe on an intercept trajectory. We need a close analysis of the new minions even if we lose it.”

A few moments later one of the two hangar bays on the Kaeper opened up and a small pyramid-shaped object flew out then arced to the right before making a slow microjump towards the closer 1st planet in the system. The 2nd might be closer in orbital path, but at the moment it was almost directly opposite the star from their observation position.

Time between revelations and movements was slow, for traveling across space was vast even with V’kit’no’sat engine technology, and the Hadarak moved far, far slower. Their minions, however, were not so encumbered with mass, and they made good time…too good of time.

“Velocity?” the commander asked.

“Acceleration profiles are wrong. They’re moving too fast for their mass unless they have different gravity drives than known minion types.”

“Empty cargo ships?”

“No. Their mass indicates no voids. They’re solid assuming normal tissue density.”

The commander tipped his head down and scratched the side of his face with his short arm. “It’s been speculated that the Hadarak were far stronger than they allowed us to know. This could be the first sign that their territory in the Inner Core has different defenses. These could be a higher level minion class being sent in response to our constant annexation of their territory.”

“You mean that we’ve only been dealing with their second line troops?” one of the 6 dinosaur command deck crew asked.

“That is what has been suspected, but until now I never believed it.”

“How long do we wait before leaving?”

“Until we know how many arrived. If we have to make a periphery jump we can still beat the Hadarak to the next system.”

“And the minions?”

“If their couriers are also enhanced it will make no difference. They have nothing ahead to relay to.”

“Tier 5 is descending into the star,” another Lir’nen noted as the incoming Hadarak count hit #11 with yet another alarm ping. “New arrival is tier 3.”

“Warship minions are diverging. A group is splitting off and heading for the outer planets.”

The commander sneered as all eyes were on suddenly on him.

“We can’t save them and they can’t defend themselves. All we can do is observe and learn, then take that information back to Mak’to’ran. If this is the beginning of a superior invasion force, we need to know as much as we can before our forces engage them. The inhabitants of this system are beyond our help, but we could save others with the information we gather here. Regardless, these will be avenged when combat occurs.”

“Mak’to’ran wants them preserved,” another Lir’nen noted.

“Even a full warfleet could not save this system. What would you have us do?”

“They are unique in our records. If we cannot save their planet, we need to preserve enough that they can reproduce later.”

“That is not our assigned mission, and doing so would compromise it. We need as much data as possible, and revealing our presence with engine activity will diminish our time here.”

“If we snag a few on the way out we can accomplish both the primary and the secondary mission. I for one do not want to be punished for disobeying Mak’to’ran’s standing orders.”

The commander growled, but not at his subordinates. They were correct, for Mak’to’ran had punished others for letting indigenous races be wiped out when they could have preserved some of them. He did not care about the lives lost so much as the genetics of unique races being extermished. That was a victory for the Hadarak, and Mak’to’ran liked to deny them victory as often as possible.

“Very well. How many do we need?”

One of the crew pulled up the survey file. “They reproduce via eggs, tri-fertilized. We need a minimum of three, and any three will do. They have no genders.”

“Begin reconfiguring the second hangar bay. Launch all probes and shift assets to the primary. Figure out what they eat and if we need to procure it from the planet as well…”

The sky above the world known as Baxvo was pink, as was normal for the planet’s atmosphere, and the quadruped race of Mentako had built up five large colonies over the course of their existence. Each one was made of brick and extended as far underground as they did up into the air in large, round skyscrapers. They had electricity and other primitive technology, but the Mentako’s wide paws weren’t well suited to construction, hence they had developed biotic limbs that attached on top of their own to do the more delicate work with.

So there were many fake cyborgs walking around the ant-like colony in the northwestern plains when the sky began to darken. The Mentako did not have orbital sensors, so they did not know what had entered orbit, but a giant mass temporarily blotted out the distant sun before passing by and allowing the light to return.

That mass continued to grow larger, and soon it was impossible to miss as it dropped low on the horizon and even caught on fire as it hit the upper atmosphere, punching into it with rapid speed before ramming the planet and triggering a massive earthquake.

Four of the towers in the northwestern plains colony swayed so much they broke, carrying thousands of people inside them to the ground where they landed on other buildings and streets, breaking apart on impact and shattering into shrapnel that flew out killing others. The earthquakes continued in lesser amounts for minutes later, snapping a few more towers but the rest held erect, swaying back and forth like grass, though they were never designed to do so.

No one knew what was happening, and the entire colony was thrown into a panic long before the first of the images from the other colonies showed the impact crater and the 102 mile wide object sitting in it and extending tentacles out to dig further down into the surface.

After that came the swarms of beings out of it, some constructing buildings nearby the tortured ground around the impact zone, others marching out as armies towards the nearest Mentako harvesting settlements.

The Mentako had no defenses, for they had never encountered another race before, but some of them bravely went out to try and defend their kin, only to be slaughtered by the alien invaders that quickly made their way to the nearest colony. There the battle was more protracted, but the end result was the same. The aliens were hunting down and destroying all the Mentako, even searching the underground mining catacombs as if they had orders to cover every square foot of livable space as the monstrosity on the horizon sat unmoving.

Some Mentako ran into the wilderness, others stood their ground and died fighting, but none were spared and the alien armies continued from colony to colony exterminating them, leaving the northwestern plains for last. When they eventually arrived, they came with both land troops and flyers, and during the initial combat some of those fliers were shot out of the sky by a large dark object that came overtop the colony.

It fired beams of light at the invaders, killing them on contact as bipedal armored suits dropped to the ground and shot some of the Mentako too, then they took the Mentako bodies back up with them into the dark object and it left, leaving the colony to die alone as it raced into the sky with many of the alien fliers attacking it.

The remaining Mentako wouldn’t live to tell their story, and within another 4 days every last one of them in the colony would be dead, and the few that had run into the wilderness to survive wouldn’t make it more than two months. After that the entire planet would be dead, save for the Hadarak and their minions.

The Kaeper stayed in orbit as long as possible, but once it made it to ground and engaged the minions it was marked and would not be left alone. When the warship-class minions eventually came for it the Lir’nen had to run, but not before seeing the first of the Hadarak leave on not one, but three different jumplines. They were spitting up as even more arrived in this system, now up to 27, and it was clear that this was a rendezvous point out from which an invasion was beginning…but an invasion against who? The star systems they were jumping to were more or less lateral to their current position and not on the path towards the V’kit’no’sat bases.

The Lir’nen wouldn’t know the answer to that question until they returned to the fleet and combined their information with that of others seeing the same thing happening at various points around the Deep Core, and all of them were operating on the same methodology.

Every system they passed through they attacked and destroyed the inhabitants, leaving behind minions on the exterminated worlds…and in the case of uninhabited systems, they were leaving behind minions just the same.

That wasn’t normal for them, and it soon became clear that this was an entirely different type of invasion, for the Hadarak were not seeking out the V’kit’no’sat for combat. Instead they were sweeping through all adjacent systems and clearing them of population, then seemingly marking their territory as they moved on.

It did not happen quickly, and the more data that flowed in to the V’kit’no’sat resulted in a call for a massive fleet response, with V’kit’no’sat vessels traveling for months from across the empire to get to the Hadarak front as they assembled and waited for enough ships to arrive before they attempted to strike back.

2

July 23, 128457

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat Capitol)

Wendigama

Mak’to’ran knew this was bad, and as more and more reports filtered in across the Urrtren it only got worse. The Hadarak were not attacking the V’kit’no’sat border yet, and it wasn’t because of the distance involved. They weren’t even heading towards it, but Mak’to’ran could see all too well what they were doing, and it was something that had never happened before, yet something the V’kit’no’sat had always feared.

Normally the Hadarak didn’t care who lived on what planet, and the only times the V’kit’no’sat could detect a pattern in their attacks was when they came for their own worlds and bypassed others. But even then it was sporadic, as if they didn’t actually have territory to defend. In fact it was much like V’kit’no’sat territory, where they did not own most of the planets in the coreward half of the galaxy, but held dominion over those outside the Deep Core. They only bothered to interact with the denizens of the unclaimed planets when they proved to be a nuisance, had something the V’kit’no’sat wanted, or rose to the level of a threat. Beyond that they were ignored, and so too did the Hadarak ignore those that lived in the galaxy.

But they did feed on planets, and if you happened to live on one they happened to land on they would cause massive damage. Some planets lost their entire populations even if the crust itself remained mostly intact when starvation and infrastructure loss caused their civilizations to collapse. Others managed to rebuild after the fact, because the Hadarak did not stick around to kill them all. Their minions didn’t hunt down every last one of them, they simply ran them over when they got in their way.

But now they were hunting them down, to the last person, on every planet in their path and leaving minions behind on all of them. To Mak’to’ran it was clear what was happening, but he didn’t want to believe it. He was hoping he was wrong, that this was just an isolated incident following some protocol he hadn’t figured out yet, but the results were stark and gradually expanding across Hadarak controlled space while ever so slowly approaching the V’kit’no’sat border.

The Hadarak were exterminating all animal life large enough to attract their attention, but they weren’t destroying the plants specifically. If Mak’to’ran wanted to glass a planet he bombarded it from orbit and anything that was on the surface got charred into glass. But the Hadarak were not doing so, despite the fact that they did have enough ranged weapons to do so in their minions. That said, they didn’t need to bombard a planet to destroy the forests and other vegetation on them. They could just tear them down…but they weren’t except where it was necessary to hunt the lifeforms.

And it didn’t matter if they were groundpounders, aquatics, or avians. Everyone was being targeted and killed, and at first Mak’to’ran thought they were feeding off them, but that wasn’t categorical. Sometimes the dead were being harvested near minion colonies, but elsewhere on the planets they were just left to rot where they were killed.

Mak’to’ran had worked this every way he could, but there was only one undeniable conclusion.

The Hadarak were exterminating all people from their territory.

The two questions foremost on his mind was how far they would take this, and why were they doing it now? Never in the history of the V’kit’no’sat had the Hadarak done this, not even on a single world. It was also true that the V’kit’no’sat had never pushed this far into Hadarak territory. Perhaps this was the backlash to their continual victories, but they were not attacking the V’kit’no’sat! Despite the thousands of Hadarak coming out of the Core, none had come to the border. In fact, the normal patrols had been pulled back to join the others in the eradication efforts, leaving the V’kit’no’sat free and clear to claim vast tracks of territory all the way in to the tiny rings of exterminated systems that were slowly expanding outward.

Mak’to’ran now had access to maps he never had before, for his scouts were able to explore systems that had been too heavily guarded in the past. There were even a number of those systems that had been stripped of minions, packed into Hadarak, and taken elsewhere. Some of Mak’to’ran’s commanders in the area had attacked and destroyed those strongholds in their moment of weakness, and still the Hadarak did not return.

They were all concentrated into three slowly forming rings, between which were inhabited systems as of yet untouched. Why they were doing this Mak’to’ran had not deduced yet, but the rings were being drawn vertically first, as if creating a wall of destruction to pin in the rest, but there were no patrols to catch fleeing ships so it was completely ineffective for that purpose.

They’re transit rings, a voice said inside Mak’to’ran’s mind as another Era’tran approached from the distant entrance to the war chamber that hadn’t been used since the Rit’ko’sor rebellion. They have to use couriers to keep updated on counterstrikes, and if they cannot pass through secure territory they will be blind if we can intercept them.

Then they anticipate counterattack, Mak’to’ran replied as Dona’gran walked up behind him then angled sharply to the right around the perimeter of the massive holographic galaxy map that dominated the center of the chamber.

“They wish to be thorough,” the elder Era’tran said aloud as he looked Mak’to’ran in the eye. “They cannot let anyone live. This is extinction they are imposing on us.”

“Why multiple rings?”

“They may grid the territory rather than only advance to adjacent systems. Have you found any control hubs yet?”

“I have been looking at several possibilities, though the Hadarak themselves serve the same function.”

“If they stay in one location. This appears to be a mobile assault force. Command and control would require fixed locations for communications if only accomplished via courier.”

“I suspect they have additional communication methods.”

“Death screams would not be efficient for an extinction task.”

“If they can transmit across stars upon death, they may be able to transmit in other forms.”

“Possibly. What do you plan to do?”

“What we are sworn to do,” Mak’to’ran said firmly.

“We cannot engage the Hadarak in groups, and the larger ones we cannot engage singly. Do you intend to lead us to our deaths in combat now rather than wait for them to come to us?”

“I need more information before deciding on a war strategy, but for the moment we are going to strike where we can to interfere and degrade their operations.”

“Then I would suggest prioritizing the couriers.”

“I am prioritizing all minions.”

Dona’gran huffed. “You believe we can win a resource war?”

“I believe it will slow their advance, not stop it.”

“And beyond that?”

“I do not know. What counsel can you offer?”

“I greatly wish we were on the Rim and Star Force was here.”

Mak’to’ran glared at him. “You think battle is hopeless?”

The larger Era’tran pointed a short arm towards the map. “This is the beginning of something so vast and complex we do not even know what we are looking at. Our only victories over the Hadarak are because they allowed it. Now they are asserting their power, for whatever purpose, and I believe they will be able to do whatever they want to do. The pertinent question is what exactly are they doing? The races they are killing are no threat to them, so is this a precaution for our invasion? I think not. They are not engaging us while they set up their transit rings. They are ignoring us, so I would assume this action is not because of us.”

“If not us, then who?”

“I have no answer for you, Mak’to’ran. I am here because Jamtren is requesting instructions.”

“For what?” Mak’to’ran asked. The Era’tran capitol was far from the Deep Core and under no immediate threat.

“Word is spreading that this might be the war to end us. They want to know how to prepare.”

“Harthur are of no help against the larger Hadarak, but they cannot have many of them. If widespread eradication is to occur, they will have to spread out. When they do, we can begin reducing their numbers. Tell Holloi to prioritize Harthur construction.”

“And how will we attempt to stop a tier 5 Hadarak?”

“We will not. Our fight is with their minions. If a Hadarak chooses to stay and fight without them, then we will decide. Historically they choose to run when their minions are depleted.”

“Are you considering the sedative?”

Mak’to’ran growled a negative. “They are too large. We could not get enough deep into them to be effective. But we can use it to numb an area of their surface. We have never attempted to do so on one so large, but if we can develop a weapon against them, then the sedative may assist in the delivery of it once the minions are eliminated.”

“Is there any realistic hope of a new weapon?”

“We have several that are more effective, but nothing on the level that we need. Our progress is incremental.”

“At the rate the Hadarak are expanding, we appear to have plenty of time.”

“Do we?” Mak’to’ran challenged. “You have pointed out several possibilities that I had not considered, but you have missed the greatest threat to us.”

“And what is that?”

“The minions. The Hadarak are collecting them from planets rather than waiting to grow them internally.”

Dona’gran starred at him quizzically for nearly a minute before he twitched and stepped back reflexively as the already stifling fear that was gripping the V’kit’no’sat empire like a parasite spiked beyond measure.

“Now you see it,” Mak’to’ran acknowledged.

“The minions,” Dona’gran said in a whisper. “They’re not surveillance on captured worlds…they’re a breeding ground for an invasion force.”

“A necessary force to screen for the numerous Hadarak. They retreat when deprived of them, but if we should wait until their devastation zone reached out to our border, with minion factories on every planet they have cleansed, we will never be able to remove them to get to the Hadarak. If we wait to fight, we seal our doom. Now is the most critical moment, before they have established their growing fields.”

“Then we must burn them, and burn them all. The Hadarak cannot keep pace with our fleets, and they cannot garrison every system. There cannot be that many Hadarak in the Deep Core.”

“I agree, though we know there are some tier 6 Hadarak that have not yet joined the invasion. I anticipate we have barely scratched the surface of their true power or numbers. We cannot fight them effectively even without their minions, so if we ever do develop a more effective weapon, we have to first get past the minions…so it is the minions that we will now make war upon and ignore the Hadarak unless we can catch a small one on its own. Others are having trouble understanding this, for they believe the minions are inferior.”

“If they scale to such numbers as there are systems to produce them, then they may be the greater threat. We must burn them Mak’to’ran, and burn them now,” Dona’gran insisted.

“I have already given the order to begin.”

The Les’i’kron task force was 204 ships strong, centered on 3 Kafcha with the legendary Vos’re’nor in command. He was amongst the oldest of the Les’i’kron, but like nearly all of his kin he did not like the idea of leading from behind. Whereas other races had their Elders retreat from the battle lines to pursue quieter, yet essential tasks, the Les’i’kron kept their most experienced leaders where their skills could be felt the most, and with Hadarak to fight that had always been the border.

But now there was a greater need, and Vos’re’nor would not allow any of lesser rank to lead the first mission deep into Hadarak territory. His task force was not the only one the Les’i’kron were sending, and all of them were necessarily small compared to the threat even a tier 1 Hadarak entailed, but his orders had come directly from Mak’to’ran and he knew his target was not the Hadarak, but the recently laid minion factories on the cleansed planets.

Vos’re’nor had been assigned a geographical area to harass, so he didn’t need to worry about running across another task force, but he also didn’t have a specific target. The Hadarak were expanding so fast across the galaxy that information on their activities were limited. Their movements might be slow, but more and more Hadarak were coming out of the Deep Core constantly, and whereas they had been relatively easy to track in the past, now there were so many of them that reconnaissance ships were getting spread thin.

Not on the Hadarak themselves, for the V’kit’no’sat had far more scouts than there were Hadarak, but they did not have enough ships to monitor every system the Hadarak were cleansing. Knowing what type of minion factories were being created, what type of minions they were spawning, and how fast those colonies were growing…that was the information that Vos’re’nor had in limited supply, so his target list had to be created impromptu once he entered his target region.

The Les’i’kron had flexed his wings, eager for battle, when they had come across the first Hadarak…but he knew he couldn’t engage it. Rather he had engaged some of the minions but had to withdraw because he didn’t have sufficient forces to engage all three Hadarak in that system. And it was a system of 4 inhabited planets and well over 80 billion people intelligent enough to speak. Add in all the lesser lifeforms that made the Hadarak’s hit list and these three would be busy here for quite a while, so Vos’re’nor took his fleet to the nearby systems and looked for the one the Hadarak had come from.

The Les’i’kron task force had found not one, but six nearby systems that had already been cleansed. Maps of this region were sketchy, for very little reconnaissance had been done here, and none had been done on the interior ring. This was ring 3, the outermost of the trio, and other task forces were being sent to the others, meaning Vos’re’nor was going to get his chance for combat before most of the others arrived on target.

And that moment was upon him as his fleet mopped up the few minions left defending stellar orbit. None were of the new versions reported, so the Les’i’kron was not concerned with them. He’d been fighting identical ones all his life and he knew what his ships could or couldn’t handle, including the few orbital defense minions floating in orbit around the single planet in the system that had once been inhabited.

But now that he was here and had his scouts spreading out across the system giving him more info while the fleet finished up the minions guarding the star, he saw that two more planets were growing small colonies on them and digging down deep into the planets for the molten material the Hadarak craved.

That was odd, because the minions didn’t really need it. They got what they required from the crust of planets, and that worried him. If the newer minions were built more like Hadarak then they might be more resistant to weaponsfire, and if the minions here were digging deep, then he bet that the factories needed the magma to produce what were probably superior minion forces.

But there were hardly any defenses here and Vos’re’nor’s fleet swept through them easily, leaving his ships in orbit high above the primary planet as they spread out into bombardment formation. There was one large colony here with many ‘seeds’ sprinkled across the planet that would expand further, like a cancer, until they occupied every location of value.

When all ships in the fleet signaled that they were in position he casually gave the order to open fire, unleashing the glowing rain and straight lightning streaks that encountered no energy shields. The destructive energy hit the living structures, partially being absorbed, but the heat soon overloaded the material and they popped like puff balls, blowing out bits of tissue rather than exploding into fireballs as black smoke began to streak up into the air along with plumes of ash from the burnt and often vaporized sections of the living buildings.

The minions held up better than most artificial technology in the galaxy, but without shields the attack wasn’t difficult, just time consuming, for they couldn’t let anything of sufficient size remain to begin to regrow, and that meant later sending down ground forces for a final sweep.

Vos’re’nor didn’t think he’d have that option very often, but here, at least, there was such little resistance that he was already ordering the troops to the hangar bays as the bombardment continued, blasting minions and native vegetation alike in the firestorm that didn’t care what it destroyed as long as it took the minions with it.

Rock beneath the targeted structures vaporized as well, sending plumes up into the air that actually rained sand on nearby regions, and it was through that solid rain that drop pods descended once the bombardment had stopped or moved on to other areas of the planet. Those drop pods released armies of Zen’zat in vehicles, both ground, aerial, and aquatic as other drop pods stopped midair to released armored Les’i’kron that flew out over the charred and smoking landscape using their psionics to search the rubble below for minions survivors that did register on Ikrid, whereas trees and even Uriti minions would not. The Hadarak used people for buildings, as grotesque as that was, and that made them stand out like beacons once a Les’i’kron or Zen’zat got within natural Ikrid range or within the field of the artificial sensors that had much greater range, though lesser sensitivity.

Vos’re’nor knew it might be impossible to get every single one, but if he could it meant the Hadarak would have to come back here again to restart the process. And if one ‘seed’ remained, it would take far longer to regenerate what was being destroyed than 10 of them would. The more thorough he was the more time he bought and the more resources he denied the enemy in the near future, but the trend was clear.

This was not a war that could be won in this manner. They were buying time, nothing more, while Itaru and Mak’to’ran searched for an effective means to fight the growing number of Hadarak before they could get to V’kit’no’sat worlds and do to them what had been done to this one.

If it came to that, Vos’re’nor knew, the war would already have been lost…but if he was going to die, he was going to take at least one Hadarak with him. Right now he would hold to Mak’to’ran’s plan, and he fully agreed with it, but if it came down to a matter of vengeance before death, he and many others would stop focusing on the inferior minions and face their true nemesis before the end came.

And Vos’re’nor, after all the millennia he had lived, would not allow himself to survive and watch the empire slowly fall. He would face the threat head on and leave such tasks to the younger generations, for running away to fight later was not the Les’i’kron way, and the more the Hadarak won, the lesser the chance of ultimate victory.

This had to be won soon, somehow, or the V’kit’no’sat were going to bleed themselves dry trying to honor their oaths…and Vos’re’nor would not have it any other way if there truly was no path to victory.

3

November 13, 128458

System 29338573 (Hadarak Zone)

8th planet

Lenkor stood body to body with 15 other Hjar’at inside the drop pod as it raced down through the gap in the planetary defenses that the V’kit’no’sat fleet had just blasted into the Hadarak minion stronghold. They hadn’t expected to hot drop onto an intact planet, but this system had far more growth than had been reported a few months ago and the Hjar’at knew if they waited months to get reinforcements it would only get worse.

They didn’t have enough warships to glass the planet, and they’d lost several punching a hole in the biological anti-orbit cannon fields on the planet. They’d picked the area with the least density of them, then came in and blasted away while taking the return fire that consisted of a variety of exotic energy weapons as well as a form of missiles that were part rail gun, part explosive, part disabling goo. Most fired against the V’kit’no’sat fleet were shot down before they hit, but that meant a portion of their weaponsfire had to be taken off the primary targets, and when one of the ships was disabled the missiles would then get through and begin wrecking them with fusion explosions in some cases, making little suns on the hull that would eat out sections of it with each blast.

The missiles varied in type, but most of the damage to the fleet came from the ‘flowers’ that grew on the planet and tilted to adjust and fire on orbiting warships. They weren’t as powerful as V’kit’no’sat Ardent, but they had decent range and they were growing a lot of them. Too many to take out quickly, and even without planetary shields to protect their infrastructure, the minion buildings did not explode when taking damage. They soaked up a lot of it, meaning that like their Hadarak masters, they were more resilient than expected.

But the lack of planetary shields was a huge weakness, and had the Hjar’at brought more than 308 warships they would have been able to decimate the entire planet. They’d just had the bad luck of coming a little too late, but Lenkor and the others were intent on getting the job done through whatever means necessary. Luck was with them in that there was no Hadarak in the system, and that meant this was a winnable fight.

Lenkor’s drop pod made it almost all the way to the ground before the left wall blew out and shrapnel bounced off his armor’s shields, ricocheting around and hitting others as the drop pod began to fall out of control.

“Brace!” he yelled, with everyone inside locking their armor to the walls and floor before they hit the surface top on, which flattened the upper portion of the egg-shaped dropship almost all the way down into the cargo bay…meaning that the Zen’zat pilots in the upper section were probably dead.

The artificial gravity and inertial dampeners were still functional, so the one jarring impact was all that they felt, then they were left standing upside down inside the small bay.

“The door won’t respond,” one of the Hjar’at said. “It’s fused with debris from above. I can’t peel it with my Lachka.”

“Everyone assist,” Lenkor ordered, with them coordinating telepathically to know where to push and pull inside the deformed wall above the door. Groaning metal was heard along with multiple pops, then one of the Hjar’at moved up next to the door and pushed its head up into the archway, getting a small grip on the lip of the closed door and added the physical push needed to break the casing.

Something gave way inside, but it wasn’t enough. Another two Hjar’at squeezed their way up front and stood on their rear legs, putting their front pair up on the wall and pushing up with them as if they were hands. Combined with the telekinetic pressure from all 16 of them, they leveraged the bulkheads up enough that the drop pod door was able to fall outward…then hung in a vertical position, wagging back and forth, because the drop pod was upside down.

The Hjar’at ran up on the wall, guessing the conversion point well, and did a semi-controlled spiral around to land on the real ground outside as they pushed through the gap while still holding it up with their Lachka. Lenkor went out last, then when they released their psionic hold on it the archway half collapsed, crushing down over the doorway far enough that only a Zen’zat could squeeze through, though he could feel that most of them were dead. Those that weren’t crushed were already outside, but only two of them had vehicles to move about it.

All around the crash site there were intact drop pods descending over a snowy landing zone that stretched for miles. As they did Lenkor could see streaks of blue and green energy hitting them from smaller weapon ‘flowers’ that the orbital bombardment had not taken down. Most of the drop pods shrugged off the damage with their shields, but he saw one get hit with something a lot stronger and go down about 10 seconds prior to landing.

“That heavy battery is our target,” Lenkor told his small herd. “Keep your armor sealed at all times. The minions have multiple toxins that our Kich’a’kat have difficulty counteracting. If you do get infected try to pull out of combat and remain perfectly still. Several of the poisons thrive on activity and they can infect your spines if they are not energized. Keep them lit or keep them armored over. How many mortars do we have?” he asked the Zen’zat.

“Only two. The others are damaged or pinned inside the ship.”

“Follow us. Those of you that cannot, merge with other Zen’zat units. Follow me and shred anything in our path!” he yelled, taking off at a run to the head of the herd as more drop pods continued to land all around the horizon.

The Hjar’at formed up behind Lenkor into a wedge that then doubled back again into a diamond with the single Zen’zat assault vehicle in the center. It could have carried six mortars, but only had two now, and was the key to the Hjar’at taking down the larger infrastructure quickly. The other, smaller Zen’zat vehicles that allowed them to keep pace with the Hjar’at did not follow, rather loading up with all the survivors and diverting to a nearby landing zone for a drop pod that had not yet reached ground.

Lenkor followed his own orders, extending his armor up over his clear spines to protect them as he ran across the two foot deep snow. It slowed him a bit, but his feet and legs were so big it wasn’t too cumbersome as he tracked the large flower that was firing on the drop pods. It was easily visible on his armor’s interlinked computer systems that combined information from all infantry units, the drop pods, and the few warships high overhead out of ground weapons range.

The flower had been spotted by others, having come up late from an underground burrow after having not fired on the fleet. That was why they’d missed it, and even as the last of the drop pods were coming down and were soon to be below its firing arc, it had to go and the fleet couldn’t get it without coming back within firing range of the others further around the arc of the horizon.

The Hjar’at made good speed across the snowy landscape, coming up over a small rise then powering down through a valley where there were a few minion buildings. Lenkor headed directly toward them as several thin blue beams firing against his shields as tiny flowers opened up and tracked them, firing the energy weapons as well as poison pods and other nasty anti-infantry weapons.

Lenkor sprinted forward, diminishing the time he would have to endure enemy fire as he pulled the armor off his spines and ignited the bright blue energy aura around them…then he fired a blue lightning bolt forward, hitting one of the small flowers and vaporizing it on contact. It puffed into confetti as the others kept firing through the fog-like debris cloud, then more blue lightning bolts shot forward from the other Hadarak behind him, plucking the defensive structures from the building that had a line of worker minions coming up from underground tunnels and now scrambling for cover.

The Hjar’at all lit their spines and spread out in a giant line, then sprinted together as one and did a battle roll, dipping their heads and somersaulting forward at just the right moment to send their back spines into the building walls, cutting them like lightsaber blades as the mass of their bodies pushed forward with their momentum. They eventually stalled, stuck momentarily upside down, but they thrashed around and freed themselves, cutting up more of the biological structure in the process, then proceeded to dip and dive while on their feet, sending their spines sideways and using their tail spikes to further cut into the structure.

Several minutes later there wasn’t a structure left, just a bleeding, oozing mess of organic tissue that extended deep into the ground with roots, but the Hjar’at weren’t going to be cleansing this site anytime soon. They just wanted it out of commission, so it couldn’t grow more minions or defensive flowers, and once they’d gotten a good shred on it, they formed up behind Lenkor again and took off towards the giant flower rising some 370 meters above the ground off in the distance.

The Zen’zat assault craft traveled with them, but did not attack any of the six structures they came across enroute to the primary target. They were not here to fight with the Hjar’at, but merely to support them and carry the big disablers developed only some 60,000 years ago after a massive amount of research battles against the Hadarak minions. Once they got within range of the giant flower, with the Hjar’at taking down the smaller ones defending its perimeter, the Zen’zat launched the first mortar at the anti-orbital weapon, sending the phone booth-sized missile out on a straight line to the target…but there was no explosion. Instead it cratered on it like a wad of puddy, sticking and soaking in as the huge mass of nanites burrowed their way into the thick armor on the giant flower.

Normal weapons damage would take forever to destroy it, and even a warship’s weaponry wouldn’t take it out quickly save for a Tar’vem’jic hit, which this fleet was not capable of producing. So to give the V’kit’no’sat more quick takedown capability, Mak’to’ran had pushed hard for a biological weapon to use against the minions. The Hadarak were virtually immune to such things, aside from the sedative that was counteracted by combat, making it virtually worthless. But the minions were not so robust, yet they still healed very fast, meaning any traditional biological weapon could not scale in damage, and would be purged quickly after infecting the target.

The solution had been an artificial biological weapon, hence technology rather than biology in the form of nanites, tiny machines too small to see that could move within the target along with its blood supply and travel everywhere within it. Getting through the thick hide took time, but once the nanites slowly got into the primary blood stream they traveled throughout the giant flower and went after the vital components…not destroying them, for they would just regrow, but to stick to them and disrupt their function like a person sticking their foot in a closing door.

It took more than 15 minutes to take effect, but after that the flower could not fire, could not reposition, couldn’t do much of anything as the Hjar’at targeted the surrounding support infrastructure and not even bothering to attack the stem of the flower that was 128 meters wide and heavily armored. They could cut into it with their spines, but it was slow work and a warship would do much better and quicker damage once the ground forces had neutralized enough of the anti-orbital weapons to allow them into firing range unopposed.

There was so many smaller flowers around the big one that it took more than 4 hours for Lenkor’s herd to clear them out, even with the help of several other herds that eventually worked their way to them. The rest of the numerous drop pods had deposited troops heading out in all directions, widening their foothold on the planet until they could start bringing the big warships down to the surface to exploit a major weakness in the minions…that being their targeting. They were nowhere near as effective as technological systems, meaning they could hit big targets, but the smaller and more maneuvering they became, the harder they were to hit.

The smaller flowers were better, which was why the Hjar’at couldn’t send down Zen’zat aerial craft, but for the big guns like the one they’d just disabled, the drop pods could mostly make it through, hence they’d been sent down rather than a warship that would have been lit up so much it would have been destroyed under even the reduced firepower in and around the landing zone.

The fact that Lenkor’s drop pod had been hit was more or less bad luck, but their good luck had been that it was a glancing shot. A solid hit would have destroyed the drop pod in one blast.

But now that the Hjar’at were on the ground, there was no way even the medium flowers could rotate down far enough and fast enough to target them…unless they were stupid enough to stand still and wait half an hour, for the flowers had to really contort themselves to point groundward. They relied on the smaller perimeter defenses for that, and they were no match for a disciplined Hjar’at herd…so long as they didn’t get cocky and try to take on more than was reasonable.

Lenkor would not allow that to happen. He had fought the minions before, and had taken their toxins to his flesh. Luckily he had survived, and once stung he was never going to be too bold against this old enemy. They were weak and yet they were dangerous simultaneously. The lack of shields made many V’kit’no’sat expect weak opposition…only to end up poisoned and dying before they could get back to a larger Kich’a’kat that could keep up with the damage as the toxins ate into the body and, in some cases, reproduced more of itself. That was how Davur worked, and it elicited a pain beyond imagining.

Lenkor had not been infected with Davur, but a lesser poison called Strashum. It disabled more than damaged, making his movements awkward and slow, eventually tripping him up and not allowing him to fight. But today that wasn’t going to happen, and whenever he or his herd had their shields go down he ordered them to pull back, for if he waited until there was an armor breach that was all it would take to allow some poison through…and after that the battle would be inside your armor, and if it managed to kill you it would turn your body into a breeding ground for automated weapons that walked or flew, attacking any target around them after many hours or even a few days, depending on how long it took to grow them out of your corpse.

He wasn’t going to allow that to happen, but this planet was going to burn, fast or slow, it would burn. They couldn’t allow it to become an exporter of minions for the Hadarak to load up on and assault V’kit’no’sat worlds with. In the past, destroying their minions always forced them back and a long delay for them to grow more ensued…but now that they had dedicated transport minions the size of starships that could carry extra minions along with the Hadarak filling their holds, those delays were no longer relevant, and if this supply chain of worlds were allowed to develop, the Hadarak would be rolling over systems far faster than the V’kit’no’sat had ever seen before.

Taking down this semi-developed world could spare 10 other systems in coming decades, for the minions reproduced exponentially, which was why Lenkor and the other Hjar’at had to go on a shredding spree…before the growth rate of the minions won this war for the Hadarak through mere attrition.

4

November 15, 128458

System 4338573 (Hadarak Zone)

Stellar Orbit

Ich’aopo sat on his perch waiting patiently, but when the alert ping sounded the I’rar’et still jerked in a combination of surprise and anticipation.

“Hadarak-level mass on approach,” another of the avian command deck crew stated.

“Activate,” Ich’aopa stated, watching the monitors as the approximate location of the mass on approach to the system was plotted. It wasn’t moving as fast as a starship, which made the tracking easier, but still it was not possible to get a precise position due to the speeds involved and the fact that they were viewing it from nearly head on. It looked like they had 12-14 minutes before it entered the system on its long braking maneuver.

Ich’aopa was one of the few commanders authorized to hunt Hadarak. The rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleets were avoiding them and targeting the minions they’d left behind on a growing number of worlds. His fleet was a mix of I’rar’et, Ari’tat, and Qua’cho and numbered over 2,000 heavy warships. He had no ground assault vessels or troop ships, for this combat would be in space and space alone…sort of. He didn’t expect to actually kill a Hadarak, and because of that he didn’t have a Harthur with him. What he was meant to do was cause damage that would take the Hadarak out of commission for a while, thus delaying their expansion, and to do that Ich’aopa had stolen one of Star Force’s expensive bits of technology.

He had been in the fleet that had assaulted Terraxis back when Star Force’s existence was first discovered, and he’d been onboard one of the ships that had tried to brake normally against their single star coming out of an interstellar jump…only to smash into the star as they couldn’t brake as fast as normal. The I’rar’et ship had survived, but the outer armor had been mostly melted off before they were able to pull out, and many other ships hadn’t been that lucky.

Mak’to’ran had long ago ordered any and all ideas, no matter how unconventional, be proposed to fight the Hadarak. Ich’aopa had been one of several to propose using Star Force’s IDF field system on known Hadarak patrol routes to cause them to smash into the star at higher speed than expected. To date it had been tested only twice, but it had worked both times, the second of which used an even larger Disruption Array that slammed a tier 2 Hadarak into a star so hard it didn’t come back out for more than a year.

It had survived, and Ich’aopa expected the Hadarak here would too, but this system was on a newly established route that had already seen dozens of Hadarak pass through coming out of the Deep Core and he’d gotten permission directly from Mak’to’ran to set up shop in the planetless system and see what damage he could do.

He watched as the automated reports came in from the series of IDF gates set around the incoming jumpline and only that jumpline. If the Hadarak used any other they’d miss it entirely, but since they moved slowly and predictably, Ich’aopa knew another would be passing through this area, and if he could kill any courier minions launched he could potentially keep ambushing them in this system forever.

This was going to be the first test, and Mak’to’ran had given him not one, nor two, but three full Disruption Arrays to set up, disabling the Hadarak’s biological gravity drives for even longer stretches on approach and preserving more of their speed for a greater collision. All of those IDF gates powered up to full and blanketed the space between them with an energy field that linked all molecules together in a matrix that gravity pulled on equally. And it pulled on it equally because the field itself took the gravity pull and kept everything inside it locked into the field. That meant the gravity technically never hit the Hadarak’s biological gravity drives, making them useless.

The moment of truth came quickly, and as the Hadarak’s position got pinned down more and more, Ich’aopa watched as it approached the first gate and the predicted deceleration curve. As it passed through the first that mathematical curve altered, and while the results were delayed by communications lag, he saw spikes in that curvature each time the Hadarak passed through a gate, unable to keep braking until it got through it and then felt the gravitational pull of the star again…only to lose it a moment later as it passed through another gate.

He also noted that the Hadarak wasn’t tier 1 or 2. It was a tier 3, and he had no idea what damage would result from that much more mass. Maybe less, maybe more. It was hard to say and there were many variables, such as the hardness of the Hadarak skin compared to the less dense interior, but when the I’rar’et commander saw the gigantic reaction from the star as the Hadarak hit it and produced such a large splash of stellar material, he knew he had scored a major hit even as his ships in low orbit had to flee out of the way of the cannonball-induced plume that was far larger than any solar flare. It was near to nova level and was going to lick the closest IDF gates.

Ich’aopo ordered his ships to get there first and spread their shields over the mechanisms. He didn’t want to lose any, and with the delay of the material traveling through space he could indeed get his fleet there in time. The question was if they could block that amount of material, or whether it would disperse enough prior to impact to not be a problem.

But either way, that impact plume was so much larger that the Hadarak had to have been badly damaged, and the magnetic field of the star was even contorting around the impact site.

“Second mass detected on approach!”

Ich’aopo twisted his long triangular head to the side so fast his beak could have cut flesh had someone been in the way. “Two?”

“Confirmed.”

“How are the capacitors?”

“We can get 88% out of the field, maybe more depending when we activate it. But it’ll be down for several hours afterward.”

“Be conservative. We don’t want to let it slip through. I just wish we could get them to ram each other.”

“The odds of that are extremely slim, especially with our decreased coverage.”

“I know, but we can still try. The plume might cause more damage if it can travel outward further prior to impact.”

“We’ve only got 17 minutes.”

“Anything further up the jumplane will help. Route the new tracking data to the arrays and get as much recharge time as you can manage…just don’t miss it. That cannot be allowed.”

His command deck crew worked in silence as the second Hadarak approached, then just before it came into the system the IDF fields popped back up…but not all at once. The outermost ones activated in series just ahead of the Hadarak’s arrival, letting those closer in recharge for a few extra minutes, and in the case of the innermost ones far more than that due to the slower braking curve the Hadarak used to accommodate their insane mass.

The second Hadarak was a tier 2, and it did hit the plume of material coming out from the splash of the first one, plowing through it so fast some of the hydrogen in it fused from the compression and the resulting nuclear explosions sprayed the material outward in an expanding halo, leaving the center of the jumplane clear as the Hadarak smashed into the star in almost exactly the same place as the first one and made its own cannonball effect.

It wasn’t quite as large as the first, but another plume of material came straight out and slowly shot through the halo like an axel going through a wheel.

All the I’rar’et sat in silence and just watched the cataclysmic events as they unfolded, then another warning ping sounded, indicating a third Hadarak on approach.

All heads turned to face Ich’aopa, and he didn’t say anything for more than ten seconds, weighing his options.

“Keep the arrays in position and move the fleet to defend those closest to the star. If this is a long train of Hadarak, we might be able to catch another before we have to evacuate.”

“It might hit the plume,” someone suggested.

“It won’t disable it enough to prevent it from spewing out minions. Our position here is about to be compromised. Let’s get what we can out of this, but we have to preserve the Arrays at all cost…”

“It’s happening,” Vichvon said regretfully as the Oso’lon walked into the Primearch’s chamber.

The leader of the independent Oso’lon raised his long neck high above the cushioned pedestal that he was laying on. “Where did the Zak’de’ron strike?”

“No, no…not the Zak’de’ron. The V’kit’no’sat are now fully engaged with the Hadarak in a war they cannot win. They care coming out of the core en mass and laying waste to every inhabited planet without exception. It is said they are engaged in some sort of a purging behavior.”

The Primearch huffed angrily. “Those fools pushed too far.”

“It would seem so. The Hadarak have actually fallen back further, but only to increase their concentration in the deeper regions of the Hadarak Zone as they exterminate all living there. They are slowly going to work their way further out, and where they will stop no one knows. It will be a few millennia before they reach the V’kit’no’sat worlds, but I fear this may go far beyond that.”

“Did Mak’to’ran inform you of this?”

“No. We obtained this information from other sources within the V’kit’no’sat. They believe this is the beginning of the end.”

The Primearch stood up then angrily thumped his huge tail on the floor with a loud smack that echoed throughout the large chamber.

“It is fortunate we gave up our most coreward worlds,” Vichvon offered.

“It gives us time, nothing more, if the Hadarak are going to push out to their previous borders. Their pre-V’kit’no’sat borders, and I expect no less.”

“What will the Zak’de’ron do?”

“Either forget their vengeance against us and rally to fight the Hadarak…” he said with a foolish hope, “or strike us during the carnage when we are weakest. I only hope they go after Mak’to’ran first.”

“He is still young compared to us. He did not know the Zak’de’ron during their time.”

“I fear you are correct. We cannot and will not aid the V’kit’no’sat against the Hadarak. We will prepare for when the Zak’de’ron come for us and deal with the Hadarak only when they reach our worlds.”

“And then?”

“Then we fight and die, or run and probably get killed by the Zak’de’ron as we do.”

“We must develop better options,” Vichvon urged.

“If we are so lucky. If the Hadarak have truly been unleased, we cannot prevail against them. And if the Zak’de’ron are lurking and waiting to strike, we cannot leave our strongholds. What else would you suggest?”

“I suggest we find a way to survive this.”

“Inform the J’gar of what’s happening and ask if they have counsel to offer.”

“Ask?”

“There is no point in insulting them by making demands. Ask for their counsel.”

“As you command,” Vichvon said, spinning around and heading for the exit as the Primearch smashed his tail down multiple times in a fit of temper tantrum at the stupidity of the V’kit’no’sat. If he ever saw Mak’to’ran again he swore he’d kill that fool himself, even if it cost him his own life doing so.

Taryn-047 reached a hand up to grab a rock, feeling her muscles strain under the weight of her own body as she leveraged herself up another 8 inches to a better foothold on the side of the mountain. It wasn’t so steep that she was scaling a vertical wall, but rather an incline that did not allow a straight path upward. It was called Mountain Hercule, and in addition to the tough terrain and 12.4 mile height, there was an automated criticism program that used the DBZ character’s voice to chew you out on how pathetic you were as you fought the 50g gravity field to scale the mountain.

Only 389 Archons had ever made it to the top and one Knight, that being Vermaire. This was Taryn’s 12th attempt, with only two prior successes. Right now she was 3.8 miles up and making slow but steady progress when a tiny orb the size of a baseball flew up next to her face and made a series of R2 noises indicating that it had a message for her.

Comms were not allowed in the artificial chamber on Chief, the 8th planet in the Jepiker System that was reserved for only Archons, Mavericks, and a few other badasses. That meant if anything important happened an Archon climbing the mountain had to be alerted in person, either from someone flying out to them or by sending a droid. The latter was true in this case, and Taryn cursed as she set herself into a couple of good footholds, knowing that if she used her Yen’mer even once the monitoring systems would take notice and disqualify her mountain ascent.

“Dis…play…me…ss…a..ge,” she said, fighting to get the words out as her jaw fumbled against the high gravity.

An image of Davis appeared, and she could tell from the look on his face that something was terribly wrong.

“All trailblazers are to recall to Earth immediately if able. The Hadarak are coming out of the Core like bees out of a hive you just hit with a baseball bat and the V’kit’no’sat are going all in against them. Mak’to’ran has requested we send a delegation to Itaru to consult with him as advisers. He has not asked for military assistance, and I’m not sure what to make of that yet, but we need to brainstorm before we send anyone, so get your asses to Earth ASAP.”

The hologram ended and the droid floated perfectly still as it waited for a command while Taryn twitched and squirmed trying to hold onto the rocks.

She gave up on vocal commands and instead mentally ordered the droid back, acknowledging reception of the message, but Taryn continued to climb. Traveling to Earth wouldn’t take that long from Jepiker, and another day here or there wouldn’t matter. She wanted to get a third completion on this mountain badly, and she wasn’t going to stop now. The trailblazer continued climbing for another hour, making it all the way up to mile marker 4 which appeared as a blue holographic line equivalent to fog, but when she got there she stopped and pulled herself onto a small rest plateau, though the gravity didn’t relent as she laid down on her back staring up at the holographic clouds overhead along with the giant head of Hercule.

“What? Tired already? I made it to the top without taking even one break, and you’re stopping before you even get halfway up? And here I thought you were tough.”

“Shut…up,” she yelled, raising her right arm up and opening the orifice in her palm. Out from it shot a green Bra’hem beam, traveling up like a laser to hit Hercule’s big holographic head and impacted the shields within it. As programed, he appeared to explode, giving her a moment of silence, but within a few minutes he’d be back to ‘motivate’ her further.

Her arm thumped back down on the ground hard, cutting the skin on her elbow, but it regrew within the next 30 seconds as she used her Essence to goose all her healing needs and repair some of the microdamage from the hours of high gravity exposure she’d already suffered.

“Sc..rew…it,” she said, sitting up and leaning on her hands and knees as a rivulet of sweat poured off her head and appeared to get sucked down onto the rock with lightning speed. Not far to the right was a store of foodstuffs and water bottles. Without it she would never make it to the top, but there was no ambrosia there, and her body had already used up her reserves in the first two miles.

But that didn’t matter now. She wanted to get to the top, but thoughts of the Hadarak and the V’kit’no’sat were distracting her and she needed her full concentration to even attempt this. She caught her breath for a few seconds, then activated her Yen’mer and easily floated herself up off the ground, for the high gravity added power to her anti-grav nodules even as it pulled down on her body, nearly canceling out the effect aside from the torsion between the parts of her body that wanted to go up and those that wanted to go down.

50g wasn’t too much to handle, but get above 80g and your cells would start to rip apart without augmentation. Taryn did have that augmentation, but floating up now still damaged her somewhat, though the long term flying challenges in high gravity made a little trip to the valley below easy in comparison.

Taryn flew down over the course of minutes, whereas it had taken her hours to reach the 4 mile mark. She was mentally kicking herself for throwing away all that effort, but she had somewhere else to be and something far more important to do.

When Taryn landed on a gridded, concrete deck, she walked across the 1 meter wide tiles and through an open archway…where the gravity returned to normal. The trailblazer actually leapt up and hit her head on the ceiling when it shifted and she didn’t completely adjust in time, attesting to how tired she was.

“Idiot,” she mumbled as she rubbed her head and gently walked on, her muscles beginning to remember what normal gravity felt like as they collectively let out a giant sigh of relief.

5

October 1, 128459

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat Capitol)

Stellar Orbit

Liam-090 stood in front of dozens of holographic display screens as his Borg-class warship came out of its interstellar jump into the face of hundreds of V’kit’no’sat vessels waiting at the jumppoint. All of them were small at no more than 40 miles wide, with his Solarion measuring 327 miles in width and height, but more than 1000 miles long and looking like a rectangular tube with all the drones that were stacked on behind it like Legos.

The V’kit’no’sat ships were not here to fight, rather as an escort through a system that had millions of starships moving about on commerce and defense patrols. And even though they were invited, the Solarion was larger and more powerful than any vessel the V’kit’no’sat possessed, so it’s presence was going to draw attention…let alone the sight of a Mach’nel jumping into the system behind him.

It was the Malphite, under the command of Grand Admiral Saetaru, and only 159 miles wide. It was 207 long and shaped like a squid, as all 6 of the H’kar Mach’nel were. Saetaru had the reputation, and the combat scores, of being the most skilled naval officer in Star Force outside the Archons, and his presence in Itaru in his Mach’nel would have been enough on its own to cause some unease, but it didn’t end there.

After his Mach’nel came in, another Borg-class warship arrived, this one belonging to Roger-009, and it matched the dimensions of Liam’s exactly, including the mass of drones it was carrying behind it. After a few seconds there started a stream of ‘small’ Clan Emerald Shark warships, each only 22 miles long in standard Star Force ‘submarine’ shape, making them smaller than many of the V’kit’no’sat ships, but after 46 of Roger’s Clan fleet arrived, another Borg-class vessel arrived…the Excalibur.

A Mach’nel, plus three Borg vessels, would have been sending shockwaves through Itaru had this not been preplanned, despite the fact that the system defense fleet was so large it could overcome all 4 of the massive vessels through attrition, despite their full Yeg’gor armored shells. But with the V’kit’no’sat ships flying into escort position and pacing them all the way to Wendigama there were no incidents to note other than traffic flows being rerouted to avoid them.

Liam had never been to Itaru before, and seeing it live rather than just on old data was impressive. It wasn’t the largest system in the galaxy, but it had 16 planets and 183 moons, all of which were fully inhabited…save for the 4 gas giants…with an insane amount of orbital infrastructure set up around them and in null points around the two central stars, amounting to a 127 trillion population.

But what it sported more than any other system in V’kit’no’sat territory was weapons platforms. They were everywhere, in addition to their monstrous defense fleet that had grown in size since Mak’to’ran had taken power. He knew that was due to the threat of the Zak’de’ron, and this of all systems was the one they needed to hold…and the one the Zak’de’ron needed to destroy to drive a dagger through the heart of their former empire.

Liam had to admit that Itaru was more heavily fortified than any system within Star Force, though he hoped one day to surpass it. Sol wouldn’t, for it didn’t have as many planets or population, but Shangri-La might get there eventually. Though at this rate, it looked like Mak’to’ran wasn’t going to make catching that mark easy.

And the deeper they got into the system, the less likely it was that they could make it out again if the V’kit’no’sat turned on them. They had so many ship they could literally block their path with them, and even with Yeg’gor armor you could only ram through so many of them before physics won out.

But they weren’t arrayed for capture or containment. The V’kit’no’sat ships were behaving as if the Star Force fleet wasn’t here, and the small escort force delivered them to low Wendigama orbit where a special slot had been cleared out for the massive ships to park in. In fact, they were allowed to drop into an orbit that was banned for all V’kit’no’sat stations, for they didn’t want to clutter up the lower orbits and create additional traffic hazards. So only ships were allowed to pass through this region, though when the Star Force ships settled in they were defacto stations given the size of them.

Liam left the bridge and boarded a small dropship, flying himself down to the planet where he rendezvoused with the others on a landing pad, immediately feeling the heavy 3.4 gravity. He walked casually in it, for his own training had him enduring far more, but Grand Admiral Saetaru had some difficulty until he and the five Archons passed through an archway leading underground that had them transition to the V’kit’no’sat normal gravity of .9g in communal areas, though each race customized their own levels in private buildings.

Along with Roger and Paul came their apprentices, but Liam currently had none. His former apprentice had completed her training with him some 18 years ago and the trailblazer hadn’t yet picked another. Having one wasn’t required, and recently he hadn’t found any prospective candidates that caught his attention, so he had decided to wait until one did instead of just picking randomly off the list.

The apprentices for the trailblazers were not the same as those in lower ranks, with these being specifically trained to do what the trailblazers did and provide a network of personal command contacts as the empire grew larger and larger. They were essentially extending their ‘family’ network out while other Archons filled in the ranks beneath them in more specialized functions. The truth was, 100 trailblazers was not enough and even if you factored in the second gen Archons you still had them spread so far across the galaxy that ties between command structures became tenuous when the highest ranking individuals in one system had no personal knowledge of the others 1000 lightyears away, let alone on the other side of the galaxy.

So the apprentices were there for the trailblazers to get to know, as well as go around and introduce them to the other members of the ‘elite’ ranks, tying them all together a bit more while allowing the trailblazers to push the advancement rate of the apprentices while using their already considerable skills as a personal assistant. Usually they were redundant, but every now and then they came in handy…but for this mission they were going to be observers only, for whatever Mak’to’ran wanted them for, it was big dog turf and the apprentices were still pups in comparison.

Saetaru was somewhere in between. He wasn’t an Archon, but his naval scores were beyond either of the two apprentices here, as was his battle record. He was a specialist, but one so high up the skill charts that he deserved respect in some ways that the apprentices did not. But still, his presence here was not redundant, for Roger had wanted a non-Archon and naval specialist perspective on the Hadarak war machine, for on occasion they looked at things differently than the 3 top naval experts within Star Force for the simple fact that they were not trained in all 5 military aptitudes and sometimes that allowed them a point of view that added to that of the Archons.

So Saetaru was a bonus, but it was Liam, Roger, and Paul that were the main thrust of this mission. Davis had elected to send their naval best, and Liam had eagerly agreed, for he wanted to be closer to the fighting for the less old data that Itaru would provide, plus any information that Mak’to’ran didn’t feel like transmitting across the Urrtren and could only be delivered in person. Regardless, Liam knew he was going to be in loop here, and he’d much rather be involved than watching from afar as the V’kit’no’sat took on the new Hadarak assault campaign.

A few Zen’zat lead the Star Force delegation off the landing platform and down into the city, with the Archons not worried about security. They all wore their armor in retracted mode, looking like elaborate jewelry over their pure white uniforms, each of which had a pair of black stripes running down the outside of their arms and legs indicating they were all Borg-level Archons. The H’kar wore standard fixed armor, which was somewhat redundant outside his carapace, and the two apprentices also wore fixed armor with the helmets retracted, but the trailblazers were the ones who walked freely and boldly, knowing that if they got into trouble here a little extra armor wouldn’t make much of a difference. They’d have to run and run hard, but there was no feeling of contention here, rather just the opposite.

He could feel the telepathic transmissions of the V’kit’no’sat in the city. They had lived with telepathy so long they had developed the habit of transmitting even when they didn’t try to. It wasn’t the level of words, just a tiny vibe that you could sense in the atmosphere of each V’kit’no’sat world you went to. Star Force Protovic worlds were similar, where the unshielded telepathy was present, and it was because of the Ikrid blocks that the Archons had that they had never gotten that open with their mental states. But here, you could feel the fear and low level panic…as well as a little bit of appreciation for the Archons arriving to ostensibly help them fight what seemed to be an impossible war.

They’re rattled, Roger commented as they stepped onto a Satu that began pulling them through the air towards the main conduit that had all manner of V’kit’no’sat races floating along on the elevated shield ‘rivers’ that they preferred to regular streets due to the speeds they allowed. The Archons were pulled up near a pair of Brat’mar, with their clear head spikes tilting towards them as the denizens looked at what they were quickly realizing were not Zen’zat, but rather Humans from the Rim.

None of them talked, but they looked, and looked a lot, while their Zen’zat escorts stepped in front of them but likewise remained silent.

Yeah they are, Paul agreed. After making limited progress for so long, it’s like the Hadarak stopped toying with them and started to really fight. That’s got to do a lot of damage to their collective ego.

That they live and breathe, Liam added. I’m kind of surprised Mak’to’ran didn’t meet us at the landing field.

That tells me that he’s focused on the war, Roger assumed. Which I’m fine with.

I wonder how fast they’re really moving, Paul said with a hint of concern. I get the feeling they didn’t include the worst of the news.

I’m sure they didn’t, Liam said telepathically before they fell back into silence and watched the sights as they moved through the city towards wherever Mak’to’ran wanted them.

They eventually arrived another large facility built for races at the maximum V’kit’no’sat height, but one that only had Zen’zat inside, seeming to waste the grandiose nature of the architecture. They informed him that the Star Force contingent were in a command center built specifically for their use, including residential and training facilities, but it was the full access to war data that caught the trailblazers’ attention immediately as they were told they were to wait here until Mak’to’ran arrived.

All three of them immediately dove into the reports…all of which were written in V’kit’no’sat, which Saetaru had trouble with and had to constantly use his armor to visually translate text, but the trailblazers had long ago made V’kit’no’sat their second primary language, so they dove into the ample data streams so far and so hard they didn’t even notice the two hours that passed before several large Era’tran walked up behind them with a cascade of heavy footsteps that seemed to soak into the floor and disappear rather than rattle the entire room as some might expect.

“You have already begun your analysis,” Mak’to’ran said as the other four Era’tran spread out around the main holographic display and avoided stepping on the Zen’zat that were busy physically carrying some updates too sensitive to travel through the Urrtren to the command center or out to analysts and back again. “What is your initial assessment?”

“You’re screwed,” Paul said bluntly. “How did this start?”

“Unknown. Elaborate.”

“I didn’t realize you had so many specialized weapons against the Hadarak,” Liam cut in. “Why aren’t you employing them?”

“The minion growth is the greater threat. The Hadarak are not growing them internally as was their normal method. Now they are picking them from other sources, including new transports, greatly increasing their ability to rejoin combat against us after we deplete their defenses. They are also grouped together, sometimes in as high as clusters of 8. We need to allow them to spread out before we try to kill them. Until then, we must focus on denying them replenishment from the planets they have eradicated.”

“Why are we here?” Roger asked.

“We need both halves of our empire to solve this puzzle. I do not know why the Hadarak are doing this, or what their ultimate objective is. They are killing all substantive lifeforms on all planets in systems they pass through, but are not destroying the planets or the ecosystems in many cases. They are hunting for lifeforms such as us and those primitives that could one day ascend to our level. They have never done this before, and I need your wisdom to help us discover their reasons and devise better ways to fight them. You do not think like us, and your alternate perspective is greatly needed here.”

“You’re not asking for the Uriti?” Paul floated.

“I do not know if that would help or exasperate the current situation. They do not know they exist and we do not want to further draw them out. It is possible they will push out to an unknown distance then hold, and I do not want to risk causing them to go further before we have an understanding of what is happening and why.”

“Why did you come with your Mach’nel?” another of the Era’tran asked.

“If we need to do some scouting of the Hadarak we don’t want to do so with anything less,” Roger answered.

“You may if you wish, but that is not why I summoned you here,” Mak’to’ran answered. “I am not requesting that you fight.”

“But there is something else,” Paul guessed.

“All those assigned to this facility are aware of the Zak’de’ron. You may speak freely without worry. If they are going to strike us, it will be when our fleets have been diminished from combat, so I do not think it will be soon. I do not know why the Hadarak are doing this, but I do know what they are doing. They are cleansing planets of inhabitation, and deliberately so. I have ordered our fleets to retrieve individuals from certain worlds where their races are about to go extinct. Enough to rebuild their populations with and deny the Hadarak the eradication they seek. I cannot devote many resources to this, and the farther the Hadarak spread the more races will face extinction. Would Star Force be willing to assist with relocation?”

“Relocation of a few isn’t sufficient,” Liam stated firmly. “We need to evacuate the full populations ahead of the Hadarak arriving, and moving them a short distance only to come under attack later is unwise if we do not know how far the Hadarak are going to push this.”

“You have some experience in these matters,” Mak’to’ran said half sarcastically, giving the fact that he and the V’kit’no’sat had forced that experience on them long ago.

“We’ll need to establish a relay network out to our territory,” Roger added. “We’ll need some of your resources to build them as quickly as possible. If we have to delay to develop mining operations we’ll lose too many people.”

“We can assist in the short term,” Mak’to’ran offered, “but soon our full economy must be geared towards warship production. In exchange, if and when our own worlds come under assault, you will allow our people first priority for evacuation to the Rim.”

All three trailblazers looked at him, a bit stunned, while the other three had the same blank stares they’d had when they first walked in, trying to keep up with everything going on…though for Saetaru it was more a function of his hard face plates than his emotional state.

“You fear they won’t stop at all,” Liam asked?

“They are not attacking us yet and are employing eradication tactics that prevent recolonization of cleansed worlds. What does that suggest to you?”

“It’s not a reprisal against your success,” Roger answered.

“More like they’re doing some galactic cleaning,” Paul said ominously. “We’ll be lucky if they stop at some point, but am I correct that you’ve never seen them colonizing planets like this?”

“We’ve seen some of their defensive colonies before, and their density closer to the Deep Core increases exponentially, but they are not using a coverage pattern. They are taking every system, even those devoid of worlds at the cost of shipping in resources to grow outposts. Their tactics suggest denial of regrowth…”

“Which infers galactic extermination,” Paul finished. “I’m forced to concur.”

“Assuming any less would be folly,” another Era’tran added. “If we are wrong, then our situation improves.”

“How many Hadarak are there?” Liam wondered out loud. “That number determines their rate of potential expansion, and when they spread out we can start thinning that number.”

“More continue to pour out of the Deep Core,” Mak’to’ran warned. “And we have yet to see a tier 6, though we know they exist. I fear this is just the beginning, and we still don’t know why it is happening. We need answers more than we need evacuation, though I have brought you here for both.”

“And the potential of using the Uriti,” Paul noted.

“Will they fight for you?” an unspoken Era’tran asked.

“I don’t know. Their relationship with the Hadarak is broken, though they still inquire of them. We want more information before we inform them of what’s happening.”

“I am not asking it of you now,” Mak’to’ran stated. “But there may come a time when we have no other options. I want to win this war on our own strength, but if the Hadarak are able to convert the Galactic Core into minion fields, then I do not think even the Uriti will be able to stop the destruction they alone could enact. As dangerous as the Hadarak are, their minions are the greater threat if they are able to reproduce in such a manner akin to the Li’vorkrachnika that you defeated long ago.”

Roger groaned, and Liam agreed with the sentiment.

“What we do now will affect the future the most,” Paul declared. “I see no point in waiting until they push further.”

“He is right,” Saetaru added, his words clicking a bit with his mandibles despite the translation software. “We would be foolish to allow this enemy to reshape the battlefield prior to the major conflict.”

“We have a few years to work this out,” Roger cautioned. “Evacuate now while we figure out how to drop the hammer later…unless the Hadarak have suddenly gotten a lot faster.”

“They have not,” Mak’to’ran confirmed. “We are destroying their colonies as fast as they are creating more, but that is only because of the limited number of Hadarak deployed to date. As they increase, our ability to contain their expansion will diminish. At some point they will exceed our full combat capability if my suspicions as to their true numbers are even half accurate.”

“So we have some time,” Liam said, agreeing with Roger, “to figure this out. But the evacuation route has to be implemented yesterday. Do we have comms back to Terraxis from this location?”

“You do,” Mak’to’ran answered as he walked to the left and activated a bank of equipment with a mere thought. “But be aware that the Zak’de’ron may still be monitoring the transmissions. We have reworked the Urrtren, but many of the old facilities still remain where we had no obvious reason to remove them. To do so would have alerted the Zak’de’ron.”

“Alright,” Paul said, glancing at Veeron-938221. “Get Davis going on new Axius and Beacon worlds…a lot of them…and have him send as many convoys as he can to begin construction here. Make sure he includes Paladin.”

“On it,” Paul’s apprentice said, walking over to the newly activated equipment as a Zen’zat stepped over to help him arrange to send a secure message halfway across the galaxy.

6

July 4, 128460

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat Capitol)

Wendigama

A telepathic ping from one of the Zen’zat working in the Archon command center alerted Roger to a new guest, this one being aquatic, which meant he had to leave the main deck where he and the others had been working frantically for months to digest the wealth of data flows coming in from the Hadarak Zone. Paul was currently walking laps with a datapad in hand, bleeding off some energy to keep his Saiyan genetics happy while Liam was off training with the apprentices, so Roger decided to handle this himself and walked past the hologram-immersed H’kar to a side tunnel that led to another chamber with a beach-like deck half surrounding an artificial pool so deep the Archon couldn’t see the bottom of it with his Pefbar.

It was large too, and needed to be to accommodate some of the aquatic races. Right now there was only one individual waiting for him there, and the Lio’pu could easily have fit all three of the trailblazers in its mouth simultaneously if it wished, for the Mosasaur massed as much as an Oso’lon, but had a much larger head attached to a crocodile-like body that had fins rather than legs. Its tail was also inverted, with a much longer fin reaching straight down and a small one poking up above, making it a surface lurker that floated more often than swam fully submerged.

The pool it was waiting in had a connecting tunnel deep underground that led into a vast network of artificial rivers than ran underneath and through the various cityscapes. They weren’t everywhere on the planet, but Roger was impressed at how integrated the V’kit’no’sat capitol was between aerial, land dwellers, and aquatics. Star Force was far more segregated, and for good reason. A lot of aquatic races didn’t like being away from deep water, and the idea of tunnels through land made some of them claustrophobic, much like air tunnels through the oceans made land dwellers uneasy, but here, apparently, that wasn’t an issue.

“Hello,” Roger offered, but like many aquatics, this one chose to converse telepathically.

I am Bensden, Triarch of the Lio’pu.

Triarch? Roger asked, knowing that title referred to one of the three co-leaders for their race. I didn’t think any of you were living in Itaru.

We do not. I have come to discuss the evacuation of lesser races. I am told Star Force will be undertaking their transport and care?

Yes, we have agreed to that.

What will you do with the aquatic races?

Evacuate them, same as the others.

Do you have the necessary vessels for their transfer?

We have an ample amount, though aquatics account for less than 4% of Star Force population. I have fleets of them on their way here.

For direct transfer to your territories?

That would be logistically unfeasible. We will be establishing intermediary worlds to hold them so we can evacuate those currently in the danger zone as quickly as possible. We’re not going to be able to save all of them, but we’re going to get as many as we can.

Are you aware of the nature of the relationship between aquatics and the other races within the V’kit’no’sat?

Somewhat, but what I’ve learned is mostly from records and the few individuals who transferred out to the Rim.

We are not natural allies, and those on land and in the air share the same breathing medium. Aquatics do not. While we can breathe both air and water, it is the water that defines us. We choose to interact with those on the land and in the air, but it is not natural. Such interaction was demanded of us when we joined the V’kit’no’sat, and it was difficult to develop. We work well together now, after millions of years, but I worry about others. When evacuations occur and there are not enough ships, it will be convenient to move those of the land and air and leave the aquatics behind. And even if they are evacuated, they will be dumped into whatever water is available and most likely forgotten. We have seen this occur before across the galaxy. It does not occur within the V’kit’no’sat, but as we gradually lose this war I fear old habits reforming.

I sense you have an offer for me. State it.

I have studied Star Force closely, and while your aquatics division is small compared to your total population, it is the second largest in the galaxy after our own. While you do not have the strength we possess, you are far more efficient at incorporating lesser races. We have great trouble with this, and we know that we cannot take on more servants without great effort and inefficiency. The Chavco and Hiwen took far too long to advance to the point where they were useful to us, but you are able to put new races to work for you instantaneously. How are you able to do this?

We treat them as peers, not servants, but we do not immediately put them to work. They have to be acclimated to our system, and that period is referred to as indoctrination. Those who do not convert are not allowed into the general population and this process requires a great deal of infrastructure. It is expensive, but effective, because we deal with each person as an individual. But unless we can construct facilities prior to evacuation, we will have to construct holding planets and feed the individuals through our infrastructure as able. That is not a good situation, but it’s how we have to do it or we contaminate our population with unindoctrinated individuals. It is critical that we avoid this, and the indoctrinization has to be done in isolation. Having even one other individual with them will bias their minds and encourage them to maintain the status quo.

I find that odd, considering that you reunite them shortly thereafter.

After the transition has occurred and only within a Star Force framework. Think of it as a purging process for their previous culture. The incompatible bits get burnt out or greatly hindered, enough that the group effect on the opposite side of the process will encourage the new status quo and the old will gradually fade away. We’ve had a lot of experience to streamline the process, and each race and individual adjust differently. We’ve had many very hard to indoctrinize races, but over time enough individuals made it through to reconstitute the population afterwards while the obstinate ones remain in the transition process until they succeed or die to stagnation because they refuse to train.

What is your conversion efficiency?

It varies wildly, and the worse their previous culture the harder the transition is. For individuals that want to become part of Star Force, we have a 99% conversion rate. The worst we’ve ever seen was the Charkagi at 3%. They’re a race with strong genetic memory, so it’s impossible to isolate them from those inbred controls.

Why not wipe their memory?

They lose too much. We need them able to think their way through the transition. Inhibiting their mental capacity with the loss of memory reduces their ability to successfully transition to Star Force norms.

What about targeted memory loss?

We reserve that for special cases only. We’ve found it better to let people work through the challenge of the transition rather than try to manually rewrite their genetic memories, but on occasion we’ve seen individuals so messed up there’s no way they can overcome what’s been done to them. In their case it’s more beneficial to them to start over, but that is a horrifically complex process for a person to relearn everything when the natural growth processes cannot repeat. We’ve done it, and we can do it again, but it’s not something that’s viable for mass populations and we respect people enough not to try unless an extreme situation presents itself where the individual simply cannot make it on their own effort.

I do not understand your individualization process. We do not possess Ikrid blocks, so mixing thoughts is our nature. Races without telepathy behave much differently, but giving them telepathy to overcome this is usually detrimental. Only advanced races can sustain it, or those so primitive that they operate as a hive mind.

We’ve experimented with removing Ikrid blocks and found the benefits do not outweigh the problems it creates.

There our two empires are fundamentally different. We are more advanced, and as a result we cannot save the races soon to be exterminated by the Hadarak. We are meant to fight and provide an umbrella of protection over the galaxy, but in this war we cannot when we are the inferior. We fight and delay the Hadarak, but Star Force is the only viable option for evacuation. We do not have the experience for it, but we wish to be of assistance.

How so?

Others will see to the land and air dwellers. We wish to assist with the transport of the aquatics if you can provide security for our ships. Our war fleets will be occupied with combat in other systems.

That we can do.

We also wish to offer some of our worlds, portions of them, to house the evacuees if you can oversee them and put them to use.

What kind of use?

We will need resources for both the evacuation infrastructure and warship replacement. If you can convert the evacuees into a workforce, we will house them within our borders rather than move them out to the Rim. We wish no interaction with them. They will be your charges, in your colonies, but we will allow those colonies on some of our more advantageous worlds rather than forcing the aquatics into substandard oceans.

Roger shook his head. No, we’ve got better ways to handle that now. Namely the Paladin, who have an aquatic variant we can make use of. They are experts, whereas new converts will be at the bottom of the learning curve. Putting them to work immediately would be inefficient, but housing them in your territory would be extremely helpful until we can ship them out further towards the Rim.

Having inactive populations is inherently inefficient.

Indoctrinization keeps them busy, but you’re not going to get much production efficiency out of them until they gain experience. Better to bring in Paladin who can quickly establish support colonies for aquatics.

I have heard of these Paladin, but you speak of them more highly than I expected.

Their power is restrained until we need it. Mass production is their specialty, and must be kept in check until needed.

They do not reproduce naturally. Where is the threat?

They contain genetic memories that make them an efficient and experienced workforce immediately upon birth…but their advancement beyond their initial state is slow and they lack judgement when confronted with anything new. Because of this they require oversight, and if we reproduce them faster than we have overseers, problems will occur. Genetic memories help get you going fast, but relying upon them later in life is a great hindrance.

Proceed as you wish so long as the aquatics are rescued and we receive a steady flow of materiel in compensation for habitation on our worlds.

Done deal. I’ll need a list of worlds, colony sites, and boundaries.

You will have them. Are these Paladin useful aquatic fighters?

Decent, but not our best. We don’t utilize them as expendable infantry.

Infantry is a land term. How do you use them?

For light combat and support operations. We outfit them with aquatic ships and mechs for the heavier fighting.

Given the continuing outflow of Hadarak from the Deep Core, using expendable troops may be the only way we can survive if the Hadarak do not stop their advance at some predetermined point.

Death before dishonor, Roger quoted the familiar Star Force axiom. If we are to die, we will die fighting our way…and that means not abandoning anyone to shield the rest of us. We stand together, no matter how this ends.

We have the advantage of time, at least. But I do not see how this ends in victory, and even survival is not guaranteed. Do you see a way for us to win?

Not yet, but as you said, the Hadarak move slowly. We have plenty of time to work this problem, but those in the current assault zone do not and we cannot set up operations immediately. Any ships or worlds you or other races can contribute in the short term will make a considerable difference.

I have not spoken with others about this. Will Star Force also send warships to help purge the minion fields?

Our focus is going to be on evacuations, but we’re going to do some damage when we’re…, he said as a telepathic message from Paul caught his attention. “Shit.”

Is there a problem?

Yes, but not with what we were discussing. We just got word through the Urrtren that the first tier 6 Hadarak has emerged from the Core.

We have never fought one so large. I do not know how one could be defeated unless it chose continuous combat without retreat. When they reach our worlds, we will have no way to defend them. We will have to continually evacuate and the number of displayed people will swell. Many will be left behind to die, and we do not want those to be the aquatics. We also request, in exchange for giving access to our worlds here, that we be allowed to colonize worlds in the Rim so we have somewhere stable to evacuate to.

That won’t happen for millennia.

But it will happen unless we find a better way to kill Hadarak, and we wish to establish evacuation routes for the Lio’pu before they are needed.

That can be arranged, but I sense you want the aquatic evacuees to build them for you?

We cannot devote the resources to it, so our generosity in saving their lives can be repaid with an equal service. Do you not find that fair?

It is, but resources will have to go to the evacuation infrastructure first. We’re not going to let people die now while we build colonizes that you won’t use near term.

So long as they are built before we need them, the timetable is irrelevant.

Do you think the Hadarak will stop at their original boundaries and leave the Rim alone?

Some think so, and it is our duty to fight them regardless, but no one is hopeful. We have long feared this day, and we will face it, but no one sees a path to victory.

Roger smirked. No one saw a path to victory for us when you came to destroy our civilization. We found a way to survive then, we will find one now.

Are you certain of that?

I am.

Why? How can you state the impossible?

Wars aren’t preplanned, they are fought as events occur and we adapt to them, but given the advantages we have over the Hadarak, this isn’t the hopeless fight you think it is.

What advantages?

We can outrun them.

That is only useful if we have somewhere to run to. They are methodically claiming every planet to exclude us places to run. Where do you see this as to our advantage?

Places they cannot go.

And where is that?

Places that we hid that you never found. Places that require magjump travel into gravitational voids.

The Lio’pu flinched, sending a surprised ripple out through the water. I have never heard of this.

That’s because we never told you. Some of us will be able to hide and survive. The problem is the population of the galaxy can’t fit in those places…but the Hadarak can’t exterminate us completely.

How many can be saved permanently?

Not enough, but we have a few other tricks up our sleeve. As you said, most of us have time, and together we will figure this out. I am confident in that.

Do you foresee we will be able to completely destroy the Hadarak?

I don’t know. That’s not the objective now. Our mission is to draw a line in the sand somewhere and hold it while we evacuate people across that line. Once we accomplish that you can ask me the other question again. Until then, I’m going to be busy with this impossible challenge.

You have a curious attitude towards the current situation.

It’s called spite. We got a lot of practice with it during the war against the V’kit’no’sat, so at this point I’m a master.

Spite doesn’t overcome superior weapons.

No, but it keeps you fighting even when you think it’s hopeless. And sometimes the solution lies within the sea of hopelessness that others will not swim in.

7

October 2, 128463

System 399102 (V’kit’no’sat domain, Sho’var Region)

Outer Ring Nebula

Tew’chor flew through the Zak’de’ron Hive with his golden wings spread wide, feeling the luxurious air that was in small supply within the artificial world that he and the Zak’de’ron were forced to live within as they hid from the galaxy right under the V’kit’no’sat’s snout. This system was uninhabited, but only a pair of jumps away from one of their worlds. No traffic came through this system because of the 3 nebulas that surrounded the small, single star at the center that was constantly sucking material in from one of them.

The other two were farther out and stretched into fat bands. The middle one stretched all around the star while the outer one only comprised a third of a halo, but was far more bulky and inside that bulk hid the Zak’de’ron Hive. It wasn’t their only Hive ship, but the others were spread across the galaxy so they could watch and guide their servant races as they were groomed into a fighting force that could take on the V’kit’no’sat one day.

And that day was growing closer, but in a few moments Tew’chor was going to get news that was going to derail their plans completely.

He had been summoned here from another Hive and had arrived less than an hour ago, now flying to Zeno’dor’s spire where he felt a gathering of many Zak’de’ron forming. Some were flying circles around the plant-covered spire that stuck up high into the open air section of the Hive. Others were clinging to the sides, perched there while in telepathic conversation with those within, and at the center of the mental signatures was the largest and most powerful of them all.

Zeno’dor signaled Tew’chor to land and come inside, with the golden Zak’de’ron having to carefully pick a spot on the crowded spire to plant his claws, then he tucked his wings in and walked through the numerous other dragons, rubbing spike-like scales against one another in some of the tight sections until he made it to a small open area indoors where Zeno’dor was waiting.

“Welcome, brother,” Zeno’dor said, both verbally and telepathically so those that could not see through the walls with their normal vision could still be involved in the conversation. “I have ill tidings to share.”

“Have we been discovered?” Tew’chor asked.

“Far worse. I have discovered what the V’kit’no’sat are fighting in the Hadarak Zone, and it is not another surge. It is an endgame scenario.”

Something inside Tew’chor seemed to shrink, and a chill rippled through the telepathic medium all those gathered shared. “Are you sure?”

“Mak’to’ran has rebuilt the Urrtren’s security well for critical information, but there are enough pieces still visible to us to discern what is happening. New minion types are being employed, and there have been no less than five tier 6 Hadarak in the combat zone along with thousands of Hadarak more than we’ve ever recorded. They are sectioning off the deepest bands beyond the current V’kit’no’sat battle line, and have retreated from the battle line entirely. They have given the V’kit’no’sat free reign over most of the contested zone while they concentrate on eradicating all life from every system within the sectioned regions.”

“All life?” Tew’chor asked.

“I’ve confirmed this with our own scouts. They are leaving ecology behind, but any primitive lifeform within a million years of developing rudimentary technology is being hunted down by minions after the Hadarak destroy any resistance. Those minions are remaining and multiplying, fortifying the killing fields and preventing them from being reinhabited. How far the Hadarak will take this is a matter of question, but this is endgame strategy and unless the Hadarak stop themselves the V’kit’no’sat will not be able to hold them.”

“How fast are they progressing?”

“Slowly, but methodically. The V’kit’no’sat are engaging the minions, and they fear that if they are allowed to multiply they will become more dangerous than the Hadarak in their numbers, for the Hadarak are carrying them between systems rather than taking the time to grow new ones of their own.”

“That enhances their progress considerably,” Tew’chor noted.

“It does. We always knew the Hadarak were capable of greater combat. Now we are seeing it unleashed and I do not believe even we can stop it.”

“Do you know what precipitated this?”

“No. Neither do the V’kit’no’sat, and I do not believe it was their progress. The Hadarak did not even respond with a surge, so I believe something else is in play.”

“Are the V’kit’no’sat fully engaging?”

“They are.”

“Then they will weaken themselves earlier than expected.”

“I anticipate so, which leaves us with a decision to make. Do we ignore the Hadarak and take our vengeance on the V’kit’no’sat, or do we fight the Hadarak in some manner and spare the traitors so their deaths can be of use to us?”

“You have not decided?”

“You are no longer hatchlings. We must decide together how to proceed, for we are in grave danger no matter what course we fly.”

“We have to use the Uriti, or we have no hope of defeating that many Hadarak,” another Zak’de’ron said.

We do not have the knowledge to make them reproduce, one on the outside of the spire said. Only Star Force and the Chixzon do.

“We cannot find the Chixzon, and Star Force already has an army of Uriti. Are they not going to use them?”

“Star Force is in Itaru,” Zeno’dor answered. “They have engaged in some combat with their ships, but not their Uriti. They are assisting in relocation efforts for the primitives in the path of the Hadarak, but eventually they will use them.”

“But will they wait until the Hadarak are on their border to do so?” another asked.

“What will the Hadarak do when they encounter them?”

“I am curious as well,” Tew’chor added. “Can the Hadarak escalate beyond this? And if it is limited to a geographical region, would introducing the Uriti to them cause them to push further?”

“All questions to which we do not have the answers,” Zeno’dor admitted. “But Star Force is in the prime position to dictate events. They will not come under assault for hundreds of thousands of years, and more so if the V’kit’no’sat delay the Hadarak’s advance. But waiting to act will give us fewer options as the Hadarak-occupied territory grows. We must decide on a course now, before they gain greater advantage.”

Can we exist within the occupied territory?

“Not in the open. All worlds are being occupied by minions, even uninhabited ones. They are denying opposition safe havens and establishing an detection network to identify incursions. The Hadarak have tolerated us before. Now it is clear they want us exterminated,” Zeno’dor said gravely.

“We can hit Itaru now. Kill Mak’to’ran. Reclaim the V’kit’no’sat to use against the Hadarak,” someone else suggested.

Tew’chor growled in the direction of the Zak’de’ron who’d said that. “You think they would accept our dominion?”

“If they fear the Hadarak enough, then they might.”

“It is possible,” Zeno’dor offered, “but a foolish gamble at this point. Once the V’kit’no’sat fleets are broken and they are desperate, they might take an offer of reunification in exchange for their service. But not now. They are still strong and only engaging where they choose. Striking Itaru would cause them to turn their full attention to our destruction and deal with the Hadarak later.”

“I concur,” Tew’chor said angrily. “You do not know them as I do. Even Zeno’dor does not. Their hatred of us is intense.”

“Would they come after us if we did not attack them, but revealed ourselves to fight the Hadarak in parallel?”

Tew’chor paused for a moment. “They would be conflicted if we absolved our vengeance against them. Many would not believe it, others would not accept it. Many would welcome the assistance if we could show we had a superior combat edge that they lacked.”

“I do not think we can prevail alone,” a large green dragon said from behind Zeno’dor, with his scales indicating his status as a Que’cho’vox. “We either begin a scale-down and prepare to survive in Hives alone while the galaxy burns, or we begin to reestablish our dominance by making ourselves useful to an alliance. I agree that the Uriti are going to be the major weapon in this war, and other than Star Force, we are the only ones to possess them. I think a private test of their power is our first preferred action.”

“Do you refer to the minions or against a Hadarak?” Zeno’dor asked.

“Both. We still do not know if the Uriti can control Hadarak minions when a Hadarak is absent, and if they intend to take the galaxy with minion armies we need to determine if this is a weakness or not. As for the Hadarak, we need to find an isolated one and confirm the Uriti can kill it. We can then use records of the kill for any future negotiations we may entertain.”

“We do not know how the Uriti will react to the Hadarak,” Tew’chor warned respectfully, for even though he was younger, the Que’cho’vox were held so highly that their position within the battlemeld was accepted as dominant and the other Zak’de’ron, when in battle, would trust their judgement with their life and allow them to guide the masses without hesitancy. “And we do not have the Chixzon override. Do you think our hold on them is sufficient?”

“If it is not now, it will never be. We need to determine if we have a viable weapon.”

“Agreed,” another said, with a chorus of telepathic ‘nods’ echoing that sentiment.

“The Hadarak are being closely monitored by the V’kit’no’sat. We will have to wait until more arrive and spread out. Their minion held worlds are being destroyed as fast as they’re being created,” Zeno’dor informed.

“No,” Tew’chor said firmly. “If we are going to hide, then we hide fully. If not, then we have nothing to gain by remaining anonymous unless you think this Hadarak campaign in limited in scope. Does anyone truly think that?”

He received no responses, which only confirmed what they all suspected.

“They are going to destroy everything in the galaxy then return to the Deep Core with no one left to bother them. We all know that. We’ve all suspected they could do it and now it’s happening. Are we really going to wait until they make it halfway to the Rim before we decide to act?”

“What are you suggesting?” the Que’cho’vox asked.

“If the V’kit’no’sat are monitoring the Hadarak with scouts, then let them watch as the ghosts of their past appear and do the work they are failing to do…then watch them squirm even more without knowing where we are, but they will know that we also have Uriti at our command.”

“And if the Uriti disobey us, or even join the Hadarak?” Zeno’dor asked.

“Better to know now than wait for later. The V’kit’no’sat cannot easily find us, and they have a huge distraction to keep them focused away from us. I am tired of waiting to emerge, and I see no further benefit in secrecy unless we intend to fully go to ground and wait out the destruction of the galaxy and try to carve something out of ashes for ourselves afterward.”

“Act or hide,” Zeno’dor repeated. “What say you all?”

A telepathic ping fest ensued, with each present indicating their thoughts…and not a one of them wanted to hide any longer. There were only a few hundred here, with another 129 billion Zak’de’ron spread around the galaxy, but Zeno’dor doubted those would feel any different. Hiding was not natural for their race, and it was time to come out of the shadows and reestablish themselves as a galactic power, even if they couldn’t be the galactic power.

“So be it. Arrange the test,” he told the Que’cho’vox. “The mission is yours.”

9 months later…

There was one Hadarak and 12 planets in System 1993201, and the Zen’zat Wur’ki was monitoring the gradual eradication of the lifeforms on 5 of them. Two had already been overrun, but the remaining 3 were trying to fight back with primitive laser, missiles, and other things that barely qualified as weapons as this one-system, barely space-faring race fought to their doom.

A few of the scaly bipeds had already been recovered and moved out of the system, but the Wur’ki-class warship was sitting here to monitor the progress of the Hadarak. If it left the system the Wur’ki would go with it, leaving behind a beacon with information as to where it had gone so that other ships passing through could collect the data and add it to the Urrtren the next time they passed a mobile relay point. If the Zen’zat ship went to report itself, then it would lose the Hadarak and might or might not be able to catch up again depending on where it went and how long it stayed in each system. They moved slowly, but taking weeks to get information back to the Urrtren then weeks to return just wasn’t prudent.

In addition to that, new minions were being used and Itaru had declared they needed as much information as possible, so these Zen’zat were tasked with following and recording everything that happened regarding the Hadarak, but they had to keep far enough away to not attract its attention. Twice already minions had come after them, but after repositioning faster than they could follow, the minions had abandoned them until the Wur’ki creeped back in a little too close again.

Right now they were stable and recording images of the Hadarak sitting on the 3rd planet, but then all of a sudden it began to detach and move into orbit so fast that it damaged surrounding minion facilities when it tore through the ground with its tentacles because it had lifted off before fully retracting them.

That was extremely odd behavior with no threats in the system, and a single V’kit’no’sat ship couldn’t even scratch the Hadarak, so this was something that Itaru needed to know about. The Zen’zat chose to move a bit closer to get better records when they eventually picked up passive sensor pings from the stellar radiation hitting ships arriving in the system.

Apparently the Hadarak had known they’d arrived before the V’kit’no’sat did, which was odd. While they might be able to detect gravitational mass almost instantaneously, they could not identify what that mass was at this range. It could be more Hadarak arriving, so why this Hadarak took off in such a hurry was perplexing.

But so too were the large ships, three of them, along with numerous smaller vessels too far away to be identified yet, but they were making microjumps and messing with the passive sensor reception enough that the Zen’zat decided to go active even if it attracted the attention of the minions. It seemed the Hadarak was too busy to worry about the flea of a ship the Wur’ki was, so after several dozen minutes of waiting the first active signals returned to the Wur’ki and set off a very unusual and loud alarm.

Indicators flashed up warnings along with the ship profiles of the smaller vessels…indicating that they were Zak’de’ron vessels. Exactly the same designs as they had once used, no variation or disguise whatsoever, and it appeared the larger vessels were made of similar technology, though the design of those had never been seen before.

“Is this really happening?” one of the Zen’zat on the command deck asked the ship’s commander.

“I don’t know how, but those ships are reading as Zak’de’ron. I’ve never even heard that name before, but the computer says…”

“What?” another Zen’zat asked as the commander’s eyes were glued to the text readouts that accompanied the alarm.

“They’re the precursor form of the Les’i’kron, thought to be extinct, and we’re ordered to report any sighting immediately. Override of existing orders established.”

“You mean before the Les’i’kron were culled?”

“Apparently so. Those are V’kit’no’sat ships that shouldn’t exist, and they’re not registering any IDs.”

“We have to leave, now,” the commander said. “The orders are clear. Get all evidence we can, but we’re running. Max speed.”

“What if they intercept?”

“We do our duty. Now get us as much of a head start as possible.”

“We should avoid the star entirely,” the helmsman suggested. “Slow jump out from here to be on the safe side…after we see what happens.”

The commander chewed his lip as he considered that. Running past these Zak’de’ron to get to the star would give them a chance to intercept, but if they stayed out here they could see them coming and jump away slowly if they chased after them. They’d get out of the system, but in the next they could get caught if the chasers dipped back down near the star to get a faster push with their gravity drives.

But if they were going to rendezvous with the Hadarak, either as an ally or for combat, Itaru needed to know. No priority 1 enemy had ever been known in his time as Zen’zat, and while he didn’t understand what was going on here he knew Mak’to’ran would need to know as much as possible. The question was, how could he ensure they would get away and still get data on the upcoming encounter?

“Move us towards the 8th planet. Take us slow and watch for any intercepts, minions or Zak’de’ron. If nothing comes for us we’ll draw this out. If something does, we don’t take any chance and go. Make sure the capacitors are full and stand ready to run reactors at high output. I want as much of a jump as we can manage off the planet.”

With that the Wur’ki began drifting away from the Hadarak as the beast moved in closer to the star where the newly arrived ships appeared to wait for it at the jumppoint it was coming in on. But before that encounter occurred the three massive ships broke apart, revealing that they were in fact transport containers.

The Wur’ki didn’t get any good pictures from so far out, but what it did get of the three Uriti battling with and eventually killing the Hadarak was enough to chill all the Zen’zat to the bone…and when they eventually did make their slow jump out of the system they didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. Not until several jumps later when they rendezvoused with the nearest combat fleet and passed on their valuable data packet…and the commander of that fleet canceled their return scouting mission in favor of more experienced scouts.

8

February 7, 128465

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat Capitol)

Wendigama

Mak’to’ran was sleeping when word arrived through the Urrtren of the Zak’de’ron’s reemergence, and even though they had not struck the V’kit’no’sat, the empire was incensed and panicked even before he was able to arrive at the Elder Conclave after viewing the reports and issuing non-engagement unless fired upon orders that would take time to work their way out across the galaxy.

When he arrived at the Elder Conclave there was a mix of individuals who already knew the Zak’de’ron were suspected to be alive and many others who had not been previously informed. More than that, large portions of the empire were never told the truth about the Zak’de’ron. Rather they believed the lie that they were simply an older version of the Les’i’kron prior to their being culled. Now that the Zak’de’ron had returned, they were getting an unpleasant history lesson from those that knew the truth and many of the younger ones in relatively high positions were furious and demanding to know why they had been lied to.

There were too many things happening at once for Mak’to’ran to deal with. The Zak’de’ron hadn’t fired a single shot at the empire, yet they had sent it into a confused panic nonetheless. Right now they needed leadership badly, so he was going to the top and starting there, knowing that many others would be viewing the Elder Conclave today as no one dared to make it a closed session with such outrage and panic flowing through Itaru and beyond like a ripple as word traveled across the Urrtren.

Mak’to’ran walked quickly but did not run as he made his way from outer entrance to the central mount, which he climbed to the top of so that he stood above the head height of all in the miles wide chamber that had numerous ‘islands’ that consisted of slightly elevated pads that each race’s representatives stood or laid upon, and each of which had a technological interface that duplicated Mak’to’ran’s image via holo for those too far away to see him well…which was most of them.

“Be still and listen,” he said slowly, calmly. “The Zak’de’ron are still alive and in possession of the 3 missing Uriti. This is not good news, but it is something that I have suspected for a long time. We have been quietly preparing for their return, not knowing where in the galaxy they were located. We could not attack that which we could not find, and there was many flaws in our security that the Zak’de’ron could exploit if they wished, including shutting down the entire Urrtren. I could not tell you of their existence without risking them striking us early, before we were ready. I also did not tell you because there was not a war to fight. They were hiding, and this is our first proof of their existence, but we are not being caught unaware.”

“To those of you who do not know who the Zak’de’ron are, that is not my doing. The Elder Conclave decided long before I took power to lie about who and what they are. The Les’i’kron are not the Zak’de’ron, they are their lesser cousins. The Zak’de’ron are far more powerful, and it was they who created the V’kit’no’sat so that the empire could assist them with the Hadarak threat. They ruled the V’kit’no’sat. It was not a co-equal sharing of power with the Oso’lon and J’gar. Then, when I was young and not aware of what was happening, the V’kit’no’sat decided to eliminate the Zak’de’ron and nearly did so. Apparently we were not totally successful, and the Zak’de’ron survivors have been hiding in the galaxy waiting to return. They do so now to fight the Hadarak. What of their vendetta against us, I do not know. We have had no communication with them whatsoever.”

“If they attack us, we will defend ourselves, but we will not instigate combat. Their first sighting has been in combat against the Hadarak. If they wish to engage them, then I welcome the help. I do not believe they will be allies, but we cannot afford to fight a war with the Zak’de’ron if it is avoidable. The Hadarak threaten us all, so we will wait and see what the Zak’de’ron do. Our empire is prepared for a war against them…I have made sure of it. They would be foolish to engage in one, but their hatred of us must be vast, so it is a threat that I will not ignore. But make note, that if they wished to engage in a surprise attack on us, they have wasted the opportunity.”

“I for one do not care what has happened in the past. Who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Perhaps both were, perhaps not. It is irrelevant now. The Hadarak are exterminating all life from the galaxy, progressing system by system and sparring none, and if given time to spread, they will grow a minion army so large that we will not be able to defeat it, let alone the Hadarak. We do not have time to waste on any other threat. If the Zak’de’ron force war upon us, then so be it. We will not try to fight the Hadarak and them at the same time, but such a war would be our undoing. I believe the Zak’de’ron know this, which is why they have revealed themselves in combat against the Hadarak. I think it is a message for the galaxy. They despise us, but they recognize the greater threat…as do I.”

“Where is Star Force?” the Oso’lon demanded. “If the Zak’de’ron can kill Hadarak with Uriti, so can they. Where is their duty to the empire now?”

“Their duty is in the Rim, ours is the Core,” Mak’to’ran replied evenly. “As far as I know, the Hadarak are not aware of the Uriti’s existence. I do not know if a courier escaped the Zak’de’ron, but if not then the secret of their existence is still held. No one knows what the Hadarak will do when they learn about the Uriti. It could actually escalate the war further. Do you wish to risk that?”

“Can we win without the Uriti?” the Brat’mar asked.

“I do not know. Right now our fight is with their minions and any lone Hadarak we can isolate and destroy. I doubt even the Uriti can kill the larger Hadarak.”

“How can the Zak’de’ron control them without the Chixzon knowledge?” the I’rar’et asked.

“I do not know. Perhaps they have obtained it, or perhaps they have another way. The three Uriti used were all originals. Star Force has used Chixzon knowledge to create more Uriti. If the Zak’de’ron have as well, we have not seen them.”

“Are we prepared to fight their Uriti, Mak’to’ran?” the Wass’mat accused.

“If necessary, yes. Though Star Force is the Rimward portion of our empire, I have long considered the threat of them turning on us and we have prepared to fight their Uriti if need be.”

“Why were we not told any of this?” the Ari’tat demanded.

“You did not need to know until now, and the more people who did know the more likelihood of the Zak’de’ron discovering that we knew. Previously they could monitor the Urrtren, so they knew all we knew, so I could not risk any mention of it in our records.”

“They knew everything?” the Pas’cha asked.

“I believe so, but upgrades we have made should have blocked them out of our secure transmissions. However, they were the ones who created the Urrtren, and it is possible they have found other ways to hack our systems. The Zak’de’ron cannot be underestimated, but they are not to be irrationally feared. We have known they would be coming for us, and we have prepared in ways you are not aware of yet, and in some ways I will not tell you even now, for the Zak’de’ron will be seeing records of today, I have no doubt. But I am pleased that they have not struck at us first, and I have already ordered that we will not initiate combat. I will attempt to determine what their intentions are, but they may well just ignore us and focus their attention on the Hadarak. There are too few answers that I can give, but what we know is this. They are alive, they command Uriti, and they did not surprise attack us.”

“How are they still alive?” the Bez asked. “We annihilated every last one of them.”

“Apparently we missed some and they went to ground.”

“In the Rim?”

“Possibly. Or maybe they have hidden in our own dominion. The Rit’ko’sor survived when we thought they were destroyed, and the Zak’de’ron are much more clever. It was arrogance to assume we had destroyed them all, and it would be arrogance now to strike out after them. The galaxy is in peril, and I will guide us through what is to come. Remain calm and do your duty. I will deal with the Zak’de’ron, one way or another.”

“And if they wish to resume their place of leadership in the empire?” another Era’tran asked.

“The answer to that is no,” Mak’to’ran said firmly. “The past is the past and it will not be repeated. I know for a fact that Star Force would never accept Zak’de’ron dominion, and neither shall we. We also do not know how strong the Zak’de’ron are. They cannot have many worlds we have not discovered, and that guile will come at a price. And even with three Uriti, I doubt they are a match for us.”

“And if they have made more, like Star Force has?” the Garas’tox asked.

“Then we will deal with it. Even with an army of Uriti, the Zak’de’ron are the lesser threat to the Hadarak. And know this,” Mak’to’ran said, raising his voice. “If this is to be our end, at either the claws of the Zak’de’ron or under the crushing weight of the Hadarak, we will fight and die together. We will not panic. We will not flee. We will not turn on one another. Those days are in the past. We will face the dark future as warriors, and we will die before we surrender our oaths as the forsaken Oso’lon and J’gar have. We have a duty to the galaxy, and it is one that never came with a guarantee of our survival. So now it comes to this simple question. Are each of you deserving of the name V’kit’no’sat? Or are you a pretender who will crumble under the pressure of a seemingly unwinnable war?”

“Are you worthy to carry that name!” Mak’to’ran roared. “Are you hunters of Hadarak or cowards who flee from their sight? The Zak’de’ron are a threat, but they are less than the Hadarak. If V’kit’no’sat can face Hadarak, then we can face the Zak’de’ron. We all but destroyed them once, and we can do so again if necessary. But if the Zak’de’ron wish to fight the greater threat along with us, then I will welcome their help while watching for their claws in our throat. I will never trust them, but I will not blindly attack them out of panicked fear. Nor will you. I have culled the weak from your races since I took command. The traitors are gone. Those that remain should be true V’kit’no’sat. Now is the time of verification. Now is the time of the V’kit’no’sat, when we are called upon for the greatest war in history.”

“Then why are we evacuating worthless races?” the Les’i’kron demanded.

“Are you blind?” Mak’to’ran sneered, snapping his head around to face the distance perches on which the Les’i’kron rested. “What do you think the Hadarak are doing? They have not struck a single one of our worlds. This assault on the galaxy is not to destroy us, it’s to destroy everyone. Their objective is the eradication of all races. If we cannot beat an opponent, then we will spite them. And we can spite them now by denying them the eradication they seek. And Star Force can turn those worthless races into assets far better than we can. We are the elite, but they have a skill for growing slave races we have never achieved because we are too advanced. Our duties are too high. We focus on the major combat, where the lesser races are useless, but Star Force can turn those races into resource producers, so we will give them as many survivors as we can evacuate from the path of the Hadarak.”

“And what do we get in return for these slaves?” the Ari’tat asked.

“If they are worthless, what should we get in return?” Mak’to’ran challenged. “Do not be so petty to assume this is commerce. This is a fight for the survival of the galaxy, and I will take any advantage I can get my claws on. I have no time for the lesser races, but Star Force is not in the Hadarak’s path. The Rim will be spared while V’kit’no’sat territory is destroyed. They have time to invest in the lesser races. We do not. So they get them without compensation.”

“But is that an efficient allocation of resources?” the Hjar’at asked?

“In the short term, perhaps not. But this is a long term conflict and we must keep an eye on the distant future. We will burn the minions while Star Force builds our last line of defense. If the V’kit’no’sat fall, we must retreat to the Rim and make our last stand there.”

“And what if the Zak’de’ron attack us while we are fully deployed against the Hadarak?” the Qua’cho demanded.

“We will not fully deploy,” Mak’to’ran promised. “We will not leave our worlds unguarded. The majority of our fleets will engage the Hadarak minions, but the defense fleets will remain to deny the Zak’de’ron or anyone else foolish enough to attack us an easy target. And if they should hit us, our fleets fighting the Hadarak will return and we will exact the price of the Zak’de’ron betrayal in their blood.”

“What if they wait until we are so weak from fighting the Hadarak that we cannot defend ourselves?” the Neokko asked.

“We are focusing our combat on the minions. We will not bleed ourselves against the Hadarak. We will evacuate, withdraw, and continue to move our people ahead of their assaults while we attack only those that we can kill. We will not waste our fleets, and if the Zak’de’ron wait until we are as weak as you suggest, then the Hadarak will already be in the Rim by the time they are ready to strike.”

“You sound too confident,” the J’gar criticized.

“I am not confident in the outcome, only in our ability to fight effectively against any who attack us. We have been preparing for this war for the entire existence of our empire. This is why the Zak’de’ron created us, and while they may no longer be our masters, the purpose of our existence has not altered. We are hunters of Hadarak, and we will live or die as hunters of Hadarak. If anyone in the empire does not wish to live up to their duty, I will not kill you. I will not waste the time. I tell you now, flee…leave the empire behind and run to where I do not care. Purge the empire of your weakness, and leave only true V’kit’no’sat behind. We have a destiny to fulfill. The Hadarak and the V’kit’no’sat will no longer coexist. We will either be destroyed, or we will find a way to destroy them. That is our task. That is our mission. That is our duty. That is our destiny. And we will accomplish it far better than the Zak’de’ron ever could have imagined.”

“We have already pushed the Hadarak back further than the Zak’de’ron ever did. We have surpassed them in our combat record, and no matter what technological advantages they still hold over us, we have already accomplished more against the Hadarak than they ever did. Our oaths are now our own. We are V’kit’no’sat, not servants. We have risen above our previous masters, and we will not behave as panicked servants. If the Zak’de’ron wish to fight the Hadarak with us, then we will welcome the assistance. If they wish to avenge themselves on us…let them try. We are apprentices no longer. We are now the masters, and I expect you to act like it.”

“So we take no new actions in spite of this revelation?” the I’rar’et scoffed.

“We do not. I do. I will find the Zak’de’ron and determine their intent while our fleets continue to burn minions. We will not abandon that mission in any fashion unless forced to do so. Fear will not derail us, avian. Not in the skies, not in the water, and not on the land. Steel yourself for what is to come. Only those who are worthy will stand a chance of victory. The rest will be devoured and discarded in the carnage yet to come…”

9

May 17, 128481

Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat Capitol)

Wendigama

Over 16 years Mak’to’ran sought out the Zak’de’ron. And for 16 years they ignored him.

Reports came in regularly of their engaging and killing more Hadarak, with their current count being 8 tier 1s and 14 tier 2s, as far as the V’kit’no’sat knew. There were so many Hadarak continuing to come out of the Deep Core that his scouts couldn’t track them all, and many of the most favorable jumplanes leading to the routes the Hadarak emerged from the Core through were now cut off from the V’kit’no’sat. Tier 4 and above Hadarak were staking out those positions and heavily inundating them with minion colonies and filling up stellar orbit with search and destroy operations for passing ships, making it harder and harder to get a scout ship through.

But there were so many systems in the Core his ships could work their way around, but not without losing track of the main convoys of Hadarak before they split apart and headed every which way. There were, as of 6 years ago, 1938 heavily trafficked routes coming out of the Deep Core looking like wheel spokes on the galactic map, and more than 230,000 never before seen Hadarak now added to the V’kit’no’sat database. Mak’to’ran knew more were slipping through now undetected, so it was possible that the Zak’de’ron kill count might be a bit higher than was recorded.

The V’kit’no’sat kill count was larger, with 39 tier 1s destroyed and 4 tier 2s that had been caught alone by Harthur and large fleets, then pummeled for days before they were finally killed, pinned within the IDF fields that prevented them from fleeing into the closest star or diving beneath the crust of a planet to escape the pinpricks of damage that could gradually add up to their demise. But most of the effort of the V’kit’no’sat fleets were in targeting the minions in systems the Hadarak had already passed through, and while they had had a handle on it in the beginning, they were now starting to fall behind as the Hadarak infected systems faster than they could be burned.

If it had just been the minions it wouldn’t have been an issue, but the Hadarak were camping out long enough to give the minions a decent foothold, meaning the fights were getting tougher and tougher to eliminate them even with Star Force’s growing help. Their fleets were mainly involved in rescue operations, but they had battle fleets engaging the minions as well to provide cover for the evacuations and try to dictate where the Hadarak went next. They had not killed a Hadarak yet, nor had they tried, for they did not possess Harthur as far as Mak’to’ran knew, though they did have the technology for it, and they had not brought their Uriti into the combat zone yet save for a single contact mission that had gone very poorly.

That mission had given Mak’to’ran some badly needed intelligence that Star Force had shared with him. It had confirmed that the Hadarak would not be pushing out to a point and holding. The Hadarak had spoken with the Uriti and confirmed they were cleansing the galaxy of all unsanctioned life, which meant anything of sufficient animal mass equal to about the size of a dog, and any animal life that possessed technology no matter how small they were. It also meant the Uriti had to be destroyed, for they were also unsanctioned, and when the Hadarak had tried to attack the Uriti during the conversation, Star Force had pulled it out rather than engage…then they had disappeared with the Uriti and nothing more was said about it other than the information packet Mak’to’ran had received.

In that packet came more information, but nothing reliable due to the translation issues. There were mentions of danger and resetting, consumption and repulsion…some of which the Uriti knew about and some that it did not. They were part Hadarak and part minion, and it seemed their genetic memory pulled from both as well, but not a complete set of knowledge from either…or perhaps it was simply due to a lack of training that the Hadarak might receive from their peers that the Uriti had never been exposed to.

It also mentioned that this purge doubled as training, for those Hadarak that returned at the end of it would be elevated in some fashion. The Uriti had been told that as some sort of ridicule, for the Uriti could never become elevated even if they were accepted. It was fascinating intel, for it was a chance to look inside the mind of the silent destroyers of worlds, and yet it was confusing because none of it fit into a context that the Era’tran could understand.

But the contact had made clear their intensions to kill everyone in the galaxy, no matter how long a process that was…and that meant even Star Force would not be able to hide in the Rim forever. Everyone was involved in this fight, or would be, including the Zak’de’ron, and yet they still would not talk to him or any V’kit’no’sat.

They were careful never to cross each other’s paths except for the occasional scout ship in a system with a Hadarak they were attacking…and they weren’t always successful. Some managed to get away and dive into the safety of a star, after which the Uriti would not pursue them. Perhaps that was because their combat capability diminished within a star, or something to do with their ability to navigate that deep and track targets. They should have been able to telepathically feel each other out, but for whatever reason the Zak’de’ron Uriti were not chasing them into the stars when they managed to escape, and that had happened on 9 different observed occasions, including when they had attempted combat with a tier 3.

The Zak’de’ron Uriti were also taking damage in the process, which they had to heal up at some point or the Zak’de’ron would risk losing them, but they hadn’t taken off any considerable amount of time in between hunts, and Mak’to’ran suspected they were able to short-heal fully because they hadn’t suffered any massive amount of damage. The shard-shaped Zak’de’ron ships that had long ago been burnt into his memory were doing a damn good job of keeping the minions off the Uriti and adding supplemental damage to the Hadarak…so much so that he wondered if they had obtained a direct control mechanism of some sort, for they fought with what appeared to be coordinated precision.

But they were not attacking minion-held worlds at all, only the Hadarak. How large the Zak’de’ron fleet was, Mak’to’ran had no idea, nor did he know how many slave races they had enthralled to them, for they were not present in any of these hunts, only the Zak’de’ron’s own ships. And when the V’kit’no’sat scout ships attempted to make contact with them, on frequencies he knew that they monitored, not a one of them even responded with a navigational blip.

The V’kit’no’sat empire did not take that well, but they had settled down somewhat knowing that there had been no assaults on their worlds yet, but the fact that their nemesis was out there lurking beyond sight was unnerving for everyone. They had not attacked them, but they also would not respond to them, and Mak’to’ran didn’t have an address to go find them and force a conversation…or battle…so he was left waiting and wondering while he saw his hold on the warfront slipping more with each day.

They could not hold the line, but they were doing a damn good job of delaying the Hadarak’s advance. Yet with every world the Hadarak held, the more minions it produced that were now beginning to fly between systems on their own and assault new worlds without the Hadarak’s assistance and Mak’to’ran knew that facet of their warfare, never seen before, would increase exponentially over time. It was a matter of centuries before they reached the nearest V’kit’no’sat worlds, perhaps millennia if they did a good job of slowing their pace over the coming years, but they would get there eventually, and with a massive army even without the Hadarak being involved.

And yet there were more and more of them coming out of the Deep Core, and some so massive they were literally planets in their own right. The V’kit’no’sat could not fight a tier 5 or tier 6. It was impossible even with their biggest weapons, because no matter how much damage they did all it accomplished as a small scratch. It was like trying to park his fleet around a moon and destroy every bit of it with weaponsfire. You could decimate the surface, but vaporizing all that rock was next to impossible and Hadarak flesh beneath their outer coating was the consistency of rock, only with an ability to heal itself.

Mak’to’ran did not think even Star Force’s Uriti would stand a chance unless they gathered all of them together into a single battle. Even then he did not favor their odds of actually killing one of the monsters, only perhaps driving it back. Right now the most effective weapon the V’kit’no’sat had for the larger Hadarak was the Disruption Arrays, but many of them had been damaged trying to interfere with tier 4s and larger, as the Arrays would be overloaded with so much mass that they’d burn out in a second as they tried to grapple and shield the small planet-sized Hadarak from gravity. But even those that did burn out achieved a bit of their objective, enough to detail how much they were lacking and give the V’kit’no’sat the numbers they needed to overlap Arrays in order to get the necessary coverage.

That meant their ability to really ram the Hadarak into stars was diminished, but Mak’to’ran was producing more Arrays at a rapid pace and had managed to trip up several tier 6s on passage, causing them significant damage that had delayed their passaged by months…as well as causing novas in the stars they collided with, some of which burnt the lifeforms off nearby planets that they were trying to protect.

Mak’to’ran didn’t care. They were as good as dead anyway and couldn’t be used as food for the minions if they were destroyed in a few seconds during a nova. Thankfully no supernova had been triggered and Mak’to’ran had been able to preserve most of his Arrays, but no amount of collision with a star had been able to kill a Hadarak, just damage them, making these juggernauts truly unstoppable.

It was a war worthy of true warriors. One that was impossible to win and one that offered never-ending combat. A fitting end for an empire, if there had to be one, but one he could not happily accept. V’kit’no’sat did not exist to fight, they existed to win, and he wasn’t going to stop searching for a way to do so. Not now, not ever.

So when he received word from Director Davis that the Zak’de’ron had contacted him and wanted to arrange a 3-way meeting in a neutral location, he was both perturbed and relieved, for he knew the Zak’de’ron were more advanced than the V’kit’no’sat…no matter how much it burned him to admit it…and maybe, just maybe, they might know a way to fight the Hadarak more effectively than either the V’kit’no’sat or Star Force did.

As soon as he received the message he left orders for the people on Itaru, then boarded his personal Kafcha that he rarely used and left Wendigama and the system entirely, enroute for a system near the Star Force evacuation branch only a few weeks distant that was shuffling refugees out to several holding worlds while transit out to the Rim was slowly being effected by masses of cargo ships from nearly all the Star Force races.

It was an impressive operation to see, and the trailblazers that had been on Itaru had left years ago for their own temporary worlds established near the Hadarak Zone. He didn’t blame them for that, for he wanted to be on the front himself, but with the Hadarak assaulting the entire galaxy there wasn’t one focal point to be at and he had found he could coordinate better from Itaru than in a ship fighting in a system without an Urrtren link.

The rendezvous system he was traveling to now had none, as was expected, and Mak’to’ran had a fleet of 284 ships with his command ship just in case the Zak’de’ron wished to take their vengeance on him directly. He expected no treachery from Star Force, for they were as reliable as one could get even if they weren’t totally an ally, but the Zak’de’ron he would never trust again after what he had learned of them since gaining access to the full records of the V’kit’no’sat.

The Zak’de’ron had deserved to be betrayed, but the betrayal was beneath the V’kit’no’sat, so both were to blame for what happened, and Mak’to’ran wasn’t going to let it occur again. The V’kit’no’sat would fight with honor or be destroyed. He would not let them descend to the Zak’de’ron’s level, nor become a manipulation thereof. They would stand alone and independent up until the Hadarak destroyed them. That at least Mak’to’ran could guarantee his empire no matter what happened.

When the V’kit’no’sat fleet arrived at their destination there were no planets, no nebula, no nothing in the system at all. It was completely empty save for a single small brown dwarf star and two massive Star Force vessels. They were the Borg ships that served as flagships for the trailblazers and were more powerful than the Mach’nel that both empires wielded. Mak’to’ran envied them those vessels, but knew that the smaller the ship the more effective they would be against minions assaulting different locations. A Mach’nel could only be in one place at one time, which was why Mak’to’ran had ordered no new Mach’nel produced so they could maximize regular warship production and keep the minion waves suppressed as long as possible.

But still, those two Borg ships were more than a match for the entire fleet Mak’to’ran had brought with him, and he knew even the Zak’de’ron would be stupid trying to take them on with anything other than their Uriti.

The two vessels were home to Jack-020 and Randy-021. Mak’to’ran had only met Jack once, but he knew most of the trailblazers were somewhere near the Hadarak Zone with only a handful left in the Rim as safeguards against a Zak’de’ron or Chixzon attack there. He also knew that they truly didn’t have a single leader among them, so speaking with any of them was as if speaking to them all, with only Director Davis being their superior, though he highly doubted the man had left the Rim to come here, for there wasn’t enough travel time possible given the dates on the messages flowing back and forth across the galaxy between the two empires…or rather three.

As soon as Mak’to’ran’s ships moved into a holding orbit a few hundred miles away from the Star Force ships that dwarfed the viewscreens even at this range, a number of additional ships appeared on sensors as the Zak’de’ron fleet deactivated their annoyingly good cloaking devices and deposited several hundred ships of equal size to Mak’to’ran’s Kafcha on the far side of the Star Force behemoths.

Scared of us, are you? Mak’to’ran thought to himself. Good. We cannot afford a war between us now, and if you want to use Star Force as an intermediary, then so be it.

Mak’to’ran engaged the prompts for a three-way holographic session and activated the dampening screen around his command deck platform, ensuring that this would be a private conversation.

10

The image of the two trailblazers was familiar to Mak’to’ran, but the sight of a living Zak’de’ron resplendent in grey scales that sharpened to the point of spikes swept backward indicating their avian nature was infuriating. When he saw Mak’to’ran’s image the dragon unfurled his wings and beat them twice in an angry gesture before tucking them back in again.

He growled automatically, feeling the urge to ignite his Saroto’kanse’vam claws, but he checked the reflex. He couldn’t strike a hologram, but old memories of that ancient war were becoming fresh again.

“Ah good, you’ve met,” Jack quipped in V’kit’no’sat. “Family reunions are so nice.”

“If it were not for the Hadarak, our reunion would be in their blood,” the Zak’de’ron all but hissed. “Yet we have a greater duty to attend to. One the V’kit’no’sat once swore to. Do you still hold to that oath, Era’tran, or will we be forced to fight a pointless war while the Hadarak sweep across the galaxy?”

“Your name,” Mak’to’ran demanded.

“I am Zeno’dor, last of the original Zak’de’ron. You killed all of us but one, and that mistake would have meant your destruction were it not for present circumstances.”

“I was not involved in those decisions, Zak’de’ron. I was barely hatched during the war, but do not pretend you were blameless. You created the V’kit’no’sat, and the inherent distrust you sowed in us was reaped in your near destruction.”

“We were fools to trust you. A mistake we will never make again. This is not a reunion. We would rather see the V’kit’no’sat destroyed than rejoin it.”

“We have accomplished more victories against the Hadarak under my command than we ever achieved under yours, or can you not read map?”

“We never trigged an apocalypse.”

“So you deliberately held back?” Mak’to’ran accused. “You lied to us knowing the Hadarak could never be defeated? Admit it now. The animosity cannot grow any larger.”

“We were patient, but we knew not to press too far too fast without a true weapon against the Hadarak.”

“We have one now.”

“One that you stole from Star Force,” Zeno’dor said, looking at the Humans.

“I was wondering when you were going to bring that up,” Randy confirmed. “And I’d like to add that you stole yours from us as well, and if we’re ever in the same system with your three Uriti, we’re using the override and taking them back.”

“I’m curious,” Jack added, “how you manage to work with them without it. Or have you unlocked the Chixzon knowledge and attained the override codes?”

A burst of fiery blue plasma shot out from the dragon’s mouth, more like a cough than a weapons strike, but it was clear that the Archon had hit a nerve.

“Your purge of the galaxy was total. We could not collect all the strands of the Protovic necessary to produce a Chixzon. We had to establish a different relationship with our Uriti, and you will not be allowed to get near them, or it will be your death.”

“Glad we got that cleared up,” Randy said quickly. “And the next time you try to get near our Uriti birthing cradles we’ll be sure to kill you too. Fair is fair, after all, and you were trying to discover how we did it, weren’t you?”

“You speak as if you are enemies as well,” Mak’to’ran interrupted. “I assumed you were on better terms?”

“They are arrogant,” Zeno’dor spouted, “beyond measure.”

“Kara,” Jack said firmly. “What you did to her indicated your true colors, so let’s just all admit that we’re never going to be friends and get to the point where we discuss the best way to die together.”

“Death is the most likely outcome,” Zeno’dor admitted. “But we are not helpless against the smaller Hadarak. It is the larger ones that we have no recourse against.”

“It is the minions that are the larger threat,” Mak’to’ran argued. “They can be on thousands of worlds simultaneously while the Hadarak are slow and can only assault one world at a time. The minions are the other half of their threat and they are beginning to grow beyond our ability to eradicate. The more worlds they claim the faster they will sweep the galaxy. If we wait to fully oppose them, we seal our fate. They will not even need the Hadarak to destroy us.”

“Speak for yourself, Era’tran. We can survive this if we wish. It was you that forced us into seclusion. Our population is fully mobile, so we can avoid and persist as the galaxy dies, but our servants cannot and we would be fools to assume the Hadarak will withdraw after the eradication. We will not be in a position of power without the ability to colonize worlds, and if all worlds in the galaxy are infested by minions, any attempt at gaining a foothold would quickly be overwhelmed. The Zak’de’ron are not content with mere survival. We incorporated lesser races to assist us in this fight long ago, and while your betrayal means we will never do so again in the same manner, we admit this is not a fight we can win alone. Perhaps if we occupied half the galaxy that would be different, but our numbers will never become so large, so we must coopt with others to find a means to permanently destroy the Hadarak.”

“Why?” Randy asked. “Why can’t your numbers get that large? You’re egg layers, it shouldn’t be difficult given enough time.”

“Sacrifice is a necessary part of warfare, and we are too valuable to be used in such a manner,” Zeno’dor explained. “That is what lesser races are for.”

Mak’to’ran ground his teeth together hard. “And that is why my forbearers decided to destroy you.”

“You believe you have found a better way,” Zeno’dor said, ignoring Mak’to’ran and focusing on the trailblazers, “but you have not. You are effective because you have the luxury of building and choosing your battles. When you are inundated with enemies your methods will become cumbersome. You will not be able to save all, and you will be forced to make choices. Choices you do not want to make. Some must die, knowingly so, to save the others. If you choose that no die, then you will ensure that all will.”

“Like we haven’t heard that bullshit before,” Randy quipped.

“In time you will see the truth in this, but because you were banished to the Rim you are in the best situation of the three powers here. You will not feel the hammer of the Hadarak upon you until the V’kit’no’sat empire is reduced to flesh for minion consumption. We cannot allow you to learn that lesson so late, so we will teach it to you now.”

“We are not abandoning the evacuation plan,” Jack said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And don’t even think about interfering.”

“The resources gained from the newfound slaves are insignificant compared to what you could be collecting by merely expanding your Kiritak and Paladin.”

“You’re missing the point, Puff. We’re saving them because they’re people in need. The resources gained are a bonus, not the objective.”

“We cannot afford such waste. We three must throw our full might against the Hadarak now, before their minion army grows larger,” Zeno’dor said, glancing at Mak’to’ran to acknowledge his point. “We cannot wait until we develop weapons to fight the larger Hadarak. We must oppose them now with full force, allowing the ones we cannot fight to go where they will while we kill the others. Hadarak do not grow fast, and while we do not know how many are in the Core, if we can kill the smaller ones we will prevent them from growing beyond our ability to deal with. Our races’ reproduction rate is far greater than that of the Hadarak. We can win this war through attrition, but it will only be achieved through much bloodshed, and that bloodshed must start now before their minions scale out of control.”

“I agree,” Mak’to’ran said.

Jack and Randy exchanged glances, then both shook their heads no. “Bunch of newbs,” Randy said dismissively. “You always fall back on the bloodshed route. Haven’t you figured out yet that the Hadarak are better at that tactic than you? Blood for blood and their minions will win. We have no idea how many worlds they have in the Core producing them, so assuming their production now in conquered worlds is their weakness is reckless. They have held back before, and I would bet you there is an enormous amount of minion infrastructure buried in those unexplored regions.”

“Probably more and even bigger Hadarak,” Jack added. “I still don’t think they’re throwing everything at us, and you want to fight head on trading lives in the hope that we can outgrow them? It is you both that are arrogant. It seems that is the Zak’de’ron way, passed on to the V’kit’no’sat, but thankfully Star Force, while born of V’kit’no’sat heritage, did not get trained by either of you. We had to learn on our own as you tried to kill us. We are born of thinking outside protocol. Outside of culture. Outside of the expected. We stand here now because we are superior. We had to become superior in order to survive. Now listen a moment and we will share some of that superiority.”

“First off,” Randy said, taking turns speaking with him and Jack mentally linked through their ships’ battlemap programming since they were too many miles apart physically to be psionically linked, but it still meant they could read each other’s thoughts. “I need to know if the Zak’de’ron have Essence skills, or if you know of any others that do?”

“I am not familiar with that reference,” Zeno’dor added.

“It is the energy that binds your Core to your body, and can be manipulated to do some damn near magical things. Do you have this ability?”

“I have never heard of it, nor possess it.”

“Nor do we,” Mak’to’ran added.

“I already knew you didn’t,” Randy said with a smirk. “The Chixzon did not possess it, but they were aware of it. They’d detected anomalies in some other races, where physics seemed to break down and they were performing above physical capabilities, but they never learned to duplicate it. We have.”

“Explain this power,” Zeno’dor demanded.

“No,” Jack answered, “but we will summarize. Only a few of us have achieved it. Most Archons have not and we cannot predict who will break through to the point where we can manipulate it, even slightly. Once we do it’s a simple matter of training to increase our power. It’s the breakthrough that is damn near impossible to achieve. Once we do, we can see others with it, and they appear to glow. The Uriti can sense this glow, as can the Hadarak. They have instructions to destroy it immediately, in any form or amount. The Uriti nearly killed us when we first used it nearby them and we had to use the overrides to stop them. The bottom line is, the Hadarak fear Essence with a passion. Thus there is someone out there that has it, had it, or will have it, and it can kill them.”

“We can’t,” Randy added. “We’re too small, but we have found limited evidence of Hadarak-sized individuals with Essence abilities. We won’t go into details, but there are battle scars on some planets from long ago where we think they attacked and fed using Essence. Do either of you know anything about these creatures?”

“You have most of our records,” Mak’to’ran acknowledged. “Is there something in them I missed?”

“No. And you?” Jack asked the dragon, who hesitated several seconds before answering.

“Only a legend from before my time, before the time of the Zak’de’ron when the Hadarak were pushed halfway out into the galaxy. They were called Nos’vo’tok, and were said to feed on Hadarak. We have no record of them ever existing. We assumed it was merely rumor and hope sparking wishful imagination that there was an enemy that could defeat the Hadarak. No evidence exists of the Nos’vo’tok ever existing, only the stories.”

“Curious, because the Chixzon don’t have any records either,” Randy stated. “However, there is one caveat there. Have you figured it out yet?”

“I have,” Mak’to’ran said, looking at Zeno’dor. “Feel free to answer first.”

“State your knowledge,” the dragon said coldly.

“They have briefly explained how their obtained their Chixzon. They required a small portion of his mind be protected from the transformation, and from that intact portion they were able to create a reservoir of individuality against the Chixzon programming from which a skilled will could reclaim their own mind. An impressive feat, but one with the flaw of losing whatever knowledge would have been contained in the area that was protected from transformation.”

Jack and Randy both clapped theatrically. “Well deduced, Watson,” Jack said. “We know we’re missing a bit of Chixzon knowledge, so it’s possible they knew something that we currently do not, but it’s clear that Essence is a weapon the Hadarak fear.”

“What can it do?” Zeno’dor demanded.

“A great many things,” Jack answered cryptically. “But, size does matter, and the limited Essence weapons we’ve created have to be charged by those of us with the ability. Using something on a mass 1000 miles wide will have little effect. Only someone the size of a Hadarak with the ability to use Essence could generate enough to kill Hadarak with it.”

“But how would the killing be done?”

“We aren’t sure, but it’s possible a disruption effect could be created that would instantaneously kill them. That’s a skill we have not developed, for obvious reasons.”

“You can kill directly? With no damage to the body?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“We cannot, but we think it might be possible.”

“It would bypass the Hadarak’s armor and mass,” Zeno’dor said as a curious expression crossed his scaled face. “You are talking about forcing the Core to disconnect from the body?”

“That’s the theory, but it’s a skill beyond us and we’re not going to practice killing people to figure it out. I know neither of you would hesitate to do that.”

“Other V’kit’no’sat would eagerly,” Mak’to’ran said, glaring at Zeno’dor. “But I am less a product of the Zak’de’ron than they are.”

“Our influence, no doubt,” Randy noted.

“I believe there is some truth in that,” Mak’to’ran freely admitted.

“This is why neither of you are fit to lead the galaxy. You refuse to do what is necessary.”

“Necessary to do what?” Jack demanded. “What are we saving the galaxy for if not to save the people in it? If we kill them, we’re betraying our own purpose.”

“Some surviving is preferable to none. Sacrifice is necessary when outmatched. It can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat if the enemy is not so bold.”

“They are that bold, or have you not noticed,” Mak’to’ran argued. “Their minions do not hesitate to die. I believe they expect it. And I have been beaten by Star Force once because I underestimated their creativity. I will not make the same mistake a second time. If you can see another path to survival, I am listening,” Mak’to’ran asked the Archons.

“When you invaded Terraxis, we didn’t know how to beat you. We didn’t have a master plan. We prepared for evacuation long before that, but we knew we would have to adapt to whatever you did, so we expected to make it up as we went along. And that’s what we’re going to do now. Make it up as we go, figure it out, or die trying. That may seem reckless to those who meticulously plan, but we’ve learned that the universe is too complex to fully predict, so we embrace not knowing and live in the moment. We do not sacrifice to obtain objectives. We fight together, and die together, and that gives us a unity that both of you lack. You were betrayed by the V’kit’no’sat because you did not develop unity, you developed expendable servants.”

“And you,” Randy said, pointing at Mak’to’ran’s hologram. “You’ve fought how many civil wars within the V’kit’no’sat? Your unity is weak, because you embrace sacrifice and death sentences. Valuing life can give you greater incentive than death threats, but only if you do it right. Death is an easy and effective motivator for the inferior, but it pales in comparison to the greater power of the lightside. As a wise person named Yoda once side, the darkside is the easy path…but it is not the stronger. We accomplish more because we aim for the higher power with a higher prerequisite. And only that power will stand a chance against the Hadarak’s darkside. You want to fight darkside with darkside. Good luck with that, because I think the Hadarak are far better at it than you. Hell, the lizards were better at it than you, and we beat them twice.”

“Your methodology will not save you, hatchlings. When you grow older and more experienced, you will learn these lessons,” Zeno’dor said without animosity. “But this Essence could be a weapon we can use, if you will share it. If you have achieved it, then we will also be able to do so.”

“Then figure it out on your own,” Jack said defiantly. “You didn’t give the V’kit’no’sat all your knowledge when you founded them, and we won’t give you Essence. Besides, even if we told you exactly what to do you probably wouldn’t make it. It takes a lot of intense training that most Archons fail to achieve.”

“So you gloat over this power by mentioning it to me?”

“I can’t kill a Hadarak with it,” Randy stated flatly. “And even if you had it, you couldn’t either. They are too big. But there’s something out there that can and there are huge chunks of the galaxy that we haven’t explored.”

“And if this thing doesn’t live near planets and stars, but rather inhabits dark space, then finding it or them may be very, very difficult,” Jack added. “You can help by looking, and if you find anything let us know. You can’t research Essence because it is invisible to technology. Only those open to it can see it…except the Hadarak, which apparently have been engineered to sense it. How we don’t know yet. And I’m really hoping the Hadarak can’t use Essence and aren’t just banned from using it. The idea that these Essence users might be rogue Hadarak is one we’re considering heavily, but we need data. We don’t even know what they look like. Did your legend say anything about that?”

“It was said they wrapped around the Hadarak and crushed them,” Zeno’dor revealed. “But that could be metaphorical. Can you demonstrate this Essence power?”

“What part of ‘invisible’ do you not understand?” Jack scoffed. “But I will tell you that we can use it like Lachka…but Rentar doesn’t affect it, so I can kill either of you pretty damn quick by crushing your brains directly, so don’t get any funny ideas about capturing one of us for ‘study’…especially you,” he said, pointing at Zeno’dor.

“An invisible Lachka,” Mak’to’ran repeated in a whisper, finding it hard to believe.

“It also bypasses shielding and armor,” Randy added. “So you see why we don’t want to share it with anyone.”

“Do any others possess this power?” Zeno’dor asked.

“Possibly, but I get the feeling it’s extremely rare and whenever a Hadarak stumbles upon a race with it they exterminate them on the spot. That might be what their patrols are looking for.”

“Clever,” Mak’to’ran mewed. “Harass the galaxy enough that those with the skill come to them to challenge the impossible, thus revealing themselves rather than forcing a never-ending search of the galaxy. They bait them out.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the Hadarak are looking for more than one thing,” Jack added. “We didn’t go anywhere near them, so it wasn’t Essence that caused this response. Not from us, at least. Do either of you know what could have?”

“Other than proximity to the Deep Core, we have no answers,” Zeno’dor answered. “But something has altered the status quo. What did you learn from your Uriti’s contact with them?”

“They’re going to kill everyone in the galaxy,” Jack answered. “Uriti included. Anything that doesn’t have clearance to exist is going to be toast. No reason why, that’s just the way it is and always has been. Though they seemed to indicate this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

“How did the planets repopulate?”

“No clue,” Randy admitted. “Now, are we going to work together or not? If we’re going to fight, then let’s get it started so we can whoop your ass and get back to the Hadarak without wasting too much time.”

“We are far stronger than you imagine, Zen’zat,” Zeno’dor said with scorn. “But if we are to fight the Hadarak effectively we cannot hide in the shadows any longer. We must be able to build in the open, so I require a treaty with both of your empires. We leave each other alone and put our full efforts against the Hadarak, either cooperating or in parallel. We cannot waste resources fighting one another, no matter how much the V’kit’no’sat wish to do so. Our hatred of you is far greater than that against us, and we are willing to forgo it in exchange for more damage to the Hadarak.”

“Forgo or delay?” Mak’to’ran challenged.

“We are willing to put the matter to rest permanently. If we manage to survive beyond the Hadarak, we will not care to revisit past wrongs. We erred in creating the V’kit’no’sat and we have paid the price for our miscalculation. It is done for us.”

“It will not be popular, but I will give the order to not engage the Zak’de’ron except in self-defense. We will not trust you, but we will not start a war we cannot afford to fight. Where do you expect to build colonies?”

“Everywhere in the cracks of your empires. We are already there in many places, but we will claim worlds you have not and make them our own, and we will stay clear of your current ones, but when our ships pass through transit lanes, they must not be fired upon.”

“I cannot promise no shots ever being fired,” Mak’to’ran hedged. “There may be some filled with such hatred and fear that they would dare defy my order, but the V’kit’no’sat will agree to let the past die in exchange for a better chance at a future beyond the Hadarak…but if you should betray us and strike where we are weak while we engage the Hadarak, I promise I will see you dead before we are wiped out.”

“Likewise, Era’tran, for once we establish worlds in the open we will also be vulnerable.”

“Nobody is afraid of us,” Jack said to Randy. “Why is that? We’re the ones with the fleet of Uriti.”

“That’s what we get for being the good guys. No respect.”

“You’ve always had my respect,” Mak’to’ran answered. “And even now more so if this Essence of yours is even partially as powerful as I suspect. You and I have settled our disagreements, and I do not fear you betraying us, though you are perfectly set up to do so as we turn our attention to the Hadarak.”

“See, the power of unity. You don’t fear us because we’re reliable,” Randy said, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of simplicity. “All your vendettas and backstabbing are so wasteful.”

“That said,” Jack added as he looked at Zeno’dor. “If you should betray us…same thing as Mak’to’ran promised. And we’ll put Kara in charge of your demise.”

“Then we have an agreement?” the Zak’de’ron asked, ignoring the threat. “You will respect our founding of colonies…”

“None within 100 lightyears of any of ours,” Jack noted quickly.

“And 300 of ours,” Mak’to’ran added.

“Agreed. And you will respect the boundaries of our servant races as well, some of whom are closer than you noted. We promise not to expand them into proximity.”

“Name them,” Mak’to’ran urged.

Suddenly a transmission of data came from the Zak’de’ron command ship, and the galactic maps of both the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force were suddenly updated with a slew of icons marking bits of territory here and there. The Voku were among them, along with the other servant races Star Force already knew of, but there were not dozens more, not hundreds more, but thousands of races spread across the Rim and Core, inserted into both empires’ territories at many critical places where they could be used to launch an invasion.

“As I said, we are not as weak as you believed,” Zeno’dor all but growled, not liking the revelations one bit, for now they were exposed. “Do we have an accord?”

“Stick with uninhabited planets,” Jack warned. “If you start conquering nearby races we may have to get involved.”

“We do not need unskilled labor,” Zeno’dor quipped. “We need empty worlds to expand into. We will not bother those within your domain.”

“Or beyond it,” Randy added.

“Or beyond it,” Zeno’dor echoed, looking to Mak’to’ran.

“Allow me forewarning before you claim worlds, so that I can declare them to the empire to avoid confusion. You must stay away from us or there will be bloodshed initially. I can look beyond the past if needed, but many others are not so free of mind. This will not be easy to accomplish, but I am in agreement and most of my empire will abide by my decision. The remainder I will have to deal with in my own way. Avoid them and I will respect your current claims.”

“See to it that they obey your commands better than you obeyed ours,” Zeno’dor warned. “And this agreement must be made known to the galaxy. They have to know that we are all that stands against the Hadarak, and that we are not to be interfered with. Tribute would be welcome from those that cannot fight themselves.”

“It will not be forced,” Jack warned.

“We have no time to force it,” Zeno’dor snapped. “We are already far behind where we should be to fight this war because of our need to hide. Those races that wish to help can provide tribute. Those that wish to interfere need to know that we stand united. We cannot have the lesser races seeking opportunity in our weak areas, for we cannot waste resources with rear guard actions. We must fully go to war, and we are the least ready of this Triumvirate. We had planned to destroy the V’kit’no’sat, not the Hadarak, and we are ill suited for such a task other than for our Uriti.”

“Will you use yours?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“Not as you suspect,” Randy answered. “But they will fight. In their own way.”

“Explain,” Zeno’dor demanded.

“They are our allies, not our servants. They do not wish to kill Hadarak, but they know it will be necessary at some point. They are relying on us to know when that is, and we will not use them as cannon fodder.”

“No, you cannot,” Zeno’dor agreed. “All the Uriti must be preserved, no matter what the cost in ships. They are the only advantage we possess, and I would greatly suggest you share with us the knowledge of the reproductive process.”

“Turn them over to our control and we will have them reproduce,” Jack replied. “If you value your control over them as more important than the number of total Hadarak, then you’re a hypocrite.”

“We will not turn them over to you. We have put too much effort into their training, but perhaps a trade can be made.”

Randy raised an eyebrow. “What kind of trade?”

“I’m sure you can come up with something equally valuable,” Zeno’dor mewed.

“You’re having trouble controlling them, aren’t you?” Randy said, eliciting a flinch from the dragon. “They’re becoming bloodthirsty, or you nearly lost control when they met the Hadarak. Which is it?”

“You have far greater experience with the Hadarak than we do. It would be best if one who had the override controlled them. Since you will not share it with us, then a trade would be the logical path to the most productive output in this war.”

“What exactly do you want for them?” Mak’to’ran demanded.

“Tribute,” the Zak’de’ron demanded. “We do not have enough infrastructure, for we have had to hide ours. We need resources to begin catching up, particularly those harvested from stars.”

“Which you haven’t been able to get a lot of because that mining is done out in the open,” Randy summed up. “How much?”

“Enough to create a duplicate of Itaru. After that we can handle our own expansion.”

“We can’t deliver all that initially. It will have to be in installments,” Jack cautioned.

“Reasonable installments are acceptable,” Zeno’dor agreed. “Delivered to a system of our choice in the far Rim.”

“Mak’to’ran, I need a list of what you have in Itaru,” Randy said. “I don’t know the particulars.”

“It’s a lot,” he warned. “More than they can use in the near future.”

“It’s the price for the three Uriti,” Zeno’dor stated flatly. “How fast can you grow the small ones to the originals’ size?”

“Not fast enough,” Randy admitted. “We’re not going to gut our own production, but we’ll make reasonable installments faster than you can use the solari.”

“We have a bargain then…and an accord?” he asked Mak’to’ran.

“Your Uriti bargain is with Star Force, not me. But the accord is reached. We will remain separate, but we are forming a new Triumvirate. Try to respect it more than the last one you created.”

“The last one was not of equals. This one is,” Zeno’dor stated with considerable displeasure, “out of necessity.”

“Agreed,” Randy said. “Bring the Uriti to the nearest three Preserves now. I don’t know how much damage you’ve done to them, but we need to get them acclimated to the pack soon and we need to do it in isolation. We will not keep the three together and reinforce whatever bad habits you’ve taught them. Payment will occur after delivery, since we’re the reliable partner in this Triumvirate.”

“Acceptable. Though heed my advice about the necessity of sacrifice, or your naivety could be the undoing of all of us.”

“Translation,” Randy offered. “You need us to die so you can live. We’ll pass on that, thanks.”

“We were fooled once. Never again,” Mak’to’ran promised. “And you will not fool them at all, Zeno’dor. Their eyes are fully open to your duplicity.”

“And what of yours?” the dragon said dismissively.

“We already have a stable accord. This Triumvirate is upon you to make function.”

“Because it is needed we will do so, but do not think we will defend your worlds from the Hadarak. Our alliance is one of mutual damage, not mutual defense.”

“As far as mutual damage goes,” Jack said, changing the subject. “How about you tell us everything you know about killing Hadarak and their minions, particularly the parts you never shared with the V’kit’no’sat…”

www.aerkijyr.com

Uriti Tamer

1

August 2, 128482

Szequat System (Voku Capitol, Zak’de’ron Territory)

Nergthen

The clandestine Zak’de’ron ship arrived in the Voku system not under cloak. That was highly irregular, and by the time it landed on Nergthen and the Zak’de’ron inside made his way into the restricted chambers where the blue dragon that held dominion here was waiting slightly irritated.

“Why did you disregard secrecy?” he demanded as the slightly smaller yellow Zak’de’ron flapped his wings momentarily before tucking them back in alongside his body again.

“Secrecy is irrelevant. An accord has been reached with the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force. We will fight the Hadarak in parallel and all our territories have been sanctioned. The V’kit’no’sat will not attack us. The time of our hiding is finally over.”

The blue dragon flinched, drawing his head and neck back suddenly as his eyes widened. “What has happened?”

“The threat of the Hadarak is so great that the V’kit’no’sat decided we were of lesser importance, and Zeno’dor agreed. If we cannot stop the Hadarak, we will all be killed, and what good is ruling a galaxy devoid of inhabitation? It was decided that we would fight for our survival rather than trying to hide in our Hives between the stars. I agree wholeheartedly, and was sent to inform you that we are now going to war. The Voku are required for immediate deployment to the Core.”

The blue dragon, recovering from his surprise, stood up on his rear legs for a moment, then let his forelegs smash down on the ground with an echoing thud that banished any notion of passivity from the empty chamber.

“Finally!” he said, walking past the yellow dragon and giving him a friendly head butt. “Do we have a plan for victory?”

“No. We face the impossible, and our Uriti are becoming unreliable enough that we have traded them to Star Force in exchange for a system in the Far Rim and enough material to build a second Itaru.”

“They agreed?” he asked, stopping and twisting his long neck around to look back.

“They did. They want them for a variety of reasons, and I do not think if they realized their current condition they would argue otherwise.”

“How then are we to fight the Hadarak?”

“The same way we have always done. With blood. The V’kit’no’sat and Star Force are focusing on the minions, but we know it is the Hadarak that must be destroyed. We are going to hunt down the small ones, and we are going to need massive fleets to do it. We need the Voku and all the others to mobilize immediately. Leave behind only enough for prudent defense. The rest must rally to war.”

“And so they will. Come with me,” the blue dragon said, walking to the center of the chamber then spreading his wings and flapping hard as he launched himself into the air and up into the distant rooftop that pulled back on his mental command. It led to a tunnel that connected into the planet’s atmosphere, and it was a path he had never taken before due to his need to stay hidden even amongst the Voku.

But not today. He flew out and up into the sky, with the yellow dragon following, and the pair both found tall buildings to perch on as they telepathically sent out a broadcasts to all Voku within a 200+ mile range in the planet’s largest city.

The time for war has come. The Hadarak threaten the galaxy and the Voku must rally to our aid along with the rest of our servants. No longer will we hide in the shadows. Today, we reassert our place in the galaxy and reclaim the name that has been hidden from your view. You know us as ‘The Elders’, but our true name is Zak’de’ron. We hold the authority of dominion over this galaxy, and that dominion is being challenged by the Hadarak in the Deep Core. They intend to slowly move out, destroying all life in the galaxy system by system with no exceptions. We will meet these Hadarak in combat, and we will kill many, but we will also take massive losses. The Hadarak are a threat we have known of since before we took you under our care. They are not to be underestimated.

This is a war that has been in the making beyond your time, and now it is unavoidable. Either we destroy the Hadarak or they will destroy us. The time for patience is over. We go to war, and it will be a war measured in millennia, but it must begin now or the Hadarak will gain advantage in every system they take. We can no longer co-inhabit this galaxy. Either they fall, or we do. So I call upon the oaths you swore, and the investment we made in the Voku will now be repaid. Many of you will die, but you will die in combat against the enemy. If we fail and they advance this far out into the galaxy, then we are all doomed. We will meet them in the Core and decide the fate of the galaxy there rather than wait for them to come here and assault your worlds.

Rally now. To victory or to death, for there are no other paths. And in order for us to obtain victory, we must fight together. The Voku must fight with the other servants of the Zak’de’ron that you do not know exist, but all will know soon. We are no longer hiding our power, for without it, the galaxy is doomed. Even Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat recognize this, and they have agreed to fight at our side as well. All must stand against the Hadarak and slow their advance, but it is up to us to make the kills and secure victory, for none else have the power to do so.

The Zak’de’ron will lead, you will follow, and together we will find a path to victory, the yellow dragon finished, with the pair having taken turns speaking, then both raised their heads to the sky and breathed their blue plasma fire up into two vertical plumes that could be seen for miles around, but the following ‘sonic’ battle call that went out telepathically chilled all Voku that heard it to the bone, underscoring the power of the Zak’de’ron that were now demanding their assistance.

It had the desired effect, and as orders were already being transmitted out to the Voku leaders and implemented, the entire population of the Voku empire took on a fervor never before seen. They had been waiting patiently for so long for a call to action, and now they not only had one, but they were being called upon to help the Zak’de’ron fight a war for the fate of the galaxy!

It spread like a virus out from the capitol city, then across the entire planet, system, and then out across their comm grid to all Voku planets. And as one, the Voku answered the Elders’ call without reservation.

Nim-roc was in one of the nearby buildings when the two Elders came outside and addressed the Voku. When he heard their new mission for his race he headed straight to the nearest military base where he submitted his application for reenlistment. He had served for more than 40 years before leaving to pursue business opportunities as a civilian, but there was no way he was going to sit on the sidelines when the Elders issued a call for war.

And he wasn’t the only one. There was a huge crowd outside the military base when he got there, and they were all there to reenlist. His first military assignment hadn’t been voluntary, for he had been bred specifically for that purpose, but once his initial duty was completed he was given the freedom to choose his path and he had chosen to continue in military service for a while longer before leaving it.

That was why the military had no recruitment center for him to go to now. Other races did, but the Voku had a duty upon birth that kept the military ranks full. Now though, that wasn’t going to be enough, and it looked like nearly all pervious military personnel were coming back to heed the Elders’ call.

Nim-roc stood outside for 6 hours, two of which were in rain, before the line finally led him to the entry point and he was accepted in for processing. Given the fact that he had served longer than most did, his record had more gravitas to it and he was pushed up the queue and got assigned a new unit within 30 minutes.

There was no time to say goodbye or any other social sentiments. As soon as he got assigned he was shipped off to the location his unit was located and he was integrated immediately into the infantry ranks, sized up for new equipment, and got back into training mode over the following days as his unit swelled by more than 20%. It took 6 weeks before they finally had a transport to load on, then they left the system for where nobody knew other than the fact they were headed for the Galactic Core and it was going to take them nearly a year to get there, since they couldn’t use the Star Force Grid Point system.

During that time Nim-roc and the other returnees trained heavily onboard the Voku conglomerates, picking up some of the fitness they had lost while studying the Hadarak in detail. They were a terrifying enemy, and not just the planet-sized ones. The army of minions was what he and the other infantry were going to be fighting, and they were both formidable and odd, coming in all sizes and shapes. Some were quick and deadly, others slow and armored. Some of them also came equipped with poison weapons, with even a tiny amount getting onto your skin resulting in extreme pain and eventual death if not treated with the Elders…correction, Zak’de’ron technology.

But they could be killed with coordination, meaning he and the other Voku were going to have to work in groups to take them down quickly and effectively. One on one would not work well enough to deal with the swarm-like numbers that exceeded anything the Voku had ever faced before, including the Li’vorkrachnika long, long ago.

The Hadarak scared him, but it wasn’t a ‘run away’ scared. It was a fear of not being able to accomplish his mission and live to assist with the second. He knew many of them would die, but if they didn’t fight the Hadarak here and now then everyone in the galaxy would eventually be killed…and knowing that, he and others much preferred fighting for a chance of victory rather than waiting for their eventual end to come.

The convoy his transport was in traveled from system to system, taking advantage of several black hole routes that the V’kit’no’sat had opened up to them, but before they got to the Hadarak war zone his conglomerate merged with several others and a shifting of personnel occurred. He moved to the section assigned to him, then new conglomerates formed and he found himself in one assigned to naval combat along with a handful of other infantry assigned as ship’s guards, for there were recent reports of naval minions impacting and infesting ships with boarding parties.

He didn’t know how they could do that to a Voku vessel that could reorganize its interior corridors at will, but if this is where the Elders wanted him, then so be it. Their name might be Zak’de’ron, but they were the same Elders he had served from a distance his entire 1302 year life, and now that he was literally only a few ships away from one of the Zak’de’ron vessels filled with Elders and about to go to war with them…there wasn’t any other place he wanted to be. He was literally born for this, even if his personal skillset might not come into play when the conglomerate eventually went into battle.

The convoy split up a few dozen jumps prior to entering the Hadarak War Zone, leaving only a few thousand conglomerates along with his, but a couple weeks later they entered a system and rendezvoused with two other races’ fleets that he now knew were the Zatarin and Djarm. They were two of the more powerful races that also served the Zak’de’ron, though there were thousands now made public knowledge. Nim-roc had memorized them all, and the Zatarin and Djarm fleets were both larger than his Voku convoy.

They waited in this system together for more than month until three more races and two more Voku and Djarm convoys arrived. Then that massive fleet began to jump out in as close spacing as Nim-roc had ever seen. His conglomerate was in the third quarter of the now combined convoy, and when they got to the next system and he saw on the external sensors that were available for all crew to watch…his jaw dropped.

There were 200 times the number of ships than they were bringing, all clustered together with one active outgoing jumppoint. There were 382 different Zak’de’ron servant races and some 78 different Elders ships here scattered amongst them.

It took forever for his conglomerate to get into its jump position, then it launched itself across the stars alongside both large and small ships from races he’d never heard of prior to this war. They coasted together then exited in another system that was merely a pass through, jumping out from the other side of the star and continuing on.

That passed through 5 more systems, then as they approached the next one the battle warning sounded throughout the ship and Nim-roc rushed from his downtime training to get geared up and ready to repel boarders in the full body armor recently created for the Voku infantry. Shield generators alone would not work against minions that could poison you with a single touch, so now he was encased in a transforming hard carapace just as black as his natural skin.

It felt bulky, but still allowed him 88% mobility…and that was far preferable to collapsing in a pile of pain and becoming totally useless. The rest of the conglomerate crew did not have the armor, for they had tasks to accomplish onboard. Only the infantry had it, and they were now running to strategic positions around the ship that would allow them to enter transit tubes that could deposit them anywhere in the conglomerate within seconds.

From one of those waiting stations he watched the exterior sensors as they finished up their coast phase and braked entering the destination system. Fear shot icy tendrils through his body as he saw not one, not two, but three Hadarak in the system. All were ‘small,’ with two tier 1s and a single tier 2, but they were massive lifeforms beyond his imagining and they had huge swarms of minions escorting them as one was actively engaged in combat against a Zak’de’ron/Servant combined fleet already numbering over 500,000 vessels…though the debris from over 1.5 million were shown scattered across the system and largely unrecognizable had it not been for the battle records the entire combined fleet was sharing with each other.

Then he saw the corpse of a 4th Hadarak in near the star. It wasn’t active and had no minions with it, looking like a small asteroid field made up of large rocks. Another of the tier 1s was showing heavy damage and currently on retreat to the star with warships following and shooting it repeatedly. It had no minion swarm to guard it and the ships were not getting close enough to be affected by the tentacles or grapple fields, meaning they were getting in free shots, but it was so massive and weapon resistant that there was no way they were going to be able to kill it before it made it to the safety of the depths of the star where it could somehow heal in that maelstrom of stellar plasma.

The other two Hadarak were currently engaged, one at another jumppoint that had incoming minions, all warship class, arriving from elsewhere. They were pouring in and adding to the skirmishers even as the Zak’de’ron’s reinforcements were pouring in to aid them.

The scale of combat going on was more than Nim-roc’s mind could comprehend. This was beyond anything he or the others had anticipated, and the sheer amount of destruction made it clear that they were probably not going to survive this fight, but that their deaths would in fact be accomplishing something.

The Zak’de’ron could kill the Hadarak, and if this was the price that had to be paid to fulfill their oaths to the Elders, then so be it. Before now he hadn’t thought it was possible to even kill one of the massive monsters, and the Elders were giving them the ability to do so, which meant that these Hadarak would never reach Voku territory if they died here first.

Nim-roc heard a little chattering, and he looked down to see what it was…finding it was his hand armor shaking and ticking on his thigh. He pulled his arm away an inch, then his attention was drawn back to the sensors and battle reports as his conglomerate began racing towards the tier 2 Hadarak that was surrounded by minions and beyond that a massive Zak’de’ron fleet augmented with far more Servant vessels…some of which had been caught by the Hadarak and were in the process of being crushed to death by the tendrils or pulled down to the surface where the grapple fields were pinning them to the Hadarak and smashed by the pressure or, in the case of the stronger ships, held there until a tentacle was free to arch over and crush them with a single, slow moving hit.

And it was into that insanity that his conglomerate raced, as did the other Voku and servant races, without hesitation. If the Elders were personally fighting these monsters, then they would stand with them, and die with them if need be, for they’d been told that victory would require a bloody path.

And if his blood could spare an Elder from death, there could be no more honorable an end for a servant of the Zak’de’ron.

2

June 2, 128483

Kong Island System (Uriti Preserve #4)

Low Stellar Orbit

Niolla-808 was on system-watch onboard her command ship, along with two other Wranglers in their ships forming a triangle around the massive blue star that currently had 8 Uriti within it. Only one ship would make the telepathic range sketchy from one side to the other, so this star had to have 3 on duty at a minimum, and more when the Uriti moved out to other parts of the system.

But that wasn’t a stretch, for there were over 400 wranglers here and they took turns to give each other time to train and sleep. Niolla was the eldest of those here, but she had come late to the Wranglers only 12,937 years ago. Her skills were decent with the interlink, but the minds of the Uriti were still odd to her and she doubted that would ever change. They were people, but their thought processes occurred in brains larger than starships in some cases, making them as different from her as she was from a hamster…but since they were all people, there were similarities to start building upon. The problem was, it was the inferior Humans doing the contact and translation work.

But Niolla had learned that the superiority of the Uriti wasn’t the same superiority that the Archons had achieved. She was far beyond the Uriti in terms of movement and accomplishment, for they just floated in space and moved around lazily before Star Force had gotten to them, but even now they were lethargic compared to Archons and their superiority was more due to their size and the environment in which they lived, but it was superiority of a form and trying to understand something bigger was far harder than trying to see from the viewpoint of one smaller.

Her duties as a Wrangler were hit and miss other than watches, and Niolla had learned to take it slow and focus on her Archon training more than the Uriti. Insight into them came erratically, almost as if they were holding back from her until she’d passed their tests, yet neither she nor any of the other Wranglers she’d spoken with had ever been able to confirm that or identify a pattern other than familiarity. The Uriti spoke more with those they were personally familiar with, but the difference was negligible. On the surface it appeared they regarded all of the Wranglers as the same person, and the more trust the Wranglers gained as a group, the more each individual would have, even the new cadets, when they interacted with them.

But there was subtlety to their interactions, and it was those subtleties that Niolla and others were focused on for gaining greater understanding, for they couldn’t read the Uriti’s minds unless they allowed it, for they were too far away to use their own Ikrid and the Uriti’s minds were so massive she didn’t even have a clue what that would be like…other than an instant passing out on her part. So they had to use the gauntlets and boosters that not only gave them more power and range, but made their telepathy appear Chixonesk to the Originals. She often wondered if that made them sound like Darth Vader rather than what their own telepathic voices would normally have ‘sounded’ like. And even with the smaller Uriti, their ‘voice’ was altered into the Star Force mode used to communicate with their altered programming.

Right now Niolla was sitting on a padded platform, her legs crossed and eyes closed, with the jewels in the gauntlet on her right arm glowing green in a line that ran from wrist to elbow. The gauntlet was wirelessly connected to the ship and the massive transmitter it contained, and through that device that was also a receiver, Niolla was monitoring the status of the 8 Uriti bathing inside the star. She wasn’t in contact with them on a conscious level, but they had been designed to transmit their status to the Chixzon constantly when prompted to do so and that was how Star Force was able to keep track of them when they dove deep within stars, for the most part. Some black holes were so dense they blocked their telepathy at certain ranges, but here she could still feel them and what they were doing, but unless she talked to them and they agreed to talk back, their minds were shielded from her.

Had they actually been hamsters she would have been inside their minds and figuring them out the quick way, but the Uriti were gigantic mysteries that had to be nibbled away at slowly, and it was that challenge that had drawn her to become a Wrangler when the others couldn’t get any big answers out of the spacefaring monsters. Now she knew why it was so difficult, but that only drew her to the mystery more. Challenges were candy to the Archons as much as corovon was to the Uriti, and she hadn’t regretted the time she’d spent here. Not once.

Part of her on-watch duties included monitoring traffic within the system. Public access was denied here and routed to a neighboring system were a few other Uriti were located at the moment, so whenever ships popped in the fleet had to deal with them and the Wranglers were technically in charge, though most of the time they didn’t need to get involved in the intercepts of individual ships who were unwittingly passing through or were trying to sneak a peek in a banned Star Force system.

But today was not to be a quiet day, and just before Niolla’s hour was up and she switched out with another Wrangler, they began picking up hits on the Dragon’s Tooth sensors Star Force had at the base of the major jumppoints and some of the lesser ones. Those hits didn’t materialize on any other sensors and disappeared at the end of the incoming jumps, for the Dragon’s Tooth technology only worked to detect cloaked ships during the deceleration phase when they were plowing through stellar radiation.

Many ships were detected, in a long stream entering the system, but before that stream ended the first few voluntarily decloaked as Star Force ships were already racing around stellar orbit to get to the jumppoint even though they couldn’t see them.

Alarms went off and Niolla’s eyes finally opened as the sensors registered Zak’de’ron ships arraying in defensive position around the jumppoint, ready to hold off the Star Force ships as a huge signature pinged on the Dragon’s Tooth as it came in on its deceleration leg like a comet, only visible on the sensor tech that the Zak’de’ron themselves had given Star Force prior to their falling out.

A hologram of a Zak’de’ron materialized, but it wasn’t a direct comm channel to Niolla’s ship, rather a message being broadcast to the entire system on a secure Star Force comm channel that the Zak’de’ron weren’t even supposed to know about, ensuring that only high level Star Force personnel would see it.

“We deliver the Uriti as bargained. It is now fully your responsibility.”

That short message was all that was delivered just before the massive transport ship decloaked and began to open up…but the Uriti inside, which Niolla quickly identified as Vedrowen, didn’t wait for the technology to peel open and actually broke the ship as it exited, pushing off the interior walls to get outside the IDF field nullifying it’s gravity drives and getting a tentacle clear, from which it pulled itself out and left pieces of Zak’de’ron ship floating in its wake.

“Oh shit,” Niolla said, ordering her command ship to intercept with a thought as she saw the new Uriti heading straight for the star and her Uriti within it. Its stats, which were relayed to her as she reached out and prompted it to transmit, were horrific. She’d never seen one so battle damaged, physically or mentally, and this one was currently in a rage. It didn’t respond to her ‘voice’ and continued to accelerate towards the star as the other Uriti were frantically bombarding her and the other two Wranglers with questions as to who the new arrival was.

She explained how the Zak’de’ron were going to deliver them, but they had not informed her of when or where, so she hadn’t told the Uriti. Then she asked if they could talk to Vedrowen for her, because he was ignoring her calls. Her Uriti did better than that, and allowed her to piggyback on their own conversations…with a bit of lag…and she immediately saw a monster. An enraged monster bent on destroying the Uriti, whom it considered to be the same as the Hadarak who had attacked it previously.

Niolla heard the Uriti trying to explain that they were of the same herd, but the soured state of the new Uriti’s telepathy immediately told her this was the Zak’de’ron’s doing…and the fact that their ships were recloaking and bugging out even as more of their fleet arrived told her they were washing their hands of this mess and dumping it on Star Force’s doorstep.

Niolla saw all the Uriti heading for one another, those inside the star moving slowly as they pressed through all that stellar material, rising towards space, but all of hers were small compared to the 319 mile wide Vedrowen that looked like a shuriken with 5 thick but flat tentacles that were twirled into a partial circle.

Another of the Wranglers beat her to the naming of it, officially dubbing it Shuriken, but Niolla was the closest of the three ships so it was her duty to issue the stand down order. The Wrangler closed her eyes again and concentrated hard, ordering only the new Uriti and not the others to hold position. She repeated the order three times, but other than a slight hesitation in its acceleration, Shuriken did not stop approaching the star.

“What the hell,” she said, trying again and getting the same result, then she broadcast to the other ships. “We have a problem. Get your asses over here now. The override isn’t working.”

Niolla didn’t wait for their laggy reply and continued to reissue the order as her ship got closer and closer, moving lightning fast compared to the slow Uriti as the first of the smaller ones finally got to the surface. They were all Sivirs, looking like Frisbee discs, but Sivir-Zero was not here with them, meaning they had superior numbers but not mass. Shuriken was larger than them all combined, and even considering the huge patches of unhealed damage on his crumpled chrome body, she didn’t like the odds in the fight that appeared to be coming.

“Come on, come on,” she said, trying the override again and again, succeeding in only getting a few more navigational twitches as the huge Uriti raced down towards the star. Back off, she told them. Something is not right with him. He is going to attack you.

The Uriti disagreed, intent on getting to him and helping him, but Niolla knew better. This wasn’t normal Uriti brain activity, even by Chixzon standards. The Zak’de’ron had done something to him, and knowing them they probably hated the idea of the Chixzon being able to come into a system and steal control of the Uriti from them. How had they managed to override the override? And had it backfired on them? Was that why they’d agreed to turn them over to Star Force?

Thankfully they hadn’t dropped all 3 here and now, and the deal had demanded they deliver them individually so they could be isolated and integrate with the new herds and not reinforce bad habits. But Shuriken had far more than bad habits. He was literally crazed, and Niolla wondered if this wasn’t partly the unintended consequence of having the Uriti fight the Hadarak, whom they considered to be brothers. Did doing so make them crazy?

He has never seen a Sivir before, Niolla told the Uriti. He thinks you are Hadarak, and he has been fighting Hadarak. He will attack you. You can feel it. Approach slowly and do not enter close range. Agreed?

The Uriti agreed, knowing she could override them if need be, but such a thing was never used. They got along well enough, and the Wranglers knew not to yank the chain unless absolutely necessary. And now that it appeared that chain had been broken with Shuriken, she was really glad they did have that relationship to fall back on.

Wait for the others and stay together. If he attacks, run. You are faster.

The Uriti insisted that wouldn’t be needed, and she hoped they were right, but she had a gut feeling they were blinded by the euphoria of meeting a new Uriti.

Her ship got between them prior to the arrival, and despite multiple attempts the override was not working as designed…but it was working. She could feel the resistance within Shuriken every time she tried it. Somehow the Zak’de’ron had taught it how to disobey, but not disregard it. The Chixzon had made it so it wasn’t physically possible to disobey, and how this had been managed Niolla had no idea, but the Zak’de’ron were rumored to be more technologically advanced than Star Force, and it looked like they had managed to do the impossible.

She watched the ranges fall, then as soon as Shuriken hit its outer boundary range…based off of Ancient data…it loosed an energy packet that looked like a water balloon and moved just as slow. The Sivirs were actually able to dodge it, but more followed and suddenly they were perplexed into inaction, and one of them hit.

The damage was more than anything Niolla had seen before, giving Sivir-5 a nasty sunburn and flaking off the outer layers of its body with the single hit, but not carving out a crater. Emotions flared and the Sivirs became a mess of contradictions, not wanting to strike another Uriti but also with the need to fight back. Niolla cut through the chatter and did use her overrides…which thankfully still worked…and ordered them to fall back towards Farco-928443’s approaching ship as it came around the horizon of the star from the other side.

Their confusion ended the moment she issued the order, for it gave them a clarity that they could not ignore, but they were hurt emotionally, in addition to 5’s physical damage, but thankfully the other shots missed and Shuriken couldn’t move as fast as the Sivirs could, thanks to their Star Force training. Apparently the Zak’de’ron hadn’t been able to give this Uriti any training, for it was moving even slower than the Ancients had indicated that it could move. That might have been due to some of the battle damage, or because it had grown larger since those times without the proper training to develop additional gravity drives. Either way, it couldn’t catch them so long as they were moving, but there were 9 planets in this system that had infrastructure on them that couldn’t move, not to mention minion armies that could be extermished with Shuriken landing on the planets or just blasting them from space, for while they were not built the same way as Hadarak minions, Niolla doubted this crazed Uriti would care about the difference.

“Enough of this,” she said to herself as her ship paced the Uriti just outside its firing range and she mentally instructed the captain what needed to follow. Niolla stood up on top of her pedestal in the empty room reserved for the Wranglers when they were in contact with the Uriti. She spread her arms wide and set the air around her to spin, using her Essence to do it as she watched for a reaction.

And she got one, from all the Uriti, which turned to come towards her. She ordered the Sivirs back on their original tract and felt them resist the order, feeling the conflict of priorities, but they obeyed as expected. Shuriken did not, and its mind disappeared from Niolla’s as it stopped talking to the other Uriti. It appeared its full focus was on her tiny little Essence blip, so small that it shouldn’t have mattered given the other 8 Uriti out there, but something about Essence was totally abhorrent to the Hadarak and the Uriti, making them single-minded in its location and destruction.

“Good…good,” Niolla said, seeing it chasing her ship, but she couldn’t keep up the Essence use for a prolonged period of time. She tested it by stopping, and Shuriken continued to pursue until the other Uriti’s telepathic presence got its attention again and it turned back. Niolla pulsed her Essence again, this time briefer, and like clockwork Shuriken turned and came after her ship as it moved away from the star almost as fast as the Uriti could move, keeping it out of weapons range but close enough to feel that it was catching them…as impossible as that was without minions to intercept and drag them down.

How long can you keep this up? another Wrangler asked her telepathically from inside the ship, for she was the only one of them in this system that possessed Essence skills.

Not long enough. You have any ideas?

Buy time and get it as far away from everything as you can.

That’s the plan for now. You hooked in?

Yeah, we all are. Shuriken is messed the fuck up and I don’t think the babies are going to be able to stand him down.

I’m not sure the originals could either, but we need one here.

I’ll send the message, but it’ll take a few days at minimum to get PowPow here. Can you hold out that long?

Probably not. Depends how much time I can stretch in between pulses.

Maybe he’ll take the hint and get fixated on the ship itself.

Only if we’re lucky. What do you make of that damage?

We were just talking about that. It doesn’t all look natural.

What do you mean?

Best theory is that the Zak’de’ron used their weaponry to attack it and left permanent scar marks. Could be how they got it to hate the Hadarak, if they impersonated them somehow. Could be a brainwashing technique or a nanite delivery system. But it doesn’t look like Hadarak minion damage, and so far none of the big ones have shown energy weapons.

Niolla cringed. If the Hadarak had energy-weapon carrying versions buried in the Core somewhere to bring out later this apocalypse would turn into a super apocalypse in short order.

Any idea why it hasn’t healed?

Maybe a lingering poison. Nothing we have encountered before. We’re working on it, but I think it’s easy to guess that Shuriken is permanently pissed off.

I would be too, Niolla admitted. Just get his brother here. Hopefully age will offer some wisdom in dealing with him.

And if not?

Then we’re going to have to come up with something. In the meantime, start evacuating the planets and permanent stations. If he goes on a rampage, we don’t want to have wished we got them out now and didn’t.

We’ll take care of it. Just keep the shiny object thing going.

As long as I can, Niolla promised, pulsing her Essence briefly as she felt Shuriken start to turn away again.

3

June 5, 128483

Kong Island System (Uriti Preserve #4)

Low Stellar Orbit

Matti-2548 stood onboard her command ship’s bridge rather than in the protective chamber she normally used to contact the Uriti as the ship came out of its jump into the Kong Island System. The Wrangler was sitting in a chair that doubled as a command nexus, giving her full interlink into the combat systems as she searched for updates and active sensor signals to get up to speed on what was happening in the system with a Uriti on the loose.

Without it responding to the override things could get very bad, and Matti soon saw that it was worse than she had imagined. There were destroyed structures across the system, two sections of planets that had their surface tore up from burrowing, and worse yet the Sivirs stationed here were all showing significant battle damage while the new one, tagged as Shuriken, was barely scratched.

“What the hell,” she whispered, downloading the battle logs from the battlemap and reviewing what happened. “Where are you?”

Active sensors couldn’t tell her that, but once she got a few bounces from far off relays that hadn’t been trashed, she saw that the Uriti was on the other side of the star continuing to chase the Sivirs as they led it away from the planets, though obviously that hadn’t always worked. Something was seriously wrong with this Uriti, and with Riley and the other trailblazers off dealing with the Hadarak, this problem was hers to handle…well, hers and PowPow’s. The Uriti was in a transport alongside her command ship and the other 5 warships that were escorting it on the short single hop between star systems, but unlike his brother he wasn’t busting out of the ship to get after the others.

Matti signaled him through her gauntlet, indicating that they were going to move around the star prior to releasing him, which would save time since the Uriti couldn’t move as fast as the transport could, but even before they got line of sight on Shuriken Matti got a warning from PowPow that the other Uriti was sick. She inquired as to how and got a flurry of Uriti mental flashes, most of which she didn’t understand, but she got the gist of it. Shuriken was crazed, and it was something the Uriti had never seen before, yet somehow they knew exactly what was wrong.

Trouble was, how to fix it wasn’t in their genetic memories, and as Matti picked up the reports from Niolla and others, she realized that the Sivirs didn’t understand what was going on. She asked Shuriken why they wouldn’t, and he responded with a record of his isolation, which they lacked, but the Archon didn’t understand why that was relevant, though it was the primary difference between them other than size and age.

“Ok, so how are we going to do this?” she said, with the bridge crew knowing she wasn’t speaking directly to them, but rather herself or PowPow. Doing double duty linked to the gauntlet and the battlemap system left one so distracted they often talked out their mental conversations, so bridge crews who had Wranglers that worked off that location had gotten used to the ramblings and knew pretty well when they were being addressed directly and when they weren’t, for normally they’d get their orders through the battlemap rather than vocally.

“Yeah, I don’t like it either, but we gotta smack some sense into him. Ok then,” she whispered, then glanced over at the Bsidd Captain. “Battle stations.”

The insect-like mess of limbs and nubs nodded its triangular head and got the crew up to speed using his own interface into the linked computer systems along with vocal commands as Matti tuned him out and turned her attention to her Uriti.

“You sure about this? It’s gonna get nasty.”

The Uriti’s displeasure was only surpassed by the singleness of purpose emanating from its massive mind. This had to be done, and the damage to the smaller Sivirs was something that could not be forgiven. Uriti did not fight Uriti…that was a fundamental of the herd and why they did not wish to fight the Hadarak, but the fight here had already been started. Now PowPow was going to finish it.

When they got around the curvature of the star Matti released the Uriti well before they got within firing range, giving the triangular monster plenty of time to get free of the transport as the Sivirs raced to him with Shuriken following at a distance. The small Frisbees flew in between the three spheres of PowPow’s body that were linked by two large stalks that left one side of the triangle missing. There was enough room in the middle of his body to fit all the Sivirs, but they ran by and exchanged some lighting discharges between them as they passed information and some things that Star Force hadn’t fully discovered after all these thousands of years, but they knew it was some form of healing and the little Sivirs needed a lot of it now.

“Alright, buddy, this guy has no training and no speed. Let’s give him a lesson,” Matti said as she entered into a semi-battlemeld with the Uriti. It was something they’d practiced a lot, almost letting her remote control him in that she would recommend very precise actions and incorporate the Uriti’s biotelemetry into her own mind as he constantly transmitted it. He had to let her in, and she couldn’t take control even with the overrides in such a precise fashion, but when they worked as a team their efficiency skyrocketed and the Archon knew far more about combat than the Uriti ever could, so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Shuriken fired as soon as he got into long range, sending blobs of energy out beyond PowPow’s own range as the two continued to fly towards one another. But PowPow was one of the handful of Uriti that the Chixzon had given energy shields, and a huge semi-transparent barrier appeared just in front of the forward sphere onto which the blue energy blobs splattered like water balloons and cascaded backwards around the curved perimeter before flying off into space where they gradually dissipated.

“Ha. Bet he didn’t expect that,” she cheered, sensing increased rage from Shuriken, for while he wouldn’t talk to the other Wranglers he was in contact with PowPow as both were essentially trash talking each other in their own way. “Charge up.”

PowPow had many different types of weaponry, which was partly why it had been given its name, but the other part was the primary weapon that was a very near match to Jumat, at least in its effect, and on Matti’s order a sheen began to form over the forward sphere and deepen like an ocean forming as more incoming fire deflected off the shield that was just beyond it.

“Close,” she said as he wondered how best to approach this. “We need to shake him up more than damage him. He’s in a daze, so let’s knock him out of it quickly. Give me as much as you can.”

Had they more time to prepare the amount of charge PowPow could gather was almost limitless. He could charge for four and a half hours before his ability to hold it weakened to the point of unwilling release. They only had minutes here, but that would be enough for one hell of a kick, especially when they closed to pointblank range.

The Uriti didn’t have retractable tentacles like the Hadarak did, and Matti wasn’t sure why the Chixzon had removed them from the design, but they did still have grapple fields, and as they got close and took several laser-like hits from shorter ranged weaponry, she felt through PowPow as the grapple field attached to his body and pulled him closer even as he was accelerating into the collision.

“Hold…hold…hold…and…now!” she yelled on the bridge, even though their ship was well behind the two Uriti playing chicken. Nobody turned to look at her, and her mind was in PowPow’s position, but the ship was already moving into firing range along with the other warships as the collision occurred.

PowPow released his concussion blast a few seconds before they physically hit, jolting Shuriken then physically slamming into him for a second jolt top on, for Shuriken had not been approaching laterally, but rather from the flat top section. His massive arms flexed backwards from the contact as he went limp and bounced off PowPow like one basketball hitting and bouncing off another…though it was Shuriken that recoiled and went flying backwards while PowPow more or less stayed put as his forward momentum was blunted.

Both Uriti were shaken by the impact, but Shuriken was worse and Matti wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. All her drones flew into danger range, taking no return fire during the shell-shocked moment, and fired a massive amount of missiles that streaked in and peppered the huge surface of Shuriken with tiny pinpricks that did no damage…but they did deliver sedative to the surface, and it began to rapidly soak into the ultra-hard flesh and work its way throughout the Uriti’s body as it struggled to right itself after the double whammy it just took.

“Now we wait,” she told PowPow as he put back up what part of his shields remained. They were recharging, but slowly, especially considering how much energy he had forced into his concussion wave. Everything else would be low on power because of it, but that was ok, because they weren’t going to press the attack. That would just work against the sedative. Instead they were going to hold position, shields up, and take whatever tantrum Shuriken was going to throw as they talked to/taunted him.

The main point was, they weren’t going to act like an enemy would, jumping on the moment of weakness. When one was crazed they expected certain reactions and essentially had blinders on their mind that wouldn’t let them reason in words, but if their expectations shifted it would force a shift in their mindset, for the crazed grew crazier the more pressure you put on them. The disruption Shuriken just took should have caused a mental reset, more or less, but the craze wasn’t gone and the return fire came immediately, though at a slower rate.

“Such a newb,” Matti said, with PowPow translating her words while carrying on a running conversation of his own. Such was an advantage of having a brain the size of a starship. “If we wanted you dead you would be. You are our brother, start acting like it!”

Whether it was her comment or PowPow’s Matti didn’t know, but Shuriken responded by citing only the other two Uriti he knew of were his brothers, and they stood together against all else. The galaxy was against them, and they would never submit.

“Don’t submit, just stop shooting. You’re safe here,” Matti said, and PowPow translated, but he assured her that wasn’t going to work. The madness was too great. The only way he could help Shuriken was by some method Matti wasn’t aware of, but it required getting real close and the sedative was barely starting to take effect.

PowPow informed her that the craze might be enough to keep the sedative from fully working, so he was going to have to risk the closeness to save his brother, but he asked for her opinion, already knowing from the Sivirs that they had misjudged Shuriken and gotten hurt by it, so he wanted the Archon’s advice.

“Let it take effect first, as much as it can. Why did they bring you here?” she asked through PowPow, sending a mental image of the Zak’de’ron ships…and the vile that returned shocked both her and her Uriti. Shuriken hated them more than anything, and he spewed out so many painful images that it was too much for her to process, but PowPow absorbed it all and spoon fed it to her as fast as she could handle, with her realizing just what the Dragons had done to get the Uriti to obey them.

“Ok, buddy. Please don’t shoot me. I gotta use my Essence for this. When he’s distracted, get in close and do what you gotta do. Remember, focus on him, not me. I know it’s hard for you, but you gotta do it. I can’t focus in two places. I’m going to make him hear me. You have to ignore me, ok?”

PowPow basically said ‘no promises’ and Matti had the captain pull their ship far away from both Uriti just in case, then she stood up and actually floated into the air as she disconnected from the Uriti link and her gauntlet lights went from green to red. Her hair went blonde, indicating that she was activating her super saiyan mode and making her mind hyper-process far beyond what her Sav could naturally do, and she was going to need all of it for the telepathic manipulation she was about to engage in.

With practice she had learned to contact the Uriti absent the Chixzon transmitter, but it required a lot of power to get the necessary range. The Essence effect made sure the Uriti would not ignore her, no matter how small she was, but boosting it enough required a supreme effort and precise control, for this wasn’t a brute force sort of thing.

The air around her began to swirl a bit, then everything dropped dead silent as the air began to chill and frost formed on her body, the chair beneath her, and slowly spread out across the bridge a few inches at a time as she summoned up so much Essence that she couldn’t help but draw in heat energy from around her as a side effect.

You will hear me, she said in a commanding tone, imbued with Essence, and you will listen.

As expected, Shuriken immediately turned towards her ship, completely forgetting about PowPow, but she didn’t know how he was responding. Her full attention was on making contact with the one Uriti to the exclusion of all else.

You do not harm your brothers. You have been forced to do so and you have become lost to it. You will submit to the herd and join it. You are lost no more. And those that did this to you will not return. Your mind will be freed, she said, focusing hard as she was doing more than just talking to him, but rather trying to hack his mind directly using her Essence. And you will take back your sanity.

It wasn’t enough and she knew it, but Matti had succeeded in driving a spike into the brainwashing that the Dragons had done to him, breaking open a hole and allowing him to see clearly for just a moment before it slammed back shut again…but that was enough for him to stand down, thoroughly confused, and with the sedation beginning to sap his angered state.

Then PowPow slammed into him. Not a fast collision, nor a bounce, but he locked on and stuck to him with a cascade of the healing lighting arcing off all three orbs of his body and shocking Shuriken over and over again as Matti lost her connection as her Essence dragged so low she had to pull it back and shut down, else she risked killing herself.

Her mind came back to her body and her surroundings, with her dropping to the floor that was now covered with snow. She looked around, seeing that the bridge crew were covered with a thin film but had not moved from their posts as they kept the ship moving and out of range of the Uriti, though the Bsidd captain looked hilariously like a Christmas ornament as he stood next to his holographic displays and reflected the light coming off of them.

“Oops, sorry guys,” she said as a red drop fell from her nose and disrupted the pure white coating on the floor. More followed, then Matti realized she’d pushed farther than she should have.

“Shit,” she said, sitting down and activating her non-Essence healing abilities to start repairing the damage to her nose, and more importantly her brain, that the telepathic boost had caused her. She’d never tried anything that intense before, and as the pressure in her head cleared she was very grateful that she was able to pull herself back from the brink before she suffered any permanent brain damage or memory loss.

“It’s working,” the captain informed her. “Shuriken is calming down.”

Matti glanced up at the holographic displays, her head too fragged to try the battlemap connection, and she saw the two Uriti still locked together, but the sedative effect was increasing rather than decreasing from the contact as PowPow was somehow slowly putting the other Uriti to sleep.

“Dani, take over. I need to heal,” she told the other junior Wrangler on the bridge with her.

“Obviously,” the second Archon said as her gauntlet shifted from red to yellow, then finally to green as she made contact with PowPow and explained Matti’s current situation. “He says he’s got Shuriken under control, but the damage previously done to him is massive. He wants to know how soon we can leave and kill the Zak’de’ron?”

“Much later,” Matti said, understanding his feelings. “We have to bring Shuriken into the herd first. Tell him there are two others that are probably just as bad, and we need to know everything he can tell us so we can let the others know what to do in the other Preserves when they arrive, if they haven’t already.”

“Got it. Go take a nap. I’ll wake you if things go bad.”

“Good idea,” Matti said, laying down on the melting snow as the environmental controls began to warm the bridge back up rapidly. “Keep the little ones away, just in case,” she said, then slipped into a deep healing trance, grateful for the bliss of inactivity that even her Saiyan cells couldn’t argue with.

4

Her nap didn’t last long, for her healing abilities were far greater than that of a normal Human, and within a couple hours Matti got back on her feet and up to speed with what had happened while she was out. The fighting mode Shuriken had been in was gone, and now it seemed he was in crying mode.

Dani-740117 was still in contact with PowPow, and through him she was getting too much information to explain to Matti, so the other Archon realigned her mind to the necessary framework to activate her gauntlet and listened in to the tantrums that the damaged Uriti was throwing as it talked to PowPow. It was much like a messed up Human, but with a very different vibe that left Matti confused while somewhat understanding that this was the first stage of withdrawal from an abusive relationship.

It seemed the Zak’de’ron had hurt it prior to the Hadarak, but in a way that made Shuriken and the others think that they were saving them. It took Matti a while to understand, and when she finally did it made her jaw drop. Somehow the Zak’de’ron had actually managed to get inside the head of the Uriti and alter its memories…not its genetics…and that had caused it to go manic. Fighting the Hadarak had allowed them to focus its internal discord against an exterior target as a sort of relief valve to the point where they had to fight just to keep their sanity.

PowPow’s healing effect had done something to shake Shuriken free, and now the broken Uriti was beginning to melt down in depression rather than aggression, which was something Star Force had never dealt with before.

“I’m amazed the Zak’de’ron were able to pull that off,” Matti commented to Dani. “And I’m so pissed they would be this sloppy.”

“I think they gave him to us because they were nearing the point of losing control.”

“I agree. They underestimated how much their genetic programing rules them, and forcing them into combat with his brothers had to rip him apart inside. That sort of shoddy mind raiding isn’t sustainable long term.”

“Are we going to dock their pay?” Dani asked, half serious.

“No. We’ll honor the deal, but we’ll settle with them later, somehow. We’re not going to forget this.”

“Even the Chixzon took better care of them.”

“That’s a low bar to not get over,” Matti said as she tried to get a better handle on Shuriken’s tantrums. “You think PowPow can handle this?”

“He’s not letting him go. He’s got his grapples in hard and at an angle that Shuriken can’t use his tentacles to pry himself loose. He’s worried about him too, but also very protective. He’s got the Sivirs on patrol and I didn’t suggest otherwise. They’re taking Shuriken’s current state as an affront to all the Uriti rather than taking the damage he did to them personally.”

“Well that’s good. We don’t want the herd having issues.”

“What exactly did you do earlier?”

“Shouted really loud with my Essence voice.”

“Headache?”

“Oh yeah. It’s still ringing. I can’t do that again anytime soon.”

“But what did you do to him?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but it disrupted him.”

“Any use against the Hadarak?”

“I doubt it. I think I just got his attention and broke his rage blind. Beyond that I’m just guessing.”

“Worth following up later. I already sent a message to the other Preserves. Maybe they’ll get it before they deliver the other two.”

“If they’re as bad as Shuriken is, I don’t think they’ll want to hang onto them any longer than necessary. I’m just glad the trailblazers insisted on them being individually delivered. All three of them here together would have been a disaster…”

18 days later…

Mexen-11899 was exhausted, as were the other three Wranglers that were also Neos, for they had been taunting Bulmuthal around the Ikerio System in Uriti Preserve #3 as long as they could, but when all of them had exhausted their Essence diversions the mad Uriti had returned to pursuing the 16 smaller Bahamuts, Namis, and Squiddys as they ran ahead of it. So far they’d avoided serious combat, but Bulmuthal had ignored every stand down order it had been given up until Mexen had the genius idea to order it to attack the minions on the third planet.

That was an order it had accepted, diverting away from the faster Uriti and heading towards the targets that couldn’t get away from it. The Wardens had already been removed from the planet, along with everyone else that they could communicate with, and Mexen had deliberately targeted areas of the planet where there were no native lifeforms…but that short list was diminishing rapidly as Bulmuthal set in orbit and bombarded the planet where Mexen ordered him to.

The minions were not alive, for they were Uriti minions and not Hadarak ones. The former were empty biological machines far less efficient than the original minions, but the Chixzon had not wanted living beings that could ignore orders, so Mexen wasn’t executing people with this diversion. What he was trying to do was get Bulmuthal used to following his override orders, but so far whenever he added one in to reposition away from the planet it was momentarily followed…then the door slammed on him and the Uriti returned to the bombardment.

It felt like the Uriti was mentally jumping the track whenever he did so, which meant the override wasn’t working right, but he wasn’t entirely ignoring it. He shouldn’t have been able to at all, but somehow this messed up Uriti was managing it and Mexen had to get him under control. He speculated that his crazed state might be somehow allowing him to override the override, but this was new territory for Star Force, for up until now no Uriti had ever ignored an override order, and it was speculated that they could not. Though today had proven that assumption woefully wrong.

Bulmuthal wasn’t talking to him, so all he had to go on was the status signals that had been hard programed into him to broadcast whenever prompted to do so. What Mexen was seeing was horrific. One piece of his net-like body was completely missing and the stumps where it had started to regrow looked like they had been chewed on. The Wrangler could understand how your mental state went whacky when you lost a limb, for he’d lost his left hand early in his life. It had been sheered right off as an aerial craft crashed on top of him during combat with the lizards.

His mind had gone into a sort of shock mode where he barely felt it initially…or rather he didn’t realize he was feeling it. He had been focused on the moment and doing what was necessary, but once his mind had begun to slow down the pain kicked in…and it felt like Bulmuthal hadn’t yet slowed down. How the Zak’de’ron had managed to transport him was beyond Mexen, for the Uriti would literally not stand still and do nothing, with the only override orders being accepted were those that involved action.

So Mexen tried something a little different. He gave bombardment orders against the minions…which looked a lot like the Hadarak ones it had been fighting recently…while simultaneously ordering Bulmuthal to move sideways around orbit. Thankfully that worked, and little by little he got Bulmuthal used to accepting his movement overrides so long as they came with firing orders.

Before he ran out of barren wastelands to bombard, he tried a repositioning order to the 4th planet along with a bombardment order there. He felt major conflict within the Uriti, thinking it wouldn’t take it, but at the very last it ceased fire and accelerated at the maximum speed Bulmuthal could manage, jumping across the void of space towards the other planet.

Mexen let out a sigh of relief as his command ship followed. He was starting to get control, but he was having to learn the rules as he went. Hopefully as the Uriti accepted more and more orders it liked it would diminish its ability to blind itself to the ones it did not. But there were only so many minions in the system, and Mexen did not want to bombard places where they cohabitated with primitive lifeforms. Those he could not order to evacuate, so he had to get Bulmuthal somewhere else that he could blast things apart, and the obvious choice was the obstacle courses.

He didn’t dare try it yet. He let Bulmuthal destroy a lot of minions on the 4th planet before sending him out to the 5th. After he put him through a lot of minor modifications to the attack patterns and got no resistance to them, he finally tried a reposition order to the nearest obstacle course with an attack order on one of the targets.

There were no minions there, so he felt considerable resistance, but an attack was an attack and Bulmuthal accepted it on the second command. When he did so he accepted it fully, and the internal conflict disappeared as he once again had something to shoot, and the time taken to get there seemed to not be an issue so long as he was straining his gravity drives for speed and then deceleration. He did not coast at all, and Mexen assumed that passivity would have been too much to handle, but at least there was no one to be killed in the obstacle course.

Next came the hard part, and that was ordered a low level strike against the first target sphere. Bulmuthal did not fully comply, and after a few shots it was destroyed. Mexen sent him straight to another one, ignoring the pylons that he suspected Bulmuthal would not bother flying around, and he destroyed 4 more before finally reducing his firepower down enough to score a hit without overloading the shields.

Mexen kept him there firing at it, then ordered him to assault it and a pylon at the same time. That seemed to help with the internal resistance, for it was doing more while forcing him to split focus. The pylon was destroyed in short order, then Mexen had him move further along the obstacle course and do more of the same, wrecking most of it, but teaching the Uriti as he moved to accept his commands and through that newfound synergy, calm down a little.

It was also exhausting the Uriti, and after 6 days of constant moving or firing, Mexen saw a massive shift in Bulmuthal’s stats and the Wrangler gave him another stand down order, which he accepted and came to a stop…not firing or moving, merely drifting in space through another obstacle course and colliding with only a couple of pylons as his current heading would take him beyond it and into the void as he essentially sat breathing too heavily to think of anything else.

Mexen stayed with him, and after a few hours the Uriti finally responded to his telepathic inquiries. It wasn’t much at first, but as the Uriti slowly recovered some strength, Mexen felt the fear and plea for help. Bulmuthal didn’t know what to do and needed guidance now that the Zak’de’ron were not here. The override orders occurred in a way that Bulmuthal had not experienced since before his long sleep, and he had come to depend on the mental connection to the Zak’de’ron…which Mexen gladly replaced with his own, bolstered by that of the other Wranglers, and the synergy between them all seemed to work even better, making Mexen think the Zak’de’ron used tandem telepathic connections.

So they took turns, giving a few of the 238 Wranglers in the system breaks to sleep while the others worked together to maintain a chorus of mental activity to keep Bulmuthal distracted and passive. They talked and talked and talked, having to learn a lot of vocabulary as they went, but Bulmuthal was no longer holding back and eventually the Wranglers had one of the other Uriti join in the conversation.

A quick reflex attack mode ensued, but the override held this time and Bulmuthal let it go, still too exhausted to make a significant effort of it, plus his ire was not so high after receiving several monster cubes of material to snack on, underscoring that the ships nearby were friendly rather than enemies.

It was a tenuous hold, but Bulmuthal was stable and not throwing any temper tantrums at the moment. Time was finally an ally, and they had all the time in the galaxy to deal with this so long as Bulmuthal didn’t start shooting stuff again without permission.

By the time word of the other two Uriti made it to the system, the smaller ones here were actually on good terms with Bulmuthal and he was accepting of their presence, though still jittery and unsure what they were. He had only seen two other Uriti before, and they weren’t exactly like the Hadarak, but the Wranglers had convinced him that they were not, in fact, Hadarak. They obviously weren’t the same as him or the other two schooled by the Zak’de’ron, but they were ‘big people’ and they weren’t shooting at him, and that was something new enough to keep Bulmuthal in ‘wait and see’ mode.

Through the other Uriti the Wranglers got their perspective on Bulmuthal’s state, in addition to what the Uriti was sharing directly. He was wounded physically, but his mind was also damaged, deliberately so, Mexen guessed, by the Zak’de’ron as some means of controlling him.

That damage wasn’t going to be healed anytime soon, and even when Bahamut Zero eventually arrived 4 months later to work his magic on him, it was clear that Bulmuthal was broken inside. The other Uriti feared it was permanent, but the Mexen and the other Wranglers reminded them that they liked a challenge, and they would find a way to help fix Bulmuthal…whom they renamed Gridy after its net-like shape…though the Uriti itself had never known either name before.

It was a slow process, but through training Gridy began to make progress where sitting and doing nothing would have just preserved the damage. Forcing him to adapt and grow was the key, and with the other Uriti around to help guide him through the training on the now repaired obstacle courses, Gridy had a mission he could pour his attention into as a way of avoiding the pain within.

Mexen had done something similar after his hand had been regrown with a Kich’a’kat, but inside him he was still damaged for a long time. Training had let him have moments away from it, but it had taken him nearly 2 years before the trauma was completely gone.

What had happened to Gridy, either from the Zak’de’ron, the combat with the Hadarak, or the sedation by the Ancients…or who knew what happened before that during the galactic war…it was all something he had to process through and not just numb up and conceal. Mexen knew this was going to be a long process, and they had to keep him moving and adapting. Sitting and thinking was not enough, and would actually be a detriment, because you couldn’t change the past by thinking. You had to get new memories to override the old, new experiences to consume your thoughts with, and gain a mission that replaced continually replaying past events over and over again in your mind.

Mexen’s experience losing his hand helped greatly, and he was eventually tasked as Mexen’s primary handler given his unique insight…not so much because he had lost a limb, but because it had affected him so badly and he had to go through a long but successful recovery. Other Archons more badass than him had lost arms and legs and had been mentally fine about it after they were regrown. He envied them that, for he hadn’t been able to put it aside so fast, but the experience he’d gained from being a weak ass was actually helpful here, for Gridy was having to go through something similar, though vastly more complicated.

And Mexen had pledged to stay with him through it, no matter how many years or centuries it took. Gridy was far older than him or any of the other Archons, and the only one of his kind. He was worth saving, even as a war for galactic survival raged on. And before it concluded, one way or another, Gridy would heal and Star Force would have yet another ally on their side.

At least that was the plan. There were never any guarantees, and despite the fact that Mexen considered himself a weak ass for how slowly he adapted to his injury, he was in fact a badass as all the Archons were, and the Uriti were not, so this was probably going to take a longer time to get through than he realized. If at all. For healing was not always automatic. Sometimes it required bravery to break through the self-imposed barricades trying to protect you from further damage.

And if Gridy couldn’t find that bravery on his own, Mexen was determined to use all the guile he had to trick him into it, for sometimes those with less will power needed a little kick in the ass to get the ball rolling…giant space monsters included.

5

July 25, 128483

Ba’al System (Uriti Preserve #5)

Low Stellar Orbit

“What the hell?” Ryen-7117 said as the Zak’de’ron carrier opened up and deposited the Uriti known as Shunudrel into the system, then turned tail and ran in a hurry.

“Is that what I think it is?” Ellie-999238 asked.

“Has to be,” he told his apprentice/wrangler cadet as the Zak’de’ron ships quickly disappeared under cloak, including the massive transport ship, as Shunudrel drifted in place with a massive object sticking out of its X-shaped body that obviously wasn’t supposed to be there. “Why the hell didn’t they pull it out?”

“Maybe it’s stuck,” Ellie offered, looking through her gauntlet interlink more than the holograms as she stood next to the veteran Wrangler inside their protective nook onboard the Star Force command ship.

“Uh oh,” Ryen said as he tried to signal the Uriti to move position using the override…and it didn’t move at all. “He’s not responding to commands.”

Ellie frowned. “Has that ever happened before?”

“No, but the Zak’de’ron have been fighting with them, so I assume they used some sort of control mechanism. The question is what.”

“Sonic is coming out.”

Wait, Ryen told the Uriti as he was heading on a direct path to Shunudrel while the other smaller Uriti were less enthusiastic and crawling away from the star or the obstacle courses they were currently working. Something isn’t right.

He is wounded, Sonic told the Wrangler in a mix of images and feelings rather than words. We must remove the Hadarak tentacle.

He is not responding to commands. That shouldn’t be possible. I suspect some sort of tampering by the Zak’de’ron. Do not assume he will respond normally.

The object must be removed, Sonic insisted.

Can you do it, or do we need mooring beams?

I can attach to it and pull it free.

If he lets you. Be wary, he does not feel right.

He is injured.

I think it’s more than physical. His mind does not feel right to me. He isn’t shielding against my view, but something is wrong.

He is injured, Sonic repeated as if Ryen was dense.

Approach with caution, the Wrangler finally said rather than ordering him to stand down. I have a bad feeling about this.

We will heal him, Sonic promised, but the more information Ryen got from the new Uriti the more he didn’t like this. The override was hard wired into their biology. He shouldn’t be able to ignore it, though it had always been theorized that the Uriti could learn to eventually. It made no sense for the Zak’de’ron to teach them to do that, and it was beginning to appear more likely that they broke this Uriti and just dumped it on them…meaning it could go hostile at any moment, especially if it mistook Sonic for a Hadarak.

Unfortunately his worry proved true, for when Sonic was on approach, Shunudrel broke out of its stagnation and began to accelerate towards the other Uriti as the Star Force command ship and small fleet of other vessels paced it outside the weapons’ range the Ancients had indicated this Uriti possessed. But when Sonic crossed into that range a cascade of lightning began to swirl around Shunudrel, then a massive bolt shot out from between two of the X-prongs and smashed into the swirl of thick tentacles that was Sonic.

And it wasn’t healing lightning, for he could feel the damage done to the Uriti…and it wasn’t light. Normally Uriti weaponry couldn’t do much damage to their own super-hard skin, but this one did and Ryen didn’t know why. Could this be an anti-Uriti Uriti? That made no sense from the Chixzon point of view, but whatever that weapon really was it did far more damage to the Yeg’gor type skin that Sonic possessed.

Told you. Back out of range. You should be faster than him, Ryen said, but did not order with an override as he sensed confusion as well as pain within Sonic. The Uriti took a second hit as he lazily adjusted course and began to climb away, but his speed wasn’t that much greater and it took time to get some more distance between them after negating their closing velocity.

“We can’t do anything about that tentacle until he calms down,” Ellie pointed out. “And if that’s what’s pissing him off…what do we do?”

“We figure it out,” Ryen said as he bit his lip. He was in mental contact with the bridge, and he’d already unnecessarily told them to stay out of weapons range, but they were going to have to get really close to use the mooring beams, and if Sonic couldn’t get near him then there was no way they were going to be able to, for Shunudrel had plenty of point defense weaponry that would shred a drone fleet.

“It won’t dissolve in the star, will it?”

“I assume he’s already been in a star, and based off the cauterization I’d say it’s melted all it’s going to.”

“Yeah, I see that now. How do we get this guy to stop thinking Sonic is a Hadarak?”

“Maybe he can talk him down. I’m still worried about his ability to ignore orders.”

“Could that spread to the others?”

“I’m not worried about that, but if one of the smaller ones take a hit from that weapon it could kill them. Do you see the holes in Sonic?”

“Punched right through,” she agreed.

“Not punched. Melted. Nothing in the Ancient database said this weapon was more potent than the others, so it may have a unique property against Yeg’gor.”

“So why would the Zak’de’ron give him to us?”

“Maybe he shot them.”

“Then how did they get him here?”

“Very good question. He’s not reading any sedation…it has to be mental. They figured out some way to mentally influence him, and they probably screwed up the override in the process.”

“How?”

“Maybe numbing them to it. I doubt they could reprogram them biologically. Not with their resistance. It’s got to be a mental thing.”

“How do we undo that?”

“We have to get inside his head.”

“We can’t do that.”

“I know. So we work it through indirect methods. A little cranial recalibration.”

“We hit him with an asteroid?”

“No, we use the Uriti.”

“And ram him?”

Ryen frowned, glancing to his right and away from the readouts for a moment. “No.”

“Then what did you mean.”

“Watch and learn,” he said, having a discussion with Sonic that Ellie was able to listen in to, then when they agreed on how to proceed they brought the other 28 Uriti in the system in on it as well. All of them were small ones, but they had telepathy too, and they needed to beat the drums as loud as possible.

“Here goes,” Ryen said, giving Sonic the go ahead as he raced ahead of Shunudrel just fast enough that no catch could be made, but the other Uriti wouldn’t peel off, seemingly obsessed with attacking him again.

Sonic lived up to his name in a different fashion than ever intended. Rather than spinning and smashing stuff with a kinetic attack, he began transmitting telepathic pulses so loud and strong it was as if he was yelling…but in a deliberate cadence. Soon the other Uriti began responding and mimicking it until the entire system was singing in rhythm, though the lag threw it off. The overlapping ‘pings’ constantly changed as the distances between the Uriti shrunk, then when all the small ones reached Sonic and clustered around his huge body, they were finally in sync.

And loud. It was beginning to give Ryen trouble even when he didn’t listen in using his gauntlet. The telepathic pulses were being felt by everyone in the system, with the nearby ships getting the worst of it. Had he not had an Ikrid block he would have passed out by now…or been enthralled by the pulses. Thankfully Star Force had been able to develop additional countermeasures to such things, and soon the bridge crew kicked in a shield modification that dampened, though didn’t entirely stop, the telepathic signals from getting to the crew.

Soon Ryen and Ellie were both reflexively mimicking the beats. Two repetitive ones then a slightly different yet equally loud one to follow. Two then one. Two then one. Boom, boom, clap. Boom boom, clap. That was what Ryen had instructed the Uriti to do, and soon Shunudrel began responding in kind, mimicking the hypnotic rhythm, and then the Wrangler urged Sonic to drift back into the edge of weapons range.

When he did Shunudrel did not fire, and Ryen told him to hold there and not push much further. Then they changed the rythmn. Three booms followed by a clap…and Shunudrel altered his to match. They went through several variations, drawing the Uriti together in mimicry, then Ryen tried the stand down order again…but it failed. Instead Shunudrel began a dialog with Sonic rather than ignoring him, and from there things slowly improved, all the while the rhythm continued, providing the link that reinforced that these were not Hadarak, rather they were Uriti like Shunudrel, and the natural herd-behavior they all exhibited was being drawn out and used to link them, though tenuously, together.

It took days, but eventually Shunudrel allowed Sonic closer in an attempt to remove the tentacle imbedded into his side. The two huge Uriti came close together and Ryen could feel Sonic using his grapple field to pull on the exposed part of the tentacle that was sticking out for 12 miles beyond Shunudrel’s body…but it wasn’t enough, even with the other Uriti pushing at the same time, so Sonic brushed one of his tentacles against the end of the severed Hadarak one and did something that fused them together.

Then he pulled, and Ryen could see a slight shift along with a spike of pain from Shunudrel. Lightning formed again, but when Sonic stopped pulling it gradually reabsorbed. Several healing lightning arcs emitted from Sonic to Shunudrel to sooth some of the damage his jerk had applied, but still the piece of the Hadarak body the Uriti had killed was still imbedded into him like a giant thorn.

Ryen and the other 318 Wranglers, who had all come out to the location to observe and help as needed, didn’t know why the tentacle had imbedded so badly, but they knew it had to come out even if it did a lot of damage to the Uriti. Shunudrel would heal afterwards, no matter how bad the damage was unless it had penetrated his brain at the center of his body. It wasn’t that far in, but it was sitting inside a lot of ‘delicate’ tissue, though for a Uriti that was still rock-hard material.

Eventually Sonic convinced Shunudrel to let the Star Force ships approach to help, though he didn’t understand how they could. They were gnats compared to the Uriti, and the bond between the herd and them was something that was going to take a lot of time to understand, for when the Zak’de’ron contacted him they did so with a joint hive mind that appeared just as large as a Uriti. Star Force did not and remained small, so even using the gauntlets and Chixzon enhancements, Shunudrel did not take them seriously save for the override, which he was still reluctant to follow. It seemed the damage done to him had the Uriti in permanent panic mode, and somehow that panic was enabling him to ignore the override.

So tens of thousands of drones gently drifted their way in near the two Uriti as all of them were still ‘chanting’ their telepathic beats. They hadn’t stopped once they started, and it seemed to be their way of including Shunudrel even after he decided to stop shooting them. Ryen had never seen them take to the ‘singing’ so well, but that was just one more discovery to add to the book, though right now the Hadarak tentacle was his primary concern.

All the drones worked their way around Sonic’s thick tentacle that was still physically bonded to the Hadarak one. He had tried to pull harder, and broke the link earlier, so now he had it reestablished and knew how hard not to pull. But in order to get it out they had to yank harder, so all the little drones that were equipped with mooring beams within the system had rendezvoused with the new Uriti and were latching on across a few kilometers with blue beams that looked like impossibly small strands of thread reaching up to black Legos.

When they had all locked on as firmly as possible, Ryen coordinated with the pilots and Sonic, then as one they pulled with a gigantic yank that sent so much pain through Shunudrel that he pulsed a concussion wave that destroyed most of the drones and knocked Sonic clear of him…but Sonic had the Hadarak tentacle still attached to his own, now pulled free of Shunudrel’s body, as gelatinous bits of goo spewed from the wound.

It wasn’t liquid, but rather flexible rock that quickly stiffened up when it hit the cold of space, and without being ordered to do so, one of the small Namis raced in to the wound after the concussion wave subsided and wedged her more or less round body into the gap, preventing more material from flying out into space as she surged healing lightning into the wound.

Ryen felt Shunudrel’s entire mindset shift. He was still in pain, but the worst of it had passed and a huge wave of relief flowed through him. His stats began to move back into the normal realm with rapidity, and over the matter of minutes he began to accept the override commands as if the ‘thorn’ had been what was preventing him from complying.

Ryen briefly wondered if it didn’t have a telepathic signature of its own, but he quickly dismissed that idea. It had to be the damage plus the inability to remove it and having that constant threat nagging at you that put him in such a dire mental state…but then Sonic corrected him, adding that there was indeed mental tampering by the Zak’de’ron, and as soon as he drifted back within range he added his much more ample healing lightning and began to break through the mental alterations ensnaring Shunudrel.

Ryen was very interested in those, and Sonic was happy to oblige as he stayed close to the new Uriti, as did all of them now that there was no longer any threat. Suddenly Shunudrel had become their best friend and very grateful, and all of the 29 Uriti were clustering around him and helping in his recovery and mental ‘retraining’ as they pulled layer after layer of psychosis off of him, giving Ryen a detailed analysis of what they were doing.

And that gave him a pretty good idea of what the Zak’de’ron had done to be able to control them. It was impressive, actually, but also sloppy. They’d managed to tame the untamable, but their solution was not a long term one. The memories of recent battles showed clearly how their hold on them was slipping, and the more they fought the Hadarak against their instincts not to, they became more crazed and manic. It was not too unusual for mentally distressed individuals to embrace their problems rather than fighting against them, and in this case that meant the Uriti, who did not want to fight the Hadarak, became bloodthirsty for the combat once they were forced into it.

The Zak’de’ron had actually told Shunudren to break off from a tough fight, but he had refused and succeeded in killing a level 3 Hadarak…but not before it had speared a damaged spot on his body, bypassing the hardest outer layer and skewering him. Shunudren had twisted and turned, eventually breaking off the tentacle before killing the Hadarak, but it was clear the Uriti were more and more waging the war the way they wanted it and not listening to the Zak’de’ron.

So that was why the Dragons had wanted to make a deal with Star Force. They were losing control anyway. Had they not been, they never would have given up their Uriti. They probably thought they had suckered Star Force, but Ryen knew that wasn’t true. Recovering this Uriti, even in his damaged state, was worth the cost in materials even if not from a combat standpoint. The Zak’de’ron only cared about what the Uriti could do for them, but Star Force had long ago decided to save the Uriti for the Uriti’s sake, and from the waves of relief and gratitude coming from Shunudren, Ryen considered this a huge victory…and not a bad bargain.

He just hoped the other two Uriti, wherever they are, were not in such bad shape. And he wouldn’t know for many more weeks what had occurred with them until the comm network filtered those reports across the galaxy. But when all was said and done, and all three Uriti were brought back into the fold and began their long journey to full health, Star Force’s hatred of the Zak’de’ron grew, but their understanding of the Uriti and Hadarak increased greatly.

And they now had a new weapon, perhaps something the Chixzon did not realize they had produced, for a yet to be determined attribute of Shunudren’s main weapon could effectively damage Yeg’gor-style armor.

And it must have truly burned up the Zak’de’ron to be forced to give that up to Star Force, hence there was already a bit of Karma payment, but the treatment of the Uriti was not something that Star Force was ever going to forget, and it was just one more item added to the grievance list that would have to be settled if and when the threat of the Hadarak ever ended.

And right now, that seemed wishful thinking at best.

6

February 11, 128484

Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

Earth

“Hello Vochem,” Davis greeted as the four-legged, spider/wolf that was the Knights of Quenar ambassador walked into his office along with an Archon handler. Back in the day they never would have let the KoQ in the same room without an energy shield separating them, but the more powerful Star Force had grown the less paranoid they had become, though they still didn’t trust them. Hence a far more powerful Archon than Davis was required every time the ambassador needed to discuss something in person with Davis, and that didn’t happen very often.

“Director. What is the current status of the new Uriti?” he asked, sitting down on a stool while the Neo-level Archon stayed a step behind him and to the right, making sure there was no subterfuge involved.

“Stable.”

“Has the method of their evasion of the override been determined?”

“More or less. It will be some time before we can trust them enough to move them, but I’m told the threat of another attack is slim so long as they’re not interfered with.”

“We would recommend their destruction, but given the damage the Hadarak are doing to the galaxy…”

“No,” Davis said firmly, slamming the door on that line of thought. “You have no say over the Uriti. They are our responsibility, our wards, and our problem.”

“…but since the situation is so dire,” Vochem continued as if Davis’s comment hadn’t occurred, “and destruction is going to occur anyway, we wish to know how you plan to use them against the Hadarak, for we have no knowledge of them going into combat against them yet.”

“And I have no knowledge of your fleets going into combat against them either,” Davis countered. “If you have the ability to kill Uriti then you should be able to kill Hadarak. If you’re not willing to assist, why should I even bother explaining our strategy to you?”

“Your empire has grown large, but you are still young and there is much of the galaxy you do not understand. If we are to survive this we must work together, or there is no hope at all. We have a vested interest in the outcome, and since we allowed you to possess the Uriti, their use is our business.”

“They are people, not warships, and they will not be used as such. They will not be fighting the Hadarak except in self-defense, and probably not even then given that the Uriti are faster.”

“Not use them? They are the primary weapon we have against the Hadarak…”

“No, they are not yours. They are Star Force’s ally, and we will treat them as such.”

“Unless they have learned to disobey your override like the others, then they are your property and you can command them to do whatever you wish.”

“We won’t. And you can tell the others that for me, since they are reluctant to come themselves.”

“I speak for all the Knights of Quenar.”

Davis eyed him closely. “I wasn’t speaking only of them. You’re also here at the behest of others who do not want to show themselves. They want us to use the Uriti while they sit back and watch, hence they are using you as an intermediary.”

Vochem’s normally stoic expression darkened deeply, and Davis knew he’d just scored a significant victory.

“You have chosen to be the visible power in the Rim, but the true powers do not take such an obvious stance. We lie and wait in the shadows until needed, for we know if we push too far the Hadarak will surge forth to destroy us, then retreat back into the Deep Core. You and the V’kit’no’sat are behaving as fools playing with a power you cannot possibly survive. And now you have done something to provoke a reaction never before seen. We do not know what you did, but you have doomed us all, and you have the gall to suggest you are not going to have the Uriti combat the Hadarak? If need be, we will take them from you and…”

“Like hell you are,” the Neo said, telekinetically clamping down on the KoQ’s body and smashing him further onto the stool.

“Did you come here to fight?” Davis asked, “or do you have an offer to make?”

“I did not come to fight, but if he does not release me I will be forced to.”

Davis waved a hand dismissively and the Neo released his telekinetic hold. “What did you come here for?”

“The Hadarak threat is unlike anything ever seen, and you and the V’kit’no’sat are the ones currently fighting it. Our scouts report much, but not all. The Uriti are the key advantage we have. I do not believe you are going to keep them out of the fight entirely. What are your plans?”

“What have your scouts told you thus far?”

“You are using them to destroy minions, not the Hadarak.”

“Did they tell you how?”

“You are bombarding the planets from space and then implementing your own minion colonies to resist reconquest.”

“You’ve missed the key then. I’m disappointed that a race so advanced would miss the obvious.”

“And that is?”

“The fact that they weren’t shooting back.”

The wolf-like face twitched. “The Uriti can control the Hadarak minions?”

“Not quite. We tested that, but the range has to be so short to override the differences that it isn’t effective beyond 100 to 150 miles for the larger Uriti. But we can use them to send a jamming aura that renders the minions sluggish or entirely inert until they take damage, then they respond to their attackers. But if we can vaporize them with single shots, the effect is we can retake planets with ease so long as there isn’t a Hadarak in the system. Their control supersedes that of the Uriti.”

“So you intend to reconquer the devastated areas and force the Hadarak to retake them rather than push forward.”

“That’s a plus, but the truth is we don’t know how to kill the larger Hadarak. The Uriti cannot do it, and until we have an effective weapon we have to avoid them. Unless you or your friends have any suggestions?”

“There are many ways to fight, but none that can win. To do that you would have to take the Deep Core, and none can. Hiding and surviving is the only option. You must learn this or you will be destroyed.”

“We’re all going to be destroyed, or do you know otherwise?”

“In the past the Hadarak have retreated once they have destroyed their objective, but this systematic purge is new. We do not know their objective.”

“We do. They have told the Uriti they intend to purge the entire galaxy.”

“So you say.”

“How long are you going to wait before you assist us?” Davis demanded.

“We also do not know how to kill the largest Hadarak.”

“But you could kill some of the smaller ones?”

“At great cost, but yes.”

“So get at it. We saved you that cost when we took the Uriti peacefully. Time to pay up.”

“Not when you refuse to have them fight much easier battles. But we are willing to assist them in those battles.”

“No.”

“What do you gain by their inaction? You fear their loss?”

“No. We could engage with them and not lose any. But to the Uriti the Hadarak are their brothers, and they do not fight their brothers. Part of the reason the new Uriti are so messed up is that they were tricked into doing so. The result is not a good or reliable mental state.”

“How did the Zak’de’ron accomplish this?”

“Irrelevant. It was not sustainable, thus they traded them to us before they lost all control. Now we’re putting them through rehab. It will be a very long time before we can employ them to assist in minion removal, but we will get them to that point eventually.”

“Can they spawn?”

“Not now, but eventually yes, they can. And the new breeds are well worth the effort given the slow pace of the Hadarak advance.”

“Agreed.”

“Do you know how many Hadarak there are?”

“Not specifically, but we have general estimates.”

“You or your friends?”

“We share information. We believe there are beyond 10 million of them.”

Davis fought his jaw to keep from falling. “How far have you mapped?”

“Not all the way. The estimate is made indirectly.”

“How?”

“Methods that we will not discuss, but we believe to be reliable.”

“Not yours then?”

“You infer you wish an audience with the others. You do not. They are far less understanding than we are.”

“We intend to win this fight, and what I want is information in addition to help. Everything you know about the Hadarak that we do not.”

“How did you discover them?”

“There are clues all over. Your friends don’t hide as well as they think.”

“But well enough if you have not had contact with them. I will tell you that we are the most junior member, which makes you and the V’kit’no’sat too primitive for them to bother with.”

“A lie,” Davis declared.

“No,” Vochem said sympathetically. “They are far beyond you. And some are far beyond us.”

“Yet they do nothing.”

“It is wisdom. Your actions are folly.”

“How long have you been part of this group?”

“Not long.”

“When you broke through to your Essence skills?” Davis suggested.

The KoQ sighed, bowing his short snout as he resigned himself to a conversation he did not want to have. “There is so much you do not know, but we have little time and you are not learning fast enough. So we will risk a quicker path.”

Suddenly the air rippled around them and four more KoQ appeared, jolting both the Neo and Davis out of their seats…but the KoQ were not attacking, merely standing there looking at them.

“Do we have your humility now?” Vochem asked, still seated where he had been as the sound of doors opening and the rush of booted feet wafted in from Davis’s personal security detail rushing to assist.

“Essence effect,” the Neo said, visibly disturbed. “I don’t know what he did, but they were not here a moment ago.”

“I checked too,” Davis confirmed, having used his Pefbar to sweep the room and take account of all the air molecules in it. Had a cloaked individual been standing there he would have pushed the molecules aside or created a ‘null’ zone to his mental scanner. Neither had occurred. “Impressive.”

“As I said, there is much you do not know,” Vochem. “What you call Essence skills are primitive.”

The guards surrounded the intruders, a mix of Human Commandos, Knights, and a few Calavari of equal size, all armed and ready to do whatever was necessary to protect the Director.

“I’m listening.”

“No, you’re not. You are playing with powers beyond you. Those in the Deep Core, and those out here that you have now endangered with your stupidity. Now you must make amends and use your Uriti to kill as many Hadarak as you can.”

Davis huffed a laugh, despite his danger sense still running sky high at what the KoQ might be capable of doing to him in this room. “You want us to fight and die in the hopes that will satisfy the Hadarak and they will withdraw.”

“You chose this fight. You will face it and die. That is the price you must pay for your arrogance.”

“Are those your words or those of your masters?”

“We do not like capitulation, but against the Hadarak there can be no ultimate victory.”

“Surrender monkey,” the Neo scoffed.

“Agreed,” Davis echoed, subtly rubbing the ring on his finger that was more than just a ring. “You want to sit out and hope you go unnoticed? Fine. But give us the information we need about the Hadarak and your new friends. We’re not running away from this fight. I can promise you that much.”

The air rippled again, and suddenly the four other KoQ disappeared again. One moment their bodies were there, then the next the air molecules around them rushed into the vacuum where they had been with a loud ‘pop’. Davis felt the Essence rush in Vochem, but not the others, meaning it was something he had done to them?

“They are gone,” the KoQ said. “We can pull them through the walls from one person to another over short ranges. The Jenshar, which you so crudely refer to as Essence, encapsulates them and a pocket of air around them momentarily, allowing them to move independent of matter from one beacon to the next. I cannot follow them, for I act as the Beacon. All of the advanced races can achieve this, some from planet to planet if the Beacons are strong enough. And some still from within a star system to outside one where no gravity well exists.”

Davis nodded, both a thanks for the information and as a puzzle piece fell into place. “That’s why they’re so good at hiding.”

“It is part of the reason. It is also safer travel when no collisions with rogue mass are possible.”

“How fast?”

“Depends on the strength of the Beacons. One pushes, the other pulls, so the strength of both is required.”

“And if one stops acting as a Beacon before transit is finished?”

“The travelers will most likely die.”

“How?”

“They cannot propel themselves, the Beacons must do it, and if they released the encapsulation before arrival, they will merge with any unmovable mass or emerge into the void of space.”

“Do they require Essence skills?”

“Yes, but only minimal to accept and maintain the encapsulation. This technique is basic, and there are far more powerful ones beyond your imagination. You are neophyte.”

“Perhaps, but we learn fast. So why can’t these friends of yours, if they’re so powerful, effectively fight the Hadarak?”

“Mass cannot be ignored, only avoided. We cannot kill beings the size of planets with any measure of efficiency.”

“How about inefficiently?”

“It’s not worth the sacrifice when they have so many others. If you devoted your entire fleet you might be able to kill one or two. Would that be worth it to you?”

“Do you have any other hope than using our deaths as diversions and maybe convincing the Hadarak to be satisfied enough to give up their galactic purge?”

“None that can be successful, but I will admit we wish to see you try and do them considerable damage in the process. You must use the Uriti.”

“If it is hopeless, why the insistence?”

“Some believe that by turning the Hadarak’s strengths against them, you could inflict enough attrition to be worthwhile.”

“To give you research.”

“Yes. We have no intention of wasting this opportunity.”

“You sound like you’re confident you will survive.”

“We’re not, but our doom will be farther into the future if you actively engage the Hadarak with the Uriti. Regardless, it is so far ahead we are not panicked by any measure.”

“And yet you are now willing to discuss Essence with us. Why?”

“The others want you to die, regardless of whether or not you succeed in satisfying whatever need prompted this purge. The Knights of Quenar value victory more than survival. In this we are different from the others. We do not think you will succeed, but we wish it. The only slim chance you have is to use the Uriti, and yet you refuse to do so.”

Davis mentally signaled his guards to leave, and all did save the Neo, who wasn’t going anywhere, as the Director sat back down in his chair again and leaned his elbows forward onto the clear tabletop.

“I think I’m starting to understand. You established the threat of the Uriti as the central reason for the Knights of Quenar to exist, then we took over for you with a solution you never imagined possible.”

“The threat still exists if you lose control.”

“Granted, but it is our problem and we are controlling it. Yet the Hadarak basically are the Uriti, and your instincts make you want to fight them as an extension of your oaths to defeat the Uriti. But you’ve made friends that are essentially cowards, and that doesn’t sit well with you. You want us to do the impossible and show them that there is a way to fight. Am I close?”

“The Uriti are your only viable option. If there is another, please disclose it.”

“Why are the Hadarak and the Uriti programmed to destroy even the slightest bit of Essence use?”

“We believe it is their primary purpose, though that is only speculation. You are the ones that can talk to them. What do they say?”

“It is instinctual. They do not have a why, only a reaction. What have the Uriti done in the past when they discovered it?”

“A galaxy-wide search and selective purge. They can sense it everywhere they go, and it becomes very hard to hide. The others have never seen a purge of all life, and they do not know what to make of it. What specifically did the V’kit’no’sat do to provoke it?”

“We do not know. They do not know. It simply began and is continually escalating.”

“Will the Hadarak not tell you?”

“They have said what they are doing. They have not said why and they do not regard the Uriti as brothers. They are abominations that must be destroyed anyway.”

“And yet the Uriti still do not want to fight them?”

“They are conflicted. The Hadarak are not. That is not a good fight to wade into.”

“Do you have an effective plan, or are you just buying time while the V’kit’no’sat take the majority of the losses?”

“The V’kit’no’sat are committed to fighting the Hadarak. We will assist them even though our territory will not be effected for some time. If we wait, the Hadarak minions will be in so great a number that they may be able to defeat us even without the Hadarak. The time for this fight is now, and the Knights of Quenar sitting it out is not acceptable.”

“Show us a way to win and we will support you. Ask us for pointless losses and we will not.”

Davis leaned back in his chair and smirked. “Challenge accepted.”

7

February 19, 128484

System 91152845 (Hadarak Territory)

8th planet

The Qua’cho detachment sent to this desert world by the V’kit’no’sat was not enough to get the job done. Vi’che had 1,286 Qua’cho and 15,329 Zen’zat to retake the planet from the Hadarak minions that already numbered in excess of 2 million. The rationale had been that this world, devoid of other life, would be more difficult for the enemy minions to multiply in given the lack of available foodstuffs.

Whoever made that assessment was a fool, for after the Hadarak had passed through this system and deposited minions on every uninhabited world, the minions here had grown faster than expected due to subterranean growth chambers not picked up by casual orbital scans. Those growth chambers, two of which Vi’che had already destroyed, had deep root taps down into the magma layer and spread out through the crust soaking up enough necessary molecules to feed an army of burrowers going out to gather pockets of rich minerals, metals, crystals, and other necessary components for the minions.

In short, the process was snowballing much like it did on other worlds, and not nearly as slow as predicted. The Qua’cho assigned to the other planets were reporting similar difficulties, but so far no reinforcements had arrived and Vi’che had only two warships in orbit to assist with bombardment, both of which were Domjo-class. They couldn’t get deep enough into the crust to kill the growth chambers, so after blasting an entry point Vi’che’s troops had to go in and slaughter the inhabitants and their living buildings…and they had to burn the remains in order to keep them from regrowing from the shredded pieces later.

And for every successful torching mission, the minions expanded their population elsewhere. They had enough minion troops already to cause him casualties amongst the Zen’zat, but no significant anti-orbital ‘flowers’ were left operational…though they were constantly trying to grow more, and like weeds Vi’che had to constantly keep knocking them down before they got to firing size.

He didn’t see how he could successfully clear this world without reinforcements, and he couldn’t provide help to the other worlds either. And worse of it all, if a Hadarak arrived they’d have to abandon their assaults entirely. The V’kit’no’sat were so spread out now, trying to put down these small incursions before they could grow large enough to be a problem, that a miscalculation or lack of adequate scouting created situations like this that were untenable. And there were probably thousands of other systems as unimportant as this in the same need of reinforcements, and no one was going to give a damn about an empty system like this, so Vi’che expected to stay here in perpetual combat accomplishing nothing while his troops slowly got wore down to the point of taking losses.

Vi’che and the other Dimetrodons knew their duty, and were more suited to torching missions than others thanks to their psionic fins that protruded high over their horizontal backs. Unlike the Hjar’at, who had Saroto’kanse’vam, the Qua’cho had a number of different psionic tissues in their fin, including Jumat, making them more akin to the bipedal Bez. However, their low to the ground stature made them the equivalent of walking tanks that could not be flanked, for their fins produced the majority of their Jumat to the sides in such large amounts that any attackers would be knocked away.

They also could throw Jumat forward and backwards, but not as well as laterally. It had been a long-term gripe of their race that Itaru had not given them full Jumat, but the mono-directional cells that made up most of their fin were certainly useful against melee-style opponents, and there were many Hadarak minions that qualified in that category.

There wasn’t one variety of minion, nor two, nor three…rather there were thousands of types, some never before seen until this invasion, but all were biologically grown and somewhat resistant to energy weapons. Their bodies soaked up energy, including simple light, and consumed it much like tree leafs did, meaning they didn’t require as much actual food to eat…but given that they actually moved around, energy absorption was not sufficient to supply them, but it did augment them considerably in addition to making them somewhat resistant to light weaponsfire.

Add to that there were varieties with very thick skin. Not to Hadarak level, but they could take hits and keep fighting, and some of them grew as large as Oso’lon. They were also faster than they looked, meaning the enemy had a primitive, but very mobile and effective army that could replenish its losses with remarkable speed, sometimes within days, and if Vi’che couldn’t kill them faster than they grew them, then he would lose this fight through mere attrition.

And that’s what he feared was happening. Right now he had one of his Domjo scanning the surface slowly and deeply, looking for more hidden growth chambers. Everything on the surface had already been destroyed, but the minions had burrowed down beneath the sands that covered the entire dry planet to the limited water layer half a mile below. That meant his troops had to go underground almost all the time, and some of the tunnels the Qua’cho couldn’t fit in.

They could fit in the larger ones to fight the larger minions, but the Zen’zat were having to crawl through some places so tight they could only fit one at a time to get at the smallest of the burrowing minions that were hiding seeds that could regrow the entire catalog of minions if left alone. Miss even one and it could repopulate an entire planet given enough years, which would undo this invasion once they moved on to cleanse another system.

It was an untenable position to be in, but this was the war the V’kit’no’sat had long awaited and Vi’che did not wish to be anywhere else. What he wished for was a few more troops so he could get the job done here then help reinforce the other planets so they could make a clean sweep of the system. But even then, all it would take was one courier minion to come here and drop off some seeds in the proper locations to start it all over again. Hopefully the hunter ships patrolling Hadarak-controlled space would intercept and destroy all couriers and other minion ships before they could get to their targets, but all it would take was one slipping through and you’d have more of these incursions popping up on uninhabited systems that no one cared about until they became a growth field for more minion armies. And unlike this system, the V’kit’no’sat were starting to spot some of the slow growth invasions, so they couldn’t just follow the Hadarak to find them all.

Vi’che was in one of three small cities the Qua’cho had built on the planet. Each was barely a mile wide and held the necessary facilities to produce the foodstuffs they needed when supplemented with supplies held in a number of warehouses. Those buildings were being expanded to get to the point of fully supplying the invading armies, but they weren’t there yet. The fact that they’d been given such equipment indicated that Itaru expected them to be here for years, and Vi’che did not understand that. Why not just bring in an overwhelming force and eradicate them quickly? Or was his team here supposed to hold the system in perpetual combat rather than win and move on?

It seemed like a moot point when a large mass was detected entering stellar orbit, and Vi’che had already sent word out to begin the evacuation prep when he got word from the few warships around the 1st planet that it was not a Hadarak, but rather a Star Force fleet with a Uriti carrier.

Vi’che automatically assumed they were passing through enroute to another location, but soon they began altering course and spreading out towards all the planets while sending out requests for minion spread data and indicating that they were here to finish the V’kit’no’sat’s mission for them and free them up to move elsewhere.

Vi’che bristled at that, but then let it go. He wanted help, and he wasn’t going to turn it away just because it was Star Force…not that he had the ability to order them away. The fleet they had brought was 5 times larger than every ship the V’kit’no’sat had in the system, and that wasn’t even counting the Uriti that was worth far more than all the ships combined.

When the carrier opened a tiny spec emerged, but it was still a Uriti. It was only 450 meters wide, but some 16 miles long and Vi’che recognized it as a Zolom. Not the original, but one of the offspring, and it looked like a giant, thin space snake that was, ironically, headed directly for his planet while the Star Force ships split up and headed for the others while the transport drifted out to null space between the 3rd and 4th planets to park.

Vi’che had a brief conversation with Star Force, but it was more them informing him of what was going to happen than them offering to help. Apparently they knew more about the minions than the V’kit’no’sat who had assigned the Qua’cho to this planet, for the sandy world he was situated on was ideal to minion growth despite having no ecology on the surface. That was why he was having such a hard time routing them out, and that’s why it was going to become home to a Star Force minion colony.

He walked out of the city and onto a nearby sand dune to see their arrival. The Star Force ships stayed in orbit and began landing a few troops here and there, but it was the giant snake that had his attention. It was almost directly overhead when it began shooting small object off it that rained down to the planet like meteors, splashing into the sand in controlled landings. Out of those fleshy pods spewed forth different types of minions…minions that were not people, but rather biological machines and far inferior to the Hadarak ones because of that fact.

But these Uriti minions went straight into exposed tunnels and disappeared beneath the surface, hunting either resources or the enemy, Vi’che didn’t know which, but then the great snake in space half disappeared over the horizon in orbit before it curled over and began to head straight down to the planet narrow end first.

Vi’che climbed to the highest sand dune he could to watch while monitoring the tracking feed via his personal armor that was currently retracted into gauntlet mode, but it still allowed him a mental link to the telemetry as Zolom-12 hit the surface at decent speed and poked straight into the planetary crust like a needle. It took a significant delay for the earthquake to make its way to Vi’che’s position, but the entire dune shook and flattened out a touch, half burying the Qua’cho’s heavy feet in the sand.

He shook himself free as he saw the tail of the Uriti compress a bit as it slowly pulled its way underground nowhere near to any Hadarak growth chamber, but once the Uriti was fully submerged he got an update from Star Force indicating that the Uriti was going to be spawning its own growth chambers and the fight would become minion versus minion with the V’kit’no’sat providing the extra punch to assure victory.

Vi’che wasn’t going to argue with that, but then Star Force added the caveat of their minions staying to possess the planet and the entire system, ensuring that the Hadarak would not be able to reinfest it later without significant effort. And such an effort would result in a Star Force courier minion being sent to inform them of the incursion.

That changed everything for Vi’che. He knew the V’kit’no’sat could not permanently inhabit these systems, but if Star Force grew minions to hold them then they truly did have a chance of denying the Hadarak their desired growth fields…but that also meant that Star Force was gradually going to be claiming possession of huge chunks of the galaxy after the Hadarak purged them, and he didn’t like that. Especially if and when the Hadarak started taking chunks of V’kit’no’sat territory.

But if he had to choose between the two, then it was an easy choice to make. The V’kit’no’sat were allied with Star Force and at war with the Hadarak, and if they could turn the Hadarak plans for massive minion producing systems against them and fight fire with fire, so much the better. Fighting Star Force’s Uriti would be easy compared to fighting a tier 6 Hadarak, and if they had to swap one enemy for the other, then that was a beneficial trade to make.

And if Star Force remained an ally and wanted to handle the minion wars, then so be it. The V’kit’no’sat were hunters of Hadarak, not minions, and if Star Force wanted to free them up to fight the big ones, then that would both be a relief and something worthy of the V’kit’no’sat empire.

No matter how you sliced it, today was a good day, even if the V’kit’no’sat had to take a back seat to Star Force here.

Vi’che’s assessment didn’t change over the following 9 months as they cooperated in the successful torching of the Hadarak minion facilities across the system, and when it came time to pack up and leave, the Qua’cho were happy to be rid of the system with the knowledge that Star Force now had it locked down. It was a secure victory, short of a Hadarak arrival, meaning the Qua’cho’s efforts here were not in vain and not just an endless holding maneuver.

The Uriti had already left 4 months ago, moving to another site while leaving behind a few Star Force ships and one of their Wranglers who could control the minions, but as the V’kit’no’sat packed up he was informed that Star Force was leaving as well, but they didn’t want to leave their minions alone with the V’kit’no’sat still here. He found that curious and inquired further, only to be told that the minions were not the brightest organic weapons and that Star Force didn’t want them inadvertently attacking the V’kit’no’sat. They said the odds of that happening were low, but without a Wrangler to oversee them some bad behavior was possible when they didn’t have enough prefabricated orders to cover new circumstances.

That was the downside of them not being living beings, or so they said, but it made something clear to Vi’che. This was not what Star Force wanted. They were accurate to a fault and didn’t like a single unwanted death from even their enemies. They hated sloppy warfare, but leaving the minions behind to guard the system on their own was going to be very sloppy, for they had to order them to shoot anything that came here and tried to land on the planet.

And that’s what the broadcast satellites they left behind said, in as many language varieties as possible, Stay away, you will be destroyed if you land on the planet.

That was very unlike Star Force, but it underscored the position they were in. Like the V’kit’no’sat, they did not have enough troops to garrison every system, but the Uriti minions had been designed for just this kind of thing by a race of effective, but sloppy Chixzon who did not care about killing billions if it achieved their objective.

But automated weapon systems, even biological ones, were just what the anti-Hadarak alliance needed to combat the Hadarak minion waves that were quickly spreading across the rectangular zones the Hadarak had outlined like curtains being drawn across a window. Even now there were minion fleets moving independent of Hadarak from system to system, most of whom the V’kit’no’sat were destroying easily, but their numbers were not decreasing…they were increasing and it wasn’t going to get any better moving into the future.

Fighting sloppy might be their only recourse, and Vi’che was glad that Star Force was pragmatic enough to realize what must be done. And if minion wave had to be met with minion wave, maybe that would buy enough time for either Star Force, the accursed Zak’de’ron, or the V’kit’no’sat to find a way to kill the larger Hadarak before they moved far enough out into the galaxy to threaten the heavily populated V’kit’no’sat worlds that could not be moved out of their path.

8

February 27, 128484

Vianfra System (Hadarak Zone)

Muon Ti Vicora

“You’re kidding me,” Beny-3933192440 said as he conversed with the linguistics team that had been sent to make first contact with the Vicon race.

“No. The V’kit’no’sat were here 9 months ago and kidnapped 14 of them. Just came in, scooped them up, and left without a word as to why. When we got here they fired on us before we could talk them down, and they’re not in the mood to let anyone land.”

“How much other contact have they had?”

“None. The V’kit’no’sat were their first alien contact.”

The Frieza-level Archon facepalmed as he stood in the hangar bay in front of the scout ship that the linguistics team had used to get here first and do the ground work that would allow Beny to explain to the Vicon why they had to abandon their two planets…and now they were going to be even more distrusting thanks to those stupid Viks.

“I know why they did it, but they just screwed us.”

“Why did they do it?” the head linguist, a Protovic, asked as his team made up of a variety of Star Force races stood behind him.

“They don’t care about the lives being lost, but if the Hadarak want to wipe out all races, the Viks want to deny them their objective, so they’re ‘rescuing’ enough individuals to repopulate elsewhere.”

“While they leave everyone here to die?”

“Pretty much. How much resistance are we going to get?”

“Heavy. First contact aside, the kidnappings have them livid. They can’t harm our ships, but if you go to the surface they have enough firepower to kill you. We may have to stun and scoop them up. How long do we have?”

“At least a couple months, hopefully more than a year. The closest Hadarak is two jumps away. Has there been any couriers or warship minions seen here?”

“Not that we know of. What probability do we have?”

“About 1/50.”

“What’s your gut tell you?”

“That we have too many planets and too little time to evacuate them all.”

“How did we get so far behind?”

“We’ve been behind since day 1, but it’s the 4th branch the Hadarak are adding that caught us off guard.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Hadarak aren’t just expanding out from the Deep Core to the adjacent systems. They’re moving straight out along certain lines, then angling back and carving a circle track around the perimeter like a fence. Then they’re gradually working their way in and purging everything inside the fence and forcing people fleeing to pass through infested systems. Primitive starships won’t make it, so we think it’s a containment method to prevent mass evacuations. And they just began adding a 4th fence spoke.”

“Will it come all the way out here?”

“If they hold to pattern, it’ll go more than 150 lightyears beyond this system. These people just happen to be in the expansion path. Those deep inside the fences probably have another 500 years before they get hit. We don’t have that time here. Do you have any suggestions how to calm these people down?”

“No. We’ve got their language locked down through 83 dialects and are working on 12 more. You can talk to them, but don’t expect much through dialog unless the V’kit’no’sat want to return the ones they took.”

“The irony is those 14 are probably better off than everyone here. Can you identify a segment of the population that is the most reasonable?”

“I’m sorry, no. They’re all incensed as far as we can tell.”

“Alright, it’s my problem from here on out. Go get yourselves some real workouts for a few days before you leave again.”

“We’re not staying to assist?”

“We’ll know within the day whether or not we can talk to them. After that you have other systems to work on.”

“What about the other dialects?”

“I’ll make do. Thanks for getting this done so quickly.”

The Protovic shrugged. “Their language isn’t hard to decipher, but not having telepathic contact with them forced us to learn it the hard way.”

“Hopefully the next system won’t have been visited by the Viks,” Beny said, poking a thumb over his shoulder. “Make use of the training facilities while you’ve got them.”

The linguists didn’t hesitate and walked past him grateful. The scout ship had a very basic workout deck, which was little more than a few rooms with treadmills, free weights, and a high g chamber. It didn’t have full workout facilities because it was only 600 meters long, unlike the Warship-class jumpship that the scout ship had landed in that was 22 miles long and had a full workout section plus an Archon Sanctum. Even those were limited compared to the surface facilities on some planets, but Beny was able to do his full workouts here and would have gone mad if he’d been trapped in that little scout ship for the two months the linguists had been here.

The Archon glanced up at what looked like a huge ship in the hangar bay, and in the distant past it would have been, but ever since Beny had been born a little over 1000 years ago, ships like this were considered mere toys…but the fact that they were small and inexpensive was the point here. Star Force didn’t have enough warships to spread out as far as needed, so for linguistic analysis duties a toy like this was perfect…unless you had to try and get some workouts done in it.

“My turn now,” he whispered to himself, then headed over to a group of dropships parked on the deck nearby that already had his team waiting for him. With time as short as it was, and as unsure as it was, there was no point in wasting it. He was going down to the surface and communicating with the Vicon one way or another.

The dropships took fire all the way down to the surface, both lachars and missiles, but nothing strong enough to get through their shields. Knowing this, Beny just let them shoot as the four dropships landed in the courtyard of their capitol, then they stat there two more hours as the Vicon continued to shoot and do no damage to the hull, for the shield recharge rate was simply too high.

After the two hours were up and they were still shooting the Archon had had enough. He lowered the boarding ramp and walked out, still inside the dropship’s shield perimeter, and let the ramp pull back up behind him with all of his people still inside the four ships. He wore his armor fully deployed, with the purple/white plates gleaming in the hard sun with bright splotches of light hitting the shield two meters in front of him.

“Please stop shooting,” he said, with his helmet translating his words into the local’s language and broadcasting them out with amplification to get past all the noise of the weaponsfire. “We are here to talk and you are not damaging our ships. Stop firing and talk to me.”

He waited a good thirty seconds with no change, then resigned himself to do this the hard way.

Beny sprinted out through the shield, with it allowing him passage out but not back in. As soon as he was in the open his personal shields began taking the hits, but most of the shots missed for he was running too fast for them to manually target. A couple of turrets with computer programming didn’t have trouble landing their shots, so he made them his first objective, running over to and jumping on one of them, then using the powered armor function in his suit to rip the four barrels apart like he was peeling a banana, then he left them there and sprinted over to the next one, doing the same to it.

His armor pinged an alert as a missile was on approach, giving him just enough time to drop to the ground and enact his super-shields, which was a second capacitor that held a lot of energy ready to dump into an auxiliary shield generator. The result was a bubble shield that formed over him and took the missile hit, then the shield disappeared and the capacitor began to slowly refill to full, though at the moment it had only deplenished to 88%.

The ground around him didn’t hold up so well, blasting the grass and dirt into a mushroom cloud from the donut-shaped trench it carved out around his shield perimeter. Bits of flaming grass clods flew out like projectiles all around him, and for a moment he felt the crowds of armed Vicon cheering, though he couldn’t actually hear them. He was using his telepathy to sample the reactions to his destruction of the turrets, and Beny couldn’t help but smile as he waited a moment for effect, then he sprinted out of the cloud towards the nearest troops set up behind barricades.

Their elation at making a kill reversed into despair as they saw him unhurt and moving just as fast as before toward their lines. The panic and fear exploded in them…then he skidded to a full stop one meter in front of the barricades even as they shot him from pointblank range.

“Boo,” he said, telekinetically grabbing one of their weapons and yanking it out of the biped’s clawed hands and pulled it into his own. He held it for a moment as lachar shots peppered his shields, then he took the rifle and tossed it over his should as he put his hands on his armored hips.

“Stop firing. I’m not here to fight. I’m here to help you. You’re in danger and everyone on this planet is soon to die. I’m here to save you, so stop firing!” he said, adding some telepathic insistence towards the nearest few. Most of them hesitated, but those who were most crazed with fear didn’t let up…then those beside them took up firing again, and Beny knew he was going to have to approach this differently. They weren’t getting the message that they couldn’t hurt him, so he was going to have to hurt them…a little.

He jumped over the barricade’s two meter height and landed on the other side, punching one of the 7 foot tall reptilians in the chest and knocking him down, then he shot him with a stunner from his wrist-mounted weaponry before dashing towards the next one and repeating the process. With two down, he picked them up, one under each arm, and extended his shields around them so their own people wouldn’t shoot them, then he used his built in jump pack to fly the few meters up and over the barricade, landing on the other side and walking halfway back to his ship with the two prisoners in tow.

He didn’t intend to take them the full way there, but the others were not going to just let him kidnap them. They opened up doors on the barricades and rushed him, with Beny dropping his two prisoners and gladly going hand to hand with the others. He delivered body blows and stun shots, taking down swaths of them while noticing some shots from others farther off actually hitting their own people.

“Move the ship overhead and extend shields down. They’re getting friendly fire. Deny their snipers shots,” he ordered the dropship he had come in on.

It rose up smoothly and silently, blocking out the sun for a moment before parking over top of the melee and extending shields down all the way to the ground around the perimeter. They didn’t stop anyone from moving through, but they did stop the lachar shots.

Beny spent the next 20 minutes fighting and accumulating a large pile of bodies so high that outsiders couldn’t see what was happening inside. Eventually reinforcements stopped coming in and he got a moment of peace as he surveyed the damage.

“Get me a regenerator out here. Some of them are dead and I really need them up and walking again.”

He didn’t wait for the others to come out, instead jumping up and over the pile of unconscious bodies haphazardly stacked 3 meters high, then walked out in front of the others still behind the barricades, but they were no longer shooting since their rifle shots weren’t penetrating the shield perimeter. Apparently shooting the ship had lost its appeal when a little enemy was out of the ship and on the ground…and they couldn’t shoot him, so they were finally just standing and watching.

“You shot your own people,” he declared angrily. “We’re going to save as many as we can, but if they took a head shot then there’s not much we can do. We are here to help, that’s why I didn’t kill any of them. You are in danger, and we are here to help you. Those that came before, they are not us. I know who they are. They don’t care about your lives, but they stole those 14 people so the Hadarak can’t wipe you all out. They left the rest of you to die here, but we’re not. We’re here to get you all out, if we can, but we can’t do that if you keep shooting us.”

He reached a hand up and pointed to the sky, producing as large a hologram as he could from his armor, and showed them an image of a Hadarak 4 meters wide over top of his head but still beneath the hovering dropship. Then the dropship doubled up his transmission and made an even larger one above it, 10 times as big as the dropship itself was.

“This is a Hadarak. They are the size of planets. A small one is nearing you. It is attacking all planets and it will get here sooner or later. We can’t stop it, so we came here to evacuate your people before it gets here. Our weapons can barely hurt it, and there are many Hadarak out there attacking planets. Our fleet is spread out delaying them while our other ships evacuate people to safe zones. We are here to save you,” he said, well timed, as one of the visible dead Vicon stirred and came back to life thanks to a regenerator under the care of a Protovic Commando.

“If we came here to fight you, you could not defend yourself against us. But we didn’t come here to fight. We came here to save you. And if you stand no chance against us, you have absolutely no hope against the Hadarak. If you remain here you will die. We cannot protect this planet from the Hadarak, but we can move you off it. I have three massive ships in orbit ready to take the first of you to a different planet, and many more ships are coming here soon. We will keep moving people as fast as we can until you are all moved out of danger, or until the Hadarak arrives and kills you all. We don’t have much time, so please listen to me and stop wasting it. We are here to help. Please send someone to talk to me.”

“Go away!” one of them shouted, then the others joined in and repeated the sentiment in a chant. “Go away! Go away! Go away!”

“Oh please,” Beny whispered to himself. “You can’t be that stupid.”

Then he remembered reports from other Archons when they had to deal with new races and he sighed.

“Alright, you can be that stupid,” he said, turning around and motioning to the Commandos attending to the wounded. “Pick a dozen of them and take them up to orbit. Give them a tour. Show them the Hadarak records, the whole deal. Then get them back down here inside 3 hours. I’ll wait here.”

“On it,” one of the Protovic Commandos said as they began picking up unconscious bodies and one of the recently revived…which had to be restunned as he resisted…and took them back to the dropships…which prompted the Vicon to start firing on them again.

The one overhead stayed put, as did two others, with only one dropship eventually racing back into the sky at such a fast pace it made a short-lived tornado as the air vortexed in its wake, tossing around a dozen or so of the troops on the western side of the courtyard.

“Line them up, face up, into rows. Make them comfortable, but keep them unconscious for another half hour. Then we’ll wake them up and let them go,” he said, sitting down on the grass cross-legged as the dropship’s shields around him were continually lit up with weaponsfire, including several more missiles that, if they got through, would have killed the Vicon inside as well.

“How uncivilized,” the Archon said, sitting in his meditative pose in stark defiance for the attacks happening. He felt the Vicon feel the insult, so he was happy to patiently sit and defy them as they continued with their impudent attacks. Within a few minutes he got a report from the Commandos that all the Vicon had been recoverable…no head shots…and he was glad for that. Not only for their stupid asses, but because a death here would hurt his chances of getting through to them. He needed to be seen as powerful, unbeatable, but not a threat, and even if they shot one of their own, that would still be a person dying because he was here, and he didn’t think the Vicon would have the wisdom to notice that distinction.

“I really hate the Viks,” he said to himself. “Those blunt snouted, reckless, egotistical morons. Couldn’t you have just taken them during the night when no one would see you? You just had to come down in full daylight and make a show of it. Bunch of bungling idiots.”

9

April 20, 128484

Vianfra System (Hadarak Zone)

Muon Ti Vicora

It had been almost two months, and while the Vicon were now talking, Beny had only convinced a few thousand to board the Star Force ships waiting in orbit to haul millions away from the doomed planet. The two planets held a combined population of more than 12 billion Vicon, and it was going to take many round trips to get everyone off, but they simply did not want to go.

That said, Beny had already sent two transports back of non-Vicon that he’d been secretly scooping up from the planet. Namely the larger native animals too primitive to speak and whom were roaming the wilds of both planets. They would be going to sanctuaries back in the Rim, but he had held off taking the domesticated ones yet because that would kill what little trust he’d been able to build up with the Vicon so far if he started taking their ‘property’ from them.

But when a Star Force courier arrived with word that the Hadarak they’d been monitoring had just jumped towards this system and would arrive in an estimated 46 days, there was no more time to play nice. In two months from now, maybe three, everyone on the two planets would be dead or soon to die, and now he had to grab up the Vicon against their will, because there was no way to show them what they didn’t already know. Those that he had taken up as witnesses and showed them what was coming had been convinced enough to tell the others, and that had garnered some willing evacuees, but unless they saw the Hadarak for themselves the majority were not going to believe…and by that time any chance of saving 12 billion Vicon and billions more natives would be gone. Even now there was no way to get them all out, but Beny wasn’t going to waste another minute on trying to get them to voluntarily leave.

“That’s it people,” he announced to his bridge crew when he finished reviewing the message and corresponding data packet. “Time to scoop and dump. All hands on deck. We don’t have a minute to waste. Launch as soon as you get to the hangar bays,” he said as he too headed for a dropship that would join the flocks of others heading down to the planet from the transports along with escort aerial craft that immediately began to down the Vicon defenders.

They couldn’t endanger the dropships when they began to load and unload, so the Vicon military had to be neutralized first, and hundreds of skeets began hunting down and disabling the opposing aircraft with a combination of stun blasts and mooring beams, allowing them to essentially catch them in the air then drag them off to a landing zone where the pilots would be yanked out and tossed onto the dropships.

Beny specifically ordered the aircraft preserved, because when the Hadarak arrived he didn’t want to deny the Vicon the ability to fight back, ineffective as it would be, though they’d have to use replacement pilots, for these being captured were taken up to the transports in orbit as soon as each dropship was filled.

The same went for the tanks, jeeps, and other varied wheeled land craft that had to be disabled, though thankfully the Vicon didn’t have any armor or shielding capable of stopping stun blasts, so if you loaded up enough hits to even a tank, it would soak through and get to the crews, clearing the way for the Star Force gunships to fly over populated areas and douse the largest crowds with area of effect stun weaponry.

The reptilians went down by the hundreds, falling on the ground or within the buildings they quickly fled to, then an army of Bsidd collectors escorted by Protovic troops went around picking them up and the additional ones the Protovic stunned, clearing cities section by section and loading up the bodies onto the bee hive of dropship activity that had thousands of the smaller craft constantly flying up to orbit and back down again to wherever the collectors needed them to go. There was no point in establishing landing zones, so the dropship pilots put them down wherever they could find an opening, whether it be a courtyard, street, rooftop, or in some cases just hovering over rocks or trees and lowering their ramps down near enough to the ground for the Bsidd to climb in on.

Beny started off going after the military personally, but they didn’t last long and he was left to either help hunt down the Vicon or go after the primitive races. After so much refusal by the Vicon in recent weeks, he chose the latter and personally started collecting the domesticated ‘animals’ and loading them up on dropships that would take them to transports configured for their containment, and some of the critters were downright huge. They had elephant-like hexpeds that stood 4 stories tall and were used to carry heavy cargo or even some houses on their backs.

Beny freed them of their cargo then carefully stunned them in a way that didn’t have them falling on and crushing other people, including the wolf-like pets the Vicon favored. Those were much easier to round up, except that they could run very fast and gave the Archon some target practice, but he could carry three or four at once back to a dropship, and making those hunting runs occupied most of his time in the coming days.

He didn’t sleep much, barely two hours a day as he spent most of his time saving people that didn’t want to be saved, and kicking himself for not doing this earlier. Why the Hadarak was coming straight here he didn’t know, and he’d gambled on having more time to get the Vicon to come voluntarily, but now his mistake was weighing on him. A lot of people were going to die because they refused to come when offered, and he knew now that he would never make that mistake again. Caring about people’s feelings didn’t matter when their lives were in jeopardy, and he knew that, he just thought he’d have more time than this to work through it.

His mistake was going to mean billions of deaths, but it was also the Vicon’s mistake. Beny had offered and they had refused, and even now over the airwaves the Vicon were chewing out Star Force in elicit fashion for what they were doing, not understanding that this was a mercy mission. Beny could just take the animals, or he could leave and go to another system that would voluntarily leave, but he wouldn’t. He’d messed this up and he wasn’t just going to wash his hands of it. He was going to save as many as he could, and damn his bad judgement.

No one scolded him within Star Force, and he wasn’t sure if they were even thinking that or not, but it didn’t matter. He was the Archon and it was his job to lead, and he’d put too much emphasis on volunteers. Now he had to scramble to save as many as possible, and he wasn’t going to leave hundreds more to die because he took an extra hour of sleep.

But he had to get some, for he wasn’t strong enough even with his Inas psionic, but he was skating along on as little as he could and sucking down as much ambrosia as he dared. He knew he’d regret it later, but he had to get as many as he could, especially the primitives who had no choice in the matter one way or another. Their ‘caretakers’… using a very loose version of that term…had stupidly refused to leave, and while he didn’t want anyone to die, those who had refused got pushed to the end of the line…though at the moment he was basically stunning anything that moved near him, for he couldn’t waste travel time going place to place and being picky.

The Bsidd were marvelous, moving about in long lines like ants and carrying far more people and critters than he could have, for they were able to load up multiple mandibles like shelves and walk dozens of the smaller ones back to the dropships while also working together to carry the huge elephant-like animals on their backs. It didn’t look like they could with their toothpick limbs, but they were far stronger than they appeared and groups of them were moving across the ground with the stunned and unconscious captives floating above the carpet of Bsidd that shuffled slowly beneath them. They carried them for miles in some cases to get to the super-sized dropships that were actually small transports that were landing capable.

Those small transports could leave the system on their own, but they were being used to carry up large amounts of people to orbit, or smaller numbers of the larger critters. No food or equipment was being taken. No personal belongings. No heirlooms. Nothing but stunned bodies being stacked up uncomfortably five or ten high with the artificial gravity being lessened so they didn’t crush the lowest ones in the stacks under their weight.

And they had to do it, otherwise the travel time up and down from orbit would mean more people got left behind, though nobody realized what was going on until the Hadarak finally showed up.

By that time Beny and many others were operating as zombies. They desperately needed a full night’s sleep, but they weren’t going to stop grabbing people, for after 45 days of round the clock evacuations, only 1.2 billion Vicon and 2.3 billion critters of varying sizes had been recovered. The full transports had already left and more had arrived when the emergency order had gone out. Thankfully Beny didn’t have to send it, for the scouts that were monitoring the Hadarak did before they sent the courier to inform him.

That meant he had both Kiritak and Calavari transports showing up from nearby assignments with their own limited collection crews, but Beny’s Bsidd were successfully capturing people faster than they could load them, so the newly arrived transports were depositing more dropships on the ground and they were being filled as soon as they touched down.

As per his orders, which he didn’t even bother to check on given how busy he was, his fleet monitored the tier 2 Hadarak as it entered the system and broadcast it to the two Vicon planets using their own form of primitive communications technology, and they continued to do it constantly so they could see what was coming.

When that happened, some Vicon started showing up voluntarily at the dropships…but the Bsidd stunned them anyway so they could stack them like cargo. You couldn’t do that with conscious people, for they’d panic and squirm and take up a lot more space and waste time dealing with them. But the Vicon didn’t seem to care, for they kept coming in steady streams up until the local government finally confirmed with their own satellites what Star force was showing them.

And that showed a massive, planet-sized object approaching and spewing forth clouds of smaller objects that Star Force was attacking and failing to stop. They were killing a lot of the smaller objects, but there were so many all they could do was hit and run around the star, and do the same now when the Hadarak first appeared in high orbit over the inner planet where Beny was.

When it finally arrived the Archon got an alert ping, and he took a rare brake and looked up into the sky where his battlemap tracker indicated it was. He didn’t even need magnification to see it, for the baseball-sized blot in the sky was unmissable…and soon thereafter was when the Vicon started flooding towards the dropships begging to be taken away.

Beny had to time this right, for he wasn’t going to get any of his people killed by staying too long. He calculated approach speed and the best guess at a landing spot on the planet, for the Hadarak was behaving like it was going to smash down rather than linger in orbit.

“27 minutes,” he said to himself, setting a countdown timer for the entire planetary evacuation that went out to everyone’s helmet HUDs and began to tick down in unison. Then he ran off towards the nearest pet store he could find and busted inside the locked doors to find an abandoned facility with all the pets still locked in their cages or tanks.

He called for a dropship to land directly outside as he began going around and stunning all of them save for the ones in fish tanks. The dropships had special containers for those and the water had to come with them, for the dropships weren’t wasting space by bringing their own. Within three minutes an army of Bsidd arrived and began collecting the stunned pets, including several carrying the collapsible containers that they then began pouring the aquatics critters into, making sure not to mix the various kinds that might eat each other during transit.

By the time the store was clear there was only 11 minutes left and the dropship was only a third full, so Beny went back outside with the Bsidd and started rounding up anyone nearby, but a tendril of the panicked crowds made its way to the newly landed dropship and Beny didn’t need to go looking for more. He stunned them on approach and the Bsidd loaded them while the Archon kept the crowd from forcing their way onboard in a panic.

There was only two minutes left when the dropship was full, then the Bsidd squeezed onboard with Beny coming last, having to use a Jumat wave to push the crowds back off the ramp as the pilot took them into the air before trying to retract it. It slowly pulled up and sealed two inches in front of Beny’s face, then he rode up to orbit, pinned there unable to move against the backdrop of Bsidd that were so tucked up with their mandibles looking like piles of bamboo smashed together. The countdown expired on the way up, and that meant if everything had gone according to plan all the Star Force personnel would be on their way up to orbit.

Beny watched through the battlemap as the Hadarak hit the atmosphere with its minion swarm getting out of the way so they didn’t get caught in the fireball that resulted as it plowed through the sky and landed on top of one of the cities that was still mostly inhabited, killing millions in a matter of seconds, and sending out a massive earthquake pulse that killed many more in the surrounding areas as buildings collapsed hundreds of miles away, though those closer to the impact suffered a far worse fate as the crust of the planet cracked and new mountain ranges shot up around the landing site, throwing people and buildings up into the air in some cases, while others rolled with the debris down to the base of the new mountains where it all collected in a band of trash and dying people.

A icy spike of guilt shoved its way through Beny’s chest, knowing that if he’d just been a little meaner he could have saved most of those people.

But it was also true that if they had just listened to him and voluntarily come this could have ended far differently, but right now that didn’t matter to him. He was an Archon. It was his responsibility and the Vicon didn’t have enough technology or strength to interfere. He should have made them leave from day 1 in order to avoid this, but he hadn’t, and now the full realization of his mistake was vividly clear.

But even though he had to wait here and watch until the dropship made it to the transport, he wasn’t going to wallow in his emotions. He had a comm and a battlemap, so he began tagging locations on the other side of the planet away from the Hadarak that could still be evacuated, though now with minions pouring out into the atmosphere from pouches on the Hadarak while the naval versions stayed in orbit and went after the transports, he was going to have to aggressively fight the aerial and ground based ones or they’d destroy the dropships.

That made evacuating this planet whole lot more problematic, but he wasn’t going to redirect all of the transports to the other planet. Those would be the easiest evacuations to make, but he wasn’t going to do it. He was going to get some more people off this one, and as soon as the dropship landed on the transport and the ramp lowered, he rushed out across the bay through the army of Bsidd offloading and moving the evacuees and got onboard an empty dropship just lifting off. He commed it and it stalled in air, hovering over the deck a couple meters as he jumped up and grabbed the lowering ramp, not wanting to waste the 10 seconds it would take to fully lower.

He climbed onboard as the dropship made its way to the energy shield separating the bay from space, then he headed back down to an area partway around the planet from the Hadarak landing zone as he organized some proper Star Force landing zones and got both aerial cover and mech protection for them as the minion armies began to creep their way out from the Hadarak, killing everything they came across, with some being tasked specifically to go after the Star Force units coming back down to the planet.

The real fight had just begun, and Beny caught another short nap on the way down, knowing he wasn’t going to be getting any real sleep sessions in while there was a single Vicon or primitive still alive on this planet or the other one, where most of the evacuation effort was being focused. The Vicon population was now abandoning their homes en mass and heading for the nearest Star Force dropship they could find, even if it was hundreds of miles away.

They now realized the mistake they made, and what was left of the Vicon military on the first planet was mobilizing to fight the minions. They might be able to kill a few of them, but they were hopelessly outmatched. But in their position, Beny would rather go down fighting than just waiting to be killed, which was why he’d kept their military craft intact and only yanked out the pilots. It wasn’t going to matter in the grand scheme of all this, but it would matter to those few warriors that were about to die, and if they could destroy a few minions in the process, so much the better.

10

February 3, 128485

Vianfra System (Hadarak Zone)

Muon Ti Vicora

Beny dove head first towards a rock, rolling behind it as he drew four medium-scale minions his way. The rock got pelted with small energy attacks, but it was the smaller clawed minions he was worried about. They weren’t as fast as the medium ones, but if they got up on you they would trip you up and pull you down even if they couldn’t get through your armor…then the others would nick you to death with their chest-mounted weapon spouts. Each of this version had three spaced in a triangle beneath their wide, dome-shaped heads, and punching the spouts didn’t disable them. Nor did shooting them. The actual weapon tissue was buried deep inside, so the only real way to disable them was to kill the minion, and with their redundant organs you had to do a lot of damage to take them down.

Which Beny could do, but right now he wasn’t trying to kill them. Rather he was trying to draw them away from the loading dropship further to the west where a few stragglers were being rescued. Virtually all of the planet was now dead, and the Hadarak was now planted on the second planet while evacuations continued on the far side. They’d gotten more than half the population of that one out, but the transports took time to travel and return, meaning they had to wait to load them when they came back and there were still more than a billion Vicon and maybe 10 billion of the primitives over there still in jeopardy, but it was on this planet that Beny was doing the personal work of tracking down and finding the few survivors left.

He had gone on many missions to disable or destroy the minion growth chambers the Hadarak had left behind, but at this point their production was snowballing and he didn’t have the troops or warships necessary to erase them. That meant he needed to spend what few resources he had on picking up the remaining people and getting them out before the minion hunting parties found them. Fortunately he had telepathy to track the survivors down and the minions did not, and some were well hidden, but he was running out of people to save and most of the dropships had to be sent to the other planet.

But he wasn’t going to give up on the last few people here, so as he distracted and drew off the minions, using his Wequay psionic to get them to pay attention to him like an Ahri charm, a few Bsidd with a pair of Protovic guards held the single dropship secure and loaded up two Vicon along with a flock of Nebrari, which were basically ostriches with four legs.

As Beny evaded and drew them off while not getting too far away from the dropship in case they needed him, he fired a few shots into one of the medium minions then jumped up over another rock on the dry landscape. When he landed on the other side he saw some poor critter huddled up underneath the backside of it, knowing that when the minions got here a few seconds later they’d kill it on the spot.

“Damn,” he said, sending a burst of telepathic ‘friendliness’ into the furry thing, then he grabbed it with one hand and ran, tucking it up against his side.

The pug-faced critter was so panicked it didn’t struggle, merely hanging there with its back legs swaying back and forth as the Archon ran and fired off shots with his free arm thanks to his wrist-mounted weaponry. He managed to take down one of the minions, but the smaller clawed ones were getting closer, not because of their speed, but because they were using group tactics and spreading out to cover multiple angles that Beny might move along if not heading in a straight line.

That meant whenever he turned he got closer to some of them, but he received a notice that the dropship was almost loaded so he continued his evasion and kept his passenger covered with a quick reset of his shields so the minion fire wouldn’t kill it as he started running in a straight line away from his pursuit.

The dropship finished up and took off, flying out to his position and hovering at a speed that matched his running pace, coming down on top of him and extending its boarding ramp, but not low enough to smack against the passing rocks. One of the Bsidd came down the ramp to the end, reaching out several mandibles, and Beny threw the critter towards him, using his Lachka to make sure he didn’t miss.

The Bsidd swarmed the fury thing in a cage of mandibles, and even when it bit him he didn’t let go, pulling it inside the dropship as Beny continued to run and get shot at from behind. He waited for the ramp to clear, then sprinted ahead and jumped with a boost from his anti-grav, arcing up and onto the ramp, then he slipped and fell face down, but with enough grip to grab hold and stay on.

He crawled in and the dropship ramp retracted as it began to race into the sky heading for orbit and the interplanetary trek to the destination transport that was busy loading people over the other planet. When he got a good look at his fury friend, he saw it already stunned and put into a small cage as the Bsidd tended to the bite mark on his ‘arm’.

“Check for poison, just in case,” Beny told him. “And thanks.”

“Sharp teeth,” the Bsidd said, oozing some purple blood that he swiped away before applying a regenerator. It healed him and gave a holographic readout of the damage when prompted. “No poison. Just some bacteria.”

“Good. Get him some food when he wakes up,” the Archon said, looking at the half starved critter. “Pilot, how many are left?”

“Two teams are finishing up and a third is on final scan. They haven’t found any more survivors as yet.”

“Let me know if they do,” Beny said, making his way through the crowded cargo bay to a forward personnel area with banks of seats mostly full of Vicon. He sat down in one of the empty ones and retracted his helmet, but kept an ear piece extension over the left side of his head as he leaned back and tried to get some sleep as everyone around him was still panicked, talking/mumbling, and their emotions running high. Same old, same old as far as he was concerned, and he had no interest in soothing them. They’d live and that’s what mattered, and how much sleep he got could determine whether someone else died tomorrow or the next day, so he just tuned everyone out save for his earpiece that would wake him if an alert or important update came through the comm system.

The other members of his crew dealt with the passengers and deliberately left him alone, allowing him a few hours of badly needed rest before they got to the other planet and rendezvoused with the transport as the image of the Hadarak imbedded in the planet stood out like an ugly tick on the view below. It had enough minions around it that the Star Force ships couldn’t get too close, but the Hadarak also knew that if it sent those minions against his ships they’d be lost, so the Hadarak was keeping them close until it could produce enough more to swarm attack them, and that wasn’t going to be today.

The land war, however, was continually escalating as more and more minions were grown and released, some of which gathered resources while the others were eradicators. If Beny had his few warships attack them from orbit the naval minions would be sent to intervene, so that wasn’t happening. As long as the Hadarak wasn’t interfering with the dropships, Beny wasn’t going to provoke it further and only kept a few drones hovering over the surface as backup in case his ground forces couldn’t hold off the assault waves.

Unless the Hadarak moved to the far side of the planet like it had on the other, he was going to be able to get most of the people out. The Hadarak couldn’t snowball enough minions to prevent that from its current position, but if it did move there was nothing Beny could do to stop it…and three weeks later that’s exactly what happened. It lifted off, traveled a third of the way around orbit, then came back down right on top of one of the intact cities and killed more than 40 million people in a matter of seconds upon landing, crushing them, and killing others nearby in the blast wave that resulted.

Beny had known it was coming, but there was literally nothing he could do to stop it or lure it away. He was the highest ranking Archon here, and he was nowhere close to obtaining Essence skills. He had nothing to attract its attention, and his few ships could only scratch it with weaponsfire, assuming the minions let them get that close.

When the Hadarak landed the minions followed, then spread out around the surrounding areas hunting down the larger populations that made for easy targets. Beny deployed what drones he had left to fight them as the Vicon rushed away from the impact zone in whatever vehicles they had, or even on foot, leaving behind all the primitive races that couldn’t flee on their own, or didn’t know what to do and just ran around in a panic before being found and killed. And the ones in pet cages or corrals didn’t even have that luxury.

Beny wanted to die every time he saw that, but he knew he was the only hope some of them had for surviving, so he stuffed his emotions deep down inside him as he fought day in and day out to pull as many people as he could off the planet over the following 9 months. Then, one day, he didn’t have anyone left to save. Both planets had been completely eradicated of sufficiently advanced lifeforms, as far as the Hadarak were concerned.

The Frieza-level Archon didn’t accept that, and kept running scouting missions over both planets looking for and finding a few small survivors the size of fat mice, but no more Vicon or any large primitives as the number of minions continued to grow and spread, eliminating even the smallest of the remaining critters and leaving only the plant life behind.

Beny stayed behind with a single transport for another week, then finally abandoned the system in a single warship as the transport headed off to another location as the Archon got orders to head to a different system. He had 3 and a half weeks of downtime to rest and train, something he hadn’t had in well over a year. His body had deteriorated so much he hadn’t fully realized it, and once his mind actually had time to think he started to break down. All the emotions he’d stuffed away came back to the surface and he relived the horrors he’d witnessed…all of which wouldn’t have occurred if he hadn’t screwed up.

The trip to his new mission wasn’t one he wanted to repeat, and though he wasn’t fully recovered, not by a long shot, his emotional state had steadied and he knew that more people needed help. Surrendering to despair helped no one, so when he rendezvoused with another scout ship that had been learning the locals’ language, he stepped back into a situation nearly identical to the former. It was a different system with different races. Two this time that could talk, and many more that could not spread over three planets, one of which was completely wild with no cities.

Three days later the first of the transports he had assigned to him began to arrive and Beny, still haunted by the horrors he’d allowed to be inflicted on the Vianfra System, traveled down to the capitol city of the Shimonga and addressed them directly. They hadn’t fired on his ships, though they had slightly better technology than the Vicon did, but his landing zone was surrounded by their military as one of their leaders met him in an open courtyard just beyond where his dropship landed.

“We offer greetings,” the short, pudgy Shimonga said through gill-like flaps that served as his mouth.

“Hello, my name is Beny. I have come to take you away from this world before it can be destroyed. I will take volunteers first, but I will not allow any of you to remain and die. The Hadarak are coming, and I do not know how long you have to live, so I will waste no time,” he said, producing a hologram of the events that had occurred at Vianfra so the representative and those nearby soldiers could see.

“This is what is going to happen here, and it is happening across the inner sections of the galaxy. We are rescuing as many people as we can and moving them to safe zones. That is why I have been sent here. To rescue you before the Hadarak arrive.”

“You wish us to leave our home?”

“If you do not, you will die here. We cannot stop the Hadarak. All we can do is move you out of their path.”

“Move us to where?”

“Another planet far from here.”

“That is unacceptable. Surely these Hadarak can be reasoned with.”

“Are you blind?” Beny yelled, pointing at the holograms that were running as if in real time. “This is not a dispute. They are destroying all life in the galaxy. There is no discussion, no debate. They won’t even talk to us. We are beneath them. Only those as large as they are will they talk to, and we have asked through those others to speak to them on our behalf. The Hadarak have declared we must all die. There is nothing to be reasoned, negotiated, or requested. They do not care. They are going to kill you all, and every other planet full of people in the galaxy. Until we can find a way to stop them, we have to move you away, far away, and we have to start moving you now before they arrive.”

“You are a stranger here and clearly do not understand our ways. A decision such as this must be debated in the Articum and approved by the Sicate, but before that we must verify what you have said and that you are indeed seeking to help us. You cannot expect us to take you at your word and abandon our homes on a whim simply because you have superior technology to us? Surely your race must have rules and procedures? A respect for sovereignty?”

“There is no time for any of that. If the Hadarak gets here before we have finished the evacuation, people will die. I want all your people who volunteer to go first assembled at the landing zones by the end of the day. The rest of you can debate while we get them out.”

“No one is leaving without the permission of the Articum! You have no authority here, outsider. You can make your case to the leaders of our planet, but it is they who will deci…” the Shimonga said, cut off mid-word as Beny shot him with a single stun blast from pointblank range, then caught his body before it could fall to the ground.

He pulled him towards the dropship as the soldiers all around opened fire, with their plasma rifles peppering the dropship’s extended shields and not making it to Beny or his first captive.

“Send in the skeets and get a few drones down here. I want their military craft disabled before they get the idea they can fight back,” he said via comm to his people up in orbit. “I’m going to give them a lesson here and maybe they’ll understand, but we’re not waiting if they don’t. Scoop and dump if they don’t voluntarily come.”

Three years and four months later a tier 3 Hadarak arrived in the system, finding it completely evacuated. It landed on the first planet, smashing the surface and depositing minions that would claim the world unchallenged and began reproducing in extremely high numbers. The Hadarak deposited them on all 8 planets in the system then moved on to another, then Star Force sent in an eradication team shortly after it left, fighting the minions while Beny was already in another system evacuating more people ahead of the never-ending onslaught.

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Table of Contents

Summit

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

The Dinosaur War

- Map 1
- Map 2
- Map 3
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Equity

- Map 1
- Map 2
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Fracture

- Map 1
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Forsaken

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Instinct

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Dominance

- Prologue
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Essence

- Map 1
- Map 2
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Dawn of the Apocalypse

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Uriti Tamer

- Map 1
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 9
- 10