Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (57-60)
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Action & Adventure; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Science Fiction; Colonization; Galactic Empire; Military; Space Fleet; Space Marine; Space Opera; Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages); Teen & Young Adult
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force: Nexus Star Force: Empire Star Force: Shame Star Force: Retribution
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

May 8, 2635

System: Unknown

Rimward beyond Star Force’s maps

Kerrie-057 sat in the command chair of the Ma’kri-class warship as it and two of its twins raced across interstellar space mere seconds away from beginning their braking maneuvers against an unknown star. The three Star Force ships were following a H’kar ship and trusting in their navigational abilities, for the foursome had passed into the unknown regions of the galaxy beyond the furthest rimward border of the lizards and were now arriving at their destination. Beyond the gravity signature ahead the trailblazer had no information about where they were or what was waiting for them, and even the V’kit’no’sat had never bothered to push this far out with a mapping expedition.

Star Force’s map was being updated with each jump the group made, but when the ships decelerated against the star Kerrie found what she had expected the least…a completely empty system. There were no gravity signatures anywhere nearby, and at first she guessed they had to be on the far side and out of sensing range, with at least one planet’s gravity adding to that of the star and seeming to disappear behind it.

But there wasn’t, made all the more evident when the H’kar signaled with new position orders that had them moving around the star to what appeared to be another jumppoint given that there was nothing there, not a planet nor station, when they came around and into direct sensor alignment with the location.

“What are they playing at?” she mumbled, looking at her sensor holograms closely. The H’kar weren’t the most talkative race by far, and their escort hadn’t done more than relay them coordinates with each jump, leaving the trailblazer to guess at where exactly they were going. This system had been tagged as their ultimate destination in the last transmission…yet there was nothing here.

Kerrie felt like hitting the comm and asking what was up, but she decided to play it cool and just wait it out…then to her second surprise the H’kar ship contacted them, with a hologram of an exoskeletal monster appearing before her. A series of words that were a mix of low tones and bird-like chirps sounded, with the computer providing a text translation below the image.

WE HAVE ARRIVED AT OUR DESTINATION. PLEASE SEARCH THE FOLLOWING COORDINATES FOR A SMALL GRAVITY FIELD AND TRANSITION THERE AT SLOW SPEED.

With that brief snippet the hologram of the H’kar disappeared, replaced by a slew of navigational figures.

“What have we got?” Kerrie asked, looking to her bridge crew. The Ma’kri wasn’t a full-sized jumpship, rather about a third of its size and carrying no drones, but the 6.3 kilometer long knife blade was packed with armor and weaponry that most of the ADZ had never saw before. It had been designed to mimic a Star Destroyer, giving Star Force an all-in-one battleship that could roam freely and drop the hammer wherever needed, while also being a control ship and troop transport when necessary.

Kerrie only had a handful of troops onboard her three ships now, with most of the modular cargo bays being full of supplies. She would have brought only the one ship on this diplomatic mission, but given how far they were traveling she’d felt it was wiser to bring three. More firepower and the option of abandoning a ship and transferring the crew over to another if something catastrophic happened could be a lifesaver when going into the unknown like this. And they weren’t even a fraction of the way to their ultimate destination yet, but were supposed to meet up with a carrier that would take them the rest of the journey.

The Ma’kri were considerably faster than the H’kar ship, though they didn’t let on as much. The rimward race had simply asked if they could maintain a certain speed, which Star Force confirmed without adding how much faster they could actually go. That said, they weren’t sure that the H’kar weren’t holding back either, but for right now Kerrie guessed that her ships were the faster and she was interested in seeing what ride they were supposed to be meeting up with…and where. She’d been expecting at least an outpost if not full blown inhabited world, but right now all they had was empty space to greet them.

“Here,” a voice said, followed by a holographic map of the system popping up beside Kerrie’s chair and expanding outward until it shrunk to a dot…with another dot beside it 1.7 lightyears away. “Planet-sized gravity field, barely detectable, but reachable in about 2 days.”

“Inform the H’kar of our estimates,” she ordered, glancing at the dot sitting out in the middle of nowhere. It could be a rogue planet, in which case it would make for a good hiding place for an outpost. A gravity well that far outside a system would go unnoticed without a close scan, for its effect on her ship was so much smaller than that of the other stars nearby. The sensitivity of their gravity drives allowed them to detect increasingly fainter fields as their tech progressed, but this was pushing it.

After a few moments the H’kar ship jumped out, albeit very slowly, with Kerrie glancing at her navigator with a raised eyebrow.

“They’re slower by 22%.”

The Archon smirked. “Thought so. We’ll wave as we go by. Confirm jump formation and let’s get moving,” she said, standing up a bit disappointed. She’d expected to have some answers by now.

Heading off to the sanctum to wait out the painfully slow jump, made that way by the limited gravity on which the ships could brake against upon arrival, Kerrie continued with her training, being only 3 levels away from reaching mage but with considerably less progression now that she was isolated and training alone.

Kerrie had been in Atlantis with the others in the advanced training group for the past 3 decades and, while she’d been doing solo workouts most of her life, doing them here and now felt hollow. The environment just wasn’t the same, but she wanted mage bad and continued to get in the best workouts she could manage on her own, knowing that once this mission was over she’d be heading back to the others.

Not all the trailblazers were there, for some were still engaged on the lizard front and attending to other missions across the ADZ, but all of them had been rotating in and out of Atlantis as they picked up the new psionics and got a bit of time in with the group no matter how short their stay was. When the H’kar had come to Sol unannounced they’d done so to deliver a message and information concerning a race called the Sety and their Nexus, of which the H’kar were a new member, Kerrie had volunteered to respond to their invite given that she was one of a handful of trailblazers who’d had extensive experience fighting the lizards.

She hadn’t expected the isolation to hit her so hard, but adaptation was key to being an Archon and she began to adjust after the first few days…but without the others it felt akin to running without music. The movements were the same, but the energetic buzz was missing.

So she buried herself in workouts until it was time to return to the bridge and hopefully get some answers as to where the H’kar had been leading them off through the wilds of space. She had no idea what or who was out here, nor what threat level they posed. The fact that the V’kit’no’sat had never mapped it also made her worry, because everywhere within their domain they would have knocked off the major powers. But out here they had no influence, so what was or could be waiting for them unnerved her considerably.

Kerrie wasn’t worried about this mission per se, or the H’kar, so long as everything went according to plan…it’s those times when it didn’t that were the problem, in which case Kerrie’s three ship fleet could be completely blindsided. The H’kar had said there’d be a transport ship waiting to carry them on further out, implying that even their own gravity drives were insufficient for the task, meaning that there was at least one race out here considerably more advanced than Star Force was, speed wise anyway, and that made her and the others wonder how many potential sharks there were in the waters.

The location of their ultimate destination was approximately 6,400 lightyears away, which would take them across the ‘gap’ between the Orion and Perseus galactic arms and far beyond any system Star Force had charted to date. That gap wasn’t truly a gap, but a region of space with a lesser density of star systems, all of which Kerrie’s ships would miss sitting inside the hull of another carrier ship as it supposedly whisked them away through the Nexus’s transit grid, with the furthest coreward hub being the tiny gravity well they were currently en route to.

According to the H’kar, when the lizards were consuming their territory system after system they had executed a fighting withdrawal, moving further and further out towards the rim and discovering that the lizards didn’t want to chase them. They did follow but at a slow pace along with the rest of their expansion, not a straight line pursuit setting out for their destruction as they’d anticipated given the ferocious nature with which the lizards fought.

Using this to their advantage the H’kar had stayed alive and ahead of the lizards, eventually moving far enough out through the Orion arm until they caught the attention of one of the races within the Nexus, which the Sety ran. A formal invitation was made after some vetting was done and the H’kar became members, setting down roots and fleeing no further. When the lizards’ growth crept out to meet their new worlds they were met with Nexus troops and repulsed, creating a firm boundary beyond which the aggressive race could make no progress.

But that hadn’t stopped the lizards from trying. As they expanded that line in the sand had continued to get wider and wider, with the Nexus having to defend more and more systems with a greater number of troops and resources…though the battles were easy affairs. As the H’kar began to regrow their empire, this time as part of the Nexus, they became the coreward front line of the large interstellar union and had the responsibility to hold it against the lizards and several other minor threats within the local region with appropriate help now and again from others as needed.

Over the years the threat of the lizards had gone from minor to moderate, with them continuing to spread out and in such great numbers that there was no way for the Nexus to stop them aside from a huge campaign to wipe them from existence…but as the H’kar continued to gather intelligence on their enemy and the true size of their domain was revealed the unworthy opponents that the lizards were became a nuisance that was too large to eradicate. Even if they destroyed them in 100 systems they’d expand to 200 more elsewhere, literally a race of cockroaches they could not stamp out of existence if they’d wanted to.

The inability of them to be able to negotiate with or destroy the lizards, combined with their minor threat to the Nexus itself, had prompted a containment plan set to keep the lizards from expanding into the Nexus region and surrounding areas. More and more resources were having to be diverted there, not yet putting a major stress on the Nexus but growing as the years passed. There were other, more powerful races in both the Orion and Perseus arms, but the lizards were something new for them to contend with, for no matter how many battles they fought the inferior race would not quit, nor could they be destroyed unless you got them all…which wasn’t remotely feasible given the size of their territory.

As the lizard problem continued to grow the Nexus was learning more about them and the areas ahead of their lateral expansion, with the H’kar handling a piece of that assignment. They’d come across contacts that were associates of Star Force’s string of rimward reaching colonies, sharing with them information about the Humans, their public maps and language, and the news of them successfully holding back the lizards…which drew the attention of the Nexus. With the lizard threat being something that was devouring system after system, someone who wasn’t falling to them as even the H’kar had was someone they wanted to get to know, hence the invitation.

Kerrie didn’t usually like playing ambassador, but in this case she wanted to see what was out here and what the galactic competition was like…given that they’d just been invited into a bigger league. The H’kar didn’t say that they were being offered membership, but rather that the Nexus wanted to talk concerning their mutual threat. What that meant was unclear, but Star Force wasn’t going to send anyone less than a trailblazer or Davis to deal with this, and there was no way they were going to let Davis come this far out into the middle of nowhere.

The H’kar were impressive enough, given the time they’d spent in Sol and the data exchange they’d had with Star Force, which made Kerrie all the more interested in seeing those who were supposedly superior to them. So far they’d been led on a wild goose chase across the stars, but when they finally did brake against the tiny gravity well the scope of the Nexus finally registered with her.

“Oh…my…freaking…hell,” she whispered as the camera displays showed the ‘planet’ they’d arrived at, except that it wasn’t round…nor a planet at all. The thousands of starships floating around the area were a mere afterthought to the Archon, though the size of some of them was impressive in their own right, but the construct they were looking at had a stubby shaft in center connecting two large discs made up of radiating struts. Each ‘umbrella’ was curved slightly, making shallow cups with sections missing and all clearly artificial in construction.

Kerrie tapped a few keys on the holographic display on her left and got a size grid, seeing that the thing was 800 miles wide on the central stub, with each pinwheel having a diameter of 12,000 miles. The entire length of the construct was over 34,000 miles long, making it 4 times the width of Earth.

“Hold position until we’re contacted,” she ordered, seeing the other two Ma’kri decelerating behind them and knowing it’d be several hours before their H’kar escort caught up.

“Archon, we’re detecting stellar level magnetic fields emanating from the…device. They’re directional off the arcs.”

“Mag…” Kerrie said reflexively, then her eyes went wide as she realized what this was. “Holy shit, that’s how we’re getting out there.”

“Care to share?” the Captain asked.

“Ever hear of a magnetic drive?”

“Pie in the sky rumors only. Highly inaccurate to the point of stupidity.”

“Inaccurate why?” she asked, leading him as she kept her eyes glued on the visual and holo displays as more information was being detailed with the computer and analysts chewing on the sensor feeds.

“Gravity is constant, but magnetic fields fluctuate.”

“Natural ones,” Kerrie said, pointing at the planet-sized structure. “But I’d bet you a million credits that one is stable and the endpoint of a very long jumpline…correction, those two are stable. One in, one out I’d bet.”

“If I had the credits I’d take that bet. Even if you could build something like that why would you given the black hole routes?”

“Magnetism is more powerful than gravity,” she reminded him, still wide eyed like a kid in a candy store. The V’kit’no’sat had never built mag drives, for they didn’t need to, but they were aware of the technology and its potential…though nothing like this had ever been cataloged in the database. “And I’m curious to see just how fast this slingshot can fire.”

The Captain shook his head. “Can’t be mag drive. There’s no way you could hit a target that small.”

“Combo with grav drives to adjust course during drift,” Kerrie said, thinking out loud.

“Why two? Seems an awful waste to build something that large in duplicate.”

The trailblazer inclined her head to the side, granting that he had a point. When jumping into or out from a star there was only one jumpline available, and the more you got off it the braking line would veer and produce lateral movement. That meant ships coming and going had to move through the same region of space, risking a collision. The threat of that was minimized via beacon signals that traveled ahead and warned of ship’s incoming so they could drift off the line and allow each other to pass.

Busy jumplines were dangerous because the final braking maneuver had to occur in that tiny slice of space, but it was workable by monitoring the incoming super-accelerated signals from ships in coast phase, then the ships waiting to jump would wait for an opening, move into position, then jump on the line for a few minutes before easing off it and into drift mode.

The process would work the same, in theory, for a mag jump…so why build two massive mag fields when one would do?

Before she could start listing off possibilities a streak of a signal resolved itself in the clear area in front of the upper ‘dish’ that reminded Kerrie of the giant arms on the Ark from Halo, minus the greenery of the natural environment.

“Son of a bitch,” the Captain muttered, seeing the incoming ship, then he threw a glance at the Archon. “Doesn’t mean it’s a mag drive,” he said stubbornly.

“If it’s not,” Kerrie said, seeing that the ship was longer than a lizard assault pillar and considerably wider, “I want to know what it is.”

The Archon turned to the comm officer. “See if you can find someone out there to talk to before it goes Death Star and uses us for target practice.”

2

As it turned out the H’kar ship wasn’t necessary for the next stage of their journey, though it arrived several hours later as Kerrie’s three ships were left to wait for the next 3 days until their transport was ready. During that time they got plenty of questions answered, as well as were able to monitor a very high amount of traffic coming in through the Nexus ‘grid point,’ which was a direct link to another similar massive construct some 1,539 lightyears away.

The carrier vessel they were waiting for was one of a number of large transports that operated like jumpships on the grid, carrying other vessels back and forth exclusively. The thousands of other ships around the grid point were a mix of those awaiting transit and a defense fleet, none of which could travel on the grid themselves.

The massive vessel that the Star Force ships were assigned to had room for all three plus an additional 23 other vessels, each of which was tucked away inside what looked like a lagoon. The bulk of the ship was pointed into a wide, four-spined arrow whose tips circled around an empty, squashed sphere of space inside of which the ships were berthed and held steady by an IDF. The three Ma’kri were not the largest vessels being carried, with four being larger plus a myriad of smaller ships made up of multiple designs.

There was no interlinking with the carrier ship, so all the crews had to stay onboard their own ships and wait out the trip as if they were traveling solo through the jump, which lasted only 8 days. In comparison, had the Ma’kri attempted to travel that distance on their own, going through one small jump after another between stars, it would have taken them approximately 7 months to get that far, assuming they had fuel reserves to sustain them through that many jumps.

But when they arrived they were not at their ultimate destination, rather another grid point. It was identical to the other, each with two giant emitters creating the magnetic fields that the carriers amplified and repulsed off from. One for one direction of travel and the other for the reverse…but also to act as backups in case one had to be taken down for maintenance or was damaged. Kerrie also learned that unmanned probe ships were continuously sent through the grid, with them seeing 6 come in and immediately leave on the other emitter during their short wait.

The probes were unmanned and intended to inform one end of the link if the other was no longer viable, for a ship that made the jump couldn’t slow down without the other grid point being active and would either slam into the construct or miss it and shoot off into the galactic void unable to stop and essentially be lost in space. If a probe didn’t come through on schedule all outgoing traffic was halted until another came in, so as to minimize losses if a grid point was taken down.

If one of the emitters went offline the other could be used for double duty, but typical procedure had an ‘in’ and an ‘out,’ with Kerrie’s carrier coming in on the top segment of the opposite grid point, after which the Ma’kri exited the ship and waited for instructions as where to go next, for there were three additional grid points within 2 million kilometers, all situated in deep space outside of any system, keeping the transit grid a private one for Nexus use.

It took another 4 days of waiting before another carrier became available for their use, with the Star Force warships loading up and shooting off through another linkage, for unlike a gravity well the grid point’s emitters were monodirectional and could only fire and receive ships from one destination point. It seemed like an enormous waste of material to build four different constructs in one location, but the speed boost was very beneficial for transit once you had them up and running.

The amount of ships at this location was even larger, with additional stations spread out in clusters between the grid points, indicating that the one they had originally started this journey from was on the edge of the Nexus’s territory. This point was much more robust with facilities, for the constructs themselves were not housing or commerce units. Almost all of their interior space was devoted to the sole function of producing the magnetic fields and self-defense, leaving these other large facilities, though tiny in comparison, to service the ships coming through the grid.

It was hard to comprehend, but there were more stations and ships in this location than there were in the entire Solar System, and she didn’t doubt that the local population might be the same. There were no planets or natural objects of any kind to colonize, but there were so many bits of floating infrastructure and ships that it was truly mind blowing. Fortunately the Nexus was very organized and the traffic controllers had Kerrie’s fleet stationed where necessary until their ride was ready, then they loaded up and were taken on another link in their journey out to the next galactic arm.

The further they went the bigger the grid points got, with their final point containing 19 different constructs and a sea of infrastructure, all floating in deep space away from the prying eyes of anyone else. There they picked up an escort by a Sety ship that was half their size which led them through a series of grav jumps through the nearby star systems until they arrived at the capitol of the Nexus.

It wasn’t the Sety homeworld, but a system built specifically for the interracial community…and like the grid points it was choked with activity.

Kerrie had never seen anything even remotely like it before. It was a binary system, with a main central star and a small outer one in very high orbit. Worked into a complicated set of odd orbits were 39 planets and 193 moons, all of which were inhabited with layers of infrastructure. There were no natural environments visible, they’d all been erased in favor of cityscape, but the various planetoids were colonized by different races with different architecture, though it looked like approximately the same level of tech…all higher than what Star Force currently had.

In addition to the planets there were millions of installations situated in orbit or null space between the planets, but once again each and every one was neatly arranged with traffic flows moving through a very scripted routine. The three Star Force ships followed their escort closely, matching microjumps and other lesser maneuvers until they arrived at a particular planet and were given a parking orbit.

Though she couldn’t be certain, she suspected that this one system contained more infrastructure and population than the entire ADZ…which was mindboggling. Talk about big fish in the little pond. Seeing it all she wondered what the hell the Nexus had to worry about from the lizards, because they were truly the superior, like Asgard superior to Earth in Stargate, only bigger and more impressive, for some of the ‘stations’ were the size of moons themselves.

Once getting parked, arrangements were quickly made to get her down to the planet with a dropship being escorted by fighter-like craft from orbit all the way down to a city made of angular pillars that reminded her of Superman’s fortress of solitude. They even looked like ice, though more blue, and were sticking up at all kinds of angles that belied any visible motif other than sheer randomness. It wasn’t until the dropship came in closer did she realize just how big each of the spike/columns were, with most reaching up some 7-12 miles, with the largest oddballs climbing as high as 20.

The escorts led the tiny Star Force dropship to one of the ‘tall’ ones, with the mountain-sized structure having nearly invisible cutouts until you got close enough to see them, one of which was a landing pad recessed into the otherwise smooth, crystal-like exterior…though that pad alone could have held more than 1000 dropships, with several larger Nexus craft sitting on the deck along with a steady stream of smaller ones coming and going as Kerrie’s ship landed.

The planet itself was larger than normal, with 1.27 gravity and a mix of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere. Ironically the Sety breathed the nitrogen, while most of the other races in the Nexus respired using oxygen. The binary atmosphere worked for both races, which meant that Kerrie wasn’t going to have to wear special breathing gear, though she did choose to wear her brown padawan armor, minus the weapons, and blew out a deep breath as the boarding ramp lowered and she walked down to the deck, feeling the gravity thicken as she left the dropship’s IDF.

Outside the ship there was a delegation waiting, made up of six individuals from two different races. Five of them were what Kerrie recognized from the files the H’kar had given them to be Gfatt. They had huge arms and one leg, which was more of a tail that fell directly beneath them. These were wearing an anti-grav harness and floating above the ground, but she knew they could walk as a tripod with their ape-like arms doubling as legs if they leaned forward slightly. Their skin was silver and slick, without so much as a hair or blemish, reminding Kerrie of dolphins save for the face…which was made of harder spikes jutting out at odd angles.

The other individual was a H’kar, with its exoskeleton clashing with the smooth motif of the Gfatt. It was a dark green almost to the point of being black and looked very intimidating, though from their previous experience she knew they were more turtle than warrior, though the natural armor meant they’d be a beast to tackle hand to hand.

“Welcome to Nexvt’ya,” the H’kar said in passable English. “We are pleased you were able to make the journey.”

“Thank you,” she said, looking at the Gfatt and making a modification inside her helmet. “Can you understand me?”

Her external speaker created a series of words that were unintelligible by Human standards, and ones that Kerrie had yet been able to even minorly master with her own vocal chords, which replicated the Nexus’s basic language.

The Gfatt exchanged glances, then one looked at her with its three eyes and clasped its hands together. “We did not expect you to be able to speak our language.”

“Computer translation.”

“Well, it seems I’m not going to be needed here after all,” the H’kar said, who had spent a considerable amount of time learning the Human language in order to act as translator.

“No, stay. There may be other issues that arise,” the Gfatt said in a tone that indicated that they were definitely higher up in the pecking order.

“As you wish.”

“Please come inside, there is much we have to discuss,” the Gfatt said, pointing Kerrie towards the far interior of the landing bay as more ships continued to come and go around them, though none in the immediate area. “Do you have any environmental considerations we need to take into account?”

“The armor is precautionary and designed for combat. I can breathe the air,” she said, trying to keep any and all sarcasm out of her voice. The translation program was new and the simpler she spoke, the less likelihood of it messing up.

The Gfatt exchanged looks. “Are you carrying weapons?”

“No,” she said, suppressing the urge to declare herself a weapon.

“Weapons are not permitted on the planet aside from those in the possession of the security forces, which is why I ask. Your bodily protection is permissible, but unnecessary. Follow me.”

Kerrie fell into step behind the Gfatt, looking up at its shoulders as the others formed up into flanking positions with the H’kar following behind as a tagalong. They walked across the deck and into a large, cave-like entrance that split into hallways traveling in all directions. They took one angling down and to the right, with it twisting and turning at various angles with the segments always being straight and angled at the joints. Instead of stairs they had grippy, yet shallow ramps covered in traction nubs that kept wanting to trip Kerrie up.

The Gfatt simply floated over them, with the H’kar working his way down by ‘foot’ noisily behind her. The clicks of his footfalls were the only sound other than her light footsteps, with the rest of the pedestrians they passed by being eerily silent as they floated about. There was no talking, only a calm tranquility that gave Kerrie the urge to yell just to break up the monotony, making the clunky H’kar stand out amongst the silent crowd.

Eventually they came to their destination and a large table that was more of a raised symbol coming out of the floor. It was twisted and curved, with what would have been chair positions in a mess of different angles but there were none. All the Gfatt in the room simply floated beside the work station, with what looked like a giant sandbox on part of the tabletop.

That ‘sand’ was mutable, with it forming into various shapes and sizes of objects while other positions worked with recognizable holograms, not unlike what Star Force used. The ‘sand’ was what drew her attention, for it was shaped into a landscape with tiny moving structures that looked like army men…but whom she recognized as lizard mauler variants.

“Stand here please,” the Gfatt said, pointing to a spot alongside one of the edges of the sandbox.

“You’re obviously studying the lizards,” she said, with the translation program using their proper name, which she didn’t care to pronounce.

“They are a growing nuisance that will not go away, though you know better than us given your history with them.”

“Given your level of technology how are they a threat to you?” Kerrie had to ask.

“The Nexus is spread across a wide region of the galaxy. We do not control systems, we oversee them. Because the Li'vorkrachnika consume approximately 30% of all systems within their territory they are spread too wide for us to selectively target. Likewise we cannot defend the systems within the Nexus region that are not exclusively ours. We can fight the Li’vorkrachnika and win, but they are striking numerous targets simultaneously, wherein the problem arises.”

“You aren’t monitoring your territory?” Kerrie guessed.

“Not the lesser systems, no. At least not at a sufficient rate to ward off invasion. The Li’vorkrachnika are taking worlds and developing them before we even become aware of their presence. They are like unwanted hazmats sprouting everywhere along the H’kar border region and expanding into others. When we find them we destroy them, but there are too many systems to monitor simultaneously.”

Kerrie cringed at ‘hazmats,’ guessing that was the first translational glitch of many to come, then the sandbox in front of her spat out tiny globules that resolved themselves into star positions.

“This is a map of their known invasion area, but for every star system denoted there are 150 others not shown due to stellar density. These are our systems,” the Gfatt said as a scattering of the tiny bits of sand changed color and glowed red. “As you can see, we don’t hold as many systems per volume of space as you do. We believe your alliance’s contained perimeter is an advantage you possess. Do you concur?”

“Actually, I’d like you to tell me why the Nexus is so spread out? There have got to be valuable worlds inside your territory worth colonizing. Why keep expanding outward?”

“We do not seek to dominate the galaxy, merely keep it tranquil. The larger the region we inhabit the more we can inhibit the growth of threats. Local conflicts will always exist, and most of the races within our territory are not part of the Nexus. They are insignificant and we ignore them unless they should advance to the point of recognition, either as an ally, neutral, or enemy.”

“You’ve spread yourselves so wide you can’t focus on a single area?”

“Our militaries are spread out, dealing with hundreds of conflicts simultaneously. Normally a threat on the level of the Li’vorkrachnika would have been eliminated early on, but they appear to have no weak point. Within a region of space where we would have 6 system strongholds they have 6,000 weak systems. We cannot target and eradicate them all without devoting an enormous amount of resources to the effort, of which their threat level doesn’t warrant.”

“So you’re used to having a high valued target to hit, and since the lizards are more interested in spreading than consolidating you can’t cripple them with a few key strikes?”

“They are too spread out to pinpoint target, and our intelligence reports indicate that they are spreading out further towards the core. With the more systems they consume the larger their resource base will become. If they grow large enough they could threaten our border through sheer numbers, at which time we will pull forces from other regions to deal with the threat, but for now we are seeking alternative ways to combat the Li’vorkrachnika in a more economical fashion.”

“You know you can kill as many as they send, you just don’t know how to defeat them?”

“Short of a massive campaign to wipe them from the face of the galaxy, no. They seem destined to either dominate or be eradicated. Normally there is middle ground to negotiate with, even if through force alone, but the Li’vorkrachnika have shown a disinterest in survival. They will die by the billions if necessary to achieve an objective.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“I am told you have considerable experience fighting this common enemy.”

“I do.”

“Any insights you could provide would be greatly valued, as well as information concerning the battles you’ve fought and won.”

“That I can offer, but first I need to see more of the Nexus and how you’ve been fighting them. If I had your resources the lizards would have been defeated long before now and I don’t see why they’re beating you.”

“They are not defeating us,” Gfatt countered.

“They are surviving and expanding, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then they are winning and defeating your stated objective.”

“The Nexus survives fully intact, we have not lost a world. There is no defeat.”

“Maybe this is translation issue. You are not winning, correct?”

“We have not won a complete victory, no.”

“Then I need to see how you are fighting and what you have available in order to point out where you’re going wrong.”

“Strategic information is limited to outsiders.”

“Give me as much as you can, then I will compare and contrast between our battles with the lizards and yours.”

The Gfatt turned and conversed with another beside it, with their whisper being too low for her translation software to digest, but a moment later the original Gfatt altered the sandbox and a slew of new objects appeared, some being starmaps and others ship profiles.

“We will extend internal public information rights to you for the purpose of this conference. Ask and we shall answer what we are allowed.”

Kerrie looked over the various ships, then pointed to one of the smaller ones. “Let’s start here.”

3

January 3, 2637

Danba System (lizard territory)

Vani

Liam-090 studied the holograms in the command nexus aboard his Warship-class jumpship as he began to mentally link into the Ikrid control sphere and begin issuing orders to his raiding fleet, which was spread throughout the enemy-occupied system just on the far side of the ‘neutral zone’ beyond Alpha Region. They were about to stage a naval attack on the key lizard stronghold in order to beat down some of the excessive growth the planet was undergoing, and to do the maximum amount of damage possible Liam needed to adapt his fleet positioning to what the lizards were showing.

The lag made it tricky, with his own ship being in null space between the planet and star but close enough that a low speed microjump would get him there within a few minutes. He needed to be close to monitor the fleet positions without them being able to see him, for the sensor dampening hull plates that Star Force now fielded made the long range lizard sensors virtually useless unless they knew where to focus their attention.

The reverse was no longer true, for it had been Star Force that once had difficulty tracking the lizards’ own stealth plating, but right now their ship hulls were literally gleaming in reflectivity that Liam’s passive sensors were registering and giving him half a planet’s worth of orbital signatures to gather information from. He had another jumpship on the far side, and between the two of them and others relaying the signals, he was looking at a low detailed position map of everything the lizards had in orbit around Vani.

Beside him he had two more holograms for the other inhabited planets in the system, but neither was a tenth of the density of this one. The others were start up projects, further deepening this system’s resource base and defenses, but a little orbital bombardment would fix most of that while the bulk of Liam’s fleet was going after Vani…or to be more precise, the fleet surrounding it.

They had some 28,000 cruisers or better in orbit, clumped together into various formations with others moving about in patrol. The other two planets were virtually barren of orbital defense ships, with these just being a short microjump away if needed. Liam had 6 jumpships in his fleet, plus two Ma’kri, and unless the lizards fought extremely stupid there was no way Star Force was going to beat them.

They were here to do damage and pull out, a quick poke to bleed off some of their strength, though depending on how the enemy responded it might turn out to be three or four pokes. Liam was used to running circles around them, and if he could do so here he was going to make the trip pay off as much as possible.

There was a ninth ship that had come in with the Star Force fleet, an observer from the Gfatt that had been tagging along on two previous missions studying the lizard threat in this region of the galaxy and how Star Force was fighting them. Today Liam intended to give them quite a show, for the ships under his command were all top of the line models, right down to the support drones that two of his jumpships were carrying.

The trailblazer waited another 20 minutes, patient to get the positioning right with the bit of movement occurring in orbit. Nothing much, just a handful of lazy patrols moving about, but every ship counted and there was no rush. So far their arrival in the system hadn’t been detected, at least as far as the reaction from the defense fleet was concerned. They’d overbraked to come out of their jumps well out from the star in the hopes of evading any stellar detection grid the lizards had set up and it appeared they’d been successful.

The Gfatt had come with them, easily making the maneuver given their ship’s superior drives. Just how superior was a matter of question, as was the rest of their technology, but according to Kerrie they were a mid-level race within the Nexus and extremely formidable when it came to military engagements. They’d been brought in to deal with the lizards when the H’kar had been unable to handle them, even with the Nexus upgrades bestowed upon the new member.

When the Gfatt hadn’t been able to stop the spread of the lizards either more attention had been placed on the matter. They were able to win every battle they fought, but the enemy’s growth rate was something they were unable to counter without devoting a lot more resources to the ‘low level’ problem. What other threats were high level Liam didn’t know, but the Gfatt were wisely here to study how the ADZ was surviving and now thriving against the lizards.

At least as long as the Skarrons kept their attention, anyway. Right now Star Force was building like crazy to secure their borders and raids like this one were intended to keep the lizards from doing the same. At first the Gfatt had not seen the wisdom in harassing the lizards without taking planets away from them, but after their first observance coupled with an analysis of Star Force battle history they were beginning to come around to the idea of just racking up ship kills rather than securing ‘wins.’

How many Liam was going to get today was up in the air, but seeing the positioning in both holo and minds’ eye he knew he’d get at least a couple hundred. How the lizards reacted would determine how much higher that number went.

With a single thought he sent the ‘go’ command and his sensor feed vanished as the jumpship accelerated too fast to keep a clear lock. The signals coming in from the other ships were likewise distorted until they reemerged into ‘normal’ speeds in middle orbit, with another jumpship coming in beside them while the others entered at various points around the planet. Liam’s position was to be the major one drawing attention, with his two coming out and into view some 45 seconds ahead of the others.

Both jumpships immediately began deploying drones, fast releasing them on mini slingshot docking arms that allowed them all to get clear within a minute. Rather than stay with the jumpship they shot off immediately on multiple trajectories, some in groups, some solo, while the two jumpships pulled closer together and charged ahead into a ship formation of some 834 cruisers. No larger enemy ships were present at this location, but as soon as the jumpships appeared they began redeploying from elsewhere in orbit along with their flocks of additional cruisers, with many heading to higher orbit to try and block their escape jumplines.

Both jumpships opened fire with cleansing beams and bloon launchers, then added point defense maulers as the cruisers swarmed to them, not intending to survive the engagement but committed to do as much damage to the two big ships as they could and potentially set up kills when the others arrived. It wasn’t the sort of play Liam would make, but the lizards fought a different type of war and it was one version of combat that the trailblazer had become intimately familiar with…enough so that he could often predict their movements before they made them.

As the pair of jumpships tore apart the much smaller and weaker cruisers, their shields were bathed in plasma but were virtually unaffected by it. Only once the number of incoming hits scaled up drastically did they begin to weaken, with Liam not ordering the secondary armor deployed until they finally dipped below 80% and additional groups of enemy ships began to arrive to reinforce the others.

Across the hull numerous openings appeared, exposing specialized internal cargo bays from which a flood of tiny blocks flowed like water out over the hull, using each other as grip points as the 2 meter wide segments laid out a carpet of ‘replicator’ blocks across the standard armor and stacked three thick at the thinnest, with several mountains of blocks positioned over key areas for quick redeployment later if/when the shields were breached.

It took a long time for all the tiny blocks to get out onto the hull, but the shields held up admirably as the secondary armor covered everything aside from weapons batteries and other key systems that needed line of sight. Every now and then some enemy plasma would slip through the momentary gaps in the shield where it had to be opened to let the jumpship’s own weapons fire through, but those tidbits barely kissed the secondary armor, a mere prelude to what was to come.

Liam kept the jumpships in the fray, knowing that his shields would go down and expecting them to. He was here to cause damage and he couldn’t do as much as he wanted if he played too clean. Likewise the drones he had deployed were fighting harder than normal, engaging other groups as they moved in towards the jumpships but not sticking around to join them. They were skirmishers in this engagement and they needed to keep moving, but didn’t have the luxury of pulling back and recharging shields else they’d lose part of their surprise attack effect and give the mass of enemy ships time to reposition and drop the hammer.

Before that happened they’d have to pull out, which was why Liam was pushing beyond normal protocol in order to get more kills. It wasn’t a risk as far as he was concerned, for he knew well what his own ships and those of the enemy were capable of, and even while he was drawing the majority of the enemy attention the other ships were coming out of microjumps at precise positions and engaging smaller fleets while they were isolated, some of which they were catching en route to the growing main brawl.

Those intercepts were being executed by the Ma’kri, which were specifically designed to hunt down enemy ships. Liam monitored them and all others engaged around the planet while letting his captain handle most of the immediate battle. It was necessary to give him the ability to improvise, but in order to do that he needed to be aware of everything that was happening and not get tunnel vision on one particular part of the engagement.

The Ma’kri were big ships, but their design had them overpowered with engines, meaning they could move their mass around far quicker in small scale maneuvers than they appeared capable of doing. In addition they were equipped with three types of weapons, long range to snipe with, short range to ravage with, and disabler Nami-class missiles to ‘stun’ with. As Liam glanced at their progress he saw tracking markers for the big missiles being launched one each at cruisers far outside of cleansing beam range.

Each missile was the size of a Skarron fighter and was equipped with sufficient engines to get it to target and decelerate before impact, with it landing on or near the ship and emitting an IDF bubble that surrounded the target. The nami had its own shield generators, for it had to survive in order to be effective, and the ones they were currently using were plasma-resistant varieties knowing that they were going up against the lizards.

The missiles would track towards their targets, then suddenly the enemy ships became ballistic and unable to maneuver. Using their faster and more agile binary drives the Ma’kri would race out to them and make the kill at close range, hovering over top while the IDF gradually ran out of capacitor energy, and blow them apart with multiple Ta’lin’yi cannons before the charge ran out. With the kill made they’d move onto the next one, stunning one or two at a time and gobbling them up at close range or launching multiple namis and using the ballistic trajectories they created for easy long range targeting with their cleansing beam, destroying or disabling the ships quickly as the Ma’kri moved around orbit like predators.

Liam knew they had to engage small groups or they’d be overwhelmed, for their shielding and armor wasn’t anything like what the jumpships had. The Ma’kri were crewed, so they had to take care not to lose those ships by being overzealous, but they were very good at cleaning up stragglers and racking up an impressive kill list until they ran out of namis, after which they were still good in a fight but lost their main function.

Liam’s attention flicked from the Ma’kri to one of his drone fleets that was flashing warning symbols, indicating that their defenses were weakening to the point of breach. Before one of his crew could get to it he assumed priority command over one of the support drones pacing them and not firing, for it had no weapons aside from two backup plasma cannons that were currently powered down. The drone wasn’t meant to fight, but to assist the other ships, and now it was time to do so.

Liam spotted the two destroyers that were nearest to getting wrecked and brought the support drone in, which was three times as big and heavily shielded. He ordered the destroyers closer together, then brought the support ship down right in between them and extended a bubble shield around all three, blocking the incoming fire on them while they lowered what was left of their existing shields while their emitters began to recharge.

With their shields down the support ship shot over a stream of secondary armor blocks in packets, with them splashing against the drone hull and spreading over key areas of it. Had they already taken hull damage the blocks would have filled in and covered over those weak areas, but right now Liam just wanted the secondary armor there so the destroyer pilots could use it instantly when their shields did go down.

Before the support ship became vulnerable itself it lowered the bubble shield and redirected power to its own redundant emitters, hardening up its skin-tight barrier and moving ahead while blocking a bit more fire with its bulk before pulling out. It headed back between the other drones and into a waiting position while the destroyers, now with slightly recharged shields, continued to fight and would put the secondary armor to use mere minutes later when the lizard cruisers finally broke through with mounting plasma storms as more and more reinforcements came into the fight.

Liam kept that support ship and others moving, sometimes controlling them himself, sometimes letting the remote pilots handle it, but he made sure to reinforce his drones prior to them taking serious damage rather than after, extending their battle life and keeping their weaponry more or less active nonstop, though some lucky shots by the lizards were taking out a few batteries here and there, which was why you never wanted a ship with just a single weapon. Too easy to render useless with pinpoint fire.

Liam kept his chess pieces moving, waiting for the right moment in several locations, then when it looked like the lizards had them outnumbered with far too much plasma pouring into his ships for them to sustain much longer, a few specialized drones that hadn’t been contributing much firepower to the fight opened up armor panels, revealing concealed storage compartments while the rest of the nearby Star Force drones pulled back in close to the support ships, which created large shield walls in front of them that began soaking up plasma…but that wasn’t their purpose here.

The shield ships put everything they had into the walls, dropping the rest of their shields and leaving themselves vulnerable to flanking shots which the other drones tried to block as the specialized ships spewed forth a swarm of tiny, self-guiding objects out through the gaps between the shield walls as they too ducked behind any nearby.

The seekers were each the size of a small dropship, but as they flew out towards the closely packed lizard fleet they split up into smaller pieces, each moving out on their own trajectories but linked together by a remote timer. Liam held the detonation trigger himself, assuming priority control and detonating each cluster when it got into prime position. Over the course of the next 30 seconds the space surrounding the turtled up little cluster of drones became a fireworks display of explosives that put the old style nukes to shame in an area of effect attack that resulted in a lot of damaged ships.

Suddenly the overwhelming enemy numbers switched over to being targets of opportunity, with the support ships pulling their remaining shield energy back into defending themselves while the drones shot out on one final attack run before retreating, hammering the wounded cruisers and making a lot of easy kills in the face of the incoming reinforcements that were going to be minutes too late to the party.

Just as Liam issued the recall order to one drone fleet he got a ping on his battlemap, alerting him to something he had not expected to happen. The Gfatt warship, sitting high up in orbit and observing the battle, had just jumped into low orbit and was headed towards one of the lizards’ massive Atlas-class battle stations.

4

The hourglass-shaped warship moved in towards the lizard station, being barely a tenth of its size and only half the mass of one of the Star Force jumpships, with its flat top pointed towards the incoming plasma storm. No other ships were in the area, with the battle station being left unguarded as the fleets chased the Star Force ships, and it looked like the single, oddly shaped warship wasn’t going to stand a chance on its own but once it got within short weapons range it flipped over, exposing the narrow band around the center that held most of its weaponry, and unleashed hell at nearly pointblank range.

Multiple points of light appeared around the midsection of the Gfatt ship, then they leapt out in series at the lizard shields in squirt gun fashion, showing that whatever the weaponsfire was it was partially matter but not plasma. The warship flashed six different attacks every .68 seconds, creating a rapid fire torrent that built up on the stations’ shields, sapping them of strength and quickly breaching as the Gfatt hourglass was likewise covered in plasma hits.

Liam watched off and on, still leading his own battles, but it wasn’t long until the lizard battle station was showing heavy damage with scores of ships heading to reinforce and, fortuitously, drawing them away from his fleet. He did a quick mental check, not seeing any advantages to exploit, and continued the fighting withdrawal as he watched to see how much damage the Gfatt would do. He hadn’t expected them to fight at all, but suddenly now they were and he wondered why.

The slugging match wasn’t over quickly, and Liam had to keep turning his attention elsewhere as he had his hands full making as many ship kills as he could but he kept watching, hoping the Gfatt hadn’t bitten off more than they could chew…up until the ship finally pulled out from the station, which was showing a huge crater in its center but otherwise still intact and returning showers of green plasma fire, including a few streamers that were really hammering the Gfatt’s still intact shields.

The squirt guns ceased as the ship paused several kilometers out, not firing back at all as the plasma continued to flow, dampened by the range a bit but still doing damage to the shields when a huge blast emitted from the warship and sailed into the crater on the station.

The next thing Liam knew the battle station was breaking apart into chunks amidst a huge debris-riddled explosion that for a brief moment appeared like a mini nova down in low orbit.

“That’s one hell of a finishing move,” he commented dryly as he continued to issue mental commands to the ships he was linked in with, keeping an eye on the Gfatt in case they needed support, for he really didn’t want to have to relay the message that the ‘observer’ got itself killed in combat.

He needn’t had worried, for the warship ignored the incoming cruisers and made another microjump back up to high orbit and waited there, returning to its altitude perch and watching as Liam finished up his combat assignments one by one and eventually pulled his ships out of orbit, jumping to a rendezvous spot elsewhere in the system where he began to consolidate reports from the ships dispatched to the other two planets.

They didn’t arrive until later, but their laggy telemetry did and Liam watched as they quickly and efficiently pounded several orbital and surface sites, using their drones’ rail guns on the latter and knocking out several lizard mining colonies that had been funneling resources over to the main planet. The enemy would rebuild, of course, but the damage would slow them down a bit and right now that’s all Star Force was trying to do.

Some might say what they were doing was recklessly violent and wasteful, that without even trying to conquer the planet they were just wasting their time and resources, but Liam had long ago learned that the lizards thrived off of being left alone. They were builders, and in order to knock them out of their mojo you had to come in and wreck what they’d built randomly to keep them scared and cautious, otherwise they’d just creep right up on your doorstep and then start hammering your door from very short resupply lines.

That was essentially the problem the Nexus had, for winning battles wasn’t the problem, it was holding territory. Not their own, which was more than secure, but the other systems in between that they didn’t care about or were inhabited by others. The lizards were devouring them and spreading, steadily growing stronger even without conquering a single Nexus system. They didn’t have a strong world to be targeted, and even ‘small’ ones like this, given enough time, would escalate to the point of being formidable strongholds.

The trick was that one was not more important than another. Liam didn’t know about their homeworld, but every other planet they’d come across was built up in the same way using the same tech and strategies, so if you hit and annihilated one well established planet or system others would grow to replace it, often multiples ones for every one you took out…and the larger the lizard territory grew the more that math snowballed.

Every ship they killed here reduced that snowball by a fraction, which was why Star Force and the Hycre were continually hitting them near the ADZ and elsewhere where they were weak, denying them more strong worlds by getting at them before they were built up. They couldn’t get to all of them, obviously, but the region directly around the ADZ was of high priority to keep ‘weeded’ while worlds like this a bit further out were prime targets when and where they had an opportunity.

Even this attack was designed to go after the ships in orbit so they wouldn’t be available to reinforce other systems when they were hit. Taking out the reinforcements before you began the assault was another tactic that Liam, or more accurately Roger, had come up with long ago and worked well against the lizards so long as you had good intel data, most of which the Hycre were providing.

Liam was glad the Gfatt had taken out that battle station, for it was one more chess piece the lizards didn’t have to work with, though this one was immobile and could only be used to defend this planet unlike the fleets surrounding it that could go anywhere. Those, after all was said and done, were reduced by 384 kills with an additional 392 damaged. A good tally for this mission, with him having only lost 3 drones in the process.

54 more were damaged, but all of those were able to return to their jumpships and could be repaired later. He didn’t like losing the 3 and would review the battle records later to determine why they’d been lost, but overall they’d put yet another nick in the lizards’ empire. Liam wanted to do more than that and watched the surveillance intel from the monitoring probes they’d dropped off before leaving, but as predicted the lizards had restructured their fleets into larger groupings without leaving any targets of opportunity for him to hit with a second attack…at least not without losing a chunk of his own fleet.

That wasn’t an option given how many more ships the lizards had than the ADZ. Each drone they had was worth multiple lizard cruisers, both in armor and armament, and as that fact continued to snowball with subsequent upgrades it was imperative that they not get into a trading war, for the enemy would always have more to throw at them given their production capability that stretched across thousands of worlds by now.

No, Star Force had to engage and retreat, engage and retreat…preserving its own ships while taking out some of the lizards. That was the only way to fight them, which he hoped the Gfatt were now realizing.

After everyone had reached the rendezvous point and Liam saw there were no more opportunities for easy strikes he took the time to contact the Gfatt and ask them why they had hit the station. They responded by stating that they saw an opportunity and decided to take it, which he thanked them for, but then he inquired why they weren’t fighting with them the entire time, to which they said they were merely here to observe.

The two things didn’t jive and he wouldn’t get any more of an answer from them before they left the system and headed back to the ADZ, but after they returned to their staging base he pushed the issue with their commander and learned that similar battle stations in the H’kar region were never so exposed and that the Gfatt had been targeting them specifically. Biggest chess pieces in the game, hence they drew the first attention, so far as the Nexus thought.

It seemed the lizards had been using that to their advantage and using the battle stations and other large ships as bait, getting them to drop the hammer on them and potentially losing them in the process, but doing decent damage to the attacking fleet by having flanking units nearby. With having to fight long and hard to take out similar stations the Gfatt were not going to miss the opportunity for a clean kill, despite that fact that the system in question was far from their borders and no threat to them.

That gave Liam an inkling as to how the lizards were countering the Nexus, or rather surviving it and learning from the engagements. They had plenty of ships and resources, with the ability to grow additional personnel at will, to throw at an enemy that seemed unwilling to take the fight directly to them in a wide campaign. They’d hit a target and obliterate it, but the lizards could always rebuild elsewhere or even in the same location after they’d left. The Nexus wasn’t yet serious about fighting the lizards because they were fighting out of a defensive mindset.

Star Force was as well, but only out of necessity. Liam and Paul had long talked about going after the lizards’ core worlds but they never had the fleet strength necessary to do it. They were fighting defensively to preserve the ADZ because they had to, but because they knew and wanted to eliminate the lizards on the whole they went about their defensive efforts much differently than the Nexus.

Liam was wondering why, with the long experience the H’kar had of fighting the lizards, had the Nexus not wised up earlier. Kerrie’s notes had guessed at troop strengths and that they didn’t have a lot to throw around the H’kar front, superior as they were, which basically gifted the lizards a permanent presence there. One had to go all in when fighting them, gruesome as that might be, because so long as one of them lived they would continue fighting with no surrender and no mercy.

Star Force had learned that the hard way after centuries of trying to make inroads against the lizard hive mind. To this day they still took some prisoners, but they always tried to kill themselves when it looked like there was no way for them to escape or harm their captors. Those taken were for specific reasons and often dumped off at another lizard world when Star Force tired of them, but in general when Star Force attacked it was to kill the enemy for there was no other way to deal with them when they were coming at you with the numbers they possessed.

Mercy was a luxury of the dominant, and with the lizard empire slowly creeping its way around the perimeter of the ADZ it had become a ‘shoot and move on’ scenario, though the trailblazers still hadn’t given up the idea of one day breaking the genetic lock that the lizards had on each other. Until they found a way to free them as they had the Bsidd, the lizards were a threat round the clock no matter how many of them there were or the circumstances, and had to be hunted down and destroyed in order to secure targets.

The raids weren’t meant to secure territory, but diminish resources. Star Force wasn’t targeting their population but their ships and infrastructure. Without those their personnel numbers hardly mattered, so when Liam bombarded a planet he wasn’t interested in killing the people down there but their equipment…though with the lizards he wasn’t going to hold off because they were next to or inside the infrastructure. Other races he would, but with no other options with the lizards he wasn’t going to let them act as living shields to protect their assets.

That was a hard choice for him and the others to come by, but at the end of the day it came down to a matter of offense and defense. If Star Force was attacking someone else they’d use more controlled tactics and not target population centers, troop ships, etc. They had a respect for life, even that of the enemy, and would only go all-in if one of their own worlds was under assault, with any enemy present there essentially declaring their ill will when they came into the system.

Enemies sitting on their own worlds minding their business were completely different, and Star Force had dealt with the Skarrons, and the Hobbits especially, in a different manner. The Humans weren’t going to become destructive monsters and were smart enough to find ways to defeat the enemy without outright slaughtering them…but with the lizards there was catch.

The creep factor. All the lizard colonies near the ADZ hadn’t originally been there. They were recent and growing fast with the pure intent on expanding further by defeating enemies and consuming their worlds. The lizards there weren’t minding their own business, they, as a collective civilization, were bent on conquering others, making all of them active enemies attacking the ADZ and others even if they hadn’t set foot inside their territory.

Liam and the others couldn’t respect their worlds and ‘citizenry’ because they were essentially firebases setup on the galactic battlefield, and in order to fight back they had to look at it as such. No other race that Star Force knew of held themselves to the same standards of combat as they did, but when it came to the lizards they knew that if they didn’t fight them all-in in every engagement that the creep effect would eventually surround and strangle them, at which point they would, in obvious defense, go all-in…but at that point it would be too late and the enemy would have the overwhelming advantage.

It was a fine line Liam and the others were walking and he was ever aware of it, but he’d never cross it and become a butcher. The needs of the many DID NOT outweigh the needs of the few and he wouldn’t sacrifice individuals that were noncombatants in order to get a victory.

But the lizards had no noncombatants and they were all out for blood and more territory. Liam didn’t like making that assumption for trillions of individuals but after dealing with so many of them as prisoners and not finding so much as one who acted differently he’d cautiously put that concern aside. If he ever found even the slightest deviation in their behavior he’d reassess everything, but for now, with regards to the lizards, he and the others were in full blown berserker mode and killing as many of their ships and colonies as they could.

And it was that fine line that he was working with that prompted several long conversations with the Gfatt, not just to teach them some of the tactics they’d learned to fight he lizards but for them to understand why and how they were doing it, for someone unaware of the situation it would look like Star Force didn’t care about anything other than destruction, which was far from the truth and he needed the Gfatt to understand that…as well as why they too had to take a ‘cleansing’ strategy with regards to upstart lizard colonies near their worlds and take them out with preemptive strikes following up an insane amount of recon patrols so they could find them before they got rooted in place.

The Gfatt weren’t stupid, but they were used to fighting in a certain way, just as Star Force and most other races were. Star Force fought the way they did for legit reasons, while others did so out of tradition and doctrine. Liam knew he wasn’t getting through to the Gfatt instantly, but their jumping in and destroying a station when they had the opportunity was a good sign…but also a wary one, for while Star Force was capable of walking that fine line Liam wasn’t confident that others could and, faced with the way the lizards fought, would either be overrun or become bloodthirsty in response.

Liam had 600 years of experience to learn and understand the bounds of honor, which today was no longer a murky issue for him, but others would have their own learning curve and couldn’t get to his level of ‘righteousness’ overnight, and he was afraid the example they were setting would be misunderstood and inspire bad habits in their growing list of allies.

But being the tactician that he was he knew there was no way to avoid that. He had to be true to the lightside even if the lightside wasn’t obvious. With enough scrutiny others would be able to see what he was doing and figure out why, but for those who didn’t look so closely…well, he couldn’t control them and wasn’t going to restrict himself from actions that were in the right just because someone else might misunderstand. If they did it was on them, not him, and the example he set was merely a byproduct of action, and so long as he was in the right that was enough. The stupid of the galaxy weren’t going to shackle him into inactivity by their misunderstood observations.

But while he had the chance he was going to try to make the Gfatt understand, and with each subsequent observed mission he hoped they’d begin to get the gist of it.

5

March 8, 2638

Hamma System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

The Watchman-class probe was sitting in an off orbit that kept it away from the major jumplines heading in and out of the system, as were several others that Star Force had quietly dropped off into position around the star of the otherwise empty system. There were planets nearby, but all uninhabited and mostly gas giants. The few that weren’t the lizards hadn’t seen fit to take interest in, leaving this system one of several ‘stepping stones’ within their territory that they commonly passed through en route to other locations.

In lieu of running constant patrols through enemy systems Star Force had begun dropping the little probes off and coming back later to pull data dumps from them, allowing them to see a record of all traffic and activity within a system whereas a patrol would only get a snapshot. With the lizards expanding to so many systems it was determined that a heavier surveillance was required, with the added benefit of the ability to belatedly track convoys and other ship movements.

The probes didn’t have the ability to transmit to the relay grid and were little more than stealthy little cameras operating off of passive scans. The stellar radiation reflecting off ship hulls and shields usually gave enough of a signature to pick up at range, though some stealthier and smaller vessels could pass through unnoticed, especially if they were using an irregular jumpline, so the detection grid wasn’t perfect, but it was clandestine. So far the lizards hadn’t found any of the probes that Star Force was littering the space around the ADZ with and gathering a large amount of information on the enemy’s movements…as well as how much other traffic there was moving around ‘occupied’ space.

The incoming fleet however were all lizard and too large and numerous to possibly be missed. They were just passing through headed coreward, but this was the first location where they would pop up on the surveillance grid, though a patrol wouldn’t be through for another 8 months to pick up the data and belatedly register the thousands of jumpships moving through the system.

They would register in three more systems, culminating in a line headed towards the Skarron border where the lizards were devouring system after system, but only small targets. The Skarrons were winning the big fights and claiming the key prizes, but in overall numbers the lizards were taking 4 systems to every Skarron 1.

Never before had a fleet of this size been registered or even rumored of, and the approximate track that Star Force recognized and passed onto the Hycre was headed in the general direction of the Orica System, former capitol of the Nestafar and by far the largest Skarron stronghold on the border.

“I don’t think so, but it’s possible,” Paul told Cal-com as he got a message ping on his earpiece. “Just a moment,” he said, accepting the com from the Star Force warship that had just arrived in the Achkor System where the trailblazer had been camped out the past 2 months working on planning sessions with their ally.

Paul’s expression turned hard, with him pointing at the bigger Voku a few moments later. “Incoming data packet. Pull it up.”

The deep black muscled warrior worked the Voku controls and accepted an incoming transmission from the Human ship, then passed the control function over to Paul’s side of the holoprojector so he could do with it what he wanted.

“It’s finally happened,” Paul said, bringing up the Hycre intel report that hadn’t yet hit the grid network and was only now being sent out through it as the warship connected to and transmitted the fresh data back to the ADZ, soon to return to reconnaissance/courier duty in concert with the Hycre. “The lizards dropped the hammer and hit Orica.”

“How many?” Cal-com asked.

“36,783 jumpships,” Paul said, feeling his gut tighten up.

The Voku was silent for a moment, then crossed his massive arms over his chest as he stared at the visuals the Human was bringing up in holo with his wide crystalline eye. “We knew they were capable of this.”

“If that fleet came here they’d overrun any system in the ADZ aside from Sol and Epsilon Eridani, and I’m not totally confident we’d win those battles in any appreciable way. I don’t think you’d be able to hold out here either.”

“What of their larger vessels? I see several here.”

“8 invokers, 29 assault pillars…and a new design I’m not familiar with,” Paul said, pulling up the limited sensor scans the Hycre had made when they snuck in and observed the combat taking place in Orica. The ship was about half the size of an assault pillar but much more compact, and in all the recordings it was not involved in combat, but sitting back with the jumpships.

“It’s not a warship,” Cal-com said after a few minutes of analysis. “I would guess it’s a supply depot. Given the density of enemy infrastructure within the system the lizards will not have the ability to build initiation colonies on the planets to strike out from. They will have to fight directly and for a long period of time before they can start harvesting resources on site. I believe that ship will hold either supplies or a combination of supplies and ground troops for use when they reach the surface.”

“Possibly,” Paul admitted, “but don’t underestimate the cleverness of these bastards.”

“I’m not. Given the heavy fighting occurring in space, in which their major pieces are currently in play, they would not hold back these if they could contribute firepower that would spare their cruisers such egregious losses.”

“They don’t mind taking losses, but I agree. And given the numbers they’ve got here they’re going to strip off the Skarron fleet quite fast, though I’m not sure how much progress they’ll make on the ground. They’ve got the numbers to roll them, but this is the highest concentration of walkers I’ve ever seen and we know they become more potent when grouped together.”

“A worthy battle to study, but it only emphasizes my previous point. The lizard threat is greater than that of the Skarrons. If they aren’t countered they will grow to such a number that our technological advantage will not be able to sustain us. The war to win is the neutral systems, not the primaries. If we only defend a select number we will survive but the enemy will continue to grow. My homeworlds will be safe for some time, given their distance, but I do not see this enemy as ever being content with what it has. They will continue to expand until they reach Voku space…and if we wait until then they will be too strong. We have to strike them now.”

“It’s not for lack of wanting, Cal, I just don’t have the ships yet.”

“Your new friends in the Rim are failing for the same reason. They can beat the lizards in any battle, but they’re not fighting them in the ones that count. The lizards know the key to beating superior opponents is to wait and devour the smaller ones, growing stronger and stronger until they can do this,” he said, pointing to the visuals of the Skarrons getting overrun.

“So we’ve told them, but right now they view the lizards as a regional threat and not worth the attention we both know they deserve.”

“Then they are fools.”

“Fools that we’re trying to educate,” Paul added. “But they’re wise enough to seek the counsel of those with experience. Plus I don’t know what other threats they’re facing. The Nexus’s assumed territory is massive and they haven’t been too informative of anything beyond H’kar space where the lizards are currently present.”

“And what do the H’kar think?”

“They’ve been fighting and losing to the lizards longer than we have. They know the threat and are relying on the Nexus to keep them alive.”

“That I know, but do they recognize the need to attack?”

“They are open to any suggestions and are the ones who referred the Nexus to us.”

“Loss will tend to educate those who are blind…but it can also blind those who are weary.”

Paul smiled in vexation, seeing what the Voku was getting at. “You think they’re just happy to be alive and are catching their breath?”

“I think that no one is taking this threat seriously. They are biding their time and not showing their full hand. Even this,” he said, pointing at the insanely large fleet they had brought out of nowhere to attack Orica, “I do not believe is their full strength. They are sitting on enough power to counter any mistakes they make, for they are hiding their strength from others. They should have overrun you long ago but they did not. Why? Because they are confident that they can do so later. They probe, they fight, and even when they lose they learn. They learn the true strength of their opposition then tailor their eventual response accordingly while masking their own strength.”

“You have survived,” Cal-com continued, “because you are growing and adapting to them, otherwise what they have thrown at you to date would have been enough to cripple you. Your Sentinels they did not anticipate and it has bought you time, but even now they probe your lines, learning and planning, meanwhile they attack targets they are more confident they can take while sweeping up the neutral systems that no one cares to defend. The loss of races exterminated by them is insulting enough, but the apathy of their neighbors and their stupidity is unbearable.”

Paul could tell his friend was upset, and he was glad he wasn’t the only one who realized how dangerously devious the lizards were.

“If I’m missing something please enlighten me, but right now all I can do is build and take a handful of worlds away from them along our borders. What other options do we have?”

“If the lizards weren’t so far away from my home I could do more,” Cal-com complained. “But with the lizards fighting an enemy the size and strength of the Skarrons we have an opportunity that we cannot afford to waste.”

“We’re just not in a position to exploit it…yet.”

“I am doing all I can to build up this system and will continue to do so, but the resources must be local. We can’t ship what we need from our home territory, not in the numbers we need, and there are other threats our people must deal with…but none so dangerous as this one. Perhaps not now, but in the future the lizards will become a nemesis we cannot kill, and the longer we survive the larger they will grow. We have to kill them afar before they can come to our doorstep, but I have less resources here than you do. I will do my part, but the solution is not a solo act, but a coordinated offensive.”

“I don’t think the Nexus will get that heavily involved.”

“But will the H’kar?”

“I don’t know. If we give them something tangible to work with us on perhaps, but without a plan I don’t think they’re going to be able to do much more than hang onto what they have.”

“That thinking will kill us all,” Cal-com said, with no mistaking the foreboding in his voice despite his odd English accent.

Paul laughed in a huff. “Most people would say you were crazy, given your position and strength.”

“Others have the luxury of living in the moment and following the lead of others. You and I must lead, and to do so we have to look to the distant future for possible threats. Am I wrong about the lizards?”

“Unfortunately no.”

“Then we cannot wait any longer,” the Voku said, pointing again at the recent intel reports from Orica.

“I don’t know what else we can do at the moment. All my plans are still in the development stages.”

“We must begin the creation of a united front that will be able to halt their takeover of the neutral systems. Even now they are expanding around your ADZ. This cannot be allowed to continue.”

“I don’t see how we can stop it. Star Force is growing fast, but it will take time for us to get to the size we need to push far beyond the ADZ.”

Cal-com shook his head firmly. “No. You cannot do this alone and the Voku cannot support you as much as needed. You must seek out other allies. Strong ones who will see the threat for what it is and aid you in order to protect themselves from future harm.”

“If such races exist out there, other than the Nexus, I don’t know who or where they are.”

“Other than the H’kar forget this Nexus. You must look elsewhere.”

“Our ships are getting faster, but they’re not that fast yet. We’re mapping what we can but most of the races we’re finding aren’t a match for us, let alone the lizards.”

“No, such mapping expeditions would most likely be futile. We have some contacts that may be of help, but what you need are maps. Ask this Nexus and any others you have encountered for word of other powerful races. Find them and coopt them.”

Paul shook his head. “That is not going to work unless the lizards are a known threat to them.”

“We must have allies. Before the lizards grow so large they cannot be contained. Now they are vulnerable because of the Skarrons and the resources they must expend on them. Not for a killing blow, but to contain their spread.”

“To do that fully we would need allies around their borders. Neither of us have contacts on the upper side, correct?”

“This is true, but you must seek them out none the less. Neither of us have sufficient strength to contain them, therefore only a cooperative effort between dozens of races is viable.”

“I don’t disagree, but I don’t think there are sufficient powers out there. I’m upgrading lesser ones as we speak, and the Bsidd are going to be a great help in the distant future, but outside powers are few and far between. The Nexus would be the biggest help, but as I said they consider the lizards a small threat. They’re too big to fear them as they should. They will have to suffer losses until they wise up.”

“The lizards will not give them that, they will be patient and grow until the Nexus cannot defeat them without contributing their full might…and at that time it might not even matter. The lizards might not be able to defeat them, but in turn they will not be able to defeat the lizards. They are like a sotart, soaking up damage that would kill others because they can outgrow it.”

Paul frowned, searching his mind for ‘sotart’ and realizing the Voku didn’t know the word for ‘sponge.’

“I don’t disagree, I just don’t know where to look.”

“Ask anyway, and I will do the same.”

“Map search it is then. In the meantime let’s see if we can’t nibble away at the sotart.”

Two months later a Voku courier ship arrived back at their homeworld, delivering a personal message from Cal-com to Yev-jat, another Renimar, who watched the brief but thorough holographic recording before traveling across the planet to the most sacred facility the Voku possessed…that being the Elders temple.

Yev-jat had automatic access to the exclusive facility, built on the location where the Elder had visited them not so long ago. It was there that they maintained a gift of a specialized interstellar comm device that allowed the Elders to contact them from afar when they so chose. The Voku were not to contact them unless absolutely necessary, but both Cal-com and Yev-jat agreed that now was one of those times.

The Voku stepped onto a simple pedestal, dropping to a knee and touching the transmit button on the floor.

“Elders, we seek your counsel. The Humans you sought us to protect are in peril. We have secured them for the moment but the enemy they face from the Rim, which call themselves Li’vorkrachnika, pose a threat not only to the Humans but to the Voku and all those you have tasked us to protect. They are spreading and fight in a way that we have not seen before. We believe if we merely defend the enemy will grow too strong and overwhelm us with sheer resources, but we do not have the strength to strike out and annihilate them. They will not communicate and it is believed no surrender is possible. They will fight and spread and grow until they are eradicated, and we do not possess the strength to undergo such a task at great distance.”

“I ask for instructions. We will do as you command, but are at a loss as how to proceed in order to safeguard the future.”

6

December 7, 2639

Vengor System (beyond Delta Region)

Bobo

Nizzi swam hard, knowing that the enemies were behind him and the other Ollofan, and that they were slightly slower on average. That might give him a chance to stay alive and a similar sentiment was shared by the others around him as the little aquatic race pushed hard to escape the infantry battle they’d just lost on the seafloor several miles from the coast where the enemy was establishing another front.

Not that it mattered now. Most of his people were dead and the planet all but in the hands of the Li’vorkrachnika after only 2 years of fighting. At first the invaders had landed in a single location with only three ships, but they were using technology superior to what the Ollofan had and they’d been unable to remove them. After that it had all gone downhill, with loss after loss as the enemy received reinforcements out of the void. No ships arrived to bring them, they literally sprang out of their base with far more than they could have possibly had on their ships.

That wasn’t the only thing that confounded the Ollofan about the Li’vorkrachnika, and now it didn’t matter. Nizzi and the others had tried one last attempt to confront them head on, buying some time at least for the last transports to load, but it had been a debacle. The number of swimmers the enemy were grossly underestimated and soon their attack was overwhelmed, with most of his unit dying while he and a few others swam for their lives.

Nizzi’s little head tails flailed in the murky waters around him as he clawed at the water with both hands and feet, pulling himself through it while the enemy used their tails mainly for propulsion. Their green scales also clashed with the bluish waters, which the Ollofan’s skin matched, making them look like an infection on the planet…and that wasn’t far from the truth.

The surviving Ollofan swam and swam until they reached a tether line outpost, grabbing little handles on it and pushing the activation buttons that sent each one individually zipping off down the line and being dragged through the water faster than they could ever have swam. Nizzi held on tight and felt the water pull on him as he accelerated through the ocean just above the sea floor, breathing a sigh of relief, or the equivalent, given that he was using his gills right now rather than his lungs.

He rode the tether with the others for nearly 90% of the distance before it suddenly stopped, all power lost, leaving him and the others stranded short of their destination. He figured the enemy had destroyed the other end of the line, but at least it had given them a good head start.

A few aquatic chirps sounded and he swam to meet up with the others, then as a group of 18 they swam on, following the dead line until they finally got to one of the last of their intact cities, swimming inside through portholes in the otherwise smooth surface and passing through containment shields that separated air from ocean.

Nizzi slapped damp feet down on the floor and ran with little squishy sounds through the empty halls with the others en route to the hangar bays, hoping there was still a ship left. Everyone else that had been here was gone, which was partially a good sign indicating that they’d had time to leave before getting overrun, but if they hadn’t left any ships behind then he and the others would have to take to the open water and try to survive in the wild and avoid attention as long as they could, with no ultimate hope of rescue.

When he got to the hangar his chest was tight with worry, then relief flooded through him as he saw a single ship left. It was old and looked to have some battle damage, but he could tell from the patchwork done that it was flyable. He and the others ran to it, with one of them swinging by the control booth and opening the upper shield door.

The physical barrier retreated, leaving only a shield holding back the ocean above. When Nizzi and his fellow soldiers got onboard one of them with flight experience took the controls and rose the transport up and into the water, heading for the surface at a slow and ponderous speed, seeing distant enemy water ships on approach to the city. They wouldn’t reach them in time to stop them, with Nizzi and the others watching the sensors intently as they rose.

When they transitioned into the atmosphere they picked up speed quickly, avoiding the pesky enemy fighters which were luckily nowhere near their position. The old ship burned hard for space, getting there and running for the stellar jumppoint that at the moment had no enemy ships. The Li’vorkrachnika never had many to begin with, but the few they did have were true terrors. The up side was they couldn’t blockade orbit very well, only able to track down and kill a few ships if they were close enough.

Luck was on the Ollofans’ side today, for they made it to the jumppoint and accelerated off towards the star where their people’s jumpships would be waiting to pull the last ships out of the system. But when they arrived they found only three ships…all enemy ships. They immediately redirected towards the tiny Ollofan transport, intent on hunting it down like several others that were now little more than debris fields showing on the sensors.

“What do we do?” one of them asked the pilot.

“There are no jumpships. We have to go back to the planet,” another one said.

“We can’t.”

“We have to jump,” Nizzi said, watching the enemy ships coming closer on sensors and realizing they didn’t have a lot of time to decide.

“You’re crazy!” the little blue guy next to him said, eyes wide.

“If we stay we’re dead. We have to try,” Nizzi argued, hoping someone else would have a better idea.

“He’s right. We have no other options,” the pilot said, looking for the shortest jumpline out of the system and scratching it immediately, for it was on the other side of the star and there was no way they’d get there before the enemy got to them.

“We’re not rated for a jump,” another said.

“It’ll be slow and inaccurate, but it’s possible,” the pilot argued, looking hard for a useable jumpline just to get them out of here. It took far longer than he liked but eventually he got a half decent one not far off and set course for it, though the distance was going to be problematic. The destination system was twice again as far as the shortest jumpline, with there being a chance that the inaccuracy of their navigational system could mean they would miss the destination star entirely and be lost in space for a long, slow death.

But they were dead if they didn’t try, so he set course and hoped they’d get to the jumppoint before the enemy did.

“Go extra slow,” Nizzi said. “Save fuel.”

“Right,” the pilot agreed, beginning to revise his jump calculations.

“I’ll see how much food we have,” another said, trodding off.

Nizzi cursed silently. He hadn’t even considered that.

The rest of the Ollofan waited in the cockpit, crammed inside so they could watch the sensors as they transitioned across stellar orbit to their jumppoint with the Li’vorkrachnika cruisers racing hard to catch them, but once again Nizzi’s luck won out and his ship got to the jumppoint before they did, holding there to align as precisely as they could, then the underpowered gravity drive launched them out through the system on a very slow interstellar jump, out of the reach of the enemy.

“3 months, 2 weeks,” the pilot said, studying his readings intently and making a minor tweak in their trajectory as they passed a planet on their way out, trying to keep them on the jumpline as much as they could. Once they got out into interstellar space the gravity would be so low he’d only be able to get a touch of movement in any direction, and the same went for the backup maneuvering thrusters.

“We’re alive,” another said. “That’s what matters. Let’s see what’s left in the ship for us to use.”

As it turned out there were more than enough supplies for the 18 of them. The ship had been stocked with enough foodstuffs to last a much larger crew, sad to say that not enough of them had survived to need it. Those with Nizzi would, however, for the normally quick transition between systems that a jumpship provided was going to take them forever in their tiny transport, assuming they were able to goose the accuracy enough to even arrive. The line they were drifting on was decent, but some heavy thrusts had to be made on several occasions as they got closer to their destination and found that they were veering off, not because of any new movement, but of not being able to accurately measure it in the first place.

They had to use quite a bit of fuel to make those adjustments, but when they got close to their destination and saw that they would in fact make it a discussion was brought to a head…that being where they were supposed to go?

None of them knew where the jumpships had gone, for all they had been told was that they were evacuating, not to where. The enemy, as far as they knew, had been heading towards their planet for some time with many other neighbors having falling to their advance. The Ollofan had hoped to go overlooked, given that they lived underwater, but apparently they too were targets for the rolling mass of what had been called a galactic plague.

When they studied the maps they had a whole section of space ruled out, for that was where they knew the enemy to be. Systems close to their former home were also ignored, for the Li’vorkrachnika could be there already and there was no one they knew of that could stand up to them. It was either run or hope to be ignored. In that regard the Ollofan had not been so lucky.

And to make matters worse they only had so much fuel and not a lot of jumplanes short enough for them to try to make, giving them few options. Eventually they decided to head for a known commerce planet and beg for help…while hoping that they too hadn’t been overrun.

That planet was in a system four jumps away, which would take more than a year for them to get to and exhaust their fuel supply to the point that they could go no further, or perhaps one small jump after, meaning they were going to be stranded if no one offered them assistance, and given the state of the galaxy and the mass evacuations occurring ahead of the enemy advance there were no guarantees. Problem was Nizzi and the others had no better options, with only hope to rely on, though they did have plenty of time to think, stranded on their transport as they limped their way across the stars.

When they finally arrived in the Kattremon System they nearly missed the star, hitting it off center and propelling themselves laterally as they braked. Fortunately there was a gas giant nearby that they were able to pinball off of, and from there to some other nearby planets bleeding off momentum and keeping them in the system. That extra effort bled their fuel reserves nearly dry, making them incapable of doing anything more than some slow microjumps insystem.

Being very grateful to be alive and having dodged yet another catastrophe, Nizzi’s ship headed to the commerce planet and arrived in orbit just in time to witness a firefight ongoing. His little chest tightened up when he saw the enemy ships chasing down a much larger transport that was shooting back, ineffectively, with him realizing that with nowhere to run they were going to die. It might be in an hour or in a week, but they were stranded here and if the enemy had already gotten to this point there wasn’t going to be any way to evade them.

As all of this weighed on his mind a small black elongated cube moved into close sensor range and headed for the transport under attack. The enemy ships immediately ignored their target and went for it, and to the Ollofan’s amazement the smaller ship attacked the enemy 1 on 3. At first Nizzi thought it was a sacrifice play to save the transport, but as the big ship ran off leaving the little one behind to fight he saw that it was beating the crap out of the Li’vorkrachnika ships.

It wasn’t long before one of them had its shields down, and when it happened a bright beam fired into it and the hull exploded on contact. Whatever weapon it was repeated the attack many times until the ship was inoperable, then it turned its attention to the other two that were hammering it with plasma nonstop, including their potent plasma streamers, yet the smaller ship’s shields held up until it tore the second enemy ship apart.

Finally the third ship got through the black ship’s shields and began making hull hits, but it didn’t seem to matter. The resilient little thing held up and systematically tore apart the enemy that never even tried to run. Nizzi didn’t understand why nor did he care, for never had he heard of anyone who could stand against the Li’vorkrachnika, let alone dominate them in such fashion.

“What just happened?” he asked in the stunned silence.

“The Li lost,” another said, equally perplexed.

“Follow that ship.”

“Good idea,” the pilot said, slowly accelerating to follow the very fast ship as it moved off. They kept track of it on sensors and saw that it eventually made its way up to a higher orbit where a much larger ship jumped in and it docked with it. Then they noticed others nearby, some different sizes but all elongated cubes colored pitch black so that they almost disappeared against the backdrop of space, save for the reflective sheen from the sunlight.

During their lazy pursuit they were contacted by traffic control, cycling through various languages until they found one in common that they could use, that being Darfar, a trading nation that the Ollofan had relations with. Through not so good grammar they identified who they were and their circumstances…with a surprisingly accommodating response. As it turned out a lot of the ships in the system were evacuees from neighboring worlds, some a lot further out than the Ollofan had come from, that were here to parlay acceptance as either individuals or even entire races into a distant region where the Li’vorkrachnika could not go.

Nizzi’s group was told that there was an alliance that was successfully holding back the enemy and protecting a region of space where they were welcoming in those that could not defend themselves. The ship that they were following belonged to that alliance and was here to protect the system while facilitating the processing of evacuees and making arrangements for their inclusion into what they were calling the Alliance Defense Zone, or ADZ for short.

The Ollofan didn’t understand ADZ, for it was an acronym in a language they didn’t speak, but they learned the name regardless and everything else they could, begging the Star Force ship that was here to grant them sanctuary. They were given a provisional slot, with them having to wait in line until sufficient slots became available and transport arrived, but they were told so long as they agreed to the provided terms they would be accommodated.

Nizzi didn’t know if that was the truth or just a pleasant lie to keep everyone from panicking, but as the months passed by he and the others saw ships come and go, seeing those that were waiting with them being taken away periodically. As their food supplies dwindled this Star Force made arrangements with the planet to provide them replacements, ostensibly in exchange for the protection they were providing if not some other arrangement, and while being bored out of their minds Nizzi and the other 17 Ollofan were alive and safe onboard their ship in orbit, which was far more than he’d thought possible not long ago.

He didn’t know where the rest of his people were, or if he would ever see them again, but what mattered right now was that he was alive and needed to find a place in this ADZ where at minimum he could survive, though some of the stories coming out their way said people weren’t only surviving but prospering inside the well-defended borders. He wondered how much truth there was in that, but like always without options they had to take what was available to them, and he desperately wished that this wasn’t false hope.

Then the day came when their turn in line finally became pole position and their transport was given instructions to dock with one of the Alliance’s giant jumpships, this one belonging to a race called the Hycre and by far the largest ship Nizzi had ever seen. They were tucked up alongside many other ships, some more damaged than their own, then they were transported across the system to the star and jumped out into the unknown, en route to a destination they only knew of in the information packets they’d been given and the rumors circulating. What this ADZ was and why they were so welcoming of outsiders was a huge mystery, but it was one Nizzi and the others were going to have to explore, for right now this Alliance was their only chance of survival.

7

May 25, 2641

Paxxila System (Delta Region)

Akali

Nizzi’s jumpship took them across what on the map was a very long distance in only a handful of days, bringing them out into a star system that was stated as being on the border of the ADZ. The Ollofan’s ship was dropped off in orbit around one of the planets there and was directed to move to a set of coordinates, first high up in orbit, then down to a starport set just above the atmosphere. During the layoff and then the zigzagging orbital movements Nizzi and the others looked on in awe at the sheer number of ships and stations in orbit…not to mention their size.

There were huge round ones that looked like artificial gray moons while others were elongated like giant pillars. The information broadcasts indicated that those were ‘no go’ zones and defense platforms called ‘Sentinels’ and for the first time Nizzi began to understand why the Li’vorkrachnika had never made it this far.

The ADZ defense platforms were huge and spread all over orbit. The traffic map had a total of 93 spread around the system with 58 here. Some were low orbit, others at higher altitudes near what were tagged as shipyards. He didn’t know what kind of weapons they had, but just the sight of them was enough to scare Nizzi into staying away, and he hoped the same would be said of the enemy.

In addition to those scary stations there were thousands of warships in system, tagged so everyone flying a ship knew what and where they were. On top of those were 50 times more transports of varying sizes, though most belonged to what the IFF was saying was ‘Star Force.’ In fact, as Nizzi and the others digested the available information, after getting it translated into Darfar, which thankfully the local systems supported, they saw that the planet itself belonged to Star Force with four of five continents being fully cluttered with infrastructure, but only a few sprouts on the fifth.

To his delight he also saw that there were water cities set on the sea floor and surface of 16 different oceans, but that’s not where they were being diverted. Their instructions were to land at a spaceport in one of the cities on the smallest continent, which is where their pilot took them, down through the atmosphere and into the blocky, tall buildings to a wide open area in between, setting their transport down where instructed then waiting for someone to tell them what to do next.

That didn’t take long, for there was an attendant at the foot of their ship within minutes. Nizzi and the others opened up their boarding ramp and went down to the surface of the alien world, nervous almost to the point of twitchiness, and made no more easy by the very dry air they encountered, which irritated their water-loving skin.

“Hello,” a Human said in Darfar, “and welcome to Akali. There are 18 of you, correct?”

Nizzi and the others exchanged glances, then when he saw no one was volunteering to talk he hop/stepped forward and looked up at the alien that stood nearly twice his height.

“Yes, 18. You speak Darfar?”

The Human smiled, showing very white teeth that made Nizzi flinch back until he realized the gesture was friendly rather than intimidating. “We speak many languages, Darfar is one of mine which is why I’ve been assigned to you for your indoctrination. You’ve been granted sanctuary status, which means you can live on this planet without compensation for as long as you like so long as you agree to follow our rules. What they are and where you’ll be living are things that I will cover, but first let’s get you inside where we can see some holos. Your ship will be safe here. Follow me please.”

The Human waved a five fingered hand at the Ollofan, who exchanged more looks with the others who only understood about half her words, and gradually followed her across the landing pad after shutting up their ship. The short blue, fish-like race wore no shoes and found their feet hurting by the time they got to the far side, but once they entered one of the nearby buildings the ground smoothed out and no longer rubbed their soles with the dry, rough textured surface.

None of them said as word, staying close together so not to get lost as they passed a lot of different races, though most of the people they saw were the pinkish/brown skinned Humans. Following their guide Nizzi stayed right beside her and was led into a small compartment that turned out to be a transit car. All of them moved inside and sat on the seats lining the walls save for two, who stood along with the Human as the door closed and they started to move inside the building.

“You’ve been assigned aquatic quarters, which will be a mix of air and water, including hallways. You’ll be able to swim between some locations or walk, your choice, but most of the public areas will be air only. We Humans can swim, but not all that well, and this colony was built for us. We’ve been growing it and accepting in newcomers like yourselves, so we’ve done some remodeling. Food is available in communal areas and you can eat as much as you like, you just can’t take it with you.”

“What kind of food?” one of the others asked, with Nizzi wondering the same thing.

“Many kinds. Given how many different races we have here, we’ve had to develop foods that Humans won’t eat but others will, and we’ve gotten quite good at it. On the small chance that there is nothing of ours that you can tolerate we’ll make something new, so don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Nizzi said, looking up at the woman as the door opened.

“You’re welcome,” she said, leading them out into a wall of humid air that made Nizzi shudder with relief.

“There are three other aquatic races living in this area, so we’ve adjusted the communal areas to a neutral environmental setting. Your individual quarters you can reset to your liking,” she continued as an even smaller alien walked by them. It was about as tall as Nizzi’s shoulders but was quadruped with a very finny tail. It looked over at him with big black eyes but said nothing, passing the group of Ollofan by as it headed off somewhere.

“Here we are,” the Human said as they came out into a much larger chamber, this one with several ponds in it separated by walkways and kiosks. “This is the center of the quarters habitat. Food is over there, down that hallway, but it’s in an area outside of this humidity. That booth there,” she said, pointing a slender finger to the right, “will give you information about whatever you desire. The other rooms are entertainment zones, with stores being located in other areas of the city. This is more or less a lounge and a place for you to interact and rest outside of your quarters…which are this way.”

The Human led them across the ponds, in which they saw a few individuals swimming lazily about, one of which actually looked to be a Human. Two more he saw were lounging on the side of the pool, laying on the dry land for some reason. What they were doing here he didn’t know, but most of those he saw were clearly waterborn. He had no idea what race they were, but intended to stay away from them for now. He just wanted some place to hide away and get settled, as did the others.

The Human walked down a tall hallway and stopped in front of an equally tall door with a lighted strip running from top to bottom.

“Touch the light to open,” she said, pressing a hand against it, with the spot she touched changing color, “and input your access code. Right now it’s just 000. You can reset it to your liking later.”

With three touches of her finger the Human opened the door and motioned for them to go inside. Nizzi followed the others in, seeing a darkly lit room with a small pool in the corner.

“It’s small, but designed for a single person. The water entrance has a door of its own and is operated in the same way with the same code. There are a few lounging areas down there that I can’t take you to without a breath mask, but you can explore on your own later. Over here is a cleansing chamber, sleep area, and personal information terminal. It’s not as user friendly as the one back in the lounge and will take some time for you to learn, but you can communicate with anyone else in the ADZ through it.”

“There are a few storage areas here,” she said, pointing to some cabinets on the second level, which was little more than a catwalk along the ceiling at the top of a ladder. Obviously this room had been designed for a shorter species than the Humans and seemed to fit the Ollofan well, though the sleeping area was not wet, which would be bothersome, “and a holographic display here. Clothing and other small items are available as needed, but everything else you want has to be bought with credits that you don’t have. These are what we call luxury items. They are not necessary for living, but can make it more comfortable.”

“Whether you choose to pursue those or not is your own choice. Regardless you will be able to live here without responsibilities for the rest of your lives, though you will also be able to move elsewhere within the ADZ where possible. There are many options, but right now I’m guessing you just want to get settled, or maybe explore a bit?”

Nizzi looked up at her. “What are the rules?”

“We’ll get to those shortly. First we need to assign quarters. Who wants this one?”

One of the others immediately volunteered, upon which the attendant assigned him an ID tag. She did the same with Nizzi and the others, then gave them a little time to explore their individual living areas before they regrouped in a facility in another building. There they were asked many questions, medically scanned, given foodstuffs and clothing to sample with the Humans and some other races making quick adjustments were needed. It took a few hours, then the attendant took them on a brief tour of the surrounding buildings and facilties, showing them the stores and communal areas, which were packed with people, then she took them back to their quarters and told them they’d meet again the next day.

When Nizzi and the others went to their quarters they jumped into the water tunnels and explored the area, seeing that they were just a tiny swim away from each other and an empty room that appeared to be all theirs. They gathered there and talked, working out some of their nervousness and mentally marking their territory…though Nadfe got a little too excited and soiled the water with a few bubbles.

Nizzi didn’t blame him, much, for he was also feeling out of sorts. If what the Human said was true they could stay here and be safe…but in exchange for nothing? That didn’t feel right and he expected there to be some sort of trap. Some of the others felt the same way and decided to be very cautious, staying with each other at all times and near their quarters whenever possible.

The next few days were spent going through more ‘indoctrination’ in which they learned about the planet and the ways of Star Force. Many things surprised them, such as the rule saying they couldn’t eat meat, but that was a small price to pay in exchange for safety…and Nizzi wished the others had made it here. He didn’t know where they were or how many had made it out of their homeworld, with only those beside him making up his community now.

That wasn’t new, for they’d been alone on their ship for a long time, but here and now, with so many other people on this planet, he felt lonely again, with a deep sadness setting in that didn’t go away. For the next several months he and the others kept to their quarters, doing nothing more than hiding away from the galaxy until they had a visitor that arrived in their quarters area through the water hallways.

It was a Human with no legs, but blue skin almost like them. She also glowed in spots, including her eyes. The first time Nizzi saw her he was taken aback, not in fear but amazement. She was a pure breather, he could tell, and clearly dominated the water with her movements and size. He got the feeling this person was both very old and wise, but she moved with considerable youth.

Trouble was, she didn’t speak Darfar. Nizzi and the others had to talk to her via a datapad that did the translating, for they hadn’t yet learned the native language, nor planned to. What this person wanted, whose name was Jaavblet, was to offer the Ollofan different quarters in one of the ocean cities. She said that it was for water breathers only, save for some Humans of course, and that she felt they would be more welcome there than here.

Nizzi was surprised by what she was saying, for the city in question was one that he and the others had learned of through the information terminals. It was closed off, meaning they couldn’t go there nor could any others without invitation…which apparently now they were getting. However, there was a price to pay.

Jaavblet wanted their help on a construction project. If they completed it the 18 of them would earn a permanent upgrade to their status, which would mean larger quarters and a tiny stipend of credits every cycle. At first the others refused, for they didn’t want to leave their little home here, but Nizzi offered a compromise and volunteered to go look at the city and the construction project so they could know what it was that was being asked of them.

Jaavblet agreed and Nizzi went with her, wondering what in the galaxy he was doing as he followed her through the water tunnels and into new areas of the city where he’d never ventured before, eventually heading lower and lower until they came to a transit system that Jaavblet led him to. They both got into a small water car that shot them across the underside of the city all the way over to the ocean, with the transition being visible through the clear ceiling of the car as the tunnel they were in disappeared and the open water became visible…along with all the craft in it.

The edge of the continent was full of underwater habitats and infrastructure, including ships, but they all were left behind as the small car shot through the water just above the seafloor, traveling on a solid rim that was propelling it all the way out to the distant city. It took a long time to get there, but just before they arrived Jaavblet pointed out the window and Nizzi saw the construction project that was ongoing.

It was another underwater city being built, and only now in the early stages of construction. The water was too hazy to make out much, but a flurry of lights showed movement all around, both large and small, as people were working on the project.

When they got inside the city Jaavblet showed Nizzi almost identical quarters to what they were now staying in, along with the upgraded ones they could get upon completion of the project, then she took him out to the construction site and showed him how he and his fellow Ollofan could help. What she wanted wasn’t complicated, with them being little more than couriers carrying small parts back and forth so the work crews wouldn’t have to leave their positions. It would require four of them per day, if they wanted to make the deal as a group, and it didn’t matter which four. They could even switch off during the day if needed, for it would be a round the clock shift on the 24 hour day.

The planet’s rotation was 38 hours, but they were so far down under water that the sun didn’t penetrate, so they kept with what was standard for Star Force. Nizzi figured up the math, seeing that it would take some work on their part, but by sharing the load it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Before he made up his mind he asked if he could try out what it was that they wanted him to do, with Jaavblet taking him out to the construction site and swimming with him as they navigated the chaotic area, sure to stay away from the bigger pieces of equipment moving about.

He was given a small satchel  of parts or tools, he wasn’t sure which, and swam them out to the place Jaavblet showed him, giving the other tailed ‘Humans’ the bag and letting them pull out what they needed. When it was empty she took him back to a refilling point, showed him which ones to pick up out of which container, then had him swim back. No fuss, no problem.

Nizzi repeated the process for a good half hour, doing little more than swimming and getting a workout while the larger aliens did all the real work. After he saw that it wasn’t much more than a long series of swims that they were asking of them, he went back to the others and told them what he’d learned. It took some convincing, but a week later they relocated and began helping the Star Force Elarioni build the new city, and in the process became acquainted with the other workers and the larger aquatic community as a whole.

No longer did they shy away hiding from the world, but began making it their home, tentatively at first, then becoming accustomed to the other races as neighbors and even friends. They would never replace their own kin, but the loneliness that Nizzi and the others were plagued by gradually faded, leaving them with a new future free of the Li’vorkrachnika and other worry, for over time they learned that Star Force was both huge, powerful, fair, and wise…with the Ollofan immensely grateful and later proud to become part of the empire and contribute to it in whatever tiny way they could.

8

January 30, 2642

Vasper System (lizard territory)

Deegan

Nem’tran’cov waited inside the Protovic transport encased in a flexible body armor that was concealing both his luminous body and the perspiration on his forehead. He and the other infantry were about to enter combat, not in the defense of one of their own worlds as his forebears had done countless times, but in taking the offensive against the Cajdital on one of their worlds. It was to be his first combat mission aside from the extensive training he’d received, and he as nervous beyond words.

The Protovic stood armor to armor with the others in his unit, all veterans. He was the spur of the moment replacement for another that had been lost, not to combat but to retirement. Thus he was being thrust into a role that was, honestly, more than he was ready for, but the others assured him that his training was complete and that he would fit in fine, relying on their experience and simply following orders as they fought as a group of 8.

There were far more than 8 in the transport, but those to which he was assigned were right next to him, waiting for the go signal to deploy. When it occurred there was no mad rush outside, as he’d expected, but rather everyone simply walked off the transport and set foot on the extremely dry ground of the enemy-held world.

Nem’tran’cov lingered a bit, looking around until he was nudged ahead, then he walked with the others over to a prefab command post that had recently been set up. As they did so another transport was offloading tanks and he could see a few Valeries in the air above, but no sign of the enemy.

For some reason he’d been expecting to come out fighting, but as he quickly learned they were in a processing base that was handling all the incoming troop transports. He and the others would be deployed out to a number of battlegrounds soon enough, but for now everything was calm and orderly…which unnerved him even more. He wanted to get into the heat of it to shake off these nerves and lose his rookie status, but for the moment he was going to have to wait for another long ride.

His 8 man team was held over for several hours, then were taken aboard a tiny aerial transport and flown across the flat, dirty landscape to a mountain ridge several hundred miles away. It was only some 800 meters high, but on this world that counted as mountains and supplied the little bit of terrain available. This mountain range held several Cajdital bases, dug into the subsurface, and his team was to probe the area around known entrances. Nothing major, just a bit of recon that would hopefully be followed up later with a full assault, but without knowing exactly what was there, the Protovic’s nerves were as troublesome as ever.

The transport set down on the edge of the flat, offloading the troops in a location that was blind to the known entrances on the far side where Cajdital tanks had been seen coming and going from. Sliding in 5th man in line, Nem’tran’cov followed the others in a slow jog as they moved into the ‘foliage’ that covered the mountains but was distinctly absent on the large plains. Rather than typical trees, the area was covered with what looked like spikes rising up at all number of angles and topping out at some 25 meters tall.

They bent over enough to obscure the location of the troops, giving them some badly needed cover…as well as the enemy troops if they were out and about. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a small personnel entrance in the mess of spike trees, and if there were any here the Protovic recon team needed to find them before the main assault occurred on the other side of the range.

“Scouting reports are in,” the local Protovic commander commented over holo to the distant Calavari firebase, “and we’ve found several small entrances on the far side. We should be able to force an entry there while you have them distracted.”

“How many?” the Archon ranger asked.

“We’ve found eight in total, but there may very well be twice that number. We’ll have troops stationed in the area to hunt down any that get out.”

“Delay your insertion well into the battle,” the Archon suggested. “If they’re small entrances you could be sending your men into a tricky situation and I don’t have the Archons to spare to scan ahead.”

“We can handle it. You have my word,” the Protovic said without insult, for he knew well how formidable the Archons were.

The ranger nodded. “Very well. Attack will commence in approximately 3 hours. I’ll leave you to judge when to go in.”

“Agreed. Good hunting.”

“Likewise,” the Archon said, turning off the hologram and looking up at the pair of orange-clad Calavari Knights beside him. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You suspect a trap?”

“When the lizards are underground…always. Get the mechs in motion and our air cover scanning the area. We’ll fly the troops in after we’ve got our support in place…and I’ll be taking point.”

The other Calavari huffed. “Could have made credits on that,” he said, turning around and walking out of the battlefield command center to ready their men.

Vlad-195338 remained behind, sifting through the intel reports again as his staff were updating the battlemap with what the Protovic sent to them along with the commander’s transmission. The mountain ridge was one of many secondary sites on the planet that had to be routed out, now that the primary lizard colonies had been destroyed from orbit then invaded on ground. Most of them had subsurface levels that the rail gun slugs didn’t reach and cleaning those out was always problematic, but a facility like this that was entirely underground was going to be even worse.

Still, they had the advantage. Orbit was theirs and the mix of Protovic and Calavari troops were spread across the planet hunting down secondary targets and safing the destroyed colonies for engineers to come down and start tearing apart the rubble. This wasn’t a torch and run op like so many others in lizard territory and they meant to keep the planet, which was situated just outside the ADZ and one of many worlds that had formerly belonged to the Calavari. Several of their ruined cities still remained, with lizards swarming over them, but most of what had once been home had been destroyed or deconstructed, leaving a full blown lizard civilization that they now had to dismantle.

Vlad and a few other Archons were here leading the Calavari, but no other Star Force divisions were present. It was a joint op with the Protovic, whose border wasn’t far off, and yet another small step out from the neutral zone they’d been diligently patrolling and weeding of new lizard invasions. The Calavari weren’t hard up for room to expand just yet, but they fervently wanted to reclaim worlds that had been lost, despite the fact that most of those fighting today hadn’t been born when their original territory fell. Still, they were determined, and it fit into an overall strategy that Paul and the Voku commander had brainstormed.

Vlad didn’t know the full extent of it, but he had been told they were going after a number of systems near to the ADZ that they intended to keep and see what type of reaction that drew from the lizards, who were right now heavily engaged with the Skarrons. Orica looked to be soon in their hands, but the Skarrons were drawing more and more reinforcements from deep in their coreward territory, with those ships and troops headed straight towards the lizards…leaving the ADZ virtually forgotten.

The reconnaissance of those battles was something Vlad found more exciting than the entertainment holos, and he studied them regularly. Two massive superpowers were literally throwing down not too far away and Star Force was whistling through the graveyard while they built and researched like crazy. The V’kit’no’sat pyramid would win them the war in the long run, but until they delved further into its technological secrets they had to lay low and avoid attention…which was why taking this world and others made no sense to Vlad, but he trusted Paul to have something up his sleeve, which the trailblazer always did, and was content to focus his attention on the local fights while letting the padawans and now mages handle the big picture planning.

That focus wasn’t blind delusion, but rather trust. He knew they’d take care of business on their end and that he had to take care of the Calavari here. They were Star Force troops, to be sure, and could handle their own same as Canderous or the mainline troops, but they didn’t have psionics or the Archons’ unique leadership skills, let alone experience, hence he and several others had been assigned to lead them into battle, as they always did, for within their growing empire whenever there was an invasion to execute you’d find at least one Archon at the lead, if for no other reason than to troubleshoot problems that might arise.

Vlad had operational command of nearly a third of the Calavari troops on planet, with a few acolytes at his disposal, but they were here to guide more than fight, leaving the heavy fighting to the Calavari, which were more than eager to take territory. They were well trained, but the lizards were devious and he never liked going after them underground…which was why he was assigning himself to this mission and leaving one of the acolytes behind to coordinate other matters until he returned.

After reviewing the new data and current positioning of his troops across this hemisphere, Vlad went outside and up to the roof of the command post, which had only been built two days ago to replace the prefab unit he’d been using before. There were engineers and Kiritak everywhere building him a small military base even as he worked his troops in and out of the temporary structures. This location was secure, with constant air and mech patrols across the flat terrain with no way for the lizards to sneak up on them, save for tunneling, but he had active scans routinely running on the subsurface to spot anomalies.

He doubted that any would be able to tunnel this far out from their nearest base, but already the lizards had shown more hideaways than he thought they’d have. They either made them as part of their standard colonization package or they’d expected to get invaded and left plenty of blinds to retreat into. Vlad wasn’t sure which was the case but they were doing everything they could to kill at least a few of his troops, and he didn’t want to lose any of them. So far he hadn’t, for the orbital bombardment had kicked the crap out of their surface resistance, but he had lost a few mechs with the pilots recovered when some explosive traps were triggered.

That was a new version of an old tactic, with the new det packs being upgraded and placed in the infrastructure or even buried just under the ground to ambush troops or mechs with. The yield was clearly designed for the mechs, but given their armored cockpits the mechwarriors had survived even when their four-armed monstrosities had a leg blown off…along with a huge amount of dirt and infrastructure, making it look like a rail gun impact in the aftermath.

The mechs he had repositioning to the mountain range were going to sniff out traps like that before the infantry came in, and had sensor equipment added to them to assist in the task. The range was low, but it’d give them some warning and allow them to shoot the traps before they were sprung if they were cautious enough. Another tactic was having the Calavari Valeries fly low and scan the ground, though if the det packs were mounted on walls of ruined infrastructure there was a chance they could get caught in a proximity blast. Some of the triggers were pressure sensitive, others were heat, and still more were either movement related or remote controlled. The lizards had a full bag of tricks in play, and if the Calavari weren’t careful they’d needlessly take casualties.

Same went for the Protovic, yet the Archons weren’t commanding them. They worked well together, but without direct operational command Vlad worried about their safety. They were seasoned warriors, but again, these were the lizards. They adapted to everything you threw at them and would spend 1000 lives to get one of yours if necessary. They had to be hunted down and removed from this planet, but when Vlad had the choice between pushing an offensive and biding his time he’d always do the latter. The lizards weren’t going to get reinforcements, so time was on Star Force’s side and he intended to use it.

When Vlad got to the roof of the building he took off his helmet and took in a deep breath of the dry air, feeling it on his skin as a light breeze blew in from the southwest. He looked around, seeing his troops in motion, including a few stars of mechs to the north coming back from patrol. The spaceport had been the first thing permanently constructed, and even now there was an almost constant flow of dropships coming down from orbit bringing additional supplies for the work crews to build with.

Slowly he spun around, looking in all directions and seeing nothing but barren, dirty plains around his little nest of activity. Very far off to the south he could just barely make out a bit of variation on the horizon that was the ruins of a Calavari city. It was scheduled to begin disassembly within the month, but until then Vlad had troops stationed to patrol it to make sure none of the lizards slipped in and took up residence.

The nearby mechbay, which was little more than an open field with a few support structures at this point, began showing considerable activity as the units he’d ordered to get moving towards the target began walking over to the dropships in the spaceport and loading up for the flight out. They’d land well away from the base and walk the rest of the distance, but it would take far too long to cross on foot from here. In fact he had so many dropships at his disposal he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fight a war without them. They were literally the glue that held Star Force’s military together, and he didn’t have a clue how many millions there were in service, but from his experience he knew he could never have too many in play.

Most of the people he saw outside were workers, with the Calavari troops waiting inside of prefab buildings or transports. There was nothing for them to do outside other than make nice targets, so they bided their time in various ways indoors and left the thousands of Kiritak free to roam without interference as they quickly put together new infrastructure for Vlad to use.

Up in the sky there were constant Valerie patrols, both the original version that the Protovic used and the Star Force upgraded model that he Calavari preferred. He knew they’d keep his base safe, and the lizards had long since lost the last of their cruisers. All they had left were wisps and kirbies, and there was no way even a suicide run was going to get them past his air cover.

Everything was buttoned up tight here and proceeding smoothly, with Vlad about to go the opposite direction and head up the expedition into the unknown. Where there was danger an Archon would be, if only to shield others from it, but to be honest Vlad could never just sit by and watch, even if he wasn’t needed. He was warrior and warriors fought, which put the Archons at odds with almost every other military philosophy in the galaxy that had their valuable leaders well protected and hidden from the enemy.

Archons dove straight in, for they weren’t just the leaders, they were also the strongest…and the place of the strong was in the front taking the worst of assignments and finding a way to carry the others to victory, or at least survival when things went bad. That was one reason why Vlad hated the game of chess, because it had the weak pawns up front as sacrificial minions.

The ranger put his helmet back on and sealed it in place, still tasting the outside air but with a bit of a twinge as it passed through the filters. Time to get moving so he could arrive on site with the mechs and make sure everything was suitable for the ground troops to come in.

The Archon walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, falling several stories and cushioning his landing with his jump pack while scaring the crap out of a nearby Kiritak.

“Sorry,” he offered, heading off towards the spaceport.

9

The Calavari mechs ceased firing on the main doors of the lizard base, having burnt a good-sized hole in them that was now beginning to cool and lose its trim glow, then repositioned off to other locations leaving one of the four-armed machines in place to cover the entrance as the infantry began to move forward. Vlad was ahead of them, looking inside with his psionics as he moved up to the doors and the opening that was a meter up from the ground.

After getting a quick glimpse he hopped through, sidestepping to the left and finding a deserted hangar. There were several tanks sitting nearby, but Vlad knew they were empty and no threat. He didn’t like there not being anyone here, for it wasn’t like the lizards to just give up and run, and his spidey sense began tingling. With a quick comm to the troops outside he told them to hold off for the moment, then he moved further inside to scout out the area.

He pulled heavily on his limited Ikrid and Pefbar, sensing a trap and not sure where it would come from. The tanks alone should have been put to use strafing whatever troops would come in, and the fact that the lizards were abandoning them was totally wrong. The Archon ran over to one, looking inside it with his Pefbar and expecting explosives…but he found none. He transitioned to the other tanks and likewise found them clean.

It wasn’t until he moved to the exits of the hangar did he finally find the traps he feared. The narrow hallway entrances had det packs inside the walls, completely invisible to anyone passing through, but Vlad could see them with his Pefbar. There were also links to proximity detectors, tiny pinprick devices in the walls that wouldn’t be noticed without scrutiny…and the type of scrutiny that would put you in the blast radius before you saw them.

Vlad retreated back to one of the tanks and went inside, grabbing the first loose item he could find and bringing the hand-sized thingamajig with him over to one of the hallways. He wasn’t sure what the yield was on these det packs, but he made sure to stay well back as he chucked the object into the entrance. He guided it as much as he could telekinetically until it was out of range, then it dropped towards the floor but never made. The left side of the hallway blew out and shot debris all the way back to Vlad with some small bits and pieces bouncing off his shields.

“Sneaky bastards,” he commented, getting on the comm and calling the infantry in as he picked up a small chunk of wall and headed over to another of the hangar exits. He detonated that one and three others as the first of the Calavari Knights came through the now mostly cool hole in the main doors. Each of them wore the telltale orange, four-armed armor and was carrying an array of weapons on their back racks, along with some that had physical shields made famous by the mainline Knights.

They moved in quickly and held back as Vlad commanded, then he began to probe deeper into the base, sniffing out more traps and detonating them. The Calavari knew well how dangerous the lizards could be so they heeded his warnings and kept back, even as some lizards came out to engage them then ran, trying to draw them back into ambushes. When that didn’t work small groups of them ran out, obscuring a single individual carrying a det pack that was trying to get to the Calavari.

Vlad hit them with Fornax and toppled the suicide bomber far enough that when he did detonate a few moments later none of the energy shields on his infantry were taken down…though a few meters more and that wouldn’t have been the case.

With plasma fire the Calavari suppressed others running out at them, some of which tried ambushes out of side doors as they moved further and further into the subsurface facility. As they did Vlad began picking up more and more minds nearby, with them eventually getting the telltale horde rush once they were three levels down. Vlad tried not to fight too much, worrying about det packs in the mix and trying to pick them out, and getting one early enough that he was able to snipe him down before he detonated.

The Calavari meanwhile took to the standard variant lizards like they were toys, shooting them at range then knocking them around almost effortlessly in hand to hand. Their size, strength, extra arms, and the thickness of armor they were able to carry were over powering, with only the det packs a true threat. Vlad kept his troops with him rather than having them spread out, but as they took levels he had to leave some behind to hold regions they’d taken, with some of the suicide bombers getting through in places where Vlad wasn’t.

Fortunately the Calavari took them down before they got within touching range, diminishing the intensity of the blasts enough that their shields and armor protected them, though several had to be evacuated with injuries. Had they been Human troops they would have been dead, but the extra armor had been enough to save them, and for that Vlad was grateful as he pressed on, knowing that the faster he killed these bastards the less opportunity they would have to be devious.

But he couldn’t move too fast, for he had to scan all the walls in front of him, both for det packs and minds, for there were also hidden compartments with troops in them. Had he not been there the Calavari would have walked right by, then the lizards would have popped out behind them and in front, catching them from both sides. He still would have put credits on the Calavari winning out, but the more armor damage they took the greater the chance that others would deliver the finishing blows later.

The det pack threat didn’t disappear early, with Vlad having to deal with them up until the very end, but after some 7 hours of fighting and him thoroughly searching the facility with his psionics the task was done and the base was now in Calavari hands. He met up with the Protovic on the far side, with them having come in only a few levels and engaged in a brutal firefight. Apparently they hadn’t had any explosives in the walls around the hidden base entrances, but they’d been committed to doing whatever damage they could, with the last few stragglers making useless attack runs, sometimes solo, which the Protovic easily mowed down after taking a few injuries.

With their allies pulling out of the base and leaving, Vlad ordered some of his troops to remain to babysit the facility to make sure the lizards didn’t sneak back in, then took the rest and headed back to base where he would begin planning the next attack and readjusting his troop disposition accordingly. He had more than enough assets to do the job, but his primary task was to safeguard the Calavari while retaking the planet. So far he’d managed to do that, putting aside the injuries, but there had been a few deaths in other areas of the planet, and more so with the Protovic than the Calavari.

A few days later when there was a lull in activity he took a dropship back up to orbit and one of the Star Force jumpships so he could get a few decent workouts in its sanctum, for while the combat on the ground was intense at times it was no substitute for training and Vlad was already feeling squishy after so many days missed. He knew he had to get a few workouts in here and there to minimize the damage, so he took the opportunity now, not knowing when he’d get another chance in the future.

The dropship shot him up to orbit, passing by the Calavari drone fleet. Unlike the standard Star Force drones these were elongated in typical Calavari design, looking like fat spears and docking with specialized jumpships that accommodated their shapes into a crate-like lattice that would expand out from the jumpship hull rather than having a cut out section premade. It was a variation that allowed the jumpships to be more compact when empty, but it made them overly fat when full.

The jumpship he went to was one of three varieties and the largest, with all Calavari ships being built with a small segment of their training facilities as Archon sanctums on the off chance that they might be needed, and this was one such occasion given that there were no mainline ships in the system, only Calavari and Protovic.

It was still a Star Force ship though, and he felt at home inside it when he finally arrived. The hallways were a bit bigger, but all Star Force ships were designed to accommodate all the Star Force races, including the quarters Vlad had been assigned, not to mention the food. He had to have his own ambrosia stores, for the backup supplies for all the other races wouldn’t be enough for him and the others over the long haul of this campaign, but about half of what the Calavari ate he could also digest…with a few other Human items added to the cargo stores prior to his coming on this assignment.

As of now there were three races that had specialized ambrosia within Star Force, the Calavari, the Kiritak, and the Elarioni. The latter was originally designed for Ariel, and easily applied to the newer Star Force members. Most of the Elarioni population was still independent, such as the Kiritas were, but a good faction of them had crossed over and joined Star Force, establishing their own colonies while maintaining close ties with the other Elarioni.

Ambrosia research was currently in play for the Bsidd and the recently annexed Scionate, but those wouldn’t be widely available for at least another couple of decades, for Star Force didn’t take any chance with the concoction that was still lightyears ahead of their current tech level. Copying the original Zen’zat formula was one thing, but modifying it for other races was quite another and it required a lot of work to just make feasible, but like with everything else Star Force did they chipped away at the problem until they finally got a solution, with it serving the Calavari and Kiritak well to date.

All of Vlad’s troops were on ambrosia, though most of the civilian Calavari were not, just like the Human population. The Kiritak all were, given that they were workers and anyone born into the Kiritak that did not want to be such went back to the Kiritas or into Axius, leaving the entire Kiritak population as energetic little busybodies, made all the more so with their ambrosia that was geared more towards endurance and stamina than the general balance than the Zen’zat variety, which had the same with considerable ‘burst’ added that allowed it to be depleted quite quickly with activity or specialized psionics that directly consumed it.

The Kiritak didn’t have psionics and they weren’t physically strong combat troops, with their strength being in their workload and aversion to sedation. The ambrosia amped that up even more, with the Kiritak always being assigned to doing something and their personal training filling up the balance of their time.

The Calavari were the reverse, with great physical strength that their ambrosia heavily amped up along with a speed burst, giving their muscles compounds to increase contraction speed and endurance, letting the big guys overcome some of their clumsiness, though they were still no match against a Human when it came to agility.

The Elarioni were the most radical, given that they were swimmers. Ariel’s compound had simply been a standard transition from the Zen’zat compound to fit her physiology without Star Force trying to meddle with it. Now that the Elarioni as a race were part of Star Force that hadn’t changed, with their ambrosia formula most notably upping their self-sufficiency rates heavily simply by making it easier to attain.

That boost was also the reason why the Kiritak were growing by leaps and bounds…for their death rate was almost non-existent.

The Calavari’s sluggishness was a hindrance to self-sufficiency, making it harder for them to attain but still feasible with proper training. Some races were simply more energetic than others by default, which got them closer without trying, but all could attain self-sufficiency if they wanted to work at it…but unfortunately a lot didn’t.

Vlad’s troops were all self-sufficient, but the Calavari civilians were not. At present it was estimated that some 12% were, based on those reaching an age that those without typically would not. Aside from the medical devices in the pyramid there was no way to test for self-sufficiency, other than to keep living and not growing old.

Then there were some who attained self-sufficiency early on and grew tired of the training and chose not to continue. The body adapted to everything you did and did not do, meaning that if you wanted greater strength you had to keep using it. It wasn’t an attainment that would last forever, and necessarily so for that ‘loss’ allowed you to customize your body in new ways by undoing what you’d previously done.

That’s why stagnation was so dangerous, for you were undoing your strength but not building up any new ones. Granted, it would take Vlad a very long time to lose the amount of strength he’d gained from centuries of training, but getting in a good workout now would start to reverse the downward slide he was already experiencing, which was why he headed straight to the tiny sanctum and got to work right away with a good long run.

He was alone in the sanctum, for there were no other Archons up here at the moment, but that didn’t bother Vlad for he was well accustomed to solo training. Some others preferred having training partners but this Archon felt it was a distraction, a healthy one at times, but when you transitioned from a partner back to solo you often were left with a lackluster period of time until you readjusted. Because of that Vlad preferred to always train solo and focus on pressing his own limits rather than comparing himself to others.

He didn’t need a rabbit to chase, for his motivation was internal…something that most people in the galaxy lacked. Star Force was designed to offer incentives everywhere, and it worked, but at the end of the day you were either a badass or you weren’t, and a badass didn’t need incentive to do workouts.

Vlad also preferred the empty sanctum, for while he got along with the Calavari well they were not up to his level, in any way, and he preferred the isolation so he didn’t have anything else to compare with. When with the Calavari he felt totally superior, which he was, but here, in the sanctum, it was just him and himself…and for the first time since his last visit did he realize just how rusty his body had gotten.

A rusty Archon could still kick a Calavari’s ass, but take away that dominance and Vlad was just left with a body that was desperately in need of workouts. He kept his narrow perspective focused on himself and got three days’ worth of exhausting workouts in, so much so that he woke up the last day wobbly legged, but knowing that his duties down on the planet would offer up plenty of time to rest.

When he boarded the dropship and began the descent he pulled out a datapad and got up to date on what had been occurring the past 3 days, for he hadn’t been monitoring anything during his training, keeping his focus squarely where it should be. Now that he was back he was totally invested in the fighting and the Calavari…plus the Protovic where he could help them out. In fact they were prepping for an attack on another subsurface lizard facility, which he knew they’d need an Archon for.

Once he got back to the command center he contacted them and walked them through the various traps the lizards had in their most recent fight, then volunteered himself to take point more than a week later. Before that happened, though, he launched another attack on the remains of a lizard surface colony, which included subsurface sections, with the Calavari. After cleaning it out he transitioned back to base for a few hours then headed over to the Protovic to assist them.

And so it went on, with Vlad bouncing from one fight to another, knowing that his psionics were badly needed to counter the lizards’ traps. Even though they were beaten, the enemy was going to strike out at the Calavari and Protovic at every opportunity until they were all dead, meaning that up until the planet was cleared of them Vlad was going to be needed constantly, for he didn’t intend to lose any of his people by getting sloppy.

To that end he took point whenever he could, resolving himself to catch up on his training afterwards, for while his body could recover lost fitness he couldn’t bring back the dead.

10

September 3, 2643

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Kerrie sat in a waiting lounge at the spaceport as her dropship was finishing loading when a ‘click, click, click’ series of footsteps approached from behind her. Without needing to look or even use her psionics she knew it was Mavrel, their H’kar ambassador of sorts.

“Yes?” she asked without turning from the observation window where she had her feet propped up on the rim.

“You are hard to sneak up on,” Mavrel said in heavily accented English.

“You should try putting some sound dampening nubs on your…contact points,” she said, not sure what to call his ‘feet’ because they were little more than hardened points…all four of them. “Your exoskeleton is noisy on our hard floors.”

“That is why H’kar have soft floors,” he said, walking around the long sofa and into the trailblazer’s view. “You are about to depart?”

“Yes I am. I thought you had already gone.”

“Our fleet will not leave until yours does, so there is no rush. I wanted to speak with you again.”

“Concerning what?”

“I am still not convinced this plan will work.”

“I thought the Nexus and your leadership approved of it?”

“They have given their approval, but I do not see the wisdom in it. I was hoping you could kill those concerns.”

“What is there that we haven’t already discussed?”

“I do not see how we can do enough damage to matter.”

Kerrie sighed. “Someone a long time ago once said that before you can stop a moving ship you must first slow it down. We aren’t planning on defeating the Li’vorkrachnika, just diminishing their ability to spread.”

“And we can do that, but I fail to see how it will lead to an eventuality that is favorable to us.”

“The Li’vorkrachnika are used to being on the offensive, hitting where and when they like. We’ve evened that out around the ADZ and they’re not so tough when we get to pick the battlefield and the amount of forces we bring to the fight. If we get too defensive we give them the advantage.”

“Yet our numbers are so few compared to theirs.”

“Our combined tech level is far superior. We should be able to make ship kills without losing our own.”

“I fail to see how that is possible, though I know you have a history of doing so.”

“That’s why the Nexus wanted to learn from us,” Kerrie said pithily.

“Which is why I think they authorized our presence here. They want to learn more, but I see no chance of doing effective damage to the enemy.”

“You think this is just a training exercise rather than real battle?”

“The combat will be real, but the campaign will not. We have no objective to attain.”

“Kill a lot of the enemy.”

“To what end?” Mavrel said, clicking his mandibles together over his mouth with a triple tap.

Kerrie stared at him and probed into his mind, trying to get a feel for what he was getting at. Inside the hard carapace that covered his awkward body was a sense of hopelessness, minor at this point given that his race was protected by the Nexus, but he had no hope of ever defeating the lizards.

“Some people,” Kerrie began to explain, “only know how to fight when they can see all the options and know they’re going to win beforehand. Then there are others who don’t assume to predict the outcome and only focus on what they need to do in the moment. The first type cannot fight a superior opponent, the second can and potentially win. A great deal of combat is based in denying your enemy the fight he wants and making him operate less efficiently than normal. Over time we can wear them down, but there are no guarantees. There are never guarantees. That is something you have to get used to.”

“In my experience, if you go into a fight you are not confident that you will win you end up wasting troops and resources.”

“For many that would be true, but a real warrior knows how to probe and disengage. Only fools fully commit blindly.”

“Yet we are taught that once battle begins we must forcefully apply our full strength or risk defeat through indecisiveness.”

“I would call that reckless. Things can change in battle in only a few seconds. You have to be able to adapt in the moment.”

“Which is something your empire does well, but it is not how H’kar fight.”

“Anyone can learn, given enough time. And you’ll have my fleet and the Voku’s with you to carry the load until you do learn.”

“Yet ours will be far larger.”

“In the beginning, yes. But that’s also why I’m going. So I can adapt for you.”

“And we are grateful for your inclusion. I just do not feel that this endeavor will come to a beneficial conclusion.”

“You never know how a fight will go down before you start, and anyone who says otherwise is asking the bad luck monkey for an upset.”

“Mon…kie?”

“A metaphor we use. It’s a fictitious person who exists to sabotage you with bad luck at every opportunity.”

“You have many metaphors in your language. It has been difficult to learn.”

“You’ve done well.”

“It was necessary, for we have no means of other communication.”

“That’s a problem we’ve had to face here as well. So many different languages end up hindering communication. We operate with two, one for our empire and the more common one that most races in this region use. It’s a commerce language but we’re trying to replace it with English over time.”

“Then it is good that I have learned most of it.”

“How many do the Nexus have?”

“Many, but one that binds us all. I have learned 6 in total over my years.”

“I can read 14 and speak 5, though I’ve had a lot more years to learn than you have.”

Mavrel stepped forward and turned around, sitting down on the couch with his spindly legs sticking forward like spears…and just as deadly if someone tripped and fell into them.

“I keep forgetting your longevity. Most H’kar do not live half as long.”

“Why haven’t you attained self-sufficiency?”

“I have learned that word, but there is no translation. Our lifespans are default. We cannot train as you do. Our bodies are not built for it.”

“Bullshit,” Kerrie said, staring at him during a brief pause. “Are you familiar with that term?”

“No.”

“It means what you just said isn’t true in any way, shape, or form and is reserved for extreme cases of stupidity. You can train, you just don’t know how.”

“You do not know as much of us as you think you do.”

“We currently have 273 different races in Star Force, most are wards that we care for, but a lot of them have said basically the same thing. It took some time and modification on the part of our trainers, but we found a way for all of them to reach self-sufficiency. It’s just a question of whether the individual is willing to work to attain it, and then maintain it. Sadly most are too lazy to do either.”

“We are not lazy. Our energy reserves are low. We have long, sustained effort at minimal levels or short bursts of intense action, but we do not have the stamina for your type of training.”

“Humans don’t either, in the beginning. You have to develop it. Look at me, I wasn’t anywhere near this powerful when I first joined Star Force. I was a pathetic weakling…still better than the other pathetic weaklings…but I was so squishy I have trouble even remembering what it was like. You can’t expect instant results. And now suddenly I think I understand your problem.”

“What problem?”

“Your concerns about this upcoming campaign. You can’t handle facing the unknown. You need some tangible results to work towards. You can’t get your mind set to fight simply to fight…or train simply to train. Tell me, have none of the H’kar achieved self-sufficiency?”

“We have not.”

“They call me a trailblazer because I will push into the unknown and learn new things that I can then teach to others, either directly or by example. I’m starting to think that once you guys start spending a lot of time with us you’ll advance rather quick.”

“I do not understand.”

“You need a battle plan to follow. Without one you’re totally lost. You can’t see a way to beat the Li’vorkrachnika and you can’t see a way to train so you don’t try. If you watch us you’ll see us doing it and then you’ll have something to pattern off of.”

“Even if you are correct about the battles we will jointly fight, we will not be witnessing any of your training. We will be on our own ships.”

“I wouldn’t mind a side project.”

The H’kar shook his pointy head. “I do not wish this.”

“If any of the others do, please tell me.”

“Agreed, but we cannot eat your food,” Mavrel said with some hilarity.

“We’ve made food for countless races, I think we can manage a few new items.”

“I will pass the offer along, but I do not think you will receive a response.”

“Don’t your infantry train?”

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t they attained self-sufficiency?”

“Our bodies are not suited for it.”

“Bullshit,” Kerrie said softly.

“It is a fact of our race.”

“I’m never going to accept that.”

“You do not have to.”

Kerrie sighed. “I always enjoy our conversations. You’re so optimistic.”

“After a long history of lost wars, optimism is not something the H’kar have much of.”

“Time to change that.”

Mavrel flexed his binary arm, which was more of a claw, and tapped his leg with both sharp points making loud clicks. “How you have survived I do not understand.”

“Watch and learn,” Kerrie said as her earpiece activated and she slid her feet off the window trim and back to the floor. “My dropship is ready to go. I guess we’ll be talking via hologram from now on.”

“Yes,” he said, and Kerrie sensed a gratitude in that sentiment.

“I stink?” she said suddenly, picking up on his thoughts.

“Apparently this is not the first time you have been told so. I was not going to say anything, but Human scent is quite foul.”

Kerrie reflexively tilted her head and sniffed near her armpit…smelling nothing. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Perhaps you are used to your own scent.”

Kerrie frowned at him. “Do other races stink to you, or just Humans?”

“Some do. Most do not. I believe it is your sweat glands.”

Kerrie looked at his hard carapace. “Which you have none of.”

“Of course not. We regulate temperature internally.”

“Well, this stinky Human is going to head to her ship. Remember to pass along that training offer. I’ll write up workouts you can do on your own ships if you want.”

“I will tell the others.”

“Alright,” Kerrie said, standing up and walking around the couch on the opposite side from Mavrel, heading for the door and taking another whiff of her armpit. She walked out of earshot then whispered, “I don’t stink.”

18 hours later Kerrie was aboard the Majestic Dolphin, a Melee-class command ship, as her crew went through final fleet checks. She had 22 Warship-class jumpships with her, full of the latest model naval drones and some of the best remote pilots Star Force had. There were no ground troops aboard the Majestic Dolphin, which had been packed full of cargo in their place, for this first hunting mission into lizard territory was to be naval only. They could bombard planets if they chose, but they were after ships, and not the big ones.

They’d take them if they ran across them, but the task force was primarily interested in hunting cruisers and jumpships. Those are what the lizards had in legion, and those are the kills Kerrie was going to be going after…and the more the better.

But she wasn’t going alone. Sitting in high orbit around Corneria were two Voku conglomerates, but both the number of ‘ships’ they could split into and the drones that Kerrie had paled in comparison to the H’kar fleet sitting mid orbit. There were six of their ‘Hive’ carriers along with thousands of their mainline warships of various models. All were upgraded with low level Nexus tech that gave them a significant advantage over the lizards, it was their battle tactics that were in question.

Kerrie had learned that they were sluggers, and their ships were built for just that purpose. Well armed and armored, but they didn’t know how to retreat or use navigation to their advantage. They just wanted to walk up to a target and blast away…and against the lizards that wasn’t going to work. They were devious bastards and turned the H’kar’s up front combat philosophy against them, but not without a cost. The lizards had to fight them at close range sooner or later, which cost them a lot of ships in the process.

Now that the H’kar had Nexus upgrades the lizards couldn’t beat them short of spamming them with ships…but then again they didn’t have to. They just hit the other worlds around them, grabbing up the easy territory and growing, always growing. Then fielding the spam-level ship numbers wouldn’t be such a hard thing to do.

But this H’kar fleet was going to take its lead from Star Force. The Voku were involved because, well, their ships were superior to both of the others and if you were going on a hunting expedition you wanted as much firepower and speed as you could get. Kerrie expected them to move as a single fleet most of the time, perhaps splitting up occasionally but hitting their targets with overwhelming numbers that would make it difficult for the lizards to flee. The Voku had already volunteered for stellar ward duty, which left Kerrie and the H’kar with the job of hitting their planets and tearing them apart.

That had seemed a little off the wall when Paul had first suggested it to her, but he and Cal-com had been going over and forming this plan for years and he quickly explained that while the first few attacks might be better with the Voku up front, the lizards would learn from survivors what was happening and choose to run rather than fight and lose…which meant in order to kill as many as possible you had to have a backdoor guard and the Voku tech was best suited to that.

That was the plan, anyway. What would actually happen once they started to dive deep into lizard territory and hit them where they weren’t expecting was anyone’s guess. Kerrie felt they’d be able to stay mobile and survive even if something went horribly wrong because they wouldn’t be tied down to defending or assaulting any planets. That and they had binary drives and the lizards didn’t, fortunately, though that wasn’t going to last forever.

So it was going to be hit and run for at least the next two years. Nobody would know where they were going, nor did Kerrie, because they would decide on the go and be as random and unpredictable as possible. Paul had likened the hunting fleets, of which this would be the first of many to come down the road, to what the Black Knight had done to them during their basic training.

That had immediately sold Kerrie, for she remembered well how much of a menace he had been…and a lot of it had been because they never knew when or where he would pop up. Their Final Challenge had been different, because they had come to him, otherwise she doubted they would have ever graduated.

Well, maybe not ‘ever,’ but it would have been a whole other matter to deal with.

Once the fleet checks were in Kerrie contacted both the H’kar and Voku, getting confirmation that they were ready to move out. The three fleets, which in the Voku’s case was only two enormous ships, all made their way out of planetary orbit to the star and transitioned over to a jumpline that would head them in the direction of Zeta Region and eventually what had formerly been Calavari territory.

Kerrie sent her warships ahead first, then jumped the Majestic Dolphin out a few seconds behind them, leaving the much larger H’kar fleet to gradually transition through their jumps with the Voku bringing up the rear. Though they hadn’t let the H’kar in on the fact, Star Force and the Voku were going to look out for their new ally and babysit them to the max until they learned the ropes. It was odd saying that about a race that had been fighting the lizards for longer than they had, but it had become clear that virtually all opponents the lizards faced eventually lost out, which Star Force being the shining exception.

That was why the Nexus had wanted to watch and learn from them, and that’s why they approved the H’kar coming here. Kerrie wanted them to learn, but more than that she just wanted their firepower in the here and now. Star Force was building more infrastructure than ships at present, but they were gradually increasing their fleet numbers to a level that would be able to sport multiple hunting fleets, but until that happened she had to work with what she got, even if it was the ‘green’ H’kar.

Their fleet was formidable, but their recent experience against the lizards showed them to be little more than seasoned newbs. She and the Voku would watch their back as they learned, then hopefully down the road they could take that experience back to their territory and apply pressure on the lizards from there.

But that was well into the future, and as she’d explained to Mavrel nothing was guaranteed. Right now they just needed to find lizard ships and work on their kill count…then see where it went from there.

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1

April 8, 2652

Baarg System (Beta Region)

Keeson

Larry Vich was sitting in his office looking out the panoramic window down into the valley when the comm tone sounded, bringing him out of another of his daydreaming sessions. The Administrator spun around in his chair, seeing a holographic prompt. He reached out to his desk and touched the button accepting the call, with the image of another Human popping up above his wide desk.

“I just finished compiling the recent numbers,” his counterpart from region 18 said with a light smirk on her face, “and you were right.”

“I usually am.”

“But you weren’t right about the source,” she quickly corrected him. “It was D flock.”

Larry frowned, his pleasure with being right now tinged with confusion. The former Lacvamat capitol world that they were tasked with managing pieces of had been in Star Force’s care for some time now, but not long enough to do a thorough job of reworking the infrastructure and civilization up to their standards. Humans still held all the important positions, with the fleshy fliers working their way up the learning curve and having to earn their place.

Most hadn’t cared early on until Davis had instituted the ‘flock’ program, which was a reorganization unique to the Lacvamat. While Star Force still had the individual advancement possibility woven into the design, most of the Lacvamat didn’t care to act unless it favored a group, hence they’d been given group advancements. That was atypical of Star Force but with each race they added, whether as member, ward, or mainstay, peculiarities had to be troubleshooted.

Technically right now the Lacvamat were a ward of the empire, but they weren’t being treated as such. Rather they were being reorganized and grown into what would one day be a mainstay, similar to the Calavari or Kiritak, and in order to make them a feasible addition their race had to be integrated into the whole…which always came with challenges.

For the Lacvamat that was double trouble because they weren’t bipeds. Most of their movement occurred through flight, though they did have two fairly thick, short legs they could hop around on. Those legs doubled as hands with some precision talons on them that could grab or manipulate controls, but designing infrastructure for such a race varied differently than for Humans, and blending both together was far more difficult than, say, blending the needs of the Calavari with Humans.

As far as the societal aspect was concerned the original Lacvamat were definitely routed in a ‘group think’ that the maturias had virtually eliminated, but without that cultural hive mind the individual Lacvamat were lazier than most species. There were always exceptions, but on average the fliers just weren’t cutting it, then Davis had instituted the flocks and so far that had seemed to cure the problem.

The flocks were not made up of bloodlines, but were rather talent pools. One had to earn their way into a flock through individual merit, but after that point they worked together for a myriad of things short of full autonomy. Davis had made it clear that he didn’t want the competition factor overemphasized to the point of division, but rather to keep it friendly and constructive.

Each Lacvamat world that Star Force now possessed was split into regions that had unique flocks within them, each of which amounted to as little as 200 or as many as 10,000 Lacvamat. Every one had a specific purpose with none being self-sufficient, but rather tasked with a tiny piece of the overall planetary puzzle. Each region was redundant and able to fully support itself, if not also assist others in times of need.

Larry had been having discussions with Nadie as to how production quotas were going to fare for years, with both Administrators being able to call outcomes before they occurred. Recently Larry had suggested that in one of their neighboring regions, number 13 to be precise, there was going to be a quota overage in the production of iron ore. Nadie had disagreed, suggesting that they’d just barely scrape by in the six month cycle, which she now had admitted was a mistake.

But the confusing thing to Larry was that, while he had apparently been right about the numbers, he had been wrong as to which flock had given region 13 the boon.

Each assignment, such as a mining operation in a given facility, would have several flocks attached to it. Each would be working alongside one another, some during different shifts, others simultaneously, but never working together. The output was measured independently for each flock and scores were assigned. In this case it was D flock that had kicked the overall mining site production well over their expected quota, which was merely a loose figure that the local facility was shooting for.

Flock D for this facility was the oldest flock in the grouping and had been in ownership of the top spot for some time. They always hit their quotas and little more, earning points for the flock that gave them upgrades to their status. Throughout Star Force civilians were assigned luxuries based on statuses that they earned or could purchase with credits, but those statuses were always individualized. With the Lacvamat flocks they were not, with the entire group rising or falling with the others.

This ‘team’ advancement was the first for Star Force, which valued the individual above all other concepts, but in the Lacvamat’s case it was working to provide them the motivation they needed. That said, D flock at the facility in question had always been steady and reliable, doing what they needed but never going over the top, which was why Larry didn’t understand how they could have been the ones to push his estimates to fruition.

“What about B?”

“Just over par,” she said with some mirth.

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s certainly unusual, but with the new A flock coming in perhaps the vets wanted to lay the law down.”

“That’s not how they think.”

“Well, whatever the reason, D came through for you and you won this round. I just get the satisfaction of knowing it was by accident. Any news happening on your end?”

“Same old, same old.”

“How close are you on that spaceport?”

“Still another 2 months before it goes partially online, what with these damn aerial patterns.”

“Definitely one of the challenges of living here. Are we still on for tomorrow?”

“I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to gloat.”

“Like I’ll miss that.”

Larry nodded. “Yes, we’re still on, and I’ll grant you a tie on this one.”

“No, it may have been a sloppy prediction, but it still came out to be true. Take your luck and run with it.”

“Alright, have it your way. 2 shot lead.”

“Three, actually,” Nadie said with some dissatisfaction.

“They came in that far over quota?”

“Ye….ep,” his fellow Administrator said with some shame as she cut the transmission, leaving Larry alone again in his office.

Curiosity got the better of him and he dug into the planetary files to search out the production records she was referring to. They were recent, having been filed within the past 6 hours, and showed that the mining site in question had registered a 6 month production quota at 278%.

That blew his mind, not because he hadn’t seen numbers like that before, but because of the location and those involved. He’d expected the newer 2 flocks to up their game and put the lagging facility ahead on this cycle but he had not expected so much. Since he’d taken the over on this one the higher the number went the more credit he got for it with Nadie on their regular ‘dates’ as he liked to think of them, though there was nothing romantic involved. It was just a chance to spend some time with a peer on a planet full of aliens.

Their dates were part work, part games with them picking two or three activities to do over the course of a day while chatting. They necessarily had to be low effort to accommodate the conversation, and the first of which they had planned was hologolf, in which his prediction had earned him a bit of a head start. It was one of the games available in an entertainment chamber, rather than a ‘real’ game that left physics to the universe instead of computer simulation, but the luxury of being able to pull up over 300 premade competitions inside a bland, somewhat small room had its benefit for those that weren’t overly concerned with competition and just wanted to play to blow off some steam or hang out.

There were other Humans here, of course, but only a handful of administrators and Larry liked to spend time with his peers whenever he could. Nadie was the closest of them, being located in the region to the north and only a short hop away by dropship or a longer ride by train, but all of the Administrators could get to one another without too much trouble or delay and keep some semblance of community on the otherwise bizarre planet…one that they were attempting to convert into semi-bizarreness.

Larry swiveled his chair around so he could look back out the window. The cityscape below him was Star Force, telltale from the grid layout and the material of the buildings, but what varied was the high, needle-thin spires rising up from the center of the city and the mass of buildings clinging to the far canyon wall. They were built vertically, such as his office was on the opposite side, connected by a carpet of structures between the two with a smattering of spires in the center.

That wasn’t typical Star Force, but it wasn’t that far outside their normal motif. The bizarre thing about it was the aerial traffic that had the open air within the canyon filled with the Lacvamat moving around. Instead of taking internal lift cars or walking down hallways they flew everywhere, making the cityscape below more of an outdoor interior than true buildings, where the roads doubled as topless hallways.

There were enclosed structures, of course, but when one wanted to move from point to point they came out to the roof and flew over to the next location, meaning that all of the structures had to be thin and accessible to the air, with none of the big, hulky city-buildings that Star Force favored elsewhere.

Larry and the other Humans moved about conventionally, for it was Star Force infrastructure and therefore accommodating Humans and others with subsurface rail lines and lift cars. Not far off down the canyon, where the exit of the river that flowed down the now artificial center met up with a spindly little lake, there was a large plain sitting in the middle of the otherwise varied terrain. There construction was still continuing, with the most notable feature being a spaceport…but unlike most Star Force spaceports this one wasn’t being constructed on the ground.

It looked like a giant mushroom rising high up into the sky and spreading out laterally, leaving a thick central stalk supporting it then an umbrella outstretch that allowed the Lacvamat fliers to move across the surface beneath the starship traffic so they wouldn’t cross paths. The Lacvamat could fly to considerable height, but Larry and the others had found that giving them an altitude free of craft that they could move about through without worry saved a lot of hassle…or rather it had been an Archon that had devised that little tidbit and passed it onto them, for he was technically in charge of the entire Lacvamat race.

But it was Administrators like Larry that held everything together, with the planning and building of individual cities to consider. The Archons would come in, change this or that, then leave again to put out any procedural and societal brush fires that popped up, but it was the Administrators that stayed in place and made sure everything progressed smoothly, for that was their function. Sometimes what the Archons wanted was a pain in the ass to do, but he’d never met one who had given orders just to yank someone’s chain and there was always a reason for what they did, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious.

But on this planet he’d been left mostly alone. It had been the Lacvamat capitol before but, on the call of an Archon, that designation had been stripped from it and moved to another location. Keeson was still heavily populated, as far as the aerial race was concerned, though the layout of the cities was very thin and almost underpopulated compared to the Star Force norm. That was necessary, given there was only so much sky space, and while the Lacvamat could navigate in large groups fairly easily the Administrators had learned not to get them too packed together, for when they all had different directions to go the ‘group think’ of the Lacvamat kind of misfired and chaos broke out.

Get them all going in the approximate same direction or with the same purpose and they could swarm through the air with ease, but the somewhat regulated flight patterns of the low altitudes within the cities defied that theme to a degree, though there were long, thick columns of fliers all heading the same way on what looked like roads in the air from Larry’s window.

Little specs would split off from them and fly through the open spaces in between, coming down or up to one of the spires or surface buildings where they needed to go. It was those transitions especially that caused trouble in greater numbers, but with proper city planning and population monitoring the Star Force Lacvamat cities functioned and functioned well, though there were always opportunities to improve.

Some 160 miles to the south was one of the temporary habitats Star Force had set up some time ago to house the Lacvamat population while the true cities were being built, and those temporary sites had been constructed in order to move people out of the original Lacvamat structures, which were now all decommissioned and in the last stages of recycling the materials. The temporary habitats would stay up until all of the Lacvamat could fit within the cities, then Larry and the others would begin expanding more slowly to suit their growth needs. Right now, however, they were building as fast as they could just to give everyone a place to live.

Which was why the maturias were slowing reproduction rates to a steady trickle. The Lacvamat reproduced through eggs, giving Star Force the ability to firmly control population rates as opposed to live births because the eggs had to be externally fertilized. Originally, unsanctioned reproduction had been a minor problem, but virtually all of those Lacvamat that had been born through the maturias accepted Star Force’s mandates and didn’t try to circumvent them. It was those that had lived prior to the annexation that were showing defiance, and while there weren’t a lot of them left due to the war and subsequent attrition there were always some problems with the dissenters, but at least it seemed they’d given up on trying to breed off the grid.

Most of them just sat and rotted away in their habitats, ironically cleansing the planet of the problem they represented. Some had converted over, but most stubbornly refused to help their ‘conquerors’ and were gradually fading away from the social consciousness. The planet and their race were Star Force now, with that becoming more so every day and with every subsequent generation being hatched and trained in maturia, but there was still a lot of work to be done before the Lacvamat could take their place as peers within Star Force, for right now without the Human Administrators and other ‘support staff’ the Lacvamat civilization would quickly fall into shambles.

They weren’t ready to be independent yet, not in any way, shape, or form, but they were gradually making progress and most of those Larry interacted with now could speak English, which was a blessing, for his trade language was not in a comfortable sound range for his vocal chords. It always was a chore to pronounce, but with the conversion taking place on the planet and the Lacvamat becoming more and more Star Force, English began to take over as well, allowing normal speech that he was grateful for.

The Lacvamat had their own dialect, of course, but it was easy to get used to given that they’d learned it from Human trainers and holo recordings. It was the non-maturia raised natives that spoke it with an almost garbled tone, and that gave him some considerable difficulty in understanding them, but he rarely dealt with those individuals anymore now that he’d accumulated a moderately sized staff of Lacvamat that he could rely on to do basic tasks. Over time that staff would grow in number and experience, but it was going to be a long haul indeed.

He’d learned early on that he needed breaks to refresh his Humanity, or more accurately to refresh his ‘Star Force.’ That wasn’t a proper term but it was the only one he had, for when dealing with the Lacvamat and trying to pull them into the massive organization he was likewise pulling himself out of it a bit, being blended with their bad habits and tendencies as he battled them.

So it was days like the next, when he met up with Nadie and the pair took the day off from duty, going far away from the Lacvamat and retreating down into levels where they didn’t typically go to get away from their charges and recharge their Star Force batteries. As planned they hit up the entertainment facility, playing through two rounds of simulated golf by smacking the real little projectile and having the computer calculate its movements even as a force field caught it only a few meters away.

After golf it was damough, then tennis, followed up lastly by a lazy game of holographic cards in a private hot tub as they soaked the alien influences out of them. Through it all they exchanged information, plans and concerns, turning the ‘fun’ day also into a business one, but that was just who they were. Administrator wasn’t a job you did during the day and walked away from at night, it was a position with round the clock responsibilities and while they might take time to blow off some steam and recharge, they were always Administrators and when they chitchatted it usually came back to the work at hand.

After quick, separate showers they had food brought in for them and they spent the evening on a rooftop deck watching Larry’s city as the twin suns slowly set over the far canyon wall and the nighttime lights replaced them, twinkling as tiny Lacvamat would fly by in the dark and cause the distant lights to blink in and out almost as if they were silent fireworks going off.

The breeze felt good and the pair sat in silence, taking one last break from the Lacvamat while still observing them, almost as if in transition back into their world and out of the tiny bubble they’d retreated into. Bringing a race into Star Force was no easy task, and if one wasn’t careful they’d lose themselves in the process. This had been underscored many times by the Archons and even Larry’s superiors. He hadn’t understood initially, but now saw the wisdom in their warnings.

He had to stay Star Force in order to bring the Lacvamat into it. It wasn’t a trade off or merger, they had to come fully in with Larry not budging an inch. That was the only way they would truly become part of the empire, and it was the only way to keep the Administrators and other personnel on planet from being corrupted, for like it or not, those you spent time with had an effect on you, and the weaker minds would often begin to emulate their environment.

Larry’s mind wasn’t weak, but he also wasn’t an Archon. That said, a little recharge like today was enough to keep him on track and come tomorrow morning he’d be ready to go at it again and bring the Lacvamat one more baby step closer to truly being a part of Star Force.

2

April 28, 2652

Sului System (Beta Region)

Favrrcor

Gam’len’wex ran through the small stream, kicking up water as the Scionate bounded across in only eight footfalls, with the latter two sinking into the mud on the bank and slowing him as he ran up the short incline and back onto the trail he was following. The quadruped wore no armor nor shoes, clothed only in a thin torso vest that had holes for his neck, legs, and tail…the Scionate equivalent of a body suit.

Behind him others followed, staggered a few seconds apart, with two on ahead of Gam’len’wex as the group crossed through the still wild regions of the planet that Star Force was rebuilding for them. They owed the great empire a debt they felt they could never repay, and had been working hard the past 6 years to prove their worth after hearing the stories of how their forbearers had so dishonored themselves.

Gam’len’wex had not been born at that time, but he’d learned from others what had truly transpired. The records Star Force had available to the maturias were incomplete, and it wasn’t until Gam’len’wex had graduated and met others who had lived through that era that he’d learned the truth.

The Scionate had never been a united people, with constant dissention and battling amongst themselves over various matters. When the war to fight the attack by the Lacvamat began they were united in the obvious sentiment to defend themselves, but how they did so and the subsequent counterattacks they made were not universally supported. By the end of the war those frustrated and ignored Scionate that had argued for a saner course of action had an opportunity presented to them when Star Force and the other major powers punished the Scionate for their actions by taking a number of systems from them.

The fools had fought back, which cost them further, reducing the Scionate’s holdings down to only two systems, each of which had a Star Force presence in it acting like a leash to monitor the behavior of the dishonorable. The Lacvamat had lost all of their systems due to their actions, but given that the Scionate acted mostly in self-defense their autonomy was not stripped from them. They did, however, have to relocate their populations from the confiscated worlds into those they retained, with anyone staying behind falling under Star Force jurisdiction.

Many of the original bloodlines that did not need to evacuate because they were based in the capitol system sought out Star Force and asked to arrange a deal in which they would be allowed to come over to the Star Force worlds regardless of how many Scionate decided to stay behind, for they were sick of the way Scionate society operated and felt that, in addition to a form of penance for the bad decisions their kin had made, their sense of honor could be better satisfied as part of the Humans’ empire.

Ironically those bloodlines were one of the first things to be disbanded by the Star Force conversion, with Gam’len’wex having been born to parents that were unknown to him. He’d been raised in a maturia and had no idea what former bloodline he belonged to, nor did he care, for the new Scionate, the Star Force Scionate, did not think in such terms. They were a united people who, regardless of whether they were new born or converted, were committed to growing their small race into a military force capable of assisting the rest of Star Force and earning their keep.

Gam’len’wex had also learned that the conversion of the originals did not go smoothly, for Star Force had to break them of many bad habits…but they had been willing to try, and that willingness had set them apart from other races, they’d been told, with the Scionate taking to the Star Force ways far more quickly than others once they got past the first few transitional bumps. They were adapting so rapidly, it was said that they were being fast tracked towards higher status within the empire, even more so than the Scionate within Axius.

Therein lie part of their success, he was told, for Scionate maturia already existed within Axius and did not have to be constructed from scratch. The same was true of military equipment designed for the Scionate, though they’d taken it up a notch as they designed modifications along with the Star Force Archons and techs. Right now there were 3 large Scionate units dispatched to field work, with a fourth being formed that Gam’len’wex hoped to join.

Two of those units were holding defensive positions on the border, freeing up other more veteran Star Force troops to move into actual combat theatres, though if attacked the Scionate would have more than enough action to sate them. They were not safe by any means, but they were holding guard over valuable sites and facilities, something that Star Force hadn’t been willing to trust to others. There were many races within Star Force that had military capability, but most were not permitted placements on the front, even those that had been in the empire for several hundred years.

That made the defensive placements quite an honor, especially for a race so new to Star Force, but there was one unit, their most elite, that was operating beyond the borders of the ADZ and assisting Star Force in taking worlds from the lizards. That fascinated Gam’len’wex more than anything, and he desperately hoped that in time he would be able to join that unit or another, which was why he and the others were working so hard in the advanced training group that was blessed with an Archon as trainer.

And his workouts did not disappoint, which heavily focused on running…the one major advantage the Scionate had over the Humans, for they were far faster than most of them. That was a basic fundamental of quadruped motion, at least those with flexible joints. Even the small quadruped races were faster than their bipedal counterparts, on average, and the Archon wanted the ‘full sized’ Scionate to amp up their speed as much as possible so they could be a new asset for Star Force to utilize rather than just a redundant replication of other races’ capabilities.

That was why Gam’len’wex and the others were running without armor, for this training exercise was all about speed and endurance sustained over rough, unpredictable terrain. The trail was one he’d ran before, but it was so long that there was no way he was going to be able to memorize it after only a few runs, leaving nearly every twist and turn as a surprise, not to mention changes in the forest that occurred naturally.

They were covering ground quickly, with his legs already burning after just 20 kilometers. That was due to their pace and the climbing they were forced to do. The trail took them up and over every little hill there was to be found, almost as if it had been cut out in such a way to maximize difficulty, but that hadn’t been the case. Rather it was a run from one training base to another, with the lay of the geography running perpendicular to the path, resulting in the up and down rollercoaster of a trail run that Gam’len’wex found incredibly challenging.

But then again what wasn’t here? He’d been told specifically that this group was designed to give the worthy few a short cut to combat assignments, and that they’d have to endure a lot of stress in order to prove their readiness whereas the normal progression path would be more gradual, taking decades at minimum, with many Humans taking more than 100 years before they got posted to the front.

There was a need for more troops, as many as they could get, but Star Force wasn’t going to let anyone go who would be a liability, forcing individuals and races to prove themselves time and again before they would be trusted not to get themselves killed and give the enemy an opportunity to poke its way into the ADZ. The fact that the Archons were even giving the Scionate this opportunity for a fast track was a great honor, and Gam’len’wex had quickly realized that great honor came with great responsibility within Star Force, and this training group did not disappoint.

More than half of the original group that was here when Gam’len’wex arrived had washed out, by their own choice, for they couldn’t handle the intensity. None of them had quit, but rather went back to the standard training programs and the ‘slow’ track. Those that remained were supplemented with new recruits every now and then, but those weren’t put with Gam’len’wex on his workouts. Those few Scionate with him now were half of the most experienced ones, but even they were still several years away from the benchmarks set down by the Archon.

Those called for running skills far beyond what Gam’len’wex had now, and what blew his mind was that those numbers came from the fastest of the Archons. The Scionate had to prove they were faster, amongst other things, and there was no way he could ever see a biped moving as fast as he was now, let alone faster.

Their Archon was fast enough, and had come with them on some of their early runs when they were still slow, after which he’d teased them about getting beat by a biped. That had aggravated Gam’len’wex more than the others and he’d worked a little bit harder in response, but even today there were still Humans out there faster than him, though not on this planet.

The Archon was monitoring their progress from afar, with a tiny ear clip on each of the Scionate that doubled as an emergency comm device. It tracked their location for they were moving across terrain where there was still hazardous wildlife and all types of potential dangers from rocks and trees and who knew what else. This wasn’t a typical training session in a controlled environment, this was a cross country run, literally, so there needed to be some type of backup in case something bad happened.

But that was just typical Star Force procedure, looking out for the odd ball situation. Right now the only threat to the Scionate was the physical fatigue they were suffering from as they came up to their next check point.

It was little more than a tracking archway, but when Gam’len’wex came up to it he saw the colored energy shield that he was meant to run through shining a pale green almost to the point of being clear. That meant he was just ahead of schedule, for the darker the green the bigger the lead he had. If it shifted over to yellow then he would have been slightly behind pace, with red indicating that he was slower than the minimum requirement, which would end in a challenge fail if he didn’t speed up.

Pale green was a relief, for he wasn’t sure how much he’d slowed over the past kilometer. He could judge his pace off the others, but if the leader was slow then the rest would be and he hadn’t felt like they’d been dragging him along as fast as they should. Tired as he was, he realized he’d been doing better than he’d thought.

Just on the other side of the archway he saw Hef’met’ka standing beside the trail taking a breather. It wouldn’t last long, for his turn keeping pace was over and now Gam’len’wex was second in line. Hef’met’ka would wait to fall into last position and just try to stay with the group while the new leader set and tried to maintain the desired pace, allowing others to just focus on the moment and the sound of the footfalls ahead of them.

It made a difference, not having to worry about how fast you were going and just keeping with the guy ahead of you, but one more kilometer up the trail and it would be Gam’len’wex’s turn to lead, and then he would have to worry, for there was no way to measure speed other than by feel, and with the terrain being so erratic you had to make constant adjustments, keeping the long, boring run anything but.

The Scionate never had the ability to just settle in and relax, with the trail forcing them to be agile and evasive nonstop as they made their way across the countryside, passing from one checkpoint to another until they finally reached their destination and the forest ended, giving them a sprint across level ground to the final archway set inside the training base.

All the Scionate grouped up within a few seconds and hammered the last bit three wide, getting up to the final marker that was showing yellow. Their time didn’t record until the last of them made it across, but when he did the final result was tolerable and did count for points, though they were only 22 seconds away from failure.

Gam’len’wex sagged heavily, wanting to lay down but knowing he shouldn’t or he’d get an earful from one of the non-Archon trainers who were waiting for them. His perseverance was rewarded with a light tap on his right shoulder by one of the tall Humans, a small sign of respect as the muddy, water-drenched cats walked their way indoors and to the equipment room where they showered and got dressed in a fresh set of clothes, including the small shoes that felt very good on his now raw foot pads.

But there was no time to rest, or at least sleep, for after a quick stop by the cafeteria Gam’len’wex was sent into a study session, allowing his body to rest while his mind had to soak up yet more data regarding Star Force protocol and tactics, with today’s lesson covering aerial tactics. The Scionate fought off the sleepiness and devoured everything they showed him, knowing he needed to know how each part of the empire’s military forces worked for when/if he would end up fighting alongside them in combat.

After an hour of rest/study he was sent to do some light agility drills then sparring practice, first against the Humans then against other Scionate on loan from Axius. The Humans were tricky, but he did have some advantages he could use and managed to get the best of them a few times, but the Axius Scionate he literally couldn’t touch. They were so fast and experienced that they owned him each attempt unless they deliberately held back to teach him something, which they did most of the time.

Hand to hand was a weakness of quadrupeds, but what they did have was first strike potential given their running speed and pouncing range. Once engaged they didn’t have the leverage that a Human did, with their trainers trying to teach them how to hit and run, then circle back and hit again rather than trying to lock onto an opponent. It was difficult to learn, but with the Axius Scionate there to show them what the Humans were trying to explain helped greatly, though some of the movements required him to think like a biped and that was a transition that he hadn’t fully made yet.

He didn’t want to raise up and expose his belly, for one, and his trainers made him pay for that multiple times with overtop attacks and today was no exception. He knew what he had to do but was still hesitant. Mentally marking that as a place for future improvement he did his best during the rest of the day’s training then eventually retreated back to the cafeteria for a very large last meal, before walking off to his personal den and falling asleep almost immediately.

The next day he would rise and repeat, for that was what was required on the fast track to a combat assignment, with only those wanting it bad enough being able to keep themselves going, and so far Gam’len’wex was hanging in there, taking it one day, one moment at a time, and finding himself growing stronger and faster than he had ever imagined…yet with so far yet to go that it was almost comical.

He’d long ago set aside his concern and trusted in Star Force, for if they could get the Axius Scionate ready then they could do the same for him. With that worry gone he focused on doing his workouts, leaving the big picture to his trainers and thus far that approach had been working well.

Only time would tell how far he got and if he’d have to tap out and take the slow route like many of the others, but for now he was holding par and that’s all that mattered.

3

May 23, 2652

Maxzet System (Epsilon Region)

Mazicc

Admiral Laver watched from his jumpship as the previous intel reports were updated with realtime telemetry. The six locations on the planet’s surface that had been tagged as containing pirate hideouts were indeed registering infrastructure as well as some surface activity at one site. A liftoff was taking place, with the cargo ship in question even now beginning to rise up through the atmosphere to make a run for orbit and, ostensibly, out of the system.

It took a moment for the Australians’ sensors to identify the type of ship, marking it as a Lemickas insystem commerce model, meaning it didn’t have interstellar jump capability. Laver ordered it tracked and followed, but not intercepted. Unless it met up with a jumpship it wasn’t going anywhere and they could deal with it later.

Their mission was to take out the pirate bases on what was otherwise an independent system within the ADZ. The planet was home to a primitive civilization that hadn’t yet achieved space travel and one that had wished to be left alone. Star Force had tagged it as a transit only system, meaning that only passerthroughs were permitted and that the planet itself was off limits, as was the rest of the system.

There were many other systems in the same situation, having fallen within the boundaries of the ADZ and not wanting to have anything to do with the Alliance or the war. Star Force counted them as lucky and left them alone, making sure that others did as well, but those systems in question were regularly targeted as places to get off the Star Force grid and attracted a lot of illicit attention.

The six pirate bases that the Australians had been sent to get rid of had been identified by Star Force security previously, but they hadn’t sent their own team to eradicate them. Often they did, but with so many needs to attend to in the growing ADZ population that was approaching a quadrillion, they often farmed out such duties to other parts of the empire, with the Australians finally being able to step up to the plate and contribute in a significant way.

Admiral Laver had been part of 3 previous campaigns to hunt down pirates, slavers, and other scum from the ADZ, all of which had been under the command of an Archon. This tour, however, he was in sole command. He figured it was due partly to the limited number of the super soldiers and the vast scale of the ADZ that had them going all over the place with significant travel lags in between, but he also knew that his fleet would never have been assigned this duty solo if they weren’t trusted. The previous campaigns had been the Archon using the Australians in lieu of other ships and troops they didn’t currently have available, but it had also been a test.

Apparently one that Laver and the others had passed, for the previous 4 months had been missions similar to this yet lesser in scope that had the Australians dealing with assignments completely without oversight. Most were ship interdictions with a few surface raids, but this was the largest strike given to them yet, with indications that there were thousands of pirates on the planet below that either had to be captured or killed…and he knew from previous experience that pirates didn’t like to go down without a fight.

This lot had been responsible for well over 50 hijackings of starships passing through Epsilon Region, all non Star Force, for the pirates weren’t stupid enough to try and take one of those. No, they preyed on the ever-increasing traffic from the other races in the ADZ, often picking off ships and getting away before anyone even received a distress signal. Star Force did belatedly monitor all transit between inhabited systems and had picked up at least faint sensor recordings of the attacks, along with the jumplines the pirate ships had taken when leaving with their bounty, which was sometimes cargo or passengers, or even entire ships.

There were becoming fewer and fewer places in the ADZ for starships to hide, with virtually every attack that occurred being followed up and those responsible found and dealt with eventually…yet more kept coming as if they didn’t care or didn’t follow the news. It was very difficult to hijack a ship in the ADZ and not have it noticed by Star Force unless you did it insystem, for it was just a computational twitch to match up entry and exit signatures and see if there was an anomaly. If there was, that was red flagged and a closer scrutiny of the sensor logs was taken up, with those in question having led Star Force security to this planet.

They’d done a thorough recon then left the system, noting that the military capability of the pirates was beyond what they could have dealt with on their own, and referring it on to others more suitably equipped. The mission was eventually farmed out to the Australians, which were doing a considerable amount of pirate hunting and other cleaning duties within the ADZ given that they weren’t deemed fit enough yet to take part in combat on the front or beyond.

That still left the Australians sour, but Laver knew that they were being slowly let off the training wheels for a reason. No Archon oversight on this campaign highlighted that, as well as the fact that this strike was way down on the priority list. Still, it had to be done and done soon else they’d let the pirates run rampant in the shadows and that couldn’t be allowed.

Australia was more than happy to step up and contribute, freeing up other Star Force units for higher priority tasks while giving the junior members some greater standing within the ADZ. Previously Australia had been little more than a closet member of Star Force, neatly tucked away where no one could find them, but over time they’d been stepping out and attaining some new colonies of their own. Nothing large, but they were outside the Core Region and allowed them to begin to interact with other parts of the ADZ as the independent entity that they were.

They were still Star Force, there was no disputing that, but within the empire they were a semi-independent piece, similar to the Kiritas but not the Kiritak. Australia had to operate within the boundaries that Davis set for them, but so long as they stayed within the coloring book lines they could paint whatever picture of their society that they wanted. They had taken a lot from standard Star Force protocol but diverged in a number of places, creating a separate identity that many had not liked.

Australia’s current population now ran a little over 3.7 billion, but with an outflow that at some times had exceeded their growth rate. Many individuals born into Australia eventually chose to leave for either Axius or a mainline Star Force colony, finding the pure openness to be more attractive than the somewhat traditionalized Australian society. It had taken a lot of trial and error on the part of Australia’s leaders to keep their population at home, but eventually they began attracting more immigrants than they suffered in losses…and they did so by offering things that the rest of Star Force didn’t allow.

They couldn’t go so far as to legitimize contraband, for that would put them outside the coloring lines, but they did offer alternatives to many people who didn’t like the Star Force take on life, with the biggest selling point being hybrid maturias. Nearly all Australians were born and trained in Star Force standard maturias, or at least the Australian version of such, but eventually a secondary program was instituted for those individuals that wanted, and sometimes loudly protested for, the ability to keep a family connection with their offspring.

What the Australians eventually offered was the ability for a parent or parents to become low level trainers and work in the maturia where their child was present, maintaining a connection to them until they became old enough that they were allowed to live in a separate facility with them during off hours, yet they would still be part of a maturia and all the rigorous training that it required.

That familial connection that the Australians allowed was the first big move the Australians made, with Davis’s approval, away from the typical Star Force model and it attracted so many immigrants that it prompted the Australians to begin reshaping their nation into a Star Force alternative and experimenting with new things to both try and distinguish themselves from the rest of the empire, as well as to attract more immigrants to replace those that were continually leaving.

Semi-independence had its privileges, but it also had its down side as well, with the Australians faced with the risk of losing pretty much their entire nation if too many of their citizens decided to leave. And with the Australians having to make every ship and building themselves, what mainline Star Force colonies offered looked a lot more appetizing to most, hence the push to attract the discontents and offer them up alternatives.

It had been a long process, but eventually Australia had etched out an identity for itself and was now pushing for a greater role within Star Force, with that being them taking on some of the responsibilities of keeping the spacelanes safe and hunting down pirates where others wouldn’t or couldn’t, for most races in the ADZ didn’t care about anyone other than themselves, leaving Star Force and a few others as the guardians of all.

That was a responsibility that Star Force took very seriously, which further indicated that the Australians’ status was increasing given that Laver had been given this solo campaign, low key as it was. This bit of it was going to be a milestone, one way or another, because to date nothing like this had ever gone down without an Archon running the show, and today it was going to be an all Australian affair.

He just hoped everything went smoothly.

“Lock in the drop points and get the transports moving,” the Admiral ordered after watching the track of the ascending transport for a bit. “Deploy the fleet into standard containment formation and inform the planet that we’re here to remove some squatters,” he said, almost word for word mimicking similar orders given by the Archon that he’d worked with in previous years. “Get me air cover preceding our ships and everyone stay alert. We need to bag these guys before they get a chance to run and hide.”

The Australian jumpship wasn’t large, for they’d had to construct it themselves and virtually every ship in their fleet was undersized compared to the mainline Star Force navy. While they had access to nearly all Star Force tech, the more recent and impressive developments were withheld from them until they showed they could master what they’d already been given…and ‘given’ in terms of blueprints rather than actual machinery.

They had tech assistance as well, with many mainline and even Canderous techs helping them design and get their own machinery up and running. Given the necessary disconnect between the two, Australia’s equipment looked and was designed differently than what the mainline troops had, just as Canderous’s differed as well. The Australians didn’t fare well in the comparison, but they did have competent, solid ships that had gone through numerous revisions and upgrades as the most junior member of Star Force slowly cut its teeth on a handful of missions and assignments.

It was aggravating to most Australians how newer members of Star Force got privileges that they didn’t, with the Lacvamat and especially the Scionate being rushed into prominence. It was true that neither of those pieces of the ever growing Star Force empire would be independent, but rather constructed and run by the mainline section just as the Kiritak were. That meant they didn’t have the freedom to experiment and deviate from standard protocol the way Australia did, but they were being given so much in terms of resources and tech that it rubbed many Australians the wrong way.

Laver had once been one of them, but he’d gradually come to see just how juvenile Australia was compared with everyone else as he moved around the ADZ with the Archon, gaining bits of insight here and there and realizing how much the Australians still had to learn. They were like kids being allowed to play in the sandbox, but when it came time for the volleyball match they weren’t allowed to play in the same sand at the same time.

Laver was one of the three highest ranking military officers Australia had, and as such he held a significant voice in their decision making and future planning, with him lecturing the others constantly on how and why they were behind the rest of the empire and even falling behind the other ADZ races. It was simply a matter of drive, for while Australians had everything they needed others did not and were power hungry. That was not necessarily a good thing, but it drove them forward while the Australians metaphorically just laid out in the sun getting a good tan while complaining about not being treated as equals with the rest of Star Force.

What Laver hadn’t originally understood was that all of Star Force was working its butt off in some way or another, while Australia was consumed with the civilian aspect of Earth. Civilians reaped the benefit of others’ hard work, and if Australia wanted to be one of the big dogs they had to get out of the ‘taker’ mentality and start becoming a ‘provider.’ There had been some very long and loud arguments over that point, but eventually Laver and a few others had made their case and several expansion programs had begun to be formed and implemented.

They were still in their infancy right now, but first on the list was an increase in military production. He was pleased with the fleet that he had, and obviously the Archons felt the same otherwise they wouldn’t have been calling on them for duties in recent years, but in overall numbers their fleet was tiny and that had to change.

As he watched from his command chair four pieces of his ‘half-sized’ jumpship broke off, leaving him with a skeleton of a ship between the forward cone and the rear engine compartments. It was still armed and decently shielded, but the jumpship was little more than a mobile command center and not a true warship. Those were being deployed elsewhere in orbit with each carrying its own small drones, none larger than cutter class and most being the equivalent of oversized starfighters.

After those warships broke off from the jumpship and moved out of sight to their assigned positions a series of hatches on the underside of one of the neighboring jumpships opened up and released golf ball-like dropships of decent size that began descending into the atmosphere. Soon the other four did likewise and sprinkled the planet with descent craft carrying the Australian army down to the surface to contend with the pirates up close and in person.

Following them out of the jumpships came, sometime later, squadrons of Australian fighters that dove into the atmosphere and raced to meet up with the slower dropships to give them air cover as they began landing near the six pirate bases. As expected enemy aircraft began to take to the sky and a beehive of activity began to show up on Laver's sensor scans. The pirates weren’t going to go down easy, but he sent a message ahead of the arrival of his forces demanding they stand down and surrender both themselves and all equipment that they had.

The Admiral expected no response, for there usually was none in cases like this, but one of the pirates bothered to reply with a curse-laden spiel accented by various unkind gestures. What otherwise would have been somewhat ironically humorous was anything but given the pure vitriol being displayed. These pirates had no intention of submitting to Star Force and were either arrogant or ignorant enough to think that they had the right to go around stealing from and murdering travelers.

These weren’t valiant rogues, but savages…and Laver didn’t like thinking ahead to what he suspected his troops might find down in their bases, but this was work that needed to be done, and while it occasionally turned his stomach he wasn’t going to relent. Australia needed to prove its worth, even if it meant taking out trash like this that preyed on the weak, but who had no real chance against the troops he was sending against them.

4

Timothy heard the crack of the dropship door a moment before he saw the light coming in from outside as the big ramp began to lower. The luminous intensity was twice that of a ‘normal’ planet and made his eyes wince despite the auto-glare cutdown in his mech’s cockpit. He was viewing the outside of the bipedal machine via camera relays while he sat within a protective cocoon inside the Bushwhacker-class mech, one of a handful of favorites the Australians produced out of more than 320 models that Star Force had come up with over the years.

“I’ve got point,” he told his fellow mechwarriors as he walked out of his receptacle in the improvised mechbay inside the dropship and over to the now half lowered door. He waited until it finished deploying then walked his hunched mech down and onto the planet’s heavy surface. Gravity here was 1.3 and caused his mech’s footfalls to be a bit sluggish, but the computer automatically adjusted and allowed him more or less normal ‘driving’ as he ramped up his speed and put some distance between himself and the big spherical dropship behind him.

9 other mechs followed him out, which formed up into two stars of five. Timothy had another bushwhacker and three ravens with him, while the others had a thor, maddog, and another three ravens.  All the mechs were intended for the pirate base a few kilometers to the north while other dropships were bringing down more mechs and troops for the other five locations on the planet, all of which were situated in a geographical band running a few hundred miles through a wild section of the planet and far from the population centers.

Timothy’s bushwhacker stepped heavily through the marshy ground upon which they’d landed, for there was little else around the base that made for a suitable landing site. The area was heavily forested, with only the cutout for the pirate base and these swampy, almost shallow rivers bisecting the forest in numerous locations. Those were going to be the roads the mechs came into the base on, for a direct drop would have been impossible.

The pirate bases weren’t just hideaways, but armed firebases. They had enough point defense weaponry to roast any dropship coming down on top of them and even now were giving the fighters havoc as they attempted to strafe some of the defense turrets now that they’d cleaned up the pathetic pirate craft. Timothy saw one hit by what looked like plasma fire and go down before the others eventually broke off and held to a perimeter that the mechwarrior could see on his battlemap. They were still in the air and nearby to call for assistance, but it was made clear that they couldn’t take out the bases defenses on their own, even before orders came over the comm.

Their overflights had tagged a number of additional batteries that they hadn’t noticed from orbit, with all of them going through analysis by the ships in orbit and then filtered back down to the mechs as priority targets. Timothy had a slew of them highlighted on his battlemap before all of the mechs were offloaded, and was well prepared for what he was going to face and have to knock down as his star began sloshing their way through the marshy gaps in the forest.

The mechs weren’t subtle, standing some 10+ meters tall at the smallest and making a lot of noise walking through the shallow water and muck, but they slowly made their approach, working through the twists and turns of the natural waterway as contacts began popping up on the battlemap and headed their way…fast. Analysis soon identified them as hover tanks that were also following the marshes, though without any hindrance given they were operating on anti-grav instead of legs.

“Ok fellas, let’s see how many prizes we can bag,” Timothy said, adjusting his weaponry accordingly as he saw the stand down order for the fighters. These were going to be pure mech targets. “Disabling shots only.”

“Can’t we blow up at least one?” Ellie asked from the raven to his left sarcastically.

“Save it for the turrets,” he said, seeing the first of the tanks come around the bend ahead. It was more of a giant sled than a tank, but it had three enclosures with weaponry mounted on top, all of which opened fire with orange plasma lances that leapt out and hit the ground, air, and left leg of Timothy’s mech.

The one that hit the ground resulted in a plume of vaporized water that created a short lived cloud, but the impact on the bushwhacker’s leg merely sucked away some shield strength as Timothy pointed the nose of the squat mech towards the tank and fired off a single lachar blast. The bright streak of red hit the body of the tank and punched a hole in its thin armor plating but did little other damage as three more tanks came around the bend and began to take aim.

Timothy marked the one firing at him as his priority target, then gave the other four mechwarriors their own to deal with as he fired another lachar shot, peppering the same area of the tank with successive hits and avoiding the cupolas where he knew the crew were even as they fired back with their more potent plasma. Eventually he hit the anti-grav in the forward section and the tank’s front end dipped and rammed itself into the muck, leaving the other part still in the air and the whole thing askew.

Meanwhile the ravens moved up and went right for their tanks, coming up on them and weathering the plasma storm before firing their own tiny plasma blasts into key points on the flat hulls, blasting apart the internal mechanized components and disabling them to the point that they were no longer able to fly as more tanks flooded into the battle. Eventually there were so many peppering them that the shields on the mechs began to weaken, with Timothy again taking the lead with his larger bushwhacker and walking into the middle of them.

He pulled the power on his mauler back considerably, then launched the tiny orbs from his mech’s boxy right arm, with the blue blasts melting into the tank hulls and exploding outward, ripping the vehicles in half with a single shot as if they were made of nothing more than wood and paint. The internal components that were being compromised made the explosions erratic, and more than once Timothy saw the cupolas get hit, often with the occupants being thrown out with the debris. He didn’t know if they were still alive or not, but he at least tried to keep from stepping on them as he moved forward towards the other tanks that were swerving left and right to try and throw off the mechs’ aim.

It didn’t buy them much time and eventually the last few tanks turned and tried to run back to base, but the ravens didn’t let them go, running up behind them at about half their speed and maintaining target locks long enough to gun them down with either plasma or a few of their missiles for when they got around one of the bends. Thanks to the battlemap they were able to fire up and over the forest, hitting the fleeing tanks and knocking them down in various states of damage, but keeping all of them from retreating back to base and reinforcing the defenses there.

“Cleanup crews, you’re a go,” Timothy reported to the dropship along with location tags for each of the downed tanks and some of the pilots and gunners that were trying to flee across the marshes and into the forest on foot.

Back in the dropship Veronica waited on her speeder bike with two passengers seated behind her, finally getting the ‘go’ order and accelerating out of the bay along with several others. Unlike the mechs the swampy ground didn’t bother them and they shot out across the waterway on anti-grav and quickly caught up to the big warhorses after several twists and turns in the geography, with the first thing Veronica saw was a pair of pirates making for the forest to her left.

She veered that way instantly, leaving the other targets of opportunity to those coming up behind her and wanted to get to these two before they disappeared in the trees, otherwise they’d have to go on foot and track them down…something she’d prefer not to do.

The Australian version of a commando lined up her speeder with the first of the pair and flew straight at him/her/it while popping out the stinger turret on the front of the bike. The four little barrels descended out from the otherwise smooth underside and began spitting the stun-laced paintballs in a flurry, mowing down the first runner and dropping him into the water.

Veronica swung the bike around quickly and made a second attack run, likewise stunning the other pirate before flying her passengers up to where the first went down and dropping one off, who quickly ran to the unconscious pirate and pulled the Critel out of the water before he could drown. Veronica got her other passenger in position to do the same then flew a lazy circle around the location as the two got to work, ensuring that their prisoners weren’t dead and having to do a few chest thumps on the Gavrosan to get some water out of his airways.

Once they were squared away breathing wise the commandos bound their captives and Veronica picked them up, latching them to the speeder then flying her unconscious guests back to the dropship for proper processing. After dumping them off there she returned and picked up her pair of wranglers and moved on, looking for more to round up and eventually having to dig through some of the tank debris to pull out those injured while the mechs continued to move on towards the base and out of sight.

When Timothy came around the last bend the pirate base came into view just in time for him to see a large transport take off from the nearby pad and slowly rise up into the air, underneath of which a hail of plasma fire hit his mech from various ranges. He targeted the closest of the defense batteries and fired back with a mauler blast that melted the stubby little turret set into the last of the water to his right before the marsh transitioned into what had been the tank dock.

There, along the water’s edge, was a straight pier with a half dozen more turrets spread out, behind which there were more distant towers and a half dozen other starships that were hurriedly prepping for launch. Timothy ignored them and the one now gaining distance overhead, knowing that the navy would deal with them. Right now he had base defenses to take down and he was walking right into them, meaning he didn’t have a lot of time to work with before his mech started taking damage.

The other batteries on the pier were outside of mauler range, so as Timothy walked his mech through the sloshy marsh he took aim at one of the towers with the rail gun in his left arm and tried for a ranged shot, nearly missing but clipping the side of the tower and knocking a chunk out of it as the metallic projectile shot straight through the concrete and blasted it into a shower of little chunks that rained down on the crews scrambling about below.

As he did the mechs in the other star began to approach from a different marsh entrance 90 degrees around the perimeter to the north and Timothy saw the towers on that side begin to open fire. There were so many he wondered exactly what the pirates had been planning to defend against, but they weren’t going to keep the mechs back. Even as a shield warning flashed in his cockpit the other bushwhacker targeted the same tower with its rail gun slug finishing the work he’d started.

The entire top half came crashing down, its stalk severed, taking that battery out of the fight and likewise removing one of the anti-air turrets that had been on top. That diminished the firepower being thrown at Timothy only slightly, with him turning to the right and running up on some of the ground turrets and slagging them with his mauler as the ravens ran forward drawing fire towards them as they hopped up on the dock and began crossing solid ground shooting at anything that shot back at them, including infantry.

As they pressed inward across a large open deck area that could have accommodated ten times the number of starships that were present, tiny missiles began sprouting from random points and fired into the mechs from infantry with portable launchers. The ravens ignored them at first, mowing down a few more turrets and making sure Timothy wasn’t going down, then they left the remaining big guns to the pair of bushwhackers and went after the infantry, firing a mix of stinger barrages and short range energy blasts that looked like a sprinkler of stun energy delivered via a bubble gum pop. They had to be very close, but any infantry stupid enough to run up near the ravens got the energy bubble in the face and went down like someone had hit their off switch.

Those further away were stitched with a hail of stingers, of which the mechs could carry a lot and fire with decent accuracy over range…and what they couldn’t accurately hit they took down with sheer numbers of projectiles. All across the landing pad/dock area the infantry began to pile up, both those with weapons and those fleeing to the ships. The mechwarriors didn’t care who they were, they were all getting stunned and let the infantry deal with them afterwards.

Timothy’s armor-damaged mech was still fully operational and he worked with his twin to target and take down the remaining towers and turrets in their area save for those at the far end that bracketed the entrance to the base. They were obscured by a ship still sitting on the deck, with others spaced around similar ‘solid’ areas surrounding the base, whether it be artificial surface or just hard packed dirt above the waterline.

All of them had to be taken out, so with one of the fully shielded ravens going first Timothy walked his mech around the parked starship and pounded the fairly large plasma turrets with his mauler as the raven played bait and got whacked for it. It lost all shields and got a kiss of melted armor before Timothy and the other bushwhacker took down the last of the wall-mounted turrets, then all three began to redeploy around the perimeter of the base and pick off the others while the two remaining ravens patrolled the area hunting more pirate infantry and crewers…all the while careful not to step on those they’d already rendered unconscious.

Jack ran out of the enclosure on the rover a few minutes later, coming out onto the landing pad and seeing a waypoint pop up on his helmet immediately. He and the other assault teams poured out of the small anti-grav transports that had brought them up to the base as speeders whipped around them on patrol and in the distance he could see the dropship that had brought them here climb up into the sky and began a controlled hover that would bring it across the gap and land it at the base.

Before that happened cleanup crews had to remove people and debris from the area, but that wasn’t Jack’s purpose here. He was going inside the base and neutralizing personnel, with a host of stinger weapons at his disposal along with one regular plasma pistol should the occasion warrant it. He felt a bit clumsy with all the weaponry on his back in the heavy gravity, but as soon as he passed through the blast doors that the mechs had melted a hole in, the base IDF took over and approximately normal gravity resumed, though it felt a bit on the light side to be honest.

That wasn’t surprising considering it wasn’t a Human base, but the lightness was welcome and he felt more like his normal self as his squad pushed ahead on the ever growing battlemap as various teams fanned out and added more hallways to the virtual display. It took several minutes before they ran into any personnel, with the first group being an ambush waiting for them.

He and several others took armor damage from the pirate plasma weapons, most of which looked to be of standard Zarati make, but their defenses kept them alive long enough to respond to the ambush and turn the tables on their attackers. They disabled most of them then pursued the fleers throughout the base, hunting them all down in ones and twos before reporting in that all areas had been safed, after which Jack and the others were put on scavenger duty, hauling the unconscious prisoners back to the loading dock for processing.

A similar course of events was occurring at the other 5 bases, with them being systematically overrun and most of the pirates being taken alive. Meanwhile the navy was intercepting the ships that managed to get off the surface all the while waiting for their jumpship to arrive. That would take another 5 weeks but the wait paid off and the Australians bagged the big ship as it came off the stellar jumpline and into planetary orbit, including the warships it carried and the most recent victim in the form of a damaged cargo vessel of independent origin.

The pirates also had a few captives of their own in one of the bases and the jumpship, which were recovered and freed…along with the stories of those who had not survived. In addition it was learned that this group of pirates had a second jumpship, so the stay for the Australians was lengthened as they waited for it to unwittingly walk into their hands, which it did some 3 months later. By that time the pirate bases had been cleaned out and somewhat destroyed by demolition crews. They left behind what remained and cleared out, returning the system to its neutral status and carrying their prisoners back to Star Force territory where they could be unloaded for a proper debriefing before being sent off to various prison facilities to being their long isolation sentences.

As an added bonus, the Australians were permitted to keep the captured jumpships, taking them back to their nearest colony to begin either refitting or disassembly, for the gravity drives alone were worth recycling.

To Admiral Laver it made him feel like they had become anti-pirate pirates, though he was pleased to return home with some loot, which Australia was more than happy to receive to bolster its limited resources.

5

June 4, 2652

Delorean System (Zeta Region)

Flux

Ren’jar’tel sat on the elevated walkway with his legs hanging out into the air and his arms resting on the guard rail as he watched the dance taking place below in the park. He wore a full body suit, including loose helmet, to keep his bioluminosity obscured from the other Axius denizens but the dancers below did not. They were all female Protovic and fully nude, which is what drew his interest, but for the other races watching below they were interested in seeing the light show, for the artful and graceful gymnastics routine they were putting on was made all the more impressive with the myriad of glowing purple and green patches of their bodies’ own natural colors.

There weren’t many Protovic in Axius, with most choosing to remain in their own territory, but Ren’jar’tel was born into the arm of Star Force and had never been off planet. Most of his associates were other middle-sized races, with the Flux colony being one of seven inhabited planetoids within the system and reserved for those near his size range. There were two other colonies that were for races smaller than him, and one for those larger, with the remaining three being hybrids, two on the small end and one on the larger.

That meant he could travel to a total of four worlds within the system if he chose, and live there also, but he had never had cause to leave Flux, let alone make a permanent move. In the past 12 years since he’d graduated from the maturia he had switched quarters twice, both times moving to different parts of the same city but going no further. He liked where he lived and the carefree lifestyle that Star Force provided, and while he was a bit curious as to what the Protovic worlds were like it wasn’t enough for him to investigate further. He was happy where he was and with the current scenery as some 23 of them danced about making for an erotic display to the handful of other Protovic in the crowd.

But that’s not why they were here in the open air park. They were dancing for aesthetic reasons, with most of the races not being able to recognize the sexuality in it. They thought it was a colorful acrobatics display, which it was, but as far as Ren’jar’tel was concerned there wasn’t anywhere else in the galaxy he wanted to be right now.

A few other spectators were on the railing with him, most of whom were standing as the mass of the crowd was milling about in the courtyard below on the grass. There were no seats or infrastructure, for the performance was a random one. More often than not various artists would come here to perform whatever it was they did, making the locale a hot spot for spectators. A few hours ago there had been a sparring display between a Critel and a Scionate, with both showing enough skill that their mismatched forms made for a good bit of action, but most of the displays were less impressive.

More often than not you’d get amateurs trying to polish their skills in whatever it was they did, building a fan base that could propel them into the credit-generating class of artists, but there were some, like this Protovic group, that simply danced to dance, using their natural glow to highlight their movements in the twilight hours.

It made for quite the spectacle, and luckily they made their circuit of performances known a day or so in advance, otherwise he would have missed it being over in the entertainment complex catching a vid. He found it funny how the crowd was completely oblivious to the fact that they were nude, making it almost his own private peep show, despite the fact that it was in public with a crowd of several hundred watching.

Normally nothing would have torn his eyes away from the dancers, but a silent mass rising across the last bit of sunlight on the horizon drew his attention, along with several others on the upper walkway whose vision wasn’t blocked by the trees.

“Whoa,” someone else said, pointing to the ship rising up from the surface. It was big…in fact, bigger than big, so much so that to the Protovic it looked like it didn’t belong in the atmosphere at all. From the direction it was he knew that the location had to be the D39 spaceport, for there was nothing that could handle a ship of that size anywhere within 100 kilometers.

“Troop transport,” an old Calavari said from behind him.

Ren’jar’tel turned back to look at the dancers, who were appearing to glow more and more as the last bit of sunlight faded out, but his curiosity overrode his sexual buzz for the moment and he half spun around on his stone seat. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ve traveled on many of them. The silhouette is familiar.”

“Whose troops?” a Martekal asked, blinking its three eyes eagerly.

“Ours,” the Calavari said matter of factly. “Those are either Axius ground or aerial troops leaving to fight, probably on the front somewhere…there, you can just see the top of the second ship now. They’re leaving in convoy to meet up with a jumpship stationed in stellar orbit.”

“I thought our troops stayed here to defend us?” Ren’jar’tel asked.

The Calavari shook his head slowly, as if that was the quickest movement his decayed body was capable of. “No, no…Axius does most of its fighting elsewhere. Only twice has one of our worlds come under attack, with both being little more than scouting runs by the enemy. Our troops are taking the fight to the lizards in order to keep them from coming here.”

“Those ships are huge,” someone else commented, now that the second one was fully visible and trailing slightly behind the other as it quietly rose up in altitude and headed for orbit at a tranquil pace.

“Most of Axius, like you, are civilians,” the Calavari explained, “but do not underestimate the size of Axius. There are, proportionally, enough of us wanting to fight that we have one of the largest militaries in the ADZ. You don’t see it because it’s spread across many systems, but it’s there, and right now you’re getting a glimpse of a tiny piece of it.”

“How many people are onboard those ships?” Ren’jar’tel asked.

“Difficult to say without knowing what races there are, but I’d conservatively estimate over 100,000 each, plus their fighting equipment, which will including mechs and other large craft.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I know because I once fought with them, long ago.”

“And now?”

“Now? As you can see I am not fit to fight those dancers, let alone a lizard. My time has passed and I earned my keep, now I sit back and watch others continue the fight.”

“Why haven’t you obtained self-sufficiency?” someone asked from behind the Calavari.

“I did, once, as do all our troops…but after I finished my duty, well, the strains of civilian life are so few that retaining your strength is not a priority. I am not proud to admit it, but I got lazy. It is a well-deserved, restful lazy, but my body has deteriorated none the less. I am content as I am, and have lived a long life. I have no regrets.”

“Why not start training again?” Ren’jar’tel asked.

The Calavari stared down at him, his bulk coming more from fat than muscle. “Perhaps the same reason you do not.”

Ren’jar’tel scoffed beneath his mask. “I’m not old.”

“But you are not self-sufficiency either…and do not try to tell me otherwise. I have been around too long not to be able to tell the difference, no matter what race you are. Ask yourself why you do not train, then you will have my answer in that it is the same.”

“I don’t need to train,” the Protovic said, not sure where this conversation was going.

“You’d rather watch others…act,” the Calavari said, pointing one of his lower hands at the dancers, “than do so yourself.”

“I’m not a dancer.”

“No, but you are inactive, as are most people in Axius. You are taught differently in the maturia, then you slowly lose what you gained there. It is common and due to a lack of motivation. I predate Axius, I was not born here, but back on one of the original Calavari worlds just before they fell. I fought to help my people survive, and that we have accomplished. Now I am content to pass the torch to others who wish to fight. I have earned my place here, whereas most of you do not nor ever will.”

“You’re saying we don’t belong here?” the Critel asked.

“No, no, do not misinterpret my meaning. I only say that most do not contribute. That is a luxury that Star Force allows you, and it is a luxury that I am enjoying right now, though as I said I earned my keep early on, just as those,” he said, pointing to the rising ships now three in number, “are doing now.”

“I’d rather watch the dancers,” Ren’jar’tel said, turning his attention back to them as they jumped and flipped around in the darkness, lighting the faces of the crowd nearest to them in their multi-colored glow.

“As you wish, youngling. Your path is yours to choose. Fortunately not all of Axius feels the same way, and a good number of them are heading out now to keep us and others safe.”

“Why don’t you go with them?” Ren’jar’tel asked, his attention now fully back on the dancers.

“I lost one leg, and it is something that I do not wish to repeat.”

The Protovic spun around, seeing both of the big Calavari’s legs from the knees down to his shoes in fleshy yellow/orange.

“It was regrown,” he explained, “but with it went a great deal of my strength. As did my self-sufficiency.”

“Sounds like you quit,” Ren’jar’tel said, wishing the Calavari would just shut up and let him enjoy the nude dancers in peace.

“At least I had something to quit. Most never begin,” he said, followed by some heavy footsteps as the old man walked off to Ren’jar’tel’s relief.

The Protovic sat and watched the dancers for several more minutes, then glanced back at the now black horizon. The cityscape below was lit, with just enough of a haze to block out most of the stars, though it was more than enough to light the underside of the stream of transports rising up and disappearing in the distance. He saw at least a dozen, once again in awe at the sheer size of them, and now a bit more so knowing who and what was inside.

He shook the thought off and returned his attention to the park and the living campfire in the center that was dancing around. He wasn’t a fighter and never would be, but he was glad the others were and silently wished them good luck before his mind was once again lost in the spectacle of his nude kin and he returned to the normal ebb and flow of Axius civilian life.

Waiting in orbit around the central star a Ma’kri floated next to a slew of Axius jumpships, all of which were taking on personnel and cargo from the various planets. The Ma’kri was a recent arrival, bringing with it an Archon commander and some light battle damage from a recent engagement. Two of the Ka’sevron cannons had been knocked out, but the rest of the weaponry remained intact and the ship wasn’t retreating to a shipyard for repairs. With a bit of secondary armor covering the damage in the primary plating it had come here to pick up reinforcements, then was heading back into battle at the head of an Axius fleet.

While unknown to most, Axius was technically a branch of mainline Star Force, but one focused on non-Human adjuncts. They used all the same technology as the Human forces did, and as such the Axius-produced drones were the same make and model of the ones produced in Epsilon Eridani or Sol. There were some variations in mechs and fighters, but that was largely given to the fact that the different races had different talents and needs. Valeries were used more than skeets, and the whole line of mini-mechs was not present within the Human mainline forces, but otherwise they were the same and operated out of the mainline hierarchy of Administrators, meaning that in the upper levels Humans ran Axius the same way they ran the Core Region.

The Calavari were different, with Human oversight and command but with the Calavari handling a lot of internal decisions on their own and customizing their equipment to their liking. Axius was a mixed bag of races that was growing with each decade that passed, making it the communal mixing ground that Star Force was using to unite the various races in the ADZ as well as to make use of their skillsets. That generated a unique Axius culture, but not a singular identity, for different Axius colonies had different feels to them, some with denizens only a few inches tall where others were multiple meters in height.

They were all Axius, and all Star Force, but unlike the Calavari there was no nationalist bond uniting them. They were a scattering of individuals, most of whom were living off of Star Force’s generosity…and that didn’t come anywhere close to the level of self-reliance necessary for a semi-independent status within the empire.

But it had never been intended to become that. Axius was like the majority of Human colonies who existed primarily with a lazy and uninterested population, but out of which enough volunteers came to take care of the rest. Axius produced far less warriors and workers by percent than the Human colonies did, but the sheer size of Axius, which now outstripped all but the Kiritak, meant it was fielding a high number of troops and resources that Star Force had come to rely upon.

Right now that meant calling up troops waiting for just this occasion, and doing so within a day of the Ma’kri ship coming into the system. Where they had been extensively training, now the Axius troops were being shuffled onto transports and taken up to the jumpships...and after loading the Archon would be taking them to locations unknown to do battle against what they also didn’t know. The Axius troops weren’t the most veteran in Star Force, but they were solid and motivated, willing to go where needed with no questions asked. Some of them had even migrated over to the mainline fleets and armies, where their physiology allowed them to pass the Human requirements.

That was rare but not unheard of, with the Axius format much more beneficial in taking advantage of the differences in the races and their capabilities. As such, while the Human mainline troops might be the more skilled, Axius would often pack a bigger punch due to its diversity of fighting styles and equipment…so long as it was properly used. The more complex something was the more likelihood of it being messed up, which was why there was almost always an Archon involved when Axius deployed.

This one took the combined fleet of Axius cargo ships and warships across Zeta Region and into Beta, depressing so low that they nearly dropped into Gamma over the weeks that passed but ended up on the lowest border of the Skarron advance. Here they were still pushing forward, not yet having encountered the edge of the ADZ for it angled back around the curve that it was. The troops here were not from the same source as those now fully engaged with the lizards, and these were continuing their typical push into the weaker systems that surrounded the ADZ without too much resistance.

The Voku border was far below on the galactic plane, leaving no one in the area with the strength to repel what was really an easy gobbling up of systems by the enemy, but in recent years Star Force had been pushing its diplomatic efforts out beyond the ADZ and establishing contact with hundreds of new races so they could share intel on their mutual enemies.

This continuing push below the ADZ had been one such instance where an associate of Star Force’s had relayed to them the reconnaissance reports that had allowed a small fleet of Ma’kri to seek out and engage several of the Skarron expeditionary fleets, blocking a few invasions but eventually biting off more than they could chew. The eventual reinforcements had come and it was either time to back off or up Star Force’s game…with Flynn-046 choosing the latter and sending back one of his ships to pull up Axius reinforcements so they could remove one of the forward Skarron strongholds.

Do that and they’d put the Skarron offensive behind schedule enough to buy the local region a decade, at least, with Star Force coordinating those local races that were willing and helping them organize a stronger, mutual defensive line to avoid the easy gains the Skarrons had been previously making.

Star Force couldn’t be everywhere at once, but a few hard strikes here and there coupled with a strategic game plan for the locals could make a world of difference in the near future, and since Star Force’s end game was predicated on unlocking more and more pyramid tech they had to try and keep the ADZ from being totally surrounded, and to do that they had to work and think proactively.

And when the Archons called, Axius was there to answer, as was every other military force within the empire…and they were using them all, right down to the more developed wards, to fight battles beyond mere self-defense and save as many people as they could, all the while more and more refugees fled both the lizard and the Skarron offenses and continued to pour into the ADZ by whatever means they had to get there.

6

June 19, 2652

Unnamed System (Beyond the ADZ)

Point 6

The seda decelerated against the gas giant’s gravity well, with the massive jump cradle surrounding it like a spider grasping its prey as it slowed the medium-sized station down using its considerable engine power. Already in orbit, having arrived a few minutes ahead, was the Canderous fleet some 18 ships strong with another 34 on the way, trailing slightly behind the seda in loose escort formation.

None of them were jumpships, or in the case of Canderous, jump ‘rods’ for the spacefaring civilization had forgone the traditional Star Force model and rebuilt their fleet based on the Skarron navy, in which each individual ship was capable of making slow jumps between star systems. Now every Canderous ship from cargo hauler to warship was interstellar jump capable, with only their sedas requiring a lift. Those were meant to be stationary, but their fleet wasn’t, and the idea of a number of ships getting stranded in a system because their jumpship malfunctioned or was destroyed was something the Canderians weren’t too keen on.

They lived in space, operated in space, and only went planetside to gather resources or to fight…with this current mission being right up their alley, for there wasn’t a habitable planet within the unclaimed system that was situated beyond the Alpha and Epsilon Regions. The gas giant the seda was being placed into orbit around had a slew of moons and there were six other sizeable rocky, yet barren worlds without atmosphere for Canderous to harvest resources from, but there was nothing here even remotely capable of housing a standard civilization.

Star Force could have built colonies on the worlds, contained within sealed cities like they had in many other locations, but this system was to be Canderous only with no ADZ resources devoted to it. The seda had within it all the necessary crews and factories required to build another just like it…and many more. Right now it was isolated and alone, with only a handful of warships to guard it against threats in the region, but those threats were minor as far as Star Force’s scouting reports indicated. No, Canderous was here for another reason beyond colonization.

While others built up the defenses within and around the ADZ Canderous had been tasked to go beyond it, into the expected expansion path of the lizards and build up outposts that they could monitor the local areas from and hopefully pick off small scale invasions before they grew to the point where the mainline fleet would be required. So many systems were falling to the lizards simply due to the fact that no one was around to fight them, with them picking up valuable planets with almost no resistance at all.

Sure, there were major battles being fought elsewhere, but the lizards were assaulting so many systems that neither Star Force nor anyone else could counter them all, let alone detect them. Even with their relay grid and progressively faster communication between star systems there was always a lag, and that relay system didn’t extend beyond the ADZ save for a few locations, meaning outside the ADZ the lizards were gobbling up easy targets, some of whom Star Force only learned about from survivors fleeing their way.

While lizard territory was too vast to contain, Canderous had been tasked with slowing them down. To that end they were picking 29 widely spaced systems and putting down roots, in this case a seda in each, and developing those systems while scouting out the surrounding area and establishing permanent patrols once they built up their fleets. Each location was well ahead of the lizards current lines, with the intention to be that Canderous could be firmly established in their outposts and fielding sizeable fleets by the time the first lizard ships arrived, but with their tendency to hop over some systems and go for others there was no way of telling when it would be, but sooner or later they would come and Canderous would be waiting for them.

They knew they didn’t have the firepower to resist a major invasion, but what they planned to build their outposts into was a small scale, high numbered fleet that could monitor and hit the type of seed planting invasions that the lizards had originally hit Epsilon Eridani with…a handful of ships that would create a lizard colony and grow their way into greater strength. If they could detect and take out those when they arrived, they could deny the lizards hundreds of planets going forward. In the greater scheme of things that was a small number, but the less they had to work with the better.

The lizards were veterans at fighting in multiple arenas simultaneously and Star Force was going to take a page out of their book, letting Canderous play with their expeditionary forces and cause them the kind of havoc the lizards typically caused others.

To that end the giant seed that the seda was dropped into a stable orbit and immediately began sending out short range craft to the nearby moons, landing mining equipment and other gear there for the work crews to begin assembling. The seda was purposefully over staffed, knowing that they weren’t going to get any personnel reinforcements for several years to come and the local birth rate wasn’t going to be enough to supply what they needed. The rest of Canderous would make up for that, but aside from this initial seda and fleet, Point 6 was going to have to build everything else on site.

The jump cradle detached from the seda after it was secured into a fixed orbit and left immediately, capable of traveling far faster on its journey back to the ADZ than any of its previous escorts could. It would report back that the outpost was now operational and growing, but beyond that the Canderians would be on their own for months, if not years before the next ship came to check on them. They were about 3 months away from the ADZ given their ‘slow’ gravity drives and more than 3 weeks away from the nearest Point outpost, making them truly on their own with no relay links back to the ADZ…only courier ships should they send one.

But that didn’t worry Canderous, for this environment was one that they lived and thrived within. They’d chosen a system far enough away from the lizard lines to give them plenty of time to build and they set out to do that immediately, sending only two warships away to begin scouting the neighboring systems and updating the limited maps they’d been given. This was their turf now and they needed to get to know it in detail if they were going to end up monitoring and lightly defending all of it, not through establishing bases and putting up Sentinels, but by creating and maintaining patrolling fleets to knock down any small scale invasions that might occur, or rather would. It was the timetable and location that was in question.

With the two ships jumping out, the rest spread around the system pulling more detailed surveys, dropping off sensor probes and comm relays, and otherwise fully claiming the uninhabited system as theirs. How much traffic passed through en route to other systems they didn’t know, but there hadn’t been so much as a scratch of infrastructure in the system when previously scouted, nor was it marked on any of the local maps as belonging to anyone. It was simply one of the ‘junk’ systems set in between the others and used as a hopping off point to shorten jumplines or avoid bad ones.

Canderous intended for it to remain that way, with them not taking up any positions near the star other than dropping off some monitoring probes. If no one knew they were in the system that was fine, they’d just build quietly and keep an eye on the local star systems, waiting and watching for the inevitable arrival of their enemy while the rest of Star Force fought the major battles.

It was the small ones that were winning the lizards the most territory, and there it was that Canderous had to counter them, at least in this small piece of the galaxy. And as was typical of the Canderians, they were eager for the lizards to get to them, for as many engagements as they’d had against the Skarrons they’d seen less combat than others. And for a purely military civilization that just wouldn’t do, hence their volunteering for this part of the master plan before Paul had even had a chance to suggest them for it.

Within two days the first of the processed ore shipments arrived in the seda and the factories began to come alive, building structural components and other parts needed to begin constructing larger mining facilities on the moons. Those would then produce more output and the process would snowball as it had many times before as Canderous followed well-established colonization protocols. It would be a few years before they had another seda built, but once they did the personnel reinforcements would start flowing in from the ADZ and the Point 6 outpost would continue to grow, eventually producing its own starships and everything else they’d need, increasing the patrols and area around the system that they were monitoring.

Like little balloons, their detection and monitoring range grew out spherically, creating a ‘safe’ zone for the locals that the lizards were not aware of. It would be 16 years before Point 6 saw their first sign of enemy incursion, but when it came they’d be ready and the lizards wouldn’t know where the resistance was coming from, further confounding their expeditionary forces as to the location of the enemy and where the weak spots were for them to spread into.

Naru flew a few feet over the floor, carrying a small satchel as the Nestafar’s hummingbird-like wings accelerated to compensate for the extra weight. She was on her way to a birthing ceremony and had forgot the gift, scurrying back to her quarters to get it and hoping to arrive in time. One of her maturia sisters was giving birth to 3 new members of the Nestafar civilization, with each one celebrated as a blessing now that word of their race’s extinction was common knowledge across the ADZ.

Most didn’t know that some of them remained, as wards of Star Force and tucked away on a private planet with a few other races that had suffered similar ill fate. Those were either in a waiting state, with their future uncertain, or they’d chosen to remain wards and forgo any ideas of independence. Star Force was gracious enough to extend that option, with their needs being taken care of in perpetuity, with no worries about surviving into the future.

The Nestafar were past the waiting stage now, and chose to live in seclusion. Their population was small, small enough to fill only three large cities on the planet with a fourth slowly under construction. They had no dreams of one day rebuilding their huge civilization, but in simply making a place for themselves to live here, peaceably, and to do their small part in helping the overall empire and ADZ thrive…but from a distance.

Part of the desire for seclusion was the lingering resentment in the ADZ against the Nestafar, but as that gradually died out over time along with those who had lived during that era, the Nestafar that had turned their backs on their own empire and fled to Star Force simply no longer had the desire for glory. They wanted to build, but not expand, making their granted cities a new home they could be proud of, and welcoming each new member into the fold immediately as they arrived.

The birthing ceremony was one of Naru’s favorites, but one that she’d only been on the other side of once. It was pleasure mixed with pain, but it marked not only the end of the pregnancy but the beginning of the younglings’ journey as they were transitioned into a maturia within minutes, and all done in ceremonious glory. The mother would then be allowed to rest, with her responsibilities complete, and would be showered with attention and gifts as a show of compensation for the duty to her people that she had just acquitted.

And it wasn’t a pleasant one, for a Nestafar womb could hold up to as many as five infants simultaneously, turning the mother into more or less a fleshy orb in the final stages. Naru hadn’t liked that at all and didn’t intend to go through the process again, but she recognized the importance of it and figured that the four Nestafar she had acted as a conduit to bring into the universe were enough to acquit her duty…but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to support and praise those that continued to reproduce, knowing the toll it took on them.

With that thought stuck firmly in her mind she flew as quickly as she could, arriving at the ceremony as the first of the younglings was born. No one could see the actual birthing, for those involved were behind a screen, but the first of the transition canisters came out with the youngling inside and ceremonial guards flanking it as the hover pod was taken across the chamber for all those gathered to see, then off down a special hallway to the nearby maturia where the little one would begin his life and eventual training.

Naru cheered along with the others, then did the same as the other two came out in sequence. Once they were gone and a few minutes passed the screens lowered with the mother now visible and clearly fatigued, but the onslaught of well-wishers surrounded her and she received them with joy and thanks.

Naru was relieved she’d made it in time and gave her sister the gift she’d been working to make for the past three weeks. It was a head piece with an ornate script across the front and sides with several jewels inset, and it had cost her quite a few credits to acquire the pieces, after which she’d done the construction and inscribing herself.

The gift went over well and Naru was pleased, then she excused herself from the remainder of the ceremony and rushed over to another part of the city…the bioharvest zone, where she had taken a short break from work to attend. The Nestafar dropped to the floor at the entrance and proceeded on foot the rest of the way into the harvesting center, then made her way over to the section she’d been working on before and stepped up to the control cupola that had another two people inside working the remote controls.

“That was fast,” one of them said, his attention focused on the displays.

“The ceremony is still continuing, but the younglings have been born and I didn’t want to delay things here so I hurried back.”

“Good, because we lost one harvester already.”

“What happened?” Naru asked, activating the controls to one of the full growth pods.

“One of the tines snapped. First one I’ve had in years do that.”

“What did it hit?”

“I don’t know. We couldn’t find anything in the pod. Must have just been a freak thing.”

“I don’t like that. How far behind are we?”

“Enough,” the other Nestafar said, taking a brief break to move his harvester from one pod to another.

“Let’s get to it then,” Naru said, passing her armature that was attached to the ceiling down through the open top of the pod, which now only had a thin energy shield keeping the concentrated CO2 environment inside. The Tanazi bushes within were stacked thick against one another, but with just enough of a gap that Naru could push the harvester down between them, bending aside some of the supple branches. Using camera relays she began cutting off certain branches and leaving others, with the severed pieces going into the harvester and being transported up a conduit and into the ceiling.

The trick of it was to cut the right branches without killing the Tanazi, and to date computerized harvesters had a less than stellar success rate than guided ones. It was labor intensive, but the Tanazi branches provided three major foodstuff components used across Star Force and were grown virtually everywhere. This bioharvest facility was different in that it only grew Tanazi, with the intent being to export the products off planet after all local needs were met.

Those needs were exceeded by other facilities, with this one and others like it being the Nestafar’s means of contributing to the empire on the whole. They were ill-suited for combat, at least when armored up to Star Force’s standards and taught to fight in honorable ways that didn’t involve massive risk and sacrifice, but in truth most of the Nestafar here weren’t interested in fighting. Those few individuals that were had left long ago, to where Naru didn’t know, but virtually all of the others simply wanted to be left alone and live in peace, with foodstuff production allowing them to help repay Star Force for all they’d done and were continuing to do for them.

And Star Force seemed happy with the arrangement, for they made no demands on the Nestafar. They expected them to produce what they claimed they would, but beyond that there was no pressure put on them to do more or other things. Regular shipments of the Tanazi components would be seen leaving via dropship almost round the clock, but other than the cargo ships there was virtually no orbital traffic. The Nestafar and the other wards on the planet were kept isolated and secure, with Naru and the others glad for their little bit of tranquility in an otherwise chaotic and violent galaxy.

7

August 3, 2652

Solar System

Ganymede

Arvil Netherson was walking down one of the main promenades in the Clan Saiyan capitol city, heading to catch a few friends at the theatre for a newly released vid when he passed by the 9 foot tall statue of Vegeta that marked one of the city’s status boards. More like a wall, the glowing panels held up to date information on the Clan and its rivals and Arvil swung over to it, knowing he had a few minutes to spare. He worked in the fabrication division of the Clan, building structural components that techs would later use to create new infrastructure, and their output was continually monitored along with the rest of Clan activity.

On the status board he went to the fabrication panel straight off, knowing its location by habit rather than reading the tiny icons on display, for there was a huge amount of data being presented with everything from naval ship count to the latest trials results on display…all of which was translated into points that made up the power ranks that the Clans obsessed over. It was friendly competition, but it drove them to be better than the rest, keeping the Clans ahead of the rest of the empire despite their smaller size.

Arvil saw that in overall fabrication rank the Saiyans were still sitting in 36th position, but their lead over Clan Mantle had diminished, due no doubt to the new production facility the rival Clan had built in the Istar System. Numbers from outside Sol were always laggy, but the small jump in their output score was no coincidence. The new facility must be up and running, adding a bit more industrial muscle to Mantle, but the question was, was it fully operational yet?

Arvil didn’t like the idea of them slipping any further than they had. 8 years ago they’d held the 31st position and were 18th in infrastructure production, which his division directly fed. Saiyan operations hadn’t lessened, in fact they’d slowly been increasing both the efficiency of the facility that Arvil worked in and were adding a handful of others, bumping up their score but falling behind a few other Clans that were growing faster than they were.

Some were doing it, he knew, simply by building a slew of new facilities. On Ganymede that wasn’t an option, given that most available land space on the moon had already been exhausted. It was mostly one endless cityscape now shared by several Clans and a few others, with any building being done requiring the upgrade of existing facilities or the demolition thereof to make room for larger, newer models.

The Saiyans had been upgrading their capitol in such a way for centuries, choosing to stack as much of their powerbase here and a few other locations rather than going for the shotgun approach and spreading throughout the Core Region and even the ADZ as other Clans had. That was both a matter of defense and pride, for the Saiyans wanted one central location that they could call home and one that would serve as a stronghold upon which the rest of their Clan could center.

Arvil had been working long and hard to help his Clan build up their production rates, even though he was only involved in a tiny bit of it…but that was true of everyone, for while the Clan was nowhere near the size of, say, the Calavari, it was a large, interstellar civilization of its own with considerable resources, not to mention military assets.

Those were displayed on another panel, with Clan Saiyan being ranked 84th in naval power, but with a skill score of 56th. The skill score came from the Trials, in which both Archons and other military personnel participated. They were challenges and war games meant to test and hone one’s skill absent actual combat, and the Clans took them very seriously, even more so than the sports leagues that had the Clan competing against each other through civilian tournaments. The Trials were watched by virtually everyone in the Clan, with Arvil rooting on the Saiyans whenever he could.

The Clan was like one giant team, no matter what you did, and they all had each other’s back automatically. That was the culture in the Clan, and as such everyone wanted to know how their ‘team’ was doing, hence the status boards, which were constantly changing. Some trends held true, such as the Sabers always being in the top 5 in the naval categories. They had the most skilled fleet on a regular basis, but they would burn off a lot of drones in real combat, diminishing their fleet strength scores and dropping them in rank.

That didn’t affect skill scores from the Trials, but how much a Clan had in terms of resources was also tied to how much it lost, and the Sabers were more involved in defending the front lines than most Clans. That was due, no doubt, to Archon Paul being the mastermind behind the current war plan, but his Clan was getting hit with losses sufficient to knock them down to the 3rd spot presently. Arvil knew the Sabers had a huge industrial base that would replace the ships that were lost quite quickly, but with other Clans not getting so hard hit with the brutal combat their fleet numbers were increasing, and hence their rank was eclipsing the otherwise dominant Sabers.

There were thousands of ranks displayed on the board, some in broad categories, but more in the breakdowns of those categories, letting each individual be able to track his or her own contributions and see how others were doing, both in their own Clan and others. Some of the board panels were mutable, with a touchscreen that would allow more detailed information on other Clans to be brought up, but at the moment Arvil wasn’t interested in those stats…his eyes were drawn to the news panel, which was detailing various current activities that his Clan was involved in.

A breaking news beacon was flashing, indicating that the status update was less than 60 seconds old. Arvil and the others nearby, including those just walking and not paying any attention to the numbers, all stopped and looked at the flashing lights that also were accompanied by a small chime that quickly disappeared. Someone near that panel touched it and amped up the volume, with a reporter standing inside a holographic map detailing the location of a system within the ADZ near the border.

“We’ve just received word that a Clan Saiyan fleet stationed at Oxion has responded to a lizard incursion of the ADZ. It was detected early by the stellar monitoring system and relayed through the comm grid, allowing the Saiyans and two Axius fleets to respond before they could gain a sufficient foothold. The following images come directly from the Saiyan flagship involved in the fight, and as you can see there was orbital bombardment of multiple surface sites on the uninhabited planet.”

“The images you’re looking at now are without context, for we’ve only just received them, but what we can tell you is that the lizard incursion was successfully uprooted and their base destroyed. No word yet on numbers of casualties or ships lost, but the Saiyan fleet we know to have been comprised of at least 20 Warship-class jumpships in addition to the Command Ship. That underscores that this was not a small incursion, and is to date the furthest inside the border the lizards have attempted to jump.”

The reporter went on, with multiple battle footage displays popping up giving those watching views of both orbital and surface combat, all without tags or context, but it was enough to make Arvil’s skin crawl with a mixture of fear and anger. Star Force and its allies maintained a neutral zone around the ADZ where they kept back lizard forward bases through a nearly continuous cycle of battles. Clan Saiyan was involved in some of them, from time to time, though the Clans were used more as defensive emplacements within the ADZ while the mainline fleets were the ones taking the offensive.

But for the lizards to have bypassed the neutral zone and the border worlds to set up an attempted foothold inside the ADZ was a very bold attack. Star Force obviously squashed it, with them unable to resupply that far inside without their convoys getting picked apart on the way in, but the mere fact that they’d tried and had gotten as far as they did was ominous and Arvil had to remind himself that the front wasn’t an armored wall, but rather a collection of tiny dots…and there was nothing keeping the lizards or anyone else from moving between or over those dots.

Any system in the ADZ could theoretically get hit, but with monitoring systems around most of the stars any attacking fleet passing through would be detected and the word would spread, albeit slowly due to the lag, but that meant the enemy couldn’t sneak inside and set up a base with years of anonymity to work with. Arvil didn’t know how many systems still lacked the monitoring devices, but he knew there were regular patrols going through them to prevent just such a thing and give Star Force a heads up if someone was trying to grow a forward base behind their defensive ‘lines.’

There was no way the lizards had more than a few months to get set up before they were confronted, meaning that they must have smuggled in a huge fleet as opposed to the single ships that were reportedly conquering entire systems elsewhere, planting a colony somewhere out of the way and growing the troops and building the ships that would then conquer it over subsequent years. That couldn’t happen here, so the lizards had to take another tactic, but what the hell had they been thinking?

That incursion was doomed to failure…or was that the point and the whole thing just a test of the ADZ defenses?

Arvil didn’t know, for while he followed the activities of his Clan closely military matters weren’t his specialty. He stuck around long enough to see if there were any kill counts given, with a stats sheet popping up a few minutes later. A murmur of approval whispered through the crowd as they saw that the Saiyan fleet had a 19/1 kill count against the lizards, though with varying ship sizes that wasn’t always an accurate measure, but it was enough to get the point across that it had been a major beatdown.

The two Axius fleets were marked with a 13/1 and a 15/1 count, which garnered a sense of pride in Arvil that he left the status boards with. The Clans were better than the rest of Star Force, maybe not by much in some cases, but their accused ‘obsession’ with training and rank had pressed them to a higher level, from warriors down to techs, making the Clans superior across the board.

Now granted, it had been Axius troops and not the mainline fleets involved in the battle, and a lot of Clan personnel made up the mainline fleets, or rather ex-Clan, but Arvil took it as a positive regardless that the Saiyan fleet had outperformed the two Axius ones, and he wasn’t alone in that analysis, as most of the rest of his Clan, spread across the Core Region, would utter similar sentiments in the coming days.

When Arvil arrived at the theater he spread the word, with the recent news consuming the chatter until the lights dropped and the vid began.

Just beyond the edge of Beta Region Clan Meteor had an even larger fleet of warships, with some of their best naval crews hammering the Skarron defenses over one of their strongholds left isolated by the Voku’s semi-blockade of the region around Achkor. It wasn’t the first Skarron-conquered world that Star Force was taking back from them, but it was one of the largest ones they’d tried to assault and required a significant force above and beyond what the Meteors could field alone.

No other Clans were with them, nor were there any mainline troops, instead this was the first real test of the Bsidd military. Clan Meteor was taking the lead in the assault and doing the heavy hitting, both in orbit and soon to be on the surface as well, but given that this was a ‘safe’ assault and it was highly unlikely that the Skarrons were going to get any sizeable reinforcements past the Voku, especially when all available ships were being diverted to counter the knife blade that the lizards were thrusting into Skarron territory, it had been deemed the best opportunity for the Bsidd to get their feet wet…or whatever you wanted to call the ends of their various appendages.

Their military was new and green, but it was large. They had 5 times as many ships here as the Meteors did, and even more so in the way of ground troops. Larissa had even come out to personally lead this assault and make sure everything went smoothly, for it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. They’d brought sufficient force with them to take the planet, but it was going to be a hard fought victory like everything else, for they didn’t have enough available ships and troops to just spam the enemy out of existence…not yet anyway.

Larissa knew the Bsidd had to get combat experience so they could pass it on to those coming up in the ranks behind them. A huge yet green military was a really bad idea, and so long as they had a mostly predictable assault like this available for them to fight and genuinely contribute to without risking the entire operation, Larissa was going to make use of it and deployed herself here to counter any unforeseen surprises.

She was not going to take the Bsidd up against the lizards yet, for they were too devious and her Bsidd too inexperienced. While they could still win, no doubt, she could end up losing thousands of them and that wasn’t a risk she was going to take. Her Clan Meteor was going to take it to the Skarrons and the Bsidd were going to play backup, with her channeling as much responsibility their way as she thought viable, with an ongoing reassessment taking place in her mind starting as soon as the first Bsidd-controlled drone entered combat.

Larissa knew her Clan could handle this on their own, though it would be tight and stretch out much longer than wise. Give the Skarrons too much time and they might sneak a supply convoy through or find a way to make her life hell through sheer resistance if she didn’t have a large amount of troops to work with. The trailblazer knew she could get the job done without the Bsidd, and always had that as a backup plan if something went wrong and they suddenly showed they weren’t ready, but they weren’t just here to watch and she needed them if they were going to efficiently and cleanly kick the crap out of the Skarrons and take the planet…and she intended to personally make sure that happened.

With the orbital battle heating up she began throwing a few Bsidd warships into the fight, testing and evaluating them on the fly then gradually bringing in more and more over the coming days with their performance being satisfactory for a first outing. Had it been her Clan troops she would have been irate over the sloppiness, but the Bsidd were green and needed time to learn, and so long as it was only equipment being lost it was an acceptable price to pay for the lesson…especially since she knew what kind of industrial powerbase the Bsidd were building, with a few hundred drones being a small order in the near future as their growth rate continued to snowball.

When Larissa sent troops to ground they were all Clan, with the Bsidd being reserved for cleanup operations and kept far from the enemy’s big walkers. The Bsidd’s own mechs didn’t see their counterparts on the battlefield until well past the halfway point in the campaign, with a few of their best being added to some Clan formations where they could protect them if things went very bad…but they didn’t, with the Bsidd mechwarriors faring better than their naval counterparts.

But it was the infantry that stood out the most, with the larger Bsidd variants, armored in typical Star Force style, owning their Skarron counterparts. The Hobbits could barely scratch them, and the muscle behind the otherwise looking ‘spindly’ Bsidd was enough to be able to wrestle the Skarrons to the ground, even when they were wearing their own elite armor.

Larissa fed them into the combat formations gently, not wanting to take any great risk, but even she was surprised by their effectiveness, for the original Bsidd troops had never been anything close to this strong in combat. They’d always been lightly used as cannon fodder with their numbers being their primary strength, but now that each of them was being treated as a valuable component and armored/armed as such, the future applications were literally mouthwatering with Larissa putting them in more and more combat situations against the Skarrons to get a better test of their capabilities.

Their strategic sense was lacking, she discovered, but that was just due to them being green and would be something they’d have to work through like everyone else, but their hand to hand effectiveness was nothing short of amazing, and even their smaller infantry units were proving to be more than competent once she let them wade into combat.

The entire campaign took some 9 months to complete, which was fast in terms of a planetary takeover, and a large part of that was due to the Bsidd being able to take on more duties than Larissa had expected and freeing up her Clan troops to make quicker and more forceful advances without having to spread out into defensive arrangements that the Bsidd were now capable of maintaining.

At the end of it all Larissa was genuinely impressed and already making plans for tweaks to the Bsidd military structure…along with a message to the rest of the trailblazers indicating what a gem she’d stumbled across and how down the road the Bsidd were going to add so much firepower to Star Force that she didn’t even want to try and estimate the impact they’d have.

But it was going to be huge.

8

August 30, 2652

Typhis System (lizard territory)

Hashfa

Uxtral sat in his Valerie cockpit, waiting in standby mode as his fighter was tucked away safely inside an armored transport waiting to head down to the surface when the order was given. He’d been sitting in his angular ship for more than 2 hours, but for some reason they were being held up with his transport sitting in middle orbit along with the rest of the non-warships as the Calavari navy continued to clean up the orbital clutter.

The major battle had been won, and won convincingly, some three weeks ago with the Calavari breaking through the lizard defense fleet and taking out their orbital battle stations, but instead of stay and fight to the death, the surviving lizard cruisers had broken up and fled around the system. The ground offensive had been held off until they could be hunted down and killed, for their ability to aid surface troops was well known, and Uxtral and the others waiting to get into the action did not want to see one of their silhouettes approaching on the horizon once they’d entered battle.

Their Wisp-class fighters were bad enough, not that the craft was any match for the Valerie. Star Force tech had made them even more potent than their original designs and the Calavari prided themselves on the effectiveness of the tiny craft and their being used by many allies and other factions within Star Force. The mainline and Clan aerial divisions still preferred their skeets, with a never ending conversation over which was superior, but both were far better craft than the lizard fighters, which didn’t even bother to come equipped with shields.

Their advantage was in their numbers, for the tiny craft were agile, had decent firepower, and almost no defense. That made them easier to produce and the lizards were doing so in vast numbers. Uxtral hadn’t fought them many times to date, but when he had they were always outnumbering the Calavari at least 10 to 1 and fighting in packs, as if 5 or more of their fighters were a single unit that you had to contend with. They flanked as often as they could and whittled away at your shields and armor until one eventually broke through…and unlike going up against a single opponent, when you killed one of the wisps you only diminished the incoming firepower against you slightly, making for battles that seemed to never have a pause.

But that was their only advantage. The lizards had even tried adding shields to their fighters once, but after several horrific encounters the heavier wisps were never seen again, for the reduction in their agility made them so much easier to kill. It was clear that the lizards were experimenting and adapting, as they always did, but more so in recent years as they tried to crack the puzzle that Star Force had become. It was true there were other races involved in the defense of the ADZ, but Star Force was the skeleton on which all others were fixed, both in terms of defenses and technology.

The Calavari were Star Force through and through now, but they retained their individuality as a race and even Uxtral felt the debt they owed the Humans weigh on his shoulders, despite the fact he had been born well after the fall of the original Calavari empire. Star Force had rescued the survivors, preserving a few of their worlds and bringing them back into the ADZ to train on others, reshaping and enhancing the Calavari military and overall civilization into what it was now.

Or so the stories went. Uxtral had to take their word for it, for he had never known life outside of Star Force, but he felt the urge to prove the Calavari worthy and to take on a greater share of the combat duties. The Humans had more than done their part, and many other races in the ADZ were sitting on their fat assess doing nothing. All those in Star Force were contributing in some way, and he didn’t fault any of them, but the freeloaders that sat in safety and complained about the very empire keeping them alive and prosperous irritated Uxtral and most other Calavari to no end.

But more than that they didn’t like playing a support role. They viewed the Humans as their brothers, and the other races within Star Force as the same, only lesser so, as if they were younglings whereas the Humans were elder siblings. The Calavari wanted to rise up on par with their brothers and share the load they’d more or less been single handedly carrying while everyone else licked their wounds and used the time given to them to retool and grow.

The Humans were still in command, or their elites were anyway, and they’d been holding the Calavari back for some time. Uxtral grudgingly agreed that it had been necessary in the past, but now was different. The Calavari race was resurgent and taking back worlds from the lizards…a few small ones here and there, but they were taking and holding them, with few reprisals coming their way. Some said it was because of the Skarron war the lizards were fighting, but Uxtral knew their enemy hadn’t been ignoring them. All along the border there were raids and full blown battles going on. No, the lizards just hadn’t found a way to deal with Star Force yet, and they weren’t committed to sending the numbers of troops and ships it would take to make for a sloppy overrun.

And even if they did, they’d only get a few systems. Star Force had been reinforcing the border worlds for decades and now had so many Sentinels in place that there was no way the lizards could take them all out. The simply didn’t have enough ships to do so, which was why Uxtral assumed no large scale invasion had taken place. It was a stalemate, with Star Force unable to kill the lizards due to their huge territory, and the lizards unable to kill Star Force due to their Sentinel defense line and density of well-defended systems.

Without much room to expand, Star Force had been colonizing planets that no one in their right mind would have wanted previously, but by doing so they had thickened the inhabited band of systems within the ADZ to the point where if one system were hit it wouldn’t be very long before reinforcements would arrive from the next. Given that fact, no matter how hard the lizards attacked they couldn’t get very far, and until they found a better way to fight Star Force, Uxtral assumed the enemy wasn’t going to waste resources.

The Calavari didn’t feel like maintaining the stalemate and had been urging for a larger assault, which they now had. Hashfa was one of three inhabited planets in the system and not lightly so, for the lizards had poured more resources here than the surrounding systems, with documented supply convoys coming in on a regular basis rather than building and growing everything they needed locally. The system was a central hub of lizard activity in their territory near the Rimward Calavari cluster, and from it a mass of new lizard colonies were attempting to spread out.

Those systems had been the targets of raids and ‘weeding’ expeditions, but Hashfa hadn’t been touched due to its stronger defenses and distance from the border. The Calavari had urged the Archons to let them hit it, knowing that it would weaken the surrounding area if it fell and set up the possibility to sweep away a dozen other systems in the following years, systems that mostly belonged to the Calavari before the fall.

It had taken a long time, Uxtral had learned, before the Archons had granted the Calavari permission to hit it solo, though there was one caveat they had insisted upon. Right now there were two Sentinels sitting in orbit around Hashfa, one of which had only been assembled yesterday after being brought into the system in large segments. If the Calavari were going to take the system then they had to be able to hold it afterwards, and without the Sentinels that would be very hard to do when the lizards responded, as everyone assumed they would.

This wasn’t a small target Star Force was taking away from them, and he wondered if the delay in landing ground troops was to get the Sentinels up and operational or to wait and see what kind of reinforcements the lizards sent before potentially stranding them on the ground if they were forced to flee orbit.

Uxtral didn’t care right now, he just wanted to get into the fight and all he could do was sit and watch the battlemap as the navy did their thing. Frustration aside, it was good to see his people kicking ass in space, for rumor had it that pre-Star Force the Calavari navy sucked hard. He couldn’t understand how that was possible, but right now his brothers were hunting down and kicking the crap out of the surviving lizard fleets as they tried to ambush the cargo ships and others as the Calavari were beginning to spread out across the system to go after varying targets.

This was by far the largest assembly of Calavari fleets to date, with them devoting a significant chunk of their overall naval forces to be able to take this system without needing mainline fleet help. That had been the main emphasis when they pleaded their case to the Archons, for they knew ships were scarce with so many needs across the ADZ. They didn’t want to weaken any other positions, but felt they had enough to make this assault happen on their own.

Uxtral had heard there had been some wrangling over that point, but eventually they’d been given the green light and here he was, all set to do his part but stuck inside a transport waiting for a release that felt like it would never come.

After another ten minutes he began wondering if they were going to get called out of their fighters and back to their quarters, for they couldn’t stay in their cockpits all day, but then the battlemap began registering incoming jumps into planetary orbit and he realized that their arrival near the system’s star must have been detected earlier and that’s why their planetary assault had been delayed, for scores of lizard cruisers were popping up in escort of several larger battleships and dreadnaughts…enough to be a concern as the Calavari fleet was somewhat spread out between the various planets.

But the Sentinels were here and one opened fire immediately, with the nearby Calavari ships moving aside to give them clear firing lines. The lizards didn’t hesitate and went after the Calavari warships, completely ignoring the pair of Sentinels, of which only one was currently in range of the jumppoint.

Uxtral really wanted to get out there and fight, but his Valerie wasn’t designed for space combat. None of theirs were, as was standard Star Force military philosophy. Fighters were too small to be effective in space given the risk of the pilot, with similar sized drones being more effective, though the Calavari used none, nor did most of Star Force save for Canderous who fielded a lot of them. No, the Calavari aerial core was strictly planetary, though they did fight on airless worlds a few times.

It was the anti-grav that they needed to maneuver, not the air, and this far above the planet the angles were all wrong. He could fly his Valerie through space, but not at combat speeds given the lack of necessary lateral tug that being on the surface provided. That, and if he got shot down he’d suffocate to death if the canopy was breached or someone didn’t get to him in time.

Thoughts of getting into the action in some way were pounding through his head as the panel that would show deployment orders was annoyingly blank, but then his attention was taken fully back to the battlemap as a huge target manifested itself on sensors, with him recognizing it as a lizard assault pillar. That meant they were going after the Sentinels before Star Force could get any more here, which was a wise play because a few more with overlapping firing arcs would make it almost impossible for the lizards to reclaim orbit.

A moment later a second jumppoint, one not originating from the star, began spewing more ships. They too were lizard cruisers, so many that Uxtral couldn’t visually count, but with them came another large ship, this one an invoker that was headed not towards the Sentinels but towards the cluster of Calavari ships parked in orbit…including the one that he was sitting inside.

“Damn it, let us go!” he yelled to no one inside his cockpit, smacking the armored canopy over his head in frustration. The navy was going to have its hands full dealing with that beast, and there was nothing he could do about it sitting in here so they might as well let them head on down to the planet where they could do some good, otherwise they’d just be target practice in here or their quarters.

The Calavari’s frustration turned to dread as another target at the first jumppoint materialized on sensors, with this being a second assault pillar amongst even more waves of cruisers.

“What the hell is going on?” he said angrily, knowing that they should have had some ships covering the star. It took some doing, but he adjusted the battlemap to give him the lag-delayed data from stellar orbit and his jaw dropped when he saw how many enemy jumpships there were. No more incoming arrivals were being logged, but there were far more than he’d expected the enemy to have available to counter attack with, especially after only 3 weeks.

The Calavari ships that had been there were gone, but a quick check of stats indicated that they had redeployed elsewhere rather than stay and get destroyed…which was smart. With the two Sentinels up and running this was going to be a good fight that could go either way, but regardless of who came out on top Uxtral’s fleet was going to get trashed in the process.

But so be it. The fight was here and the more lizards they killed…

Then the Calavari pilot saw the other large contacts sitting around the star as they waited their turn in the long lines heading to multiple jumppoints. There were three more assault pillars on the way, plus a second invoker.

So much for the lizards poking around and experimenting. The Calavari had wanted to hit them hard, and it looked like they were counterpunching in the same fashion. Uxtral figured the ground assault was now permanently off, with his transport and others probably going to evacuate the system while the navy played with the enemy for a while. They weren’t going to waste two Sentinels, but he didn’t think there was much of a chance of them winning out, despite their range advantage with the cleansing beams.

The lizard cruisers could compensate for that by running ahead and screening for the bigger ships, and if more than one assault pillar targeted a Sentinel at the same time it was unlikely that both could be taken down before it was taken out. Add in the invokers that would rip apart any drone warships that got within short weapons range, meaning their maulers and talon cannons were going to be useless against them.

Just as Uxtral was mentally calculating the strategic advantages that the lizards had his display lit up with a countdown just before his transport made a microjump down into low orbit. He was so confused that he didn’t register the deployment orders for several seconds, then blinked away invisible haze over his eyes as he confirmed that it was telling him that they were going to drop into the atmosphere and clear the way for the troop transports to land.

Battlemap data was shunted his way showing swarms of wisps near the target area and part of his mind immediately flipped into combat mode while the rest was screaming out in panic, knowing that their naval fleet was about to get their ass kicked.

He didn’t know what his commanders were thinking, but he wanted to trust them…he just had no idea what angle they could possibly be playing with all of this.

Uxtral was ready to fight though, and with the countdown ticking off the seconds until they were in position for release he committed himself to his part while hoping this whole thing didn’t turn into a bloody mess. A few seconds later that bad feeling reversed itself as a rare but familiar sound played out into his cockpit and every other cockpit and control station throughout the Calavari fleet as more incoming jumps were registered on the battlemap.

These weren’t lizard though, they were mainline Star Force coming out of odd and difficult jumplines directly into ganking positions, and they were broadcasting the Imperial March as both reassurance that they had the Calavari’s back and a massive middle finger towards the enemy that was receiving the same battle song on open broadcast.

Uxtral should have had more faith, and he kicked himself for not counting on the Archons to have everything covered as the bay doors opened and his countdown expired. Without hesitation he launched his Valerie into space and put it into an easy dive down into the upper atmosphere along with the others in his squadron and the squadrons pacing them. He had new worries to deal with now, but before he got within the fog of war and focused entirely on the enemy wisps he glanced back at the battlemap, which still included the stellar orbit data…and he saw a flurry of Star Force icons there, hitting the lizard jumpships where they were lightly defended.

The Calavari gritted his teeth in both excitement and a swell of pride seeing that this was going to be a hard win, but they were going to own the enemy so long as no one screwed up and he was going to make sure he didn’t.

Dismissing the extraneous battlemap displays he brought the local up to full size and got a feel for where his squadron was and how the enemy was moving below them as they kept to their nose dive, intent on hitting them from above as the lizard fighter swarm spread out like bees below. This was not going to be easy, but they had Valeries and Star Force training, and it was time to give the enemy another lesson on why both were superior.

9

September 3, 2652

Iona System (Beta Region)

Kirit

Fatti had a decision to make, and a big one. The Kiritas stood in front of a display screen in his maturia quarters, two days from leaving and still he didn’t know what he was going to do. He had graduated a day ago and was now ready to transition into his ‘real’ life, but until he chose what his path would be they couldn’t assign him new quarters or travel plans.

He had two more days before he’d automatically be punted into the general population, which was a fair option. No responsibilities and an unlimited amount of time to decide what he wanted to do…or to just kick back, relax, and do nothing. That sounded horrible to him, for the Kiritas had so much energy that downtime was literally the worst thing possible. He wasn’t going civie, and like most other Kiritas he was going to find at least something he could do to keep himself busy and help out either his race or Star Force.

He wasn’t entering the general ADZ population independently, he knew. That didn’t appeal to him. He wanted to remain somewhere within Star Force and had a lot of options to choose from, though all of them required a lot more training to qualify for. He could stay local and find some support task to help out with, ranging from personnel relations to maintenance, but that seemed a bit too low energy. He wanted something bigger.

On the screen in front of him was a list of all the options available to him, and he’d been running through it for the past 4 hours, pacing back and forth as he thought and weighed his options. In general there were 3 basic paths available to him, and that was stay with the Kiritas, go into Axius, or become Kiritak. Axius wasn’t some place that Kiritas went unless they wanted to get away from everyone else, and while there were a handful making use of themselves there most of the stories he’d heard were that they’d gone civie and essentially given up on Star Force.

That wasn’t for him, which left the two main options every Kiritas had. Work as part of the semi-independent Kiritas empire, into which he had been hatched, or transfer over to the Kiritak that had no independence and directly served Star Force as a massive workforce. The Kiritak reproduced on their own too, with their population being far larger than the Kiritas, but some of them didn’t want to stay and came over to Kirit or one of their colonies to take a different path. Nobody was locked in to where they began and there was a lot of swapping back and forth, sometimes with the same person changing more than once during their life.

For the Kiritas, they were fervently loyal to Star Force, for in their distant history it had been the Humans that had saved their planet and race from starvation and utter collapse, but more than that they had taught them a better way to live and had guided them through stages of advancement that had led them to colonize multiple star systems within the ADZ…something that was totally beyond his ancestors, who only had Kirit when the Humans first came to them.

The Kiritas were building and expanding along a plan that Star Force had set out for them, which everyone knew of from their maturia training. They were meant to be a home guard and resource production carry while other portions of Star Force focused on tech development, exploration, and combat. Kiritas troops and ships were rarely ever called upon for frontline duty, with their purpose being to defend their own worlds and be in a position to reinforce others if things went bad and the front was lost. To date that hadn’t happened, and a lot of Kiritas didn’t like sitting back and waiting while others did the fighting, but faithful as they were they followed the plan and so far it seemed the Humans knew what they were doing, as always.

While the Kiritas kept to their own systems and were continuously developing them into outright marvels of engineering capable of holding an insane number of people in a workable and comfortable environment, the Kiritak were the exact opposite and scattered across the ADZ. They had no civilian population and were all business, doing various tasks for Star Force that heavily fell into the resource collection and processing categories. Entire Kiritak colonies were established for no other reason than to mine and ship the materials collected off to other parts of the empire for use, while other colonies were industrial-based and used those materials to make parts and products that were likewise feeding the rest of Star Force, not to mention foodstuff production.

But more than that, the Kiritak were also heavily merged with mainline Star Force activities, not in terms of military, but the cargo naval fleet. The Kiritak had their own fleets built for the express purpose of shuttling resources to and from their colonies, but even the massive cargo freighter jumpships that had no contact with those colonies were seeing a good portion of their crews being made up of Kiritak. It was a mix, with Humans always involved, but no other race had such a presence in the mainline operations of Star Force as the Kiritak did, and that was a note of pride that interested Fatti greatly.

But making it onto one of those crews would be a long process full of training and competing against others for who had the highest marks. Only the best got to crew with the Humans, and he knew that 4 jumpships even had Kiritak Captains, who were literally a legend to all Kiritas. If Fatti wanted to go that route there was no guarantee he would make it, and to be honest he wanted to start making contributions now rather than later.

The Kiritak also had a military division, which was used as security for their various colonies. Those had seen more action than the Kiritas military had, but only through combat with the Skarrons during the initial invasion…during which most of them died fighting. That wasn’t the case anymore, and like the Kiritas they were merely homeguard protecting the valuable resource collection infrastructure upon which Star Force depended, but they too were elite and required years of training and competition to rise to a level to earn those positions.

Fatti wanted the notoriety of a military unit, but feared he’d be bored just sitting and waiting for a fight that might never come. Crewing on a cargo ship meant he’d be contributing on a daily basis, which was more to his liking, but it would take so long to earn a slot that he reluctantly pushed that option aside as well. That left a slew of possibilities that were less visible, but none the less important, and he stopped his pacing once again to run down the list that he’d practically memorized by now.

He’d had enough waiting and thinking and otherwise boredom and told himself he was going to pick and pick now so he could get going, so he ran through field after field, ranking them on a scale of 1 to 10, then going back and eliminating everything below a 6 on a datapad he had nearby. Then he went through the remaining list, weighing the advantages and difficulties of those before him and ranking them again, eliminating the bottom tier and repeating the process.

Fatti kept it up, feeling reckless but knowing he had to make a choice for there was no one area that stood out beyond the rest. Eventually he narrowed the long list down to five options, then found himself stuck as to how to eliminate another. All were quick routes, which employed huge numbers of people in a massive workforce and required less than 2 years of additional training beyond what he already had in the maturia…and as he looked at the list he realized all 5 were in the Kiritak rather than his native Kiritas.

Well that bit was decided, at least, but he still wasn’t sure how to choose between the 5. The first two were mining related, with one being a vehicle pilot and the other being a cargo loader. They were simple tasks but very important to keep the flow of materials moving, and they needed lots of them, meaning the competition for those slots wasn’t as fierce as it was for others, though he’d still have to prove himself once his training was complete. If not he’d stay in training until his skills rose to a level where he could earn a slot.

That was why he didn’t want to go naval, for he could be stuck in training for the next 50 years. The other 3 options he had on his short list were also movement related, with a bioharvest loader, warehouse loader, and an aquatic terminal loader having caught his attention. The last one was the rarest, with some aquatic mining colonies sending trains of resources up the sea floor to the coast where they were held in a depot for ground or air transport to other locations on the planet.

Being that it was rarer than the others Fatti reluctantly crossed it off, knowing he needed something that was widespread and easily accessible if he was to maximize his chances of earning a slot. With that in mind he also nixed the pilot, figuring there would be less craft available than crates to move, leaving him with three choices…all of which were nearly identical.

He went back to pacing again, glad to be near to a decision but still stuck. Eventually he just said to hell with it and chose one at random, imputing the numbers 1, 2, and 3 into his datapad and having the randomized function choose one…with it spitting out #2.

That was the bioharvest loader, which would have him moving crates of foodstuffs, either grain or finished products, between segments of the transportation grid, be it from rail to dropship or from hovertruck to warehouse. The position didn’t specify, which was why it had such a large number of open slots which were literally being updated with every transmission that came through the relay grid and he could see the numbers changing on his screen. With every slot filled they’d decrease, then new batches of openings would become available and the number would rise again.

At present, there were 1.6 million slots available, though only yesterday there had been 1.4 and two weeks ago when he’d been lightly perusing the numbers while going through his final graduation challenges there had been 1.7 million. That meant there was an insane amount of transition going on, but with a population in the trillions that was to be expected.

Fatti couldn’t petition for one of those slots now, for first he had to go through the proper training. To accomplish that he needed a slot in a higher level maturia, and a Kiritak one at that. Using his terminal he put in the request and got an acceptance message within 3 seconds, followed by deployment orders within the hour.

Feeling the excitement and relief at finally being on the move again he packed up the few belongings he had and headed out of the maturia to the spaceport indicated, hop/walking through the Kiritas crowds with his little duffle over his shoulder and mentally saying goodbye to the planet that had always been his home. He’d never been offworld before, but now he was headed for a Kiritak colony in Alpha Region, clear on the other side of the Human Core systems.

Most of his peers that he’d gone through maturia training with were already gone elsewhere, with about 15% remaining that would graduate soon, so it was time to move on and he was glad to be doing so in such a wild fashion. Transitioning to the Kiritak was going to take him farther away than any of the home colonies and he liked that. More to do and see and less chance for boredom.

When he got to a transit terminal he hopped inside and road a subsurface tram over to the spaceport and came out directly underneath it along with a lot of other soon to be passengers, most of which carried duffles like him. They didn’t talk, for the most part, but exchanged glances and understood that they were all in a similar position and heading out for new assignments.

He had a nav beacon on his wristbound comm/datapad that led him to the check-in point where he was given his dropship ID and departure time, with him having to wait only half an hour before it came in through the open ceiling doors and landed next to some 50 others. He and a large group boarded it and took their seats, then were flown up to orbit and deposited on a jumpship. Fatti was led to temporary quarters and left there on what would be more than a month’s journey across the ADZ.

The Kiritas tried to deal with the boredom of transit through training and games, but Fatti was just as relieved as the others when they finally arrived in Alpha Region and the Kiritak colony that housed their own maturias. The infrastructure was similar to what he’d grown up in on Kirit, but with a different feel and coloration to it, enough that he felt at ‘home’ but still in an alien environment.

There were also a handful of Humans in the otherwise all Kiritak zone, which was a new experience for Fatti who’d never seen one in person before. They were so tall and pale it surprised him, despite the pictures he’d seen all his life. Especially their heads, which were so narrow and decorated with different colors of what they called ‘hair.’ Each one he happened along over the coming days he stared at, respectfully, but didn’t interrupt. It was awe-inspiring to be next to one of them, let alone several, for he’d counted at least 14 different ones in his first two weeks in the colony, most of whom he ran across in the cafeteria or the nearby hallways.

Other than those areas it was all Kiritak all the time, with his training being taken up a notch from what he’d known back on Kirit. That was to be expected, for this was higher level maturia training and supposed to be more intense than basic had been, but it was still a challenge…though it helped that those going through it with him were also training for the exact same profession and they helped each other out whenever they could to maximize their chances of making it.

And Fatti would make it, some 17 months later when he’d completed his requirements and input his current scores into the slot selection process. He didn’t get chosen immediately, for the highest scores got preference, but after a week he received notification that he’d been accepted into a Kiritak colony all the way out in Epsilon Region, for which he left immediately.

It took three jumpships to get him out there, for there were no direct flights, but once he arrived he was put to work right away and given an exoskeleton mech to use, just like he’d trained with. It was six times as tall as he was and open to the air all around him save for a protective cage that encircled the now Kiritak. With the skills he’d developed over the last year he walked the cargo mech over to the train that had just came into the terminal and was directed to one of the cars along with six other mechs in the very long bay that allowed more than 60 cars to be unloaded simultaneously.

Fatti was last in line, following the others in and sliding the mechanical hands/pylons underneath one of the crates and lifting it up, pivoting the mech around with a shuffle of its mechanical feet, then walking the crate out and over to a conveyor onto which he sat it down before returning to the car to get another one. The conveyor had slots on it designed for the size of these crates and serviced three of the offloading stations, with Fatti’s crate dropping into one of the open slots between some others from the car to the left and all of them traveling around a few bends in the river-like flow before disappearing into a tunnel in the wall.

That was all Fatti would see of them, and his task was simple enough. Unload every train car that came through his position and get the grain that was in them to the processing factory on the other side of that wall…or wherever it was down the line. Maneuvering the mechs wasn’t easy, and even with the extensive training that the Kiritak had had, he was slower about it than the others. They didn’t give him any grief over it, for they had once been in his position, and gave him some pointers here and there and made sure to give him plenty of room to maneuver, but over the months that followed he became better at it, with his team remaining the same and them getting into a fluid sync that became second nature, allowing them to work faster and more efficiency than other, newer crews.

Their offloading rates were measured, as were all things in Star Force, so they could have numbers to compare with and Fatti quickly realized it was a matter of pride for both himself and his team as to how many crates they unloaded and how fast…but to never ever ever drop one. They were strong enough to not break, but it slowed down the process and basically said you didn’t belong here.

One of the first things his teammates told him when he arrived was to take his time and do a proper job of it. Taking their advice he did just that and never dropped one in his early days…then when he’d gotten more than a year on the job he wondered how in the hell someone could drop one, for it was so easy a task that it was almost impossible to screw up.

But that was just experience talking, and he would get even more skilled with the loading mechs as the years passed, with him transferring to another crew some 18 years later that had a higher rank and stricter timetables to work under that added a new challenge, for while the Kiritak were patient and careful, they didn’t like to be slow and designed their entire shipping process to be as fast as possible, with their loaders expected to keep up as both a matter of pride and function.

10

October 2, 2652

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Hightower looked out the observation window of the shipyard at the internal slip where a partially constructed warship floated with a beehive of Human workers moving around it, pulling more pieces in and attaching them wherever they needed to go and fleshing out the synthetic skeleton. No longer were they using metals, but had moved up the tech tree to Dar’mats, which were a synthesis of various compounds with corovon-heavy bonding points that made the molecules cling to one another even more so than metals.

There were varying degrees of Dar’mats, some with more corovon in them than others, but this newest version had the lightest amount, yet in an arrangement that gave it an 82% strength rating of the heaviest to date. That made the warship skeleton somewhat weaker, but would allow 26 warships to be built out of the same amount of corovon as one of the heavies.

Hightower knew the tradeoff was worth it, for corovon mining and recycling was his highest priority in this system and across the empire. There was so little of it available in most locations because of its density, with the greatest deposits having sunk to the center of gravity wells. Already he was working with the Hycre to mine the gas giant that they occupied in this system, but they were having trouble reaching the true core. Still, the amount of corovon they were pulling from the surrounding layers was more than the terrestrial mining operations were turning out, with the Duke knowing that most future corovon hunts were going to have to go where most races couldn’t.

Hightower’s responsibilities were like those of Davis, he had to oversee that everything the mainline Star Force colonies in the system did, as well as keep an eye on the Australians and Hycre that were also in the system, but the biggest part about being a Duke was seeing the problems years in advance and working to solve them before they arose, with corovon shortages being a persistent nemesis that somehow he’d always managed to find a way to avoid. But with the continual growth of the system’s infrastructure the number of ships it was exporting there was never going to be a time when they didn’t need more.

And it wasn’t just corovon, he had to balance population against infrastructure, maintain the traffic flow of cargo and personnel, oversee the economic fluctuations in both the local and interstellar markets, plan out additions to the planetary infrastructure, orbital habitats, and just about every other bit of building within the system…all the while coordinating with the other Dukes, Marquis, and Davis to keep the overall empire in balance. They shared resources often, but it was the aim to get each system as independent as possible so to diminish the cargo transit between them, which was already reaching staggering levels.

There were nearly constant jumps in and out of the system, with far more activity within. The movement of the vessels had to be continuously monitored and guided, otherwise there would be collisions and utter chaos. The bigger Star Force grew the more challenges there were in maintaining it, for size did matter and the smaller colonies had a much easier time of running themselves.

The tradeoff was that the larger systems like Epsilon Eridani had the industrial and personnel muscle to do things the others couldn’t, and that was both a privilege and responsibility that Hightower carried on a daily basis, for it was up to him to choose what, where, and when, with others filling in and making his plans a reality. But at the end of the day they had a framework given to them that they had to work inside of, a focus that they could rely on and tune out everything else, but Hightower didn’t have that luxury.

He knew it was even worse for Davis, who had not only Star Force but the entire ADZ to oversee, which was why he and the other Dukes tried to do as much as possible themselves to free the Director up to work almost exclusively on the big picture. The same was true for the Dukes, in that their subordinates took care of a lot of the repetitive duties to free them up to troubleshoot and plan ahead, but one didn’t fully understand what it was like to have people depending on you but without anyone for you to turn to for advice or guidance.

Hightower had many conversations about this very point with Paul when he had been Clan Saber’s Marquis, for the Archons were in the same position. The trailblazers had to lead with no one to pattern off of, for they were who everyone else took their cues from. It was total freedom to do what you wanted, but you had to come up with answers when problems presented themselves, and making that happen took a curious combination of determination, creativity, and luck.

It wasn’t easy, yet it was simple, and aside from his fellow Dukes and the trailblazers no one ever seemed to understand that, which left him in a very rare group of peers that he virtually never saw.

Epsilon Eridani was his turf, and having another Administrator of his caliber in the same location would have been wasteful, so he was left to secure and grow Star Force’s 2nd most valuable system and feed the mainline colonies and fleet in addition to what the locals needed. Epsilon Eridani had to be an exporter, and beyond that it had to be a huge exporter in order to give the rest of the empire what it needed to grow at a rate far faster than self-sufficient expansion would allow.

With the flow of cargo, ships, and pre-made structures a new colony could reach a level in a single year that, in the past, would have taken 50 to reach. That new colony in turn would reach exportation levels of its own in a relatively short amount of time, which would then help feed other colonies in a growth plume that could see entire planets reshaped in the blink of an eye compared to what he’d had to work with when he first took over control of the system.

That was the power of a large empire, and that power had to be used wisely. Many people thought that Star Force pretty much ran itself nowadays, but that was a misnomer. Mainline Star Force was full of leadership with centuries of experience and a wealth of skill, and through them the younger members were able to do things that otherwise they could not, raising the bar higher than most civilizations had ever reached.

But therein lay the snag, for without that core of experience the rest would diminish to mediocrity, not for lack of trying but simply for lack of guidance. It was easy to do something efficiently when you had a procedure to follow, given to you by a person who had had to figure it out the hard way through years of trial and error and insight, but take away that procedure and the efficient workforce suddenly became ineffective.

That was why Hightower and the other Dukes had taken Davis’s orders regarding training very seriously, for they knew that personnel rising up through the ranks could fall into the trap of simply mimicking others and learning by example. That was all fine and well until they encountered a new situation or rose to high enough rank where they had to start improvising. In order for the empire to continue to grow the leadership had to be able to think outside the box, which was why the Archons were chosen more for their intuitiveness and determination than their beginning physical skills.

Likewise Administrators had to figure out why something worked, rather than just seeing that it did and doing it again. No Duke had ever been promoted to the position without first being a Clan Marquis, and there you had to learn to do for yourself because the Clans were deliberately severed from the mainline colonies. The economies were separate, as were their supply lines and military forces. They were independent empires each, and the skills that Hightower had learned leading Clan Saber had made him ready to take on Epsilon Eridani because he’d had the opportunity to learn from doing rather than following protocol.

Likewise there were other learning experiences occurring at lower levels, with people like Hightower taking a hands off approach and letting the junior Administrators earn their keep…but he couldn’t ignore them for they’d need a poke or nudge now and again, which meant he couldn’t just sit in his office and watch the numbers roll through. He had to get out and actually see his star system first hand, which had prompted him to pick up the habit of taking random inspection tours, which at the moment brought him to this shipyard.

He always came unannounced and had a quiet look around, usually finding everything in order, but occasionally picking up on an inefficiency or a better way to do something. It was the little things that added up over time, and even while his people were damn good at what they did there was always room for improvement. They were the best within Star Force and the ADZ for that matter, but the older he got the more he learned that there was always more to learn, and with a civilization so big with so many facets, he’d stopped expecting people to be jacks of all trades…which was his job.

Specialization was a powerful tool, but when a person only knew how to do one thing it was also a weakness, for they couldn’t coordinate with others. It was the job of Administrators to get the specialists into the positions they needed, like arranging puzzle pieces, and then let them do their thing. Each puzzle piece usually had no idea what the others were doing, making the Administrators the glue that held everything together.

“I trust everything is in order?” a voice behind Hightower asked.

“That I’ve seen, yes,” the Duke said without turning around as the shipyard Administrator came up on his right side next to the large window.

“You know,” she said, “if you want to sneak onboard you shouldn’t wear your Duke’s uniform.”

“I’m not hiding, I just need to get my own eyes on what’s happening from time to time. Datapads only tell you so much,” he said, gesturing to the Cruiser-class drone being constructed in front of them inside the contained bay. It was zero g to facilitate the movement and assembly of the various components, but it was also pressurized and sealed off from space with thick doors to allow the workers to move about without wearing envirosuits.

“There’s always something to see here, given the round the clock work schedules, but I’d guess there was something more that caught your eye than the view?”

“I was curious to see the frame assembly.”

“Then you’re in the wrong slip, this one is complete.”

“Already been there,” Hightower said, glancing at her with a slight smile.

“How long have you been on my station?”

“A few hours,” he admitted.

“I’ll have to have a chat with my security chief. He only found you 40 minutes ago.”

“I hate fanfare, even in small amounts. Wastes time.”

“To answer your question, the frame assembly is taking slightly longer than previous models due to the bonding agents. We’re having to supercool them in order to make them malleable enough to take. My people are used to using heat to bond, so this cryo putty is going to take some time to master.”

“I haven’t seen any accident reports.”

“My people aren’t sloppy,” she objected with a frown.

“Didn’t imply they were, but I’ve been told the cryo bonding is dangerous.”

“Ha…most things we do around here are dangerous. It’s new, therefore we’re taking our time and learning all the little variations so we don’t have accidents. Production rates will increase slightly over the following year, I can guarantee you, but I don’t think they’re going to match the previous timetable. The process is more time consuming, even taking the learning curve out of the equation.”

“Worth the tradeoff.”

“So am I going to get all of my slips filled, or are you still holding out on me?”

“Lots of mouths to feed,” Hightower said, ignoring the complaint he’d heard more times than he could count, “only so much ore.”

“I’ve got 18 open slips, two of which are jumpship. I hate wasting time leaving them sit.”

“As do I, but I’d rather have more slips than resources as opposed to more resources than slips.”

“We used to be full up,” she reminded him.

“We didn’t have any many shipyards back then either.”

“Just saying.”

“I may have some more coming to you in a couple of years, but don’t hold me to that.”

“A mining expansion, I hope…or is it a fabrication holdup?”

“Rare compound holdup, but there are a few more cheats in prototype like this one that could alleviate some of that burden.”

“Gravity drive without corovon?”

Hightower laughed. “Unfortunately no, we’re nowhere close to that tech level.”

“Just wishful thinking.”

“Rumor has it that some distant races have achieved it,” he floated, knowing that the shipyard Administrator didn’t have pyramid knowledge access.

“Seriously? Who?”

“Someone far beyond our reach, but I’ve been told it’s doable.”

“Wow. Never heard that.”

“Keep it to yourself, please.”

“Just get me the specs as soon as you can,” she joked.

“Deal.”

“Well, as long as you’re here, I might as well take you on a proper tour. There are better places to view your minions than here.”

“Any chance I can get a look at the cryo bonding up close?”

“Sure, but is this sightseeing or are you looking for something in particular?”

“Just trying to keep up with everything new. The more I’m familiar with the better.”

“No problems at the other shipyards?”

“No, the frames appear bugless.”

“Good,” she said with a bit of relief. New pieces to work with were always a bit jittery, for her workers were used to building the same design specs again and again, with the process down to a very fast and efficient routine that allowed them to assemble ships at an impressive rate. “I’ll take you out myself, unless you want to snoop alone?”

“Lead on,” he said, finally abandoning the window.

Hightower would spend another 4 hours in the shipyard, studying the new construction procedures and learning a few more of the old ones, then he took his private puddle jumper through planetary orbit and out to a jumppoint not cluttered with stations then over to Arcadia, the innermost planet whose original desert wasteland was now almost entirely covered with cityscape. There he went down to the surface and inspected the deep mining operations and half a dozen factories, stopping by a maturia and then a Knight training center before continuing with his system-hopping tour that would take him some 3 weeks to complete before heading back to Corneria and his office tower.

There he fell back into the regular routine, pulling through massive amounts of data from across the system while also monitoring news feeds from across the empire, the ADZ, and the war reports, along with a new message from Paul.

That he pulled up first off and saw a short tech note indicating that a new containment shield was in prototype stage and working well, putting them one step closer in the long journey towards stellar mining.

Hightower pulled up a secure file, then a hologram of the V’kit’no’sat version of a ‘star forge’ manifested itself over his desk, next to which was a long list of items necessary for its construction, a few of which had checkmarks next to them. With the touch of a button and a bit of virtual scrolling he found the containment shield requirement and checked it off, putting them one step closer to the mother of all corovon mining operations.

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1

March 1, 2655

Unnamed System (lizard territory)

High Stellar Orbit

Kara’s Ma’kri exited the very slow interstellar jump at full repulsion, draining its capacitors in order to slow the jumpship far away from the star where the gravity field was weaker. That left the ship vulnerable, for it would take time for the gravity drive capacitors to recharge sufficiently to make another jump, but the benefit of it was that the lizards wouldn’t know where to expect them. Even if they picked them up on sensors it would take time to get ships out to their location, and without the lizards possessing binary drives it would be a difficult bit of navigation for them to do so.

Which was why Kara was willing to risk the jump. The system in question was on the edge of the lizards’ core region, with the journey to get here being extremely difficult. Over the past few years she’d been raiding one world or another, blowing up or otherwise sabotaging important pieces of infrastructure or ships, and data mining every computer system she could get her Vorch’nas plugged into…as well as mind melding with a few Mastermind variants she was able to track down.

Little by little she gained information on the lizards, their territory, and their inner workings…but only in piecemeal for most didn’t know anything other than what concerned their local affairs. In fact, she probably knew more about their empire than most of them did, and that knowledge had led her here.

What ‘here’ was she still wasn’t sure, but it was a level of system far beyond anything Star Force had encountered before. Those systems surrounding it were nearly impossible to enter without being detected and swarmed with ships, and on more than one occasion her ship had to bug out almost immediately when scouting the area became impossible.

Kara desperately wanted to probe deeper into the core of lizard territory but to do so she’d needed more engine power…and now finally she had it. The Ma’kri she was commanding was a prototype, or rather the first model out of prototype finishing. It carried Star Force’s newest gravity drive, which now put them at 1/10th the strength of the V’kit’no’sat’s basic drives. That was no small feat, and the ship had to be redesigned with most of the internal space going into more jump drives and leaving little more than a skeleton crew onboard, but the Sonic was now by far the fastest jumpship in the ADZ and probably the entire local segment of the Orion galactic arm.

That made her trips between systems ultra-fast, but that wasn’t the point. She needed the enhanced engine power so she could jump off the star’s gravity field but far enough out from it to miss the stellar detection network the lizards, or others, would have set up. That was the only way she had been able to scout out the surrounding systems, and it was the only way she’d been able to make it this far into the interior.

The Ma’kri also had the best sensor plating available, which would hopefully make it a ghost to lizard sensors at range, but there was no way of telling until you got there to find out.

“How do we look?” Kara asked her Captain, standing behind his command chair with her hands on the backrest.

“Nothing local, but there are…oh my,” he cut off as the passive sensors began to pick up slight reflective signals from the lizards’ own detection grid as they bounced off of various objects, with the biggest ones being the first the computer analysis could pick out.

“We knew there was something special here,” Kara said calmly. “Let’s have a thorough look.”

“Please tell me you’re not going in there?” the Captain pleaded.

“Not today, no,” she said, seeing more detail forming on both the main hologram and the Captain’s readouts that she was snooping on. “We’re just going to take a peak from range, but let’s make sure we see all that there is to see. Bring us in a lazy slingshot around the planet, but keep it high,” she said, seeing the closest of the planets in the system not too far off from their current position. It was larger than Earth by about a third and was covered in green according to the visual scans that were being enhanced and shown to the bridge, along with so many ships in orbit that they appeared to be solid globs on the sensors until they were able to sort out the tiny dots for what they were.

They appeared as schools of fish, with varying sizes. The Ma’kri couldn’t give numbers or makes from this range, only detect the mass of them, but that wasn’t what had shocked the Captain. Also in ‘orbit’ around the planet was a solid, giant ring some 10-15 miles wide and by no means a natural occurrence. As the Ma’kri began moving a bit closer the sensors were able to get more detail, but it appeared that there was a massive, artificially constructed ‘halo’ around the planet, and one with lines running down to the surface.

The closer they came the more detail they got, up until they’d ventured as near as they dared yet still in high orbit, but it was close enough to get ship counts and see the construct for what it was. The previously smooth ring was not so pristine on inspection, but rather a lumpy jumbled assortment of niches and pylons that housed partially constructed ships of massive size. As they lazily flew by the closest approach in their slingshot orbit they saw several invokers under construction, along with slots that appeared to be building assault pillars and their massive cargo ships.

Others were constructing their jumpships and no less than 7 additional models that Star Force had not seen to date, nor had gained intelligence on from Kara’s computer and memory raids. There was no way to tell if they were warships or not, but it was clear that the lizards had constructed a mindboggling shipyard that ringed the entire planet and was no doubt the source of the swarm-like fleets sitting nearby.

The lines that connected the ring down to the planet were obviously orbital tethers, something that Star Force had experimented with early on then abandoned in favor of dropships. It seemed the lizards had found a use for them, and if Kara’s instincts were right they were hauling massive amounts of resources up from the planet round the clock, and given that each one was nearly a mile wide there had to be multiple shafts inside to run who knew how many lifts.

Other than the Nexus grid points this was the biggest feat of engineering Star Force had ever seen, and the fact that it was the work of the lower tech level lizards only underscored how innovative, bold, and devious they were…not to mention industrious. This ring shipyard had to be capable of producing more warships than all the slips in Star Force combined.

Kara guessed that the cruiser slips were interior ones, for the bulk of the ships in orbit were of that make, but there was also a disproportionately high number of battleships, dreadnaughts, and other larger vessels, with facilities like this no doubt being their primary source of fabrication. Already Kara was thinking of ways to attack or sabotage the thing, but it was so massive that there was literally no easy way to do it. Even if she smuggled several dropships’ worth of explosives onto it she’d only make a dent in the thing, leaving virtually all of it intact and operational.

She had no clue how she was going to mess with it, but right now that wasn’t going to happen anyway. This was a pure recon run and they’d already got further than she’d thought they’d get, so it was time to move on, look some more, then get the hell out of here before they pressed their luck to the limit.

Keeping well clear of the planet the Ma’kri made a light jump across to the next planet in the system and traveled around the full circuit, always going slow and braking high up where there should have been no trouble. They found several other worlds fully inhabited by the lizards, including three airless ones that were no doubt mining operations to assist in feeding the shipyard ring. Kara wished they could turn their own active sensors on, for she knew they were missing a wealth of information, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Already the planetary tracking sensors were hitting their hull lightly and being absorbed, but any closer or even a twitch from their own actives would give them away.

But they didn’t need actives to see the ship counts around each of the planets they passed near. There were literally millions of ships in the system, a mix of warships and transports and who knew what else with all the unfamiliar designs, but it was clear that this system was on a development level far beyond any they’d come across before, making this a whole new ball game and confirming the fears the trailblazers had had about the strength of the lizards…with Kara only now beginning to understand how patient their enemy was.

With the exception of the Skarrons the lizards were almost lazily conquering their tiny slice of the galaxy, picking off easy targets and working over those more difficult ones with successive hikes in ship count and resources, but not overwhelming targets with the gigantic hammer of a fleet before her. They were biding their time and expanding while keeping their true power held back and out of view of others, giving them perhaps a hope of surviving when they had none. It was simply a matter of time and a waiting game, with the lizards watching, learning, and growing stronger as their second and third tier troops did all the fighting.

Star Force had noted that the lizards were not taking that strategy with the Skarrons, and from the intel reports they were getting, which they knew were incomplete, there was a steady flow of ships coming out from the core and ramming straight into Skarron territory…and now Kara knew from where they were coming. There was no doubt in her mind that there were other ring shipyards like this one in the other core systems, which numbered about 40 as far as she’d been able to deduce, and for every fleet they monitored heading for the Skarrons there must have been ten times that going in that they were unaware of.

Already the lizards had carved out a huge chunk into the Skarrons’ expansion region in previously Nestafar space, but instead of pushing out laterally the lizards were driving forward like a spear in the giant empire. Kara thought she now knew why, for the lizards had to have learned from captured ships or recovered debris of the size of the Skarron empire and realized that this was a foe they could not overrun nor play the waiting game with.

Up until now she didn’t think the lizards had a chance of beating the Skarrons, not on the whole, but now she wasn’t so sure. Granted, lizard territory was still vastly smaller, and that meant less resources available for them to use, but with the aggressive way they were going at the Skarrons and pretty much ignoring everyone else, figuratively speaking, she got the feeling they sensed a worthy opponent and were going at them hard before they had a chance to realize the threat from the rim for what it was.

Then again this was the lizards, who always seemed to have something up their sleeve that you didn’t know about, but the spear of systems they were attacking and taking away from the Skarrons hadn’t made any sense to her until now, and she would have bet a million credits they were pushing towards a high level Skarron system further inside their territory, intent on knocking it out and weakening the entire region around it so they could move forward and gobble up the pieces.

Hit the stronghold and the systems that relied upon it would wither, and now Kara saw that the lizards had the might to possibly pull that off. She didn’t know for sure because Star Force hadn’t probed into Skarron territory to see what their strongholds looked like and they weren’t going to. Heading further towards the galactic core was banned because they didn’t want to increase the odds of word getting back to the V’kit’no’sat of their existence. That meant Beta Region was as far in as they were willing to go, or maybe out to Achkor where the Voku were, but no further.

The Hycre had been going though, and monitoring what they could of the lizard/Skarron war, and from that Star Force was getting most of its intel, but in order to get to the ‘spearhead’ the lizard core fleets had to pass through or around what used to be Calavari territory, and that’s where Star Force was monitoring and ambushing what they could, though they weren’t stupid enough to try and hit one of the mega-sized fleets moving through.

Kara’s Ma’kri made it through seven planetary peeks before their luck ran out at the 8th, and as soon as they came out of their microjump in high orbit they were hit with a much higher intensity sensor scan than the other planets had had, with their armor not being able to absorb all of it. After only 9 seconds there was activity in the nearby ship ‘clouds,’ making it obvious that they’d been noticed.

“Full sensor scan for 20 seconds then run like hell,” Kara ordered, wanting to get a quick peek as long as they were here. “Capacitor charge?”

“23%,” the navigator replied.

“Damn.”

“Hop around or try a stellar run?” the Captain asked.

“There’s no time to play games, they’ve got too many ships in play. Take us to the star, indirect route, but make it quick…and go dark when we make the jump,” Kara said, tapping her short fingernails against her teeth in frustration. They shouldn’t have been detected because the tracking systems around the planets were nowhere near as powerful as those around the star. Why this planet was different she didn’t know, but they’d jumped right into the beams like a bunch of newbs and now they had to run before they were hunted down, and with so many ships available that wouldn’t be hard to do.

They could hide in the system, for sure, just by using their binary drives and going out beyond the furthest planet where the lizards couldn’t follow, but they couldn’t make an interstellar jump from out there. That meant they had to come back in in order to jump out…and give the lizards time to set up ambushes for them and you were as good as dead in a system packed this full of warships. That meant Kara had to get her ship out of here before they had a chance to set up, and with the ship’s capacitors not fully charged they couldn’t make the same sneak jump as before because they needed more gravity intensity to make up for the less available power…and that meant getting a lot closer to the star.

“Damn,” she whispered a moment before they made their emergency microjump, pulling on multiple planets to get the necessary line given how they were out of position for a natural jump. With the active sensors engaged briefly the hologram of the planet they were fleeing gleamed with detail, most of which Kara missed as the two massive rings around the planet caught her attention, previously obscured in the mass of ships and stations surrounding a world that was half ocean, half land…with that land covered with lizard infrastructure from shore to shore.

Then the active feeds cut out as they made their jump, moving over to another planet and pulling a similar navigational feat to come out of it near the stellar jumpline. They didn’t bother opening up the active sensors again, for if there was a chance they could make a quick bounce off the planet’s gravity without being detected then Kara wanted that advantage. The sensor intensity was not so strong here so there might have been a chance they’d accomplished that bit of sneakiness, but the Ma’kri didn’t stick around long enough to find out, making a second microjump at much greater speed 3 seconds later, just long enough to store up a bit of energy without lowering the main capacitor charge.

Doing the math en route, they determined how close they needed to get in order to make the interstellar jump at decent speed and picked their destination system…an empty star that was on the other side of a diffuse nebula, but one that she knew the Ma’kri’s shields could protect them from. It was the best option without taking the time to bounce around the system to a preferable jumpline, and Kara had the feeling that if they stayed any longer than necessary their odds of surviving this were going to diminish drastically.

When they came out of their microjump they had to position around the star slightly, meaning lateral movement that wasn’t speedy. Kara had them dip into the main capacitor a bit to reduce their time in the system, but when they came around to their jumpline they could see a cluster of lizard ships forming up in blockade formation across it, with many more hurrying in on different trajectories.

Luckily they were further in on the line than where the Ma’kri was heading, suggesting that for the moment they weren’t being picked up on sensors…or at least the lag hadn’t transitioned back yet to the receivers, and from the receivers to the lizards in charge who then had to issue new deployment orders. They didn’t know the Ma’kri could make jumps further out, so from their point of view they were quickly bottling up the system along all available jumplines so they couldn’t get out.

Kara cursed herself for burning this new advantage right off the bat, but there was no other choice. They had to make this outer jump, and when the lizards saw them do it, even if on replay weeks later when they scanned every bit of sensor records they had, they’d learn Star Force had a greater jump range and not make the same mistake twice.

As the Ma’kri got into position the capacitors that held an enormous amount of energy for nearly instantaneous release into the gravity drives opened up and channeled their power into producing the repulsion necessary against the somewhat weaker field to get them up to speed, accelerating and shooting them out of the system on what would otherwise have been a normal/slow jump. That wasn’t altogether a bad thing, for it would reduce the power required of the shields to protect them from the thin nebula by decreasing the collision speed with the widely spaced molecules.

But they wouldn’t get there for days, during which Kara was going to go over every bit of the sensor recordings they’d collected. She didn’t think they’d be back here anytime soon, nor did she think they could assault the system unless the lizards left it underdefended, and even then it’d be one hell of a battle if Star Force brought a massive fleet of drones with it.

No, right now this system was beyond their ability to hit, let alone take, but at least they knew where it was, and potentially someday down the road that would allow them to set up a backdoor attack on those ring shipyards to knock out a significant part of the lizards’ ship production capability…if she could figure out how to take them down.

That was a mental exercise she spent a considerable amount of her time on during the return trip to the ADZ and still she had no answers by the time they got back, with Kara filling in the others as to what she’d found before heading back out again.

2

June 9, 2657

Unnamed System (Skarron territory)

Regional Capitol

The lizard invoker broke off from its escorts, dipping lower in orbit and carrying its rainbow energy arcs around it like a giant shield that obscured view of most of the massive ship. Leaving the cruiser shield that had been running interference for it, one of the 28 centerpieces of the lizard invasion quickly moved towards one of the Skarrons’ massive orbital defense platforms that was even now targeting another invoker with a mass of heavy lachars and rail gun slugs that were penetrating the destructive cocoon and making hull impacts.

The other invoker was nearly into physical contact range, with its energy arcs ripping through Skarron ships that had positioned themselves in the path of the big ship to slow it down, for their plasma couldn’t touch the hull given the range of the energy arcs, leaving it little more than spit by the time it reached the ship, and most didn’t, for the fluctuating rainbow scattered the plasma where it collided with them.

Already massive hull breaches were occurring on the other invoker, but it didn’t pull back. The station it was closing on had already been damaged by an assault pillar that had since been destroyed, with the attacking ship being the smaller of the two. The Skarron double orb-shaped construct was larger than both the invoker and assault pillar combined and was one of six defending the heavily populated Skarron planet. The lizards knew if they could take this one out now it would save a lot of their smaller ships later, hence they were tearing at it and willing to sacrifice their bigger ships if necessary in the tradeoff.

But they weren’t stupid, and seeing that the invoker wasn’t going to get the job done on its own the other closest nearby abandoned its fleet to destruction in order to join up with the other, making the tiniest of microjumps down to the defense station and moving through a scattering of defensive ships, none of which could do anything to stop the giant chess piece. It came in on the opposite side from the other invoker, which was now close enough that its energy arcs were eating through the outer layers of the station while in turn it was also getting pummeled with plasma that was making it through the gaps where the energy arcs disappeared on contact with the hull.

The second invoker came in so close it looked like it rammed the far side of the station, but in truth the hulls never touched. The energy field did and vaporized hull plating like a glowing hurricane that slowly moved in closer and closer, consuming more material and literally eating away at the station. Between the two of them the invokers focused on the narrow mid section of the station until their energy arcs finally met up and they cut the station in half.

The first invoker, now heavily damaged, moved into the gap and began to eat at the upper orb from the interior where there were no weapons to damage it while the other pulled out and headed for the relief fleet pouring towards the station. The Skarron ships had just finished mopping up a lizard formation higher in orbit and were now coming down to hit the bigger ship, with dozens of juggernauts in the mix that began sniping the invoker from range with their lachars.

If the invoker allowed that to occur it was doomed to a slow death, so it accelerated towards the incoming enemy, buying time for the other one to eat away and finish off the two halves of the station from the inside out. The juggernauts immediately withdrew, knowing they’d be no match for the lizard ship up close, and the other Skarron ships went with them, bullied away by the invoker that could not catch the quicker ships.

All over orbit there were literally hundreds of naval battles taking place, with the lizards having brought their largest fleet to date to assault the Skarron’s most rimward regional capitol. This was the first time the lizards had assaulted a civilian planet, with all others involved in the war being pure military civilizations. The one below them now was the source of the soldiers that continually kept flowing out to the front, and if knocked out would diminish the Skarrons’ ability to counterattack with any longevity.

But it was going to cost them greatly, for the system was more heavily defended than any other they’d taken. That was expected, for the lizards had recovered computer data from damaged Skarron vessels that included strength analysis and maps of Skarron territory, highlighting this system as the central strongpoint supporting the rest of the region. Below them there were over 15 billion Skarrons and 120 billion of their slave races, all of which were reproducing regularly to supply them with new troops.

There were other worlds similar to this one further into Skarron territory, but their troops and resources were being funneled through here en route to the fronts, making this the sweet spot and weak point of this tiny piece of the Skarrons’ giant empire. The Skarrons knew it as well, which was why they’d built the enormous defense stations and had a slew of ship varieties the lizards had never encountered before guarding the system. They intended to hold this strategic point and the lizards intended to take it away from them, resulting in an apocalyptic naval battle that was seeing carnage inflicted to both sides.

The invoker moved through as many debris fields as it did intact ships as it continuously chased away incoming fleets seeking to aid the still operation halves of the defense station. Less and less weaponsfire was coming from them over time as the other invoker slowly chewed apart their innards, but that was a slow process considering their sheer size and meant the other invoker had to either come in very close to aid or keep its distance to avoid the lachars and, more importantly, the rail gun slugs, both of which would pass right through the energy fields and hit the hull with nearly maximum effect.

The Skarrons had learned early on that the invokers had a weakness in that their energy fields needed prolonged contact to inflict massive damage, racking up power being poured into a target to superheat and vaporize it, meaning that fast moving objects could pass through with only minor damage. That was why there were hundreds of new rail gun-armed warships in the system that had not yet made their way to the front, but that had been designed specifically to fight the invokers.

So far none of them had made their way to the bisected station and the pair there, but they were elsewhere hunting the others while they in turn were using their cruiser swarms to corral the Skarron fleets into positions where they couldn’t easily redeploy…then the invokers would come through the masses and run right into them, making almost instantaneous kills on contact.

The Skarrons were likewise responding with their own monster ships, far larger than the invokers, that were heading directly for the lizard cruiser swarms and peppering them with plasma and lachars with such intensity that they were eating through them almost like the invokers were eating through the Skarrons’ smaller ships, though not with such a spectacle. The Skarrons’ Titans were smaller than the invokers, barely a third of their size, but covered in so much plasma-resistant armor that the lizard cruisers could barely scratch them short of hitting them with thousands of ships…which the Skarron escort warships sought to disrupt long enough for the titans to do their job.

The outer invoker, doing its job to scare off the small fleets that came nearby eventually was overwhelmed when three groups of planetary defenders joined up and hit it with all ‘small’ scale ships, though for the Skarrons none of their ships were what most races considered to be small. Taking a page out of the lizards’ play book six of the Cruiser-class warships went kamikaze, accelerating up to considerable speed and plunging into the rainbow vortex around the invoker.

Their shields went down almost instantaneously, with their hulls being stripped off their superstructure before they made it all the way through, but the mass of the innards of the ships survived and plowed into the invoker like slow, giant rail gun slugs. Within seconds the amount of energy arcs dipped by about 20%, leaving some bigger holes in the field that the other Skarron ships then began trying to target, often with their plasma hitting and being dispersed by the erratic arcs that seemed to defy prediction.

In order to get close enough for the plasma hits to really register those ships had to enter the kill zone, but when they did they all did, and like a coordinated swarm of bees they all stung the invoker simultaneously and from multiple angles. The mass of ships looked like someone had snuffed out the bright candle for a moment as their hulls ate up and stopped the energy arcs from cascading from one emitter to another, then there was a massive series of explosions as the Skarron ships were ripped apart, sending debris out in all directions like confetti.

But there were enough ships that didn’t get hit, with the dying ones shielding them from the energy arcs, that they were able to pound the invoker with clear lines of fire, targeting the emitters and crippling the lizards’ primary weapon. Some arcs returned and hit more ships, killing or disabling them but it wasn’t enough. Soon the rest of the emitters were down and the big ship was just a giant target.

Knowing it was doomed it accelerated, plowing into the Skarrons that didn’t move out of the way. Below it the other invoker pulled back from the half of the station that it was almost now buried inside and moved away, taking some more fire as it came within the targeting lines of the intact batteries on the station’s hull but those didn’t really matter, it just had to get clear as the doomed invoker rushed in on its own kamikaze run and rammed the lower orb.

The big white structure visibly dented as the invoker buried itself inside, then the concussive force caused that orb to bump into the other drifting nearby, adding to the damage the first invoker had already caused. As that damaged chess piece ran up higher in orbit with defensive cruiser screens rushing down to defend it, the Skarron defense platform showed only a handful of defensive weapons still online, meaning that the severed and now otherwise wrecked but still massive structure was essentially out of the fight.

The lizards had achieved their objective and now the area where it had held dominance was free for them to move through and engage the roaming Skarron fleets.

Similar drastic tactics were required to remove the other giant defense stations from orbit, but with great cost to themselves the lizards succeeded in killing them all and turning the rest of the assault into a more or less ‘normal’ engagement. They made sure to stay away from the atmosphere and extreme low orbit, but eventually the Skarron warships retreated there, into the firing range of their surface defenses, and created a stalemate.

The lizards waited, knowing that going down there would have been needless suicide, so they took possession of orbit and hunted down and destroyed all the damaged Skarron ships and took out their remaining orbital infrastructure in the coming weeks, taunting the remaining Skarron fleet to come out after them but they wisely wouldn’t. Even without the handful of big chess pieces that had survived, the lizards had the remaining Skarron ships outnumbered, so a naval fight to try and save infrastructure that they knew they couldn’t protect would serve no purpose.

But on the other hand the lizards didn’t have anywhere near enough ships to assault the planet itself and the Skarrons knew it, so they preferred to preserve their remaining ships and see if the lizards were stupid enough to press a surface attack.

The stalemate that resulted would last 9 months, with most of the Skarron ships entering the system unaware of the assault being hunted down and destroyed before they could make an emergency jump back out or race down to the planet past the blockade, but eventually the second lizard fleet arrived as planned, now augmented with data returned from the initial assault and the ground troop transports that had been missing from the first assault fleet.

The big chess pieces were not present here, merely jumpship after jumpship carrying an insane number of cruisers that filled orbit with hundreds of thousands of ships that waited patiently. The troop transports stayed back at higher orbits, biding their time, then when the moment was right the cruiser swarms descended into the atmosphere and took on the remaining warships, surface batteries, and anti-air capable walkers all at once, counting on their numbers to give the defenders too many targets to shoot at, leaving other ships free to become slayers.

It was a tactical move that no trailblazer would ever consider pulling, for the lizards lost almost their entire fleet in the following 6 hours, leaving two assault pillars, a damaged invoker, and a light defensive cruiser screen around the troop transports as all that remained aside from a few hundred of the ships that had descended into the atmosphere and lived to tell of it. Most of those were damaged and only partially operational, but 54 of them had somehow come through the maelstrom untouched and were now in a position of impunity, for all of the Skarrons’ walkers, warships, and surface missile batteries had been eliminated, leaving them with nothing to defend themselves with.

With those handful of cruisers scouring the planet looking for any defenses that might have been overlooked or quiet, the troop jumpships began disgorging landing transports that brought the lizard armies to the ground, and without any walkers to oppose them their tanks reigned supreme in the ground battles that would follow, with cruiser fire support added where necessary. The Skarrons did have their aerial forces more or less intact, but in those troop transports came the lizards’ wisp swarms as well, which flooded the skies and kept the Skarron fighters occupied long enough for the ground troops to do their work over the coming 2 years.

The aerial war proved to be a stalemate, but it was a stalemate that gave the ground troops the opportunity to press their advantage. Before all was said and done a few walkers popped up that they had to contend with, either having been incomplete before the initial attack or down for maintenance. Those made things difficult, but with cruiser assistance they were eliminated and the slaughter of the civilian population continued well past the last of their military succumbing.

During the first year of major ground battles a dribbling of lizard naval reinforcements would come into the system, shoring up the meager defenses there with the assault pillars being redeployed elsewhere. The damage invoker stayed, mainly due to the fact that its gravity drives weren’t fully functional, but in large part the lizards’ hold on the system was extremely tenuous. Unfortunately for the Skarrons this was the regional hub, and there were no other nearby strongholds to reinforce them from.

The lizards knew the Skarrons might respond with a huge force from further inside their territory, but figured it would take a considerable number of years before that counterattack would come. Instead of building up the defenses of their captured regional capitol they chose to sack it, destroying the entire population and then moving on to trash every bit of infrastructure they could, with that being a tall order given the dense cityscape that covered the planet.

It would be 3 years before the counterattack would come, and it would come like a hammer blow, easily killing the defense fleet in the system and eradicating the ground troops the lizards still had on planet, but while the invaders hadn’t seen fit to try and keep their razed conquest, they had been devoting incoming ships and resources to the surrounding systems that no longer had their stronghold to receive reinforcements from. Those systems saw heavy fighting and one loss after another for the Skarrons, with the lizards once again focusing on claiming a large number of lesser systems rather than trying for a handful of big prizes.

The regional capitol was no longer a threat and didn’t interest them. It was now just a wrecked, uninhabited planet, and if the Skarrons wanted to rebuild it they could, but they’d be starting from scratch. The region around that system was quickly falling into the lizards’ hands, and even as the massive relief fleet moved about to target some of those fallen systems it couldn’t get to them all. The lizards would suffer heavy losses where it did go, but would retain so many other new conquests that the tradeoff was worth it logistically down the road.

3

July 5, 2657

Aeryn System (beyond the ADZ)

Point 14

It had taken them nearly 15 months of travel, but finally the Hevmaj jumpship arrived at the Star Force system and the small race of bipeds were not disappointed with what they found. The system itself was devoid of any habitable planets, but what the grand empire had built here was beyond comparison…for they had created their own tiny worlds. Multiple metal spheres sat in orbit around the native lifeless worlds, cementing Star Force’s hold on the location that was emanating out their power to the surrounding region of space.

The Hevmaj had never encountered the empire before but word of their deeds had spread far across the galaxy, traveling some 80 lightyears to a cluster of systems known as the ‘Benoid’ to the races that inhabited it. They were a loose coalition of friendly neighbors that occupied 7 systems, all of which were no more than 4 lightyears apart from one another, creating shorter spacelanes than what the surrounding region had and allowing the Hevmaj and 9 other races to stay in contact and trade with one another.

But word of the huge menace that was gobbling up system after system had also spread to the Benoid, with the warning that they were also in its eventual path. At first the Hevmaj had dismissed the rumors, but then another race with which they were familiar, a more advanced one that they both respected and trusted had confirmed the existence of the Li’vorkrachnika and the unbeatable threat that they posed. Race after race and world after world was being taken and destroyed with no one seeming to be able to stop them.

This terrified the Benoid, but given that it was still a distant threat they had time to think and worry, looking for something to do and realizing that there was no way that they were going to be overlooked as some others had attested to being. They were smaller races than what the Benoid contained, meaning they had no chance of being passed by when the Li’vorkrachnika spread out to them.

It wasn’t until several years later that the Benoid started to hear rumors of some races putting up a fight and living to tell about it. Searching out those rumors with a passion they later learned of the ADZ…a sanctuary where many races had fled where the Li’vorkrachnika could not go. That sanctuary was protected by an empire called Star Force, a name that would soon be spreading to many races around the Benoid.

It wasn’t until Star Force had set up a distant outpost specifically to block the Li’vorkrachnika’s advance to the region where the Benoid was located did the Hevmaj even consider trying to contact them, but with more and more reports of worlds falling despite the protected regions that Star Force was patrolling the Benoid looked to be on the eventual hit list regardless of how long they were delayed.

The Hevmaj and the other races in the Benoid boasted a very high population and did not have the option of evacuating, nor did they have anywhere to go, so a solution had to be devised locally. With it becoming clear that they couldn’t protect themselves they sought contact with their more distant neighbors…from whom they learned that some of them were entering into an Alliance with Star Force. Others were outright abandoning their homes to relocate to their ADZ, and still a few denied the threat existed and chose to do nothing.

The Benoid couldn’t evacuate and they weren’t stupid enough to let themselves become deluded to the point where they could think they were safe, so the Hevmaj took their fastest jumpship and loaded it up with supplies and their finest diplomatic delegation, then shot it off towards the location of the distant Star Force outpost in the hopes of securing some form of help.

Now they were here, sitting in orbit around an unknown planet next to one of the Star Force’s giant metal worlds…and they were not alone. There were ships from many races here, all of whom were welcomed as visitors. The Hevmaj were no different and granted movement privileges the moment they entered the system, with the traffic controllers being a bit surprised when the Hevmaj answered their multi-lingual hail in their native English, for the Hevmaj had acquired knowledge of the language from traders and spent the majority of their year-long trip studying it intently, along with whatever other information they had gathered about the Star Force previously.

Securing a diplomatic contact wasn’t difficult either, for it seemed that this location served as an embassy to the local region. The Hevmaj had several discussions over the comms during the following weeks until finally one of the Star Force representatives asked to meet with them in person. Unfortunately the Hevmaj could not live within the oxygen atmosphere on the artificial world, but the Star Force agreed to send their representative over to their jumpship instead.

The short, fury Hevmaj waited in the landing bay during the atmospheric cycling, with the big heavy doors keeping the ship’s atmosphere in while the outer ones closed and the new atmosphere flooded in around the Star Force ship. Once all was balanced out the inner doors opened and the Hevmaj trotted out on their stubby legs, getting halfway across the bay when the boarding ramp on the Star Force ship opened up and a tall alien walked down it, passing through a shimmering barrier and onto their deck.

They couldn’t see what it looked like, for it was covered head to toe in armor. That wasn’t unexpected, given that it couldn’t breathe the Hevmaj’s atmosphere either, but it still left the little aliens curious and all the more intimidated by the giant’s presence.

“I am told you speak English?” it asked through an external speaker on the helmet.

“Wee du,” one of them responded.

“I am Brendan-JK804-78 of Canderous, a subsect of Star Force given possession of and the duty to defend this system. I will be your diplomatic liaison.”

“Wee wulcum yu tu ar sheep,” the Hevmaj said with their odd but understandable dialect. “Wee ar heer tu ahk yur hellp.”

“Help in what way?” the Canderian asked, holding their first conversation right there on the hangar deck of the primitive jumpship as he gazed down on the little fury aliens that looked like they couldn’t stand up to a stiff breeze.

“Wee spec fur ta Benoid. Tin raices in tutal. Wee ahk tu jun yur impir.”

“Quiet as always,” Davis commented as Greg walked up the staircase and into his office while the Director had his back to him and was standing staring out his panoramic window at the early morning sunrise over Atlantis.

“Archons don’t like to make noise,” the trailblazer answered as he walked up to him. Davis turned around and sat down, so Greg did likewise opposite him as the slightly older man pulled up a holographic display of statistics.

“I need your advice. These are the latest batch of diplomatic requests coming in from outside the ADZ. As always there are races asking for territorial slots or outright amnesty, but there’s a new trend developing,” he said, pointing to a specific part of the hologram.

Greg looked it over, seeing a host of races he wasn’t familiar with along with a few names he’d come across before. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”

“I haven’t given any of them a decision yet, though some have been waiting several years with the communications lag and all. Your thoughts?”

Greg rubbed his hairless chin, studying the list but with his mind wandering elsewhere. “Tricky. We know we can’t stick to our existing borders for it will allow the lizards to grow too large, but we also can’t expand far enough to stop them,” he said, telekinetically tapping a few buttons on Davis’s desk and bringing up a map that had the various locations of the requests highlighted. Most were coming in from beyond Epsilon and Gamma Regions, putting them on the far side of the ADZ where the lizards hadn’t gotten to yet, but a few were above beyond Delta Region and one was even in the gap between Beta and the Voku at Achkor.

“An endless mental back and forth for me. I was hoping you could offer another angle before you head out again.”

“Do they understand what joining Star Force means?”

“Most do, the others I’m having educated. So far only one has canceled their request.”

“Switched over to a territorial slot?”

Davis smiled. “Yes. They along with a lot of others think that having a colony in the ADZ to fall back to when the lizards get to them is the smart play, and that’s also beginning to become a trend.”

“What would you prefer to do?”

“I want to play it safe and creep out our borders, but I also don’t want to turn down requests for help…and races wanted to join us rather than just freeload I’m eager to incorporate.”

“You’re worried they’re too far away and we don’t have the resources to incorporate them all as quickly as needed?”

“And we can’t spare any trailblazers to oversee the conversion,” Davis added.

“There are enough others that can fill that void now,” Greg said dismissively. “Are any of these guys big enough to warrant one of us?”

“No. They’re small, primitive, and pretty much helpless. A few exceptions, but nothing beyond the Lacvamat.”

“And moving them in isn’t an option?”

“They want to retain their current worlds if possible, and we don’t have the resources to throw around to create brand new ones for them here. We need to utilize their existing infrastructure if this is going to be a possibility.”

“And that takes us far beyond the Sentinel line.”

“That is my concern.”

“We’ve been having similar discussions,” Greg said, leaning back in his chair. “Without another major ally there’s only one way to stop the lizard advance in this region,” he said, pointing to the lower part of the galactic plane that held neither lizard nor Skarron territory. “And that’s to expand drastically.”

“Logistically that isn’t feasible in the short term,” Davis reminded him.

“And the larger we push our borders the more vulnerable we are,” Greg added.

“And the more visible.”

The trailblazer sighed. “I know, but it looks like we’re all that’s standing in the lizards’ way. Sooner or later we’re going to have to make a choice. Turtle up and survive or take on a larger role in the expanded region.”

“And become the Nexus?”

“The similarity is worth noting, given that we can’t put the density of colonies into that vast of an area like we’ve done here. The ADZ is huge enough, trying to assert control over an area dozens of times larger is going to be…well, this is why we haven’t made any recommendations yet.”

“For the sake of argument, suppose we asserted domain over this region,” Davis said, using a combination of telekinesis and his fingers to highlight virtually all of the territory between the ADZ and the Voku, plus a huge chunk laterally around Epsilon Region. “That won’t contain the lizards. They’ve got too many other directions to expand into. The only way I can see to stop them is to kill them all, which we’re nowhere even close to being able to do.”

“No we’re not,” Greg said with regret.

“So if we can’t beat them, we’d be expanding for what purpose?”

“To slow them down and to save worlds.”

“I sense a catch somewhere in there.”

“No matter how far we expand there will always be somebody a little further away that the lizards are going to get. We can’t save them all, so the question is how far do we push.”

“I hate those questions.”

“As do we.”

“And if we overextend we risk those under our current protection.”

“That is the current dilemma,” Greg agreed.

Davis shook his head. “Sometimes I find I have to keep reminding myself that we have an endgame here, because it looks like we’re already beaten.”

“Not beaten, just not capable of winning. There’s a difference.”

“It sickens me to see how there are so many places in the galaxy that are just helpless to defend themselves. Against the lizards, Skarrons, and whatever other dominant powers are out there. It’s like they’re just sitting there waiting to be eaten.”

“When you’re at the top the view is a lot more scary.”

“I wish we had someone to turn to, and briefly I had hoped the Nexus would be that someone, but we lie outside their domain and they’re suffering from the same problem we are…the galaxy is just too damn big.”

“That’s why we do what we can and try to not let the fate of the others drive us insane…to that end, I’d give the go ahead on this one,” Greg said, pointing to the small dot between the ADZ and Achkor. “I know our original no-go line was the edge of Beta, but we’ve privately revised that to reach out to the Voku. They’ve built up that planet so much that we don’t want to leave them hanging, so we’re going to creep the border out there eventually. You might as well bring that race, whoever they are, into the fold now because we’re going to expand around them anyway down the road.”

“Is that going to be our permanent line or is it going to keep creeping closer to the core?”

“As much as we don’t like turning a blind eye to anyone, we’re not setting up any colonies past Achkor. Whether or not we make raids or put a few clandestine outposts out there is still up for debate, but those would only reach so far. The mass of Skarron territory is beyond our reach and will stay that way regardless of how strong we get. That’s a choice we’ve made and we’re going to stick to it.”

“That gives us one permanent border to work with then…once we creep out to it.”

“And it gives our enemies worlds that they’re safe on, meaning we can never fully defeat the Skarrons.”

“I hate even hearing that,” Davis said with a sigh, “but unfortunately that’s the galaxy we live in. We’ve done well to survive and grow to the size we have, given everything concerned.”

“And now that the lizards are pushing further into the core, we can’t go after them there either.”

“You think the Skarrons will let them stay?”

“Not willingly, but I have no idea what their priorities are or what other opponents they’re tangling with. Most of the intel data we’ve gotten has been local only. We still haven’t recovered a comprehensive map of their territory.”

“Compartmentalization?”

“That’s been another long, on-going discussion. Current theory is they’ve got fiefdoms that operate independent from one another to counteract the lag times given the distance, but who knows.”

“So even if we grew strong enough overnight to defeat the lizards, they’ve crossed a line into a region where we will not follow?”

“Sounds like something out of the Lord of the Rings, but yeah.”

“Which leaves our victory rooted in staying alive and saving as many others as we can?”

“If you’re asking can we militarily expand…the answer is yes. The question is how much, when, and where.”

“I know a border stretch is impossible, which will leave us with colonization blips similar to what Canderous is doing, correct?”

“We’ll need to establish strongholds with Sentinel emplacements, yes.”

“Which leaves reinforcement the issue?”

“I sense a suggestion coming,” Greg said keenly.

“One of the requests,” Davis said, zooming in on a portion of the map, “comes from a cluster of systems with 10 different races. They’re practically located on top of each other.”

“I like this,” Greg said immediately after glancing at the map. “Their proximity would allow a mini version of the ADZ to be built, though it’d have to be self-supporting and that would take a lot of time…but it is far enough away from the lizards to potentially have that time.”

“It’d have to be off the grid,” Davis pointed out.

“It’s doable. Not sure if it’s the best use of our resources, but if you want it we can make it happen.”

“And the others?”

Greg bit his lip. “Hate to say it, but without a link into the ADZ transit network it’d be a bit of an overreach at this point.”

“Which brings up another item I wanted to discuss with you. How difficult would it be to establish trade routes beyond the ADZ to link us to the surrounding regions?” Davis said, bringing up a premade map of what he was thinking, with numerous finger-like lines reaching out like the branches on a plant…including one that ran all the way down to Voku territory.”

“You are a bold one,” Greg said, giving Davis credit for an idea that even the trailblazers hadn’t thought of…at least not to this extent. “These lines will be vulnerable initially and we’ll have to devote considerable military presence until they get fortified locally. This isn’t something we can setup all at once. You’d have to grow these routes out over time.”

“I assumed as much. Once we get them set up?”

“As far as our scouts have gone we haven’t found anyone that can challenge us at our current tech level. That’s not saying much, considering a lot of these routes go beyond our current maps, but so long as they stay away from the lizards I’d say it’s also doable.”

“Too much?”

“Depends on our long term plans.”

“Which are still in flux.”

“To be honest, we’re going to annex all this region anyway. We’re just being cautious and not wanting to overextend ourselves,” Greg said bluntly. “No one else is strong enough to step up to the plate and we’re not just going to sit back and watch the lizards run rampant.”

“If I’m hearing you correctly, we’re going to settle on a fixed coreward border to keep from inviting discovery by the V’kit’no’sat, but we’re going to have to stop worrying about drawing attention to ourselves out here in the mid rim?”

Greg closed his eyes. “That’s what I do not want to say.”

“Because there’s no way of knowing what could tip them off,” Davis said, his thoughts running down a similar path, yet he’d come to a conclusion about 30 seconds ago that he’d been working towards for centuries. “The fixed inner border is a necessary decision that I support, but we can’t let people die that we can save on the possibility of our actions drawing the V’kit’no’sat here. If we’re truly going to hide then we need to start evacuating to the rim now and go far beyond the lizards.”

Greg smiled deviously. “You know we’re not going to walk away from a fight.”

“Agreed, so let’s just admit to the fact that we’re going to be ourselves and not be handcuffed by what might happen. We’re a long way from the current V’kit’no’sat border with the Skarrons sitting in between, and while we can always take one more precaution I say we stop now and get to work. The inner border will have to be it.”

Greg blew out a slow breath. “I can’t disagree with that. I wonder if the V’kit’no’sat know the Nexus is out here and don’t care or just don’t have a clue. The lack of maps suggest the latter, but it still feels like a gamble.”

“We have an unknowable variable that will remain unknown until they drop in on our heads. The question is, how are we going to deal with it.”

“I hate to say it but my gut is still uneasy on this one. We’ve made so much noise already I’m half surprised they haven’t found us. The size of the galaxy is our greatest advantage, and the bigger we grow the harder it will be to remain unnoticed.”

“Now this is odd. I find myself more gung ho than an Archon,” Davis said with some amusement.

“Very odd,” Greg agreed.

The merriment left the Director’s face as he looked the trailblazer in the eye. “We can’t leave these people to die,” he said slowly.

Greg returned his stare. “No…we can’t.”

4

March 7, 2658

Gangon System (lizard territory)

Sevvba

Greg sat on an elevated pillar in the command nexus, having been on station for several hours as he watched the surface assault of the lizard world with care. None of his ships were down in the atmosphere, but the H’kar under his command were. Their Destar Conduits were far more efficient at wrecking unarmored infrastructure than anything Star Force had, and now that the defense shields were breached on several lizard colonies he’d sent his allies down to target key facilities to cripple the lizards’ regrowth rather than trying for wholesale slaughter.

That list of targets was constructed by Greg personally for each assault, not wanting to leave anything up to chance or his subordinates, and the H’kar had grown to trust in his judgement and now followed his orders to the letter. That hadn’t always been the case, but after many years of fighting side by side with Star Force and learning from them the number one lesson they’d picked up was that the trailblazers had no equal when it came to strategy…and the fact that their ships survived more engagements when one of the Humans was in command.

Greg had already sent down the list of targets, which spared the lizards main habitation areas and food storage/production facilities but targeted all other industry and the growth pods. Greg was willing to let most of the current lizards live, but he couldn’t afford to let them easily make more, hence the growth pods were always a high valued target. They could and would rebuild them again after Star Force left, but it would delay them considerably by not being able to replace their personnel losses in such short order.

The H’kar had originally argued that if they were razing lizard colonies that they should kill everyone on the planet, but after fighting alongside Star Force they’d begun to accept the different strategy and, whether they agreed with it or not they did adhere to it, which was why Greg was willing to let them carry out the secondary surface bombardment. He didn’t have to worry about them going off mission and targeting structures he hadn’t tagged. That sort of foolishness was not something the H’kar went in for, and Greg was glad they had a professional ally to work with.

While most of the H’kar battleships, their smallest ships, were in atmosphere their two behemoths sat nearby Greg’s command ship in wait. Both H’kar ships were the equivalent of mobile starbases, capable of a wide range of support tasks but just as well equipped to throw down the damage at heavy targets…in fact that was the design behind the entire H’kar fleet, to walk up to a big enemy and punch it in the face. That made them a heavy hitting race, and so ill-suited to fighting the lizards.

They didn’t previously see the value of having smaller warships, though their time with Star Force was certainly giving them an education. Their destars were a Nexus upgrade that they’d created for just that purpose, and essentially being a superlaser that would fire continuously with no recharge cycle. It was made of a dense photon slurry, but altered in such a way to artificially bond them together into packets, giving it much more kill power than any traditional laser could conceivably throw out regardless as to how much power you put into it.

Typically one of the H’kar battleships would move up close to an enemy and tag it with the destar, keeping the blue-white beam on it until the ship was destroyed then moving on to the next. When facing off against a few large ships this worked very well, but with a lizard cruiser swarm each individual ship didn’t last very long under that level of firepower, but it took time to target another and the speed at which the cruisers moved often gave the H’kar gunners trouble.

They could certainly kill a lot of cruisers, but the same tonnage of ships, when combined into three or four big vessels was much easier for the H’kar to take down. Spreading it out into fleets of hundreds of them mean the H’kar had to take weaponsfire for a very long time because no single crippling shot could be fired.

Add in the fact that each battleship only had 1 destar and not a lot of support weapons and you had a prime target on their ships for the lizards to target, often with the H’kar running off with ‘blinded’ ships that had their destar destroyed. While having a big gun was an advantage in many circumstances, the mismatch against the lizards proved to be one glaring problem for the H’kar. Already they were working with Star Force to develop new warships designed specifically to fight the lizards, but the first prototypes were several years from completion.

That said, the H’kar fleet was anything but useless. Originally no H’kar battleship had ever entered the atmosphere of a planet, for they were built in space and operated in space…up until Liam had convinced them that they could go planetside and be effective. Now it was a standard tactic in their joint raids, with their destars being able to widen the beam and created a paintbrush that could level infrastructure quite quickly as opposed to the thin cleansing beams that Star Force could hit the surface with.

Rail guns were also less effective because of their needle-prick hits. Both weapons had been used to take down the colony shields, and now Greg had the H’kar moving in to clean up even as he repositioned his own drone fleet to assault more of the lizard colonies on the planet that had seen nearly a third of its surface consumed by the invaders. They were in what had once been Calavari space, though this planet had belonged to the Vesdan, who sadly had not survived the encounter nor were able to flee from it, given their primitive technology.

The battle in orbit had been quick, with only a few dozen cruisers in defense which the much larger joint fleet easily hunted down. It was good to eliminate them, but the real long term effect was in ridding the surface of the colonies’ ability to build and sending what they had already created into the junkyard category.  This was the third system that Greg had assaulted on this campaign, and in each case he left the lizards with less than they had originally, setting back their development in these systems and effectively nullifying their ability to reinforce or spread to others.

As of now they didn’t have a single starship left in the system, nor had they advanced to the point of creating an interstellar comm station, meaning that the rest of the lizard empire was going to be kept in the dark as to what had happened here, and the more confusion Greg and the others could sow behind enemy lines the better.

Just then the battlemap began to flicker with activity as a group of incoming jumps registered in planetary orbit a few dozen kilometers higher in altitude than his command ship currently sat on its lazy orbit around the planet and several hundred behind its current track.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, mentally sending out an alert and repositioning those ships closest to him. “Now there’s bad timing for you.”

An image of the exoskeletal H’kar commander popped up alongside the battlemap, with the computer handling the translation given that only a handful of their allies spoke English.

“An ambush?”

“They’re coming from the stellar jumpline, so I’d guess they were scheduled to arrive here and we just picked a bad time,” Greg said as the much larger image of an invoker appeared on the battlemap behind a large mass of cruisers that, almost belatedly began to reform into a screen, suggesting that they were as surprised by the raiding fleets’ presence as Greg was to see them here.

The H’kar made an annoying clicking sound that the computer didn’t bother to translate, but that Greg knew was angry frustration. “Shall we withdrawal?”

“No, we’re taking this bastard down…so long as there’s only the one of them.”

“We only have a light fleet and not the tonnage required to defeat that ship…at least not without great sacrifice.”

“Keep half your fleet on the surface running through the target list and bring the other half up to me and task them to protect these ships,” Greg said, mentally tagging every rail gun-equipped drone he had. “Do not assault the invoker.”

“You cannot take it alone.”

“Your destars are medium range and will require you to get within the energy arcs, that means you stay back or get slaughtered.”

“Our behemoths can weather the storm briefly.”

Greg shook his head. “Watch and learn. This isn’t the first invoker we’ve tangled with. They’re designed to destroy tonnage, so what you have to do is sting them to death.”

The H’kar commander was silent, then a moment later his hologram disappeared, but as ordered portions of the fleet assaulting the surface abandoned their targets and began to gain altitude.

Greg watched carefully as the rest of the lizard fleet arrived. There were a few bigger ships in the mix, four battleships and one dreadnaught, but it appeared to merely be an escort fleet for the invoker with no other ‘chess pieces’ involved. He guessed they were either passing through the system en route to elsewhere or were using this location as a rendezvous, for there was nothing here warranting that much firepower.

Greg’s own command ship he was keeping away from the fight as well. He knew he could dive into the energy arcs if he had to, but the shields wouldn’t last long enough for him to deliver a killing blow to the invoker before it started to eat away at his giant donut. No, Liam had taught him this trick a while back, and it was a drone-only affair. He just hoped the lizards hadn’t developed a counter for it.

The enemy didn’t hold off, but rather came straight at the command ship and the two H’kar behemoths, which with their escort fleet would have made for an even fight. It was odd, given how in the past the lizards had always wanted to protect their invokers, but now every time they had a chance to hit one of Star Force’s command ships they took the opportunity regardless of what it would cost them. They wanted a kill badly, but Greg wasn’t going to give them a chance today.

Instead he had his rail gun-equipped warships move into a partial spherical arc around one quarter of the invoker as the cruiser swarm came out to meet them when it was determined that they were going to hold range and not let the big ship move within striking distance. By then the H’kar began to catch up and helped the drones fend off the cruisers, using their overpowered destars to knock out one gnat at a time, leaving the rest of the swarm free to poke at the black, rectangular drones.

As they did the rail runs began targeting the invoker and firing on specific points that Greg gave them. The metallic bullets moved so fast that they passed through the energy arcs without getting fully disintegrated, merely a little melty on the outside, allowing the hard central mass of the slugs to hit the thin shields guarding the hull of the ship. It took several minutes of pounding, but eventually they broke through and with enough subsequent hits knocked out a few of the invoker’s emitters.

That reduced the amount of energy arcs in that area, with the invoker immediately beginning to pivot around to bring a more intact area of the field into the firing line. Greg wasn’t going to have that, so he had his drones chase the weakened area around the invoker like they were the horses on a carousel, all the time with the H’kar and other drones protecting them from the cruisers and the five larger lizard ships that the H’kar eagerly pursued.

Those kept trying to retreat to the invoker and draw the H’kar into range, but every time they poked a few holes in them they’d disengage, not falling for the bait as they would have once done. Traditional H’kar strategy held that once you engaged a target you stayed on it until either it or you were destroyed, but thankfully Star Force had rid them of that lunacy…at least as far as their raiding fleets were concerned.

The rail gun slugs kept firing, targeting the area near the emitters despite the fact that sensor locks were nearly impossible given the disrupting nature of the energy arcs, but the more that were damaged the more gaps there were in the crisscrossing rainbow lightning field, allowing more precise plotting and even a few well targeted cleansing beams to shoot through.

Greg could have had all his cleansing beams open up on the invoker, including those on the command ship, but he needed those to assist with destroying the cruisers right now and his own ship had to keep moving to stay away from the invoker that was still chasing it, with the battlefield being dragged along wherever it went.

The Star Force and H’kar ships had to keep dancing to remain in position, but eventually the weak area on the invoker dropped its energy arcs low enough that Greg gave the go ahead to four of his drones that were standing by in the back of the battle. As a group they moved through the lizard swarm and dove towards the energy arcs, with the three cruisers tucking up against the rear of a shield ship as it deployed its full power to create an egg-like barrier around the foursome.

Greg had never done this before, but Liam’s notes had indicated how much the shield ship should be able to take and he’d gone just a little under that amount to be on the safe side…though the random nature of the lizards’ weapon defied confident numbers, so he found himself holding his breath a bit as the remote-controlled ships dove into the field.

He lost track of them on the battlemap briefly, with the control signals also being disrupted by the energy arcs but with enough gaps that there was still intermittent contact and control. The shield ship lit up with damage statistics suddenly, then it and the three cruisers were inside the energy arcs and into the ‘calm’ center of the hurricane where the hulk of the ship sat.

Defense weapons began popping plasma at the quartet, but the three cruisers had come through virtually unharmed and targeted them, first having to break through the massive ship’s shields with their maulers before they began picking off the defense batteries and owning a little piece of the ship as they maneuvered carefully so not to hit the hull or be flung back out into the energy arcs as the invoker made several abrupt course changes.

The drones were the faster and able to stay in their pocket of calm, and from which they began moving out across the hull, targeting other defensive weapons before they migrated over to the nearest emitter and slagged it. From there they hit more and more, diminishing the energy field to the point where the lizards saw the writing on the wall and decided to run.

The invoker reversed course and moved back to the stellar jumpline, with the four drones sticking with it and some of the remaining cruisers following, with the rest staying behind to fight and die as a diversion. When the invoker got back to the jumpline it deactivated its energy field and disappeared with a massive surge of acceleration…and with it went the drones, now out of communications range and acting on preset orders.

Greg didn’t know if they’d do much more damage or not, but he wanted them pestering the invoker when it arrived at the star.

A few seconds later his command ship made its own offline jump, tugging on other gravity wells to get the proper angle as he intended to beat the invoker to the star, leaving the two behemoths behind with orders to move in and assist with cleaning up the remains of the enemy fleet which included the battleships and dreadnaught.

Greg’s navigators had to guess at what altitude the invoker would come out of its jump, but they got him close. The command ship arrived some 17 seconds head of the invoker, which lit up its energy arcs again and one of the cruiser icons pacing it went out, unable to stay or get back within the hollow in time.

The other two and the damaged shield ship were still there and now back in remote control range, with several more emitters shown to have been knocked out during the microjump. Greg’s pilots used them to target a few more as the command ship chased down the invoker and dove straight into the now weakened energy arcs, taking the massive hits against its shields and getting within close firing range.

When that happened the hull of the invoker literally exploded with weapons impacts. Several emitter pylons were severed by cleansing beams and the bloon launcher blasted into the hull with multiple hits in the same location, chewing a crater into it as the command ship enlarged its IDF field to dangerous levels in order to ensnare the bigger ship and keep it from jumping out or maneuvering at all.

It was a modification that had been made in the newer models and had the IDF emitters ramped up to their maximum output, with so much power flowing through them they were on the verge of burning out, but it had been approved by the techs and was holding up at the moment, though Greg knew it wouldn’t last because the field was drawing off of a specific capacitor that only held so much juice.

But in that short span of time the command ship was going to rip apart the invoker. The only question was whether they could damage the internal gravity drives before their nullification bubble popped.

Eventually the command ships’ shields went down and the hull started taking hits, with several weapons batteries going offline like the lights of a Christmas tree slowly winking out, but the number of emitters left on the invoker was diminishing even faster, and before long there were only a few rainbow tendrils left to damage the Star Force super ship, and those were having trouble getting through the hull armor, for like the invoker had done previously Greg was now spinning the giant donut around and taking the damaged portion out of the line of fire.

With their sensors now back to almost normal, the cleansing beams began poking deep into specific portions of the hull, reaching for and hitting some of the gravity drives or their support components, but they were having to burn through kilometers of ship to get to them, and every twitch in their firing lines meant more material to get in the way of the beams.

Then the IDF bubble expired and the field reverted back to ship’s size, with Greg waiting to see what would happen.

A sudden surge of motion tore the invoker away from the command ship, then it was off on a course around the perimeter of the star, ostensibly towards a jumpline.

“Damn,” he swore, getting navigational analysis a moment later that indicated the invoker was off course and headed towards no known jumpline…as well as drifting out from the star, which would diminish the gravitational intensity it would need to make an interstellar jump, especially now without all of its gravity drives to pull on.

Greg smiled and input a chase course to the navigator, with the command ship making its own jump and catching up to the invoker without it altering course in response. A quick look at the sensors indicated that there had been an internal explosion, possibly due to the last microjump, that had gutted the remaining gravity drives or at least their power sources.

That meant the ship was now dead in the water.

Greg held the command ship back at range and let his shields recharge, poking the invoker with his cleansing beams and now bloon launchers since the ship had only a handful of energy arcs to stop them. Some would get through, he knew, so he didn’t mind spamming the giant ship with them while the cleansing beams poked the remaining emitters out of existence.

After that happened, he’d move in and finish off the ship...then have the techs paint a kill marker on the command ship’s hull as they repaired the damage.

5

September 29, 2658

Solar System

Venus

Davis’s puddle jumper landed in one of the many starports in orbit around the planet, nestling up against the wall in a hangar bay that contained a mix of dropships and larger transports before releasing him to walk over to a spoke-like concealed tunnel bump that ran across the huge deck floor. Once inside he walked in safety over to the far wall while more ship traffic moved about over his head, visible through the clear bubble that was ringed with bulkhead ridges that he passed through rhythmically. It took a while to cross the huge bay, but eventually he made his way into what was a service starport that was off limits to the general public.

The station was huge, like most in the Sol System, but the Director found his way around easy enough and eventually ended up in an observation lounge that had false windows relaying realtime camera footage of the outside of the station showing the planet below and the larger than normal sun just above the horizon. Inside the lounge were 10 white clad Archons, each showing a brown stripe running from neckline down to their ankles on the outside of their casual uniforms, denoting the padawan rank that they all held.

They noticed Davis approaching before he had even come in the doorway, and all turned to look as the Director entered their little get-together.

“You’re late,” Olli-247 teased.

“I’m never late,” Davis said deadpan. “I always arrive precisely when I mean to.”

“Some last minute instructions I assume?” Victoria-243 asked, sitting on the back of one of the two couches in the room.

Davis shook his head. “More of a pep talk. I know you’re going to have to improvise on the spot, so there’s little point in giving you instructions. Have a seat please,” he said as he walked over and pulled up a loose chair so he could sit in front of the Archons and face them as they piled into the two couches that held four each, with Victoria and Dennis-240 sitting perched on the back corners.

“I know this is new for you, more or less,” Davis began. “Stephan did some work with the Calavari back in the day, but the rest of you have been focused more on combat and training than dabbling with empire building. You have all had some experience handling Clan matters, so I wouldn’t label you as newbs, but I’m here to tell you that’s basically going to be what you are when you get to the Benoid. I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with alien races and their various cultures, and every time I deal with a new one I have to learn again.”

“Granted, there are some similarities in the process of annexing a race, but it’s not something that can be preplanned. You’re Archons, you’re the best we have at improvising and Duke Stevenson will bring with him all the experience and administrative procedures we’ve concocted to date, but at the end of the day it will be you ten that will be reshaping the Benoid into a Star Force adjunct and I want to encourage you to take liberties. Lessen disadvantages and reinforce strengths, like you always do, and make the Benoid your own.”

“I know you’ve had some chats with the trailblazers who have done this sort of thing before, but I can tell you that no matter how much prep work you do you’re still going to have to play it by ear once you arrive. The language difficulties will be a major problem, as will be dissenters. There are almost always some, and we saw that with the Kiritas too, despite their being the most loyal and grateful of all the races we’ve come to include in Star Force. If I were you I wouldn’t expect the same when you arrive.”

“When you first tested out for basic training you had to pass a video game test, proving that you could understand the fundamentals of working together as a team, and I want this endeavor to be no less. You may be going to different star systems but I want the Benoid acting as a single unit. The details of which I’ll leave up to you. It’ll be decades before I get a strong grid link out to you, so you’re going to have to make do with what you’ve got on site, and even I don’t know what exactly that will be. The data files we’ve gotten from the Benoid are sketchy, as you already know.”

“Back in the day I played a lot of video games before transitioning over to the corporate side, and it should be no surprise that the ones I favored were civilization building games. I know you guys are far better experienced in the gaming realm than I am, but I want to draw a parallel here. You’ll be doing in real life what was called for in the games, and look on it as such. Right now the Benoid is far enough away from the lizard advance to give you some time to build, but you are under a countdown, one for which we don’t know the exact date.”

“Canderous will shield for you as long as they can, but the Benoid is going to have to become self-sufficient as soon as possible, and like with some games you only have your handful of ships and personnel to start with. You’re going to have to incorporate the locals, but do so at a reasonable pace and don’t put too much on them. You are transforming them into Star Force, so don’t cut corners and compromise standards for the sake of time. Use transitional teams if needed, but the Benoid cannot become a Star Force hybrid, it must be fully Star Force.”

“I don’t say this because I doubt you, I just know some of the headaches that you’re going to encounter. These races are joining us out of self-preservation more than anything, so expect resistance when you drastically start to change their culture. It’s going to be similar to what Randy and Tom had to deal with when they saved the Kiritas, but my gut says this is going to include some new challenges. I don’t know what they will be, that’s something you’ll have to figure out on the spot.”

“Bottom line is there is no training for this, and even if I was to go myself I’d have to learn and adapt to the conditions present. So if you find the situation seemingly unworkable don’t fret. Just take it piece by piece and build out from a fortified position. Even though you’re on the clock, building a proper transition is of a higher priority.”

“Sounds a bit like double talk, and it is…but it’s also the reality you face. If this was going to be easy and straightforward I wouldn’t be sending the 10 of you and a Duke. You’ve got to start from scratch until I can get the transportation grid extended out to you, and when I do I expect something useful to feed.”

“Normally a trailblazer would be assigned to a mission of this importance, but they’re needed elsewhere and this isn’t the only annexation that we’re undertaking…but it is the largest. It’s also going to be a proof of concept, to some degree, for the region. If you succeed I imagine other races will petition us for inclusion as well. Biggest thing I want to say, in addition to good luck, is that this is the first big stepping stone to our future expansion and I need you to make it work, even though I have no idea what that will take.”

“Relax,” Zac-241 said confidently. “You were smart to assign our old basic team to this. We’re used to brainstorming as a group. We’ll make this happen.”

“Agreed,” Victoria echoed.

Davis smiled. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“And?” Olli asked.

“If it wasn’t for the Ikrid blocks I’d say you were reading my mind,” Davis commented, impressed with the Archons’ deductive abilities, for he was fairly sure he wasn’t giving away anything with his facial gestures. “There’s been a last minute request that I’m stalling until I get your take. In fact I’m leaving it up to you. This is your mission and I want you to go with a team you’re comfortable with, so don’t worry about hard feelings if you don’t want them, but both the Calavari and the Elarioni have offered their assistance.”

Britt-249 frowned from his position in the middle of the second couch. “Star Force Elarioni or the independent faction?”

“The independent Elarioni.”

“What the hell do they want in this?”

“When they found out that two of the races in the Benoid lived on waterworlds it seemed to have piqued their interest.”

“I already have a handful of Star Force Elarioni in my team,” Attrick-242 noted, for he was to oversee the annexation of the one fully aquatic race. “And I thought the other Elarioni were only interested in hiding out from the V’kit’no’sat.”

“I’ve been noticing a shift in their culture that I believe has resulted from their connection to the ADZ. While they’ve taken the hermit role to be sure, they’re linked in with our data grid and are getting a lot more knowledgeable about the region around them. I think it’s bringing them out of their fear-induced shell, on top of the fact that they know Humans are also on the chopping block and we’re not exactly hiding.”

“What’s their angle here?” Britt asked.

“I think they want pull with the other aquatics races. They don’t seem to care that much about the land dwellers, but they’ve established significant diplomatic relations with every known aquatics or semi-aquatics race to come into the ADZ.”

“What type of help are they offering?” Attrick wondered, suspecting more interference than assistance.

“They want to establish their own colony on Vardeenplis, given that those oceans are uninhabited, and a resource outpost on Bellot to feed you,” Davis said, pointing to Attrick, “resources and to assist as an intermediary learning their language and acting as a bridge between the two. They also want to share 40% of their collected resources on Vardeenplis in exchange for the right to set up that colony.”

“Sounds like claim jumpers to me,” Garen-248 scoffed.

“Do you think they’re on the level?” Attrick asked.

“That thought had occurred to me,” Davis said, addressing Garen first, “and I think they are. Consider that, while they’re not part of Star Force they are operating within our borders as an ally and associate rather than going outside and trying to set up a fully independent colony. I think they see this new annexation as an opportunity to expand and play a role in shaping future events.”

“How did they even know about this mission?” Victoria wondered.

“Any new annexation I make public knowledge. And since this isn’t a military operation I’ve let the timetable go public as well.”

“How long will we have to delay if we want them to tag along?”

“You won’t. Both have fleets insystem ready to go with.”

“Sounds presumptuous,” Wrex-245 accused.

“Not for the Calavari,” Stephan differed. “They probably saw the timetable and wanted to be in a position to help without having to delay us. You told them the mission commanders would make the final call, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Davis confirmed.

“Then that’s just them trying to be as efficient as possible. Not leverage.”

“And the Elarioni?” Wrex asked.

Stephan shrugged. “You may have a point there.”

“I’ve made them no promises and they’ve acknowledged that point. Whether that’s just talk or not is anyone’s guess,” Davis said, looking from face to face as he tried to judge their reactions. “It’s totally your call. Do you want a third wheel or not?”

“The Calavari are already Star Force, so they’re not a third wheel,” Stephan said assuredly. “If no one else wants their help, I’ll be glad to take it.”

“How many of them are there?” Victoria asked.

“They’ve assembled a team of 1.6 million, mostly comprised of techs and workers, with enough supply ships to sustain themselves.”

“Done deal there, I think,” she said, glancing at the others for confirmation, getting a few nods and telepathic equivalents in response.

“I should probably say that the Elarioni are offering a much larger fleet to the mission and some 22 million personnel.”

Attrick whistled. “That’s one hell of a colonization effort.”

“And potentially useful if they cooperate,” Stephan added, “but not to me.”

Attrick looked at Draven-246. “What do you think?”

“Depends on how willing they are to take orders. They’ll heavily outnumber us and may think that gives them the right to play loose with the rules we set down.”

“It is a risk,” Davis agreed, “but I’ve discussed this with some of the Star Force Elarioni that transferred over and they seem to think the offer is legitimate and would be very useful.”

“What does Ariel think?” Attrick asked.

“If she hadn’t okayed it I wouldn’t be bringing it to you guys.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Attrick said satisfied.

“Same here,” Draven agreed.

“Alright then,” Davis said, clapping his hands together once, “that’s done. So now to the big question.”

The ten Archons looked at him for a moment, getting some weird looks on their faces when he didn’t say anything…then Davis laughed once, breaking his straight face.

“Nah, there’s nothing. Just messing with you. Get going,” he said, motioning towards the door, “do your thing.”

Victoria blew out a breath in a half laugh as she swung herself off the couch top, standing up. “Punked by Davis. That’s a first.”

“See you in 50,” Britt said to the Director with a two fingered salute as they got up off the couches and headed out, with Attrick lagging behind a bit and giving Davis a curious stare.

“Problem?”

“You did that to check and see if we’d found a way around the Ikrid blocks.”

The air in Davis seemed to go out, with his facial features sagging a bit. “And I thought I had an answer.”

The Archon smirked as he casually headed towards the doorway. “Learn to live with doubt.”

Davis stayed on his chair, back to the wall ‘window’ and watched him leave, then slowly shook his head in dismay. Somehow the Archons could always read him, and it’d become his private little war to find a way to hide whatever cues he was giving away and from time to time to test the limits of their awareness.

It certainly seemed like they were reading his mind, but at times he was able to conceal things from them…or ‘punk them’ as Victoria had put it. Today was just another datapoint in his ongoing quest to try and figure out the riddle of the way their minds worked, and he had a feeling it was going to take him another hundred years or so before he made any real progress.

Davis returned the chair to its original position and headed back to the landing bay and his waiting ship, his task here done. He’d be returning to Atlantis directly while the 10 Archons would each be heading to their own MCV-class jumpship escorted by a flotilla of cargo ships and a handful of warships. They’d be leaving the system within the next 6 hours, with the Calavari and Elarioni ships meeting up with them at Venus and then transitioning over to the star in a long convoy that would begin making the numerous jumps required to travel across Epsilon Region and beyond the ADZ to the mostly uncharted wilds of the neighboring galaxy where they’d start to hack out some new Star Force territory ahead of the brushfire that was the oncoming lizard advance.

6

January 3, 2659

Banner System (Core Region)

Smash

“Ship arrival without IFF,” one of the Star Force traffic coordinators told the deck chief over his shoulder, his eyes still on the contact near the smaller of the two stars in the system that the detection grid had just registered and transmitted over the gap in the system to the heavily populated Human world where the transit headquarters were located.

“What make?” the Chief asked, leaning forward microscopically in his chair as he pushed aside whatever it was he was working on at the time. The coordinators handled all the traffic within the system, each with a particular zone that was micromanaged by other controllers on site, but in this case there was no station near the stellar pair so the anomaly had been routed directly to the control center.

The coordinator waited for a few seconds so the sensors could chew on the readings they were getting, but with no luck he merely shook his head and raised an eyebrow. “Unknown.”

“Alert the defense fleet to stand by for intercept and get a comm to the H’kar. This may be one of theirs.”

“It doesn’t match any H’kar ship in the database.”

“It could be another Nexus craft that we’re unfamiliar with. Where’s it heading?”

“Staying put for the moment…defense fleet says drones are being dispatched.”

“Reroute traffic patterns around it until we know what we’re dealing with. If it is hostile we don’t want anyone getting caught up in the crossfire. Backtrack its trajectory.”

“Jumpline indicates Mortica System.”

“Incoming comm from the unidentified ship,” another control room staffer interrupted. “It’s a copied Star Force transmission granting them pass-through rights.”

“It’s what?”

“It’s a green card.”

“Those don’t come from ships, they come though the grid.”

“I know, but this one is coming from the ship.”

The Chief rubbed his forehead in confusion. “Who does it say it is?”

“It’s labeled as a H’kar associate.”

“Inform the defense fleet that we have a probable legit transport, but that we request a military escort anyway. I don’t like this.”

“Actually, the green card is for a convoy fleet of 259 vessels.”

“What the hell,” the Chief said, getting up out of his seat and walking forward. He stepped down two levels and came up behind the coordinator, double checking what he was seeing. “Amend that comm to the defense fleet to ‘convoy escort.’ Still just the one ship?”

“So far yes.”

“Keep an eye on it. I don’t like this,” he said, staring at the sensor image of a single, moderately-sized jumpship just sitting in stellar orbit with a host of Star Force signals moving towards it. Eventually he took his eyes off it and retreated back towards his chair.

“Here they come,” the coordinator said before he even made it halfway back. “Multiple vessels incoming in tight stagger.”

“Sent the messenger on ahead did they?”

“And these are much bigger.”

“Defense fleet says they’re assuming priority control of the situation,” another staffer said.

“Good,” the Chief uttered, returning to his chair. This was in someone else’s hands now. “Keep the area clear and let them do their thing…and bring up possible evacuation routes for the orbital traffic. I want to be ready if fighting breaks out.”

“They do have a green card,” the coordinator pointed out.

“That they transmitted,” he said, bringing up a comprehensive system traffic tracking holo in front of him so he could see the big picture and hand out assignments for the coordinators to tackle as needed, “and that makes me wonder.”

A tone sounded on the desk where Keina was reading a mass of text, bringing her out of her studying haze. She telekinetically pressed a button on the surface half a meter to her right, connecting the incoming comm line. “What is it?”

“Unidentified ships entering the system under a green transit card that they themselves are transmitting. Traffic control requested an escort and one is under way now.”

The acolyte frowned, standing up. “On my way.”

She walked out of the small office and jogged down a straight hallway to an open platform overlooking the system defense command center. She was holding the fort, so to speak, while the normal commander was off duty. He was probably in the sanctum right now and she needed to see what was going on before interrupting the ranger. Having unidentified ships coming through wasn’t all that unusual, for some races just wanted to poke around the Human Core Region and see what was there, but with the addition of the H’kar colony a great deal more traffic was popping up, bringing with it a wide variety of onlookers.

The part about them transmitting their own green card was odd, but there was only one possibility that rose in the Archon’s mind. The relay grid sent the transmission on ahead of the irregular ships so that the destination system would know that they were guests of some sort in the ADZ and not subject them to the same suspicion and scrutiny in every inhabited system that they passed through. The only reason a ship would carry a copy of the transmission itself was…if the ships were capable of moving faster than the interstellar comm signal.

Keina bypassed the two lateral stairs and just hopped over the forward railing, dropping a good four meters into a deceleration crouch that went a little too far, forcing her to roll out of it into a somersault, but she kept the transition smooth and was back on her feet in a flash, racing towards the commander’s post and getting a quick look at the holo before she started getting additional information fed to her both visually and verbally.

It didn’t take the acolyte long to get caught up, with her sending her own message to the H’kar inquiring who this was and if they were responsible for them being here. The lag time up to the moon that they’d been given half of to establish a base of operations to service their fleet and act as an embassy within the ADZ wasn’t more than a fraction of a second, but it was a long few minutes before they finally received a response.

“Dsevmat,” she read aloud, doing the best she could to get the pronunciation right.

“Sound familiar?” one of the naval staffers asked.

“They’re on the member list of the Nexus, but one that we have no other information about. Grant them clearance and have traffic control stand down their redirects, but keep the escort drones nearby. There aren’t a lot of weapons on those bigger ships, but the small ones look well outfitted.”

“Warships escorts?”

“That’d be my guess. Keep enough drones nearby that we’ll be able to respond instantly if they go hostile, but otherwise give them their space.”

Roger was in Alpha Region when he got the message concerning the arrival of another Nexus member and the request they were making of Star Force, prompting him to hop on a Ma’kri and head back to the Core Region immediately. Both Paul and Liam were heavily engaged elsewhere in combat operations, with his work on Lucian tinkering with Clan Emerald Shark infrastructure prototypes being able to wait until later given that the Dsevmat were requesting one of Star Force’s naval warfare specialists.

When his ship finally arrived in the Banner System he had it go straight to the H’kar moon where the visiting fleet was sitting quietly in orbit carrying the diplomatic delegation and the reward they were offering if Star Force could help them solve a lingering problem. As soon as they were aware that Roger had got here the local Archon in command sent the trailblazer an update, informing him that the green card copy that the Dsevmat ships had been carrying was eventually followed up by the actual transmission through the relay grid two days later.

That right there told Roger that this wasn’t a low level race within the Nexus like the H’kar, and that whoever they were they had gravity drives far faster than what Star Force currently possessed and probably a full tech tree to match. He made contact with the H’kar first, then let them make the formal introductions via comm, during which the newcomers wanted to meet with Roger in person…and onboard one of their ships.

Donning his dark blue mage armor, the Archon headed to one of the landing bays in his Ma’kri where the Dsevmat transport eventually landed, sprawling what looked like glowing white hairs in the thousands beneath the ship as landing legs to cradle its mass as a portion of its hull melted open and the material reformed into a meter-wide foot ramp.

At first Roger waited for someone to come out, but when no one did he reluctantly walked up to the base of the ramp and looked inside, seeing nothing more than a dark hollow. Using his Pefbar he was able to penetrate the hull and look all the way through the small ship, seeing that no one was inside. Guessing that the transport was remote controlled he walked up the ramp only to have it melt and pull back up to reform the wall behind him, then the landing ‘hairs’ retracted and the ship floated out of the hangar as Roger meandered further inside.

There were only two chambers inside the seed-like pod, a main floor and a small adjunct not counting the short hallway to the door. Both were bare, but he could see additional structures in the floor, walls, and ceiling that he guessed were extrudable if the situation called for it. The main chamber flashed on a flat hologram mimicking a window across the side of the smooth-walled room that had not a single crease nor crevice in it, showing the departure from the bay and the flight across orbit to one of the pearl-colored ships.

They were likewise smooth and lumpy in places, with tiny splotches that glowed white, blue, or even a tinge of purple here and there. Mostly their hulls were just blank, but several places had been highlighted on the ships during their entry into the system denoting the position of weapons batteries that had since been retracted into the hull and were now hidden, probably behind the same melty technology that the pod’s door was made of.

Likewise a hangar entrance formed on the side of one of the biggest ships in the Dsevmat fleet, with small ripples of material moving aside and allowing the pod within, only to close up behind the trailblazer and seal him in. A moment later a trickle of apprehension ran down his spine as he reached out with his Ikrid and sensed the surrounding minds…with him immediately picking up reflective feedback.

He could only get the faintest of readings on them, but could tell that his telepathic touch had sent them into a flurry, for each one he brushed minds with immediately became agitated. Roger pulled back from the penetrating scans that he usually used on new species and just noted the position of their minds as the pod’s door opened and reformed into a ramp, inviting him to leave the tiny ship.

When he did he saw the source of three of the nearby minds…which sent another little tickle down his spin, for the Dsevmat easily outmassed him and moved in an unusual manner, given that they had no arms, legs, or appendages of any kind. They were literally giant pearl-colored snakes.

“Hello,” Roger said in the Nexus common language, which he’d learned a number of years back, as all the trailblazers had.

“We were not told you had telepathic abilities,” the closest snake said, slithering up beside him in the heavy gravity and raising its tri-finned head up level with the Human’s. “Do not try to access our minds again or you will be harmed.”

“No need for threats,” Roger said calmly. “You asked for me to come here, remember?”

“Calm yourself, Hameen. He meant no offense,” the snake to the left said with a reverberation in its voice that Roger suddenly realized was being transmitted telepathically rather than physically, imbuing it with the equivalent as a restraining hand on the shoulder or a poke in the ribs. “He withdrew as soon as he sensed us. We would do the same with strangers.”

“We were not told they were this advanced,” Hameen countered with uncertainty rippling off him.

“All the better,” the third snake said without any telepathic reinforcement. “We will not have to rely fully on verbal communication.”

“How can we when he…” Hameen said, then cut off immediately, making Roger wonder if they were only able to transmit omnidirectionally. If they could have private ‘lines’ between one another then they probably wouldn’t be discussing these things in the open.

“You’re wondering why you can’t probe my mind,” Roger interrupted their moment of indecision. “That’s because we have a defense against such things. My apologies if I startled you earlier. I won’t intrude again.”

“Apology accepted, Human,” the left snake said agreeably, with its three tiny clear eyes looking Roger over. “Is our atmosphere inappropriate?”

“It is a bit foul, but breathable,” he said, referencing some of the trace gasses that the Dsevmat used as the equivalent of vitamins that Roger’s nose was equating with a cooking experiment gone horribly wrong. “The armor is precautionary when we are entering unknown environments.”

“It has its own atmosphere then?”

“Short span, yes.”

“Tell us what your native atmosphere is and we will make adjustments.”

“Unnecessary…I will adapt. Tell me more of this request you have of us.”

Hameen turned away from the trio, but it was only to loop his body around itself in a coil that he then raised his head back up from before he spoke. “It has become known throughout the Nexus that Star Force’s strategic capabilities far outstrip your technological ones. Your efforts against the Li’vorkrachnika and subsequent joint missions with the H’kar have shown that your wisest warlords have a knack for finding ways to win battles that statistically they should not. Are we to assume you are one of these warlords?”

“I am not only one of them, but one of the top three regarding naval warfare. Which of us is best is still an undecided issue,” he said, referencing the little rivalry/camaraderie that he, Liam, and Paul still had going on to date. “What is it that you wish me to apply my skill on?”

“Follow us please,” the snake on the right said, emanating a sense of satisfaction before it twisted around and lengthened out, wiggling back and forth as it headed for a wall. Hameen followed, but the third snake telepathically gestured for Roger to go next and the Human walked off following the other two snakes, feeling very out of place with his bipedal movement. There were many others moving around the bay that he could visually see, plus many more that he could sense in nearby chambers or behind the rows of transport pods, all of which wiggled around with no apparent ability to handle the tasks normal tech crews would.

The wall opened before them, exposing a hallway on the other side, but it was the little tendril of Lachka that caught Roger’s eye. It wasn’t the same, but close enough that his Rentar allowed him to detect it stretch out from the first snake’s head and contact a control nub on the wall, indicating that not only did the Dsevmat have telepathic abilities, they were also telekinetic…which solved the mystery of how they were able to work with technology without any limbs.

The snakes were able to move rather quickly despite their trash can thick bodies, though their hallways were shallow ceilinged, with Roger having to duck down in some of the more constricted segments when his height was a few inches greater than the architecture. After a few minutes they came to a brightly glowing tunnel that clashed with the dimly lit rest of the ship that was illuminated from the walls themselves without the presence of any individual orbs or fixtures.

Before him now was more of a tunnel than a hallway, and as the first snake slithered inside it was whisked away in some type of energy field and quickly disappeared into the distance.

“A faster means of internal transport,” the one behind Roger said as Hameen likewise entered and disappeared. “It is harmless and automatic. Simply move inside.”

Roger remained silent, but did as instructed. Suddenly his forward foot left the floor and his center of mass quickly followed…then he was moving down the tunnel of bright light suspended shy of any of the round walls but likewise unable to turn his body. As he wondered what type of force field was holding him the exit manifested itself ahead as he was drastically slowed without any felt effects, meaning an IDF field was also in play.

He stepped forward back onto solid ground when the field released him, then moved away as the third snake came through. From there they ‘walked’ some more until another wall melted and they entered a chamber with six other Dsevmat at what must have been their version of work stations. They were coiled up inside clear bowls with a mess of holograms around them, some of which appeared to be solid, for they were touching them with their ‘necks’ and it finally clicked that they were head rests.

“Show him,” Hameen said to all in the chamber, this time purely telepathically and without any physical words, which made it hard for Roger to understand given the mental dialect of the language he wasn’t that familiar with.

In response to the command a star map of the Nexus and the surround regions appeared, which included lizard territory as a tiny spec on the periphery. He only noticed as his mind registered the geography for there was another region that was highlighted, along with which came hundreds of holographic schematics of alien bodies, warships, cities, weapons, and everything else belonging to a single civilization.

“They are known as the H’bat’i,” Hameen said with a tone of disbelief in his words. “And they are a conundrum that we ask you to solve.”

7

“Explain,” Roger said, beginning to soak in the information around him.

“They are a violent race within the boundaries that the Nexus is tasked to pacify, one that has fallen to us to deal with. Not long ago we mounted a major push against one of seven strongholds, an assault with sufficient force to defeat and conquer the planet in question. Instead we suffered a defeat and lost nearly our entire invasion force. We have reviewed the assault thousands of times and brought in many tactical experts from within the Dsevmat and other Nexus races. No one can account for how the H’bat’i defeated our clearly superior force, and we are not willing to mount another assault until we understand how we failed.”

“At the moment,” another Dsevmat said, slithering up on Roger’s left, “we are engaged in containment protocols, preventing the spread of the threat and limiting their actions outside their territory, but they are a problem we must deal with eventually and containment is insufficient. We ask that you conduct your own analysis, and are hoping that you can see the key to the H’bat’i’s victory over us.”

“Do you have full battle records?”

“Yes, a few of our ships managed to escape and with them they brought the data logs from every other vessel, which are transmitted automatically to nearby vessels when they begin to suffer catastrophic failure. We have a wealth of data, but no answers.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Approximately 40 years. Since that time other threats have become emboldened by our inability to neutralize the H’bat’i, making our typical peacekeeping efforts more problematic. We could mount another assault, but feel that to do so without understanding what happened the first time would be reckless. We did not expect that so much time would go by without an answer, but the longer this persists the more eroded our reputation becomes. That reputation is keeping smaller threats neutralized without us having to commit ships, and without it we cannot oversee the territory assigned to us with our current resources.”

“So you want me to show you how to beat them?”

“No,” Hameen said with a telepathic air of disgust at his presumption. “We are only asking that you show us what they did. We will formulate our own battle plans.”

“I will need a full history of their race and their conflict with you, as well as any conflicts with others.”

“We have brought along all information regarding the H’bat’i, and we are prepared to wait here as long as necessary for you to complete your analysis.”

“Alright then…let’s start with the battle itself.”

Roger spent the next 7 hours onboard the Dsevmat ship watching holos and asking a lot of questions, then eventually headed planetside for a break with the alien pod delivering him to the spaceport on the surface that he requested. For the rest of the day he trained, pushing aside the challenge the Dsevmat had laid out for him and clearing his head before getting some sleep and heading back up to the ship, for the Nexus race wouldn’t allow copies of their data to be taken with the Human for outside study. They were trusting him with a wealth of information, but only him and within their own ship, meaning he was going to have to do a lot of commuting in the coming days.

The way the H’bat’i had won was obvious, for the Dsevmat did have the superior force even when you include the orbital defenses of the planet under assault. Both races possessed tech currently exceeding Star Force’s, and the Dsevmat more so than their enemy, but they’d been beaten soundly when their weapons’ targeting systems malfunctioned. It wasn’t a total malfunction, nor was it isolated to individual ships. Across their fleet weapons batteries began to miss their targets, not with every shot, but on average 73% misfired.

During the later stages that amount diminished to 32% when the Dsevmat were losing badly, then it almost disappeared entirely as they were being wiped out. Some ships had higher and lesser accuracy numbers, and the same went for certain batteries. Some hit with every shot and others were malfunctioning. There was no discernable pattern to be found, no computer glitches or attack programing found within the computer systems, and no known weapon system on the part of the H’bat’i that could interfere with the targeting systems.

Sensor records had been gone over so many times by the Dsevmat that they’d literally run themselves ragged with frustration in an endless search. There was no energy or matter being emitted from the H’bat’i ships that could account for this, and their weaponsfire showed no variations from standard specs, nor was there any variation between what was hitting the malfunctioning ships and those with normal accuracy rates…which for the Dsevmat was 99.7%, and that included anti-fighter stats.

Roger resisted the urge to start forming theories, or strong ones anyway, and used the opportunity to study the Nexus race and their adversary, learning that this was truly a mismatch. The Dsevmat clearly outmatched them, but as stated before the higher level empire was spread out maintaining a vast tract of territory where other races lived. They couldn’t focus their might into a single area and had to work with limited fleets and resources while effectively being overstretched. What the reason was for this within the political workings of the Nexus he didn’t know, but it did shed a bit of light on why the Nexus wasn’t rushing to defeat the lizards.

If the other races were likewise as stretched, and he wasn’t automatically assuming so, then they wouldn’t have the numbers to hit the lizards on as many fronts as needed, and to be truthful the H’bat’i and some of the other races they had fought against were clearly higher level than the lizards, if not so widespread. It was a bit shocking at seeing the power gap, but Roger was soaking it all in and getting up to speed with the ‘big dogs,’ though they still didn’t fare well in comparison to the V’kit’no’sat.

That said, if the two ever went head to head it wouldn’t be a total slaughter on the part of the dinos.

With no obvious mechanism detected for messing with the Dsevmat weapons Roger dug into the construction and function of them with his analysis assistants, learning that all Dsevmat weaponry was based off of Ketara energy. The trailblazer played dumb, letting the snakes inform him of what it was and how it worked, but he already knew from the pyramid database that it was a cloying field that, rather than breaking the bonds of molecules created new ones with a rabid appetite.

That meant that a burst of Ketara energy hitting the hull of a warship would effectively condense whatever material it hit like a mini black hole, forming a crater with a condensed nub of matter in it. That meant whenever the Dsevmat attacked something there would be no explosions, which made for odd battle holos because Roger was used to at least a shrapnel spray, but these weapons were very tidy and oh so nasty.

They had several versions from orbs, to beams, to streamers and even some net-like fields they’d throw against a target. All were Ketara-based and worked decently well against energy shields as well, enough so that the Dsevmat had decided to go all-in on the tech and really refine it to potent status. That said, Roger knew the V’kit’no’sat didn’t use the energy because it had a glaring weakness, not to mention it was weaker than their other available weapons. With a special shield modification the energy could be completely neutralized to the point where virtually no amount of weaponsfire could penetrate it, similar to trying to shoot fish in a barrel with a flame thrower.

That type of shield matrix was well above Star Force’s head at the moment, and Roger got the feeling like the Dsevmat didn’t know there was a counter for the technology, which meant that probably no one else in the Nexus or the region they dominated did either.

That counter hadn’t been in play here, for the H’bat’i shields weren’t anywhere near as sophisticated…but they were extremely thick, with more emphasis going into the shields than the hull armor, which was a favorable place to stand when going against the Ketara weaponry, for like a Ta’lin’yi they really racked up the damage when they hit solid matter.

That said, they were almost useless in atmosphere because they’d hit and cause the air molecules to fuse together into solid particles that became pebbles or dust depending on density of the environment. That was going to be an issue during the ground invasion but the Dsevmat never made it that far. They’d been routed in orbit and never even had a chance to call in their troop transports waiting outside the system, which had fortunately spared them from destruction.

As it turned out in a thorough examination of how the Dsevmat military was constructed, they used an almost exclusively drone army system given their lack of limbs. Control snakes would be inserted into the combat zones and would then run operations remotely from outposts or large command centers. They didn’t operate them from orbit, which Roger felt was more tradition than function, but they had multiple variations of mechs and infantry, some which he’d never seen before.

It was side quests like that where Roger was trying to dig up more information, for the Dsevmat were quite correct in their initial analysis…there was no viable explanation as to why the weaponry malfunctioned the way it did, but as Sherlock Holmes had once said if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. With that in mind Roger felt he knew what had happened, but he needed to know why before he was going to say anything.

In addition to learning about the Dsevmat and a lot of their battle history, for his assistants were very willing to let him peruse the database even when it didn’t appear to tie in directly to the investigation, he dug into the history, culture, and society that was the H’bat’i and tried to get a feel for the way they thought and built. They were triped, twice the size of Humans, and very introverted. They usually didn’t interact with other races outside of warfare and kept their economy self-contained. They did seek to expand their territory, and that expansion is what had got the Nexus’s attention in a bad way.

They had conquered several primitive worlds and essentially turned them into a slave labor force, growing a small empire that had crossed one of the Nexus’s minor spacelanes. The H’bat’i basically shut it down, claiming ownership of the system and insisting that he traffic flow be rerouted elsewhere which had sparked the first conflict with the Nestaw.

The Nestaw were a race within the Nexus a bit higher level than the H’kar and they’d been tasked to deal with the disruption in the spacelane and the freeing of the subjugated worlds. When they failed horribly, finding the H’bat’i were far more resilient and tech savvy than intelligence had estimated, the Dsevmat took over and sent a proper recon team. They deduced the strength required and waited several years until they could muster the necessary fleet, drawing ships from various other assignments as they became available, then launching them at one of the H’bat’i’s main worlds, intending to inflict a crippling assault that they could then dictate terms from afterward.

Such tactics were standard practice for the Dsevmat, who liked to bloody an enemy’s nose then force them to submit out of fear, though in most cases it was a bluff and the Dsevmat didn’t have the reinforcements they needed to go a second or third round. Their opponents didn’t know that, so they’d been getting away with and heavily favored the tactic in a lot of their peacekeeping assignments, which also told Roger that they were desperate to figure out how the H’bat’i had bested them else they wouldn’t be sharing this and other things so openly with him.

But as he ran through the data something bothered him, and that was the cultural fingerprint of the H’bat’i being introverted not fitting in with their taking slave races. There wasn’t a wealth of data on the subjugated and the H’bat’i’s activities there, for the intel had come primarily from the Nestaw and a few independent analysis teams prior to that, but there was enough geographical and population statistics for him to see that on the conquered worlds there were virtually no H’bat’i present.

That was odd, for usually when you conquered a planet you moved in, but the H’bat’i didn’t aside from what looked like overseers and some military personnel. The planet was shipping resources off it that were going back to the H’bat’i worlds, but as for on-site occupation there virtually was none. That made him wonder what exactly the circumstances of the conquests were, but that information wasn’t available.

There were tidbits that Roger was slowly able to string together, and with those he was able to conduct some searches through other Nexus records and found two of the conquered races mentioned in survey files that predated their annexation. Those records were the first concrete data points that Roger had, and from there he began narrowing his search of the intelligence reports the Dsevmat had available to them prior to the assault.

There was a lot of military-related data, for the Dsevmat had been extremely thorough. That too was an additional data point, and slowly Roger collected the bits and pieces of extraneous data, learning as much as he could for Star Force’s purposes along the way, but needing to present solid evidence of what had happened so the Dsevmat would accept it…if he truly wanted to tell them.

He considered not doing so once he found out what had happened in the battle, for right now the Dsevmat were holding off on another assault and if they found out what had occurred it might prompt another and he didn’t want to get involved in a war that he only knew about through a few records from one party involved. Roger weighed his options, looking through all the angles he could conceive of and not really caring about the promised reward. Eventually he decided to tell them, banking on his read of their culture, with him returning to their ship one last time to spell it out for them.

He wasn’t sure how it was going to hit them, and they might flat our refuse to accept the theory he was going to give them, but the trailblazer had no doubts now as to what had happened and in reviewing the battle holos one last time before calling the snakes to him it was painfully obvious what had occurred…and saddening to the point where he almost wished it hadn’t, despite the circumstances.

Hadeem and a group of about 20 other Dsevmat slithered into the room where Roger had been working with a pair of assistants for the past month, all obviously eager to see if the Human warlord had been worth the trip and actually found the cause of their defeat as they transmitted little blips of excitement, curiosity, and doubt telepathically as they entered the room and moved around the small armored biped.

“You have an answer for us?” Hadeem asked skeptically, with the telepathic prodding being to prove the point.

“Yes I do, and you’re not going to like it.”

“Better that we know the truth and learn to counter the H’bat’i’s tactic than to live in doubt and uncertainty,” another said almost as if reading a quote.

“The reason,” Roger began, pointing to a running loop of the battle on the gigantic hologram behind him, “that your weapons’ accuracy was diminished or outright compromised in some cases, and the reason you haven’t been able to find any discernable pattern in the lapses, is because you’ve been looking at things from a technological perspective, and therein does not lie the problem.”

Roger looked around at the various snakes, with no clue how they were going to take what he was about to say.

“Your weapons didn’t hit their targets because your gunners deliberately missed.”

8

Ripples of confusion and disbelief transmitted off the surrounding Dsevmat, creating a telepathic noise that was contrast to the physical silence as none of them spoke an audible word. They stayed like that for nearly half a minute before one finally asked Roger to explain, also using telepathy as if speaking now would have been inappropriate somehow.

“The H’bat’i conquest and annexation of the surrounding worlds that prompted your assault is not what you have told me it to be. I’m assuming your people had access to the same information I’ve had, and there are enough pieces here for the line troops to put together what really was happening on those worlds. The lack of population is the first clue, for when someone conquers a world they usually want to keep it for their own purposes.”

“The H’bat’i have almost no personnel on their annexed worlds, and those that they do have are not sufficient to keep the population suppressed militarily. If you review the intelligence reports on those planets, you will see that the materials being harvested are being transported back to the H’bat’i worlds, but this does not make the conquered a slave race. I believe it to be tribute…and I think your troops figured this out as well.”

“What more there is to find in the reports is the lack of certain things, such as executions, prisons, various forms of maltreatment of the natives. There was very little to be found by the recon team, though those few instances were overly emphasized. The truth is the H’bat’i conquered these worlds to become their caretakers, not to enslave them. The resources flowing back were merely in compensation, with 92% of the local economic produce remaining on planet.”

“Whether or not the locals had a choice in the H’bat’i taking control is unknown, but even if they didn’t I believe your troops deduced that they were being ordered to attack a race that didn’t deserve it…which prompts me to ask you a question. Had they refused to fight what would their punishment have been?”

Roger let the question hang in the air as no one wanted to speak, but finally one did, with the discontentment of the others telepathically visible. “Sedition is punishable by death. Our military must act quickly and decisively. There is no room for discussion and debate. All know and accept this.”

“And what is the role of your military?” Roger asked, already knowing the answer.

To safeguard the Dsevmat and to pacify the region the Nexus has tasked us with.

“Pacify? Or maintain the tenants of justice?”

Both, another snake replied when the one the Archon was talking to refused to answer.

“I think your assault force saw that they were being sent to conquer and kill a race that did not deserve it, but with the threat of death on them if they refused to fight they tried to deliberately lose the battle instead. Not all the troops, but the vast majority of them. This is why the inaccuracy rate spiked so drastically and why you couldn’t find a technological cause. Your troops had to fight, but being in an unjust battle they were trying not to win.”

“Then, when the tide was turning the H’bat’i outmaneuvered your fleet in a brilliant piece of strategy and pinned them down. When that happened and your troops were in danger of being destroyed the inaccuracy began to vanish, and by the time they were fighting for their lives and trying to flee it disappeared entirely. It’s one thing to try not to win a battle of conquest, but quite another to commit suicide. Your troops wanted to live, but with no coordination between the dissenters they threw the battle too much and the H’bat’i bested them.”

“Rather than drive your fleet back, the H’bat’i went for the kill, sacrificing many of their own ships to keep yours from fleeing. The handful of Dsevmat ships that escaped were those that had shown no inaccuracy problems, thus the dissenters were not around to tell what had happened. They all perished because they underestimated their opponent while trying to protect them. You put them in a position where they would either have to defy the purpose of your military or to defy orders and risk execution. They tried a third option and it ended up getting them killed anyway, but at least they preserved the independence of the H’bat’i in the process.”

“I know you do not like to hear this, and the reason you came to us was so you could learn how the H’bat’i had bested you, devise a countermeasure, then go back and finish them off, but what you need to understand is that you were in the wrong and your troops knew this. Rather than commit the treason of injustice they deliberately threw that battle in order to preserve their honor.”

“You couldn’t find the truth because it was something that you weren’t looking for, but it was staring you in the face the entire time. Your leaders were in the wrong and your troops knew better, but had they refused you would have killed them. You failed to follow the course of justice and I don’t care what your reasons were. You probably wouldn’t care to tell me even if you knew, but the point is your troops figured it out and acted in the only way they could without sacrificing their own lives…which they accidentally did anyway by not fighting hard enough to be able to withdrawal against an opponent that had been grossly underestimated twice.”

“So there is the answer to your conundrum, whether you will accept it or not.”

And he knew that they wouldn’t, at least not right now based on the telepathic impulses that he was getting from this group. No one spoke again, but the rage and disgust within one of them boiled over and Roger felt the brush of a consciousness against his own. It couldn’t get past the Ikrid blocks, but him being able to feel even the slightest pressure meant that the Dsevmat was trying to hammer him with telepathic influence.

That was odd, given that they seemed unable to talk to each other directly using telepathy, but he quickly surmised that the transmission ability and the interlink were separate for them and they’d have to get past another one’s blocks in order to communicate privately. If that wasn’t something they culturally allowed then ‘speaking’ omni-directionally made sense. Roger also guessed that with their entire race being telepathic that casual probing was frowned upon, which would make what this one was attempting to do to Roger a full blown fist in the face, despite the fact that it wasn’t using its body or telekinesis to do it.

The trailblazer looked at the one that was the source of the tickle and decided to return the favor, hacking into its mind and essentially taking it by the telepathic throat. The tickle in his mind vanished, and the Dsevmat was froze in place as its body no longer responded to its own impulses.

The others sensed the assault taking place and responded instinctually, trying at first to get to Roger then wisely abandoning that idea when they couldn’t reach past his permanent Ikrid block and instead hacked into their fellow snake and fought Roger through him. That made it harder for the Archon to maintain his grip, but even with them stacking their telepathic power against him it was still no contest. They might possess some psionics, but theirs were nowhere near as advanced as the V’kit’no’sat package.

Wanting to make a quick statement he let them try and remove him from the other’s mind, then after giving them a taste of failure sent out a Fornax sphere that dropped all of them to the ground like limp ropes. When he did he let go of the Dsevmat’s mind, then let them shake off the temporary effect and try to figure out what had just happened.

“Do not try and enter my mind,” Roger warned. “And do not do so in retaliation for me simply showing you the truth. That’s rude. If I’m wrong feel free to point out where and in detail, but you know you won’t be able to. What I’ve said may infuriate you but it also smacks of truth and you know it. I can sense it in you without even entering your minds.”

Just then the doorway melted open and more snakes rushed in, apparently having felt the telepathic scuffle, but one of them wasn’t focused on Roger and instead headed directly for the Dsevmat that had first tried to get inside the Human’s head.

There was a scuffle between them, all telepathic, and Roger quietly tapped in to see what was going on but without enough of a presence for them to notice. The one who had rushed in was ship’s security and he was reviewing the recent memories, confirming the attempted invasion of the Human’s mind.

“How dare you shame us in this manner,” it said aloud, the first words spoken by the Dsevmat in some time. “This one is a guest and here at our request. Be gone,” it demanded, telepathically pointing towards the door and telekinetically shoving its head in that direction none too gently. The snake didn’t stick around to argue and slithered away, but it was spouting a considerable amount of telepathic noise in the process, all of which was in its native language that Roger couldn’t understand, but then again some sentiments were universal and didn’t require translating, with this one being the equivalent of a middle finger back at the Human.

“Our deepest apologies,” the security snake said, throwing discontent at the others nearby for their part in the scrap. “We do not normally behave in such a manner, though your skills are clearly sufficient to defend yourself.”

“They are,” Roger agreed.

The snake twitched it head slightly, sending a telepathic nod of respect along with it. “I do not care what the guest has said. You will retreat him with respect. Is that understood?”

The telepathic boom on that last word was so forceful that even Roger got a bit prickly from it, and it had the effect of subduing the others instantly.

“I know what he has said and the affront it carries, but if there is even the slightest truth in it we must know, for if there is it would shame us all. Ask your questions of him, ask many questions, but do not turn away from this and do not disrespect him again. He is a guest and I should not have to remind you as to what that means.”

With that the security snake left the room along with his escorts, his task apparently done, leaving Roger with the others and another long, awkward pause before one of them spoke.

“Explain the H’bat’i further.”

Roger telepathically told one of his assistants which files to bring up, then pointed to an unrelated report that he’d found when digging through commerce records.

“Prior to the Nexus’s interest in them, the races that the H’bat’i conquered has some contact with your economic community through third parties. The data is piecemeal but I’ve gathered enough scraps to suggest that several of the conquered races were themselves predatory, with the others being a mix of the needy and primitive. Comparing those states with those in the reconnaissance reports indicates that the tech level of the conquered races and their living standards rose after annexation, and rose considerably for some.”

“Now that typically does not occur when one is subjugated by a hostile entity. Another point is the population statistics. In nearly all cases they rose, with one that I have been unable to confirm for lack of initial numbers. There were no massive purges that diminished the local populations down to ‘manageable’ numbers, and the number of overseers in the most recent reports show that they would be incapable of suppressing an uprising. This suggests a partnership of some sort rather than brute force control.”

“A broken slave is often compliant,” Hameen commented.

“Yes, which is why I went further in my analysis and searched the current infrastructure. Even with broken slaves there must be some measure of control in place, even if it is not used. I found none other than a light military force, and those were arrayed as defensive guards at the H’bat’i outposts instead of in the population centers. However the H’bat’i took possession of the annexed worlds, even if it was through war, I believe the current inhabitants are not at odds with them given the lack of societal controls. The H’bat’i may be in charge, but it’s not by means of any leash that I can detect.”

From there on Roger explained in detail each step of his logical progression which invariably came to his final conclusion. The Dsevmat, after their initial backlash, probed him with more and more questions trying to poke holes in his theory, for which the trailblazer schooled them on each one. They stayed at it for hours, but in the end they were forced to reluctantly accept the truth that was being explained to them.

And with that they were gone, sending Roger back via pod and leaving a massive slew of cargo containers drifting in space without even bothering to tell Star Force what was inside them. It took a while to unload them before they jumped out, so Roger was able to have his own people there to stabilize and receive the ‘bounty’ for him completing the challenge, but he didn’t know what was inside until they tried to move them.

A few of the giant boxes were so massive that there was really only one thing they could contain and Roger was eager to open them up to confirm it. The others massed less and were still a mystery, but once all of them were moved over to the nearest station with sufficient hangar space they were floated inside and positioned on the deck with the AG slowly cranking up to normal and settling them in place.

The armored Archon was out with the techs as they figured out that there was no opening mechanism for the boxes, rather just a containment sheath that had to be cut through. The futuristic equivalent of cardboard didn’t take long to peel off and reveal the perfectly smooth cubes of a greenish metal that was instantly recognizable as corovon in its pure form.

Roger whistled within his helmet, then pulled it off with a click and looked along with the deck chief at the lowest cube that stood more than a meter tall, with this crate/box being some 16 meters high and 28 meters long. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” the tech said wide eyed. “That can’t be corovon.”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Not that much. That’s gotta be more than we mine in, what, a decade?”

“You underestimate how much we bring in, but you’re right about this not being any small amount…and there are four more crates as massive as this one.”

“What the hell is this for? You give them a star system or something?”

“I answered a question,” Roger said simply, reaching out and tapping the lowest cube in the stack with his armored finger.

“Must have been a hell of a question.”

“Let’s see what else they gave us,” Roger said, curious, as he started walking over towards one of the ‘light’ ones. It took a few minutes to get the sheath torn off, but before they did it began spilling out clear orbs like raindrops, with each being the size of croquet balls and none the less hard.

“I got it,” Roger said, telekinetically catching a lot of them and holding the dam in place so more wouldn’t flow out. “We need collection bins.”

“I’ll have some cargo crates brought over,” the tech said, glancing at the motionless Archon. “How long can you hold those?”

“Not very…they’re heavy too.”

“Right…clear the area,” he told one of his subordinates before making a comm call to someone else. A few minutes later some car-sized, open-topped crates were flown up on anti-grav and Roger let the top portion of the load spill out into it, though he had to guide the flow and that further added to his mental fatigue. He only had so much Lachka energy in his reserves, but he managed to hold it together until the top portion of the box emptied and he was able to finally let go.

“Find a better way to get the rest out,” he said, walking over and picking up one of the orbs and looking it over.

“I don’t recognize it,” the tech commented after some confused looks from Roger.

“Neither do I, but I think the orb is a carrying case for those particles in the center.”

“I thought it was an integrated component.”

“Whatever it is, get them collected and out of their original containers.”

“Will do, but we’ll need a lot more crates shipped in. We don’t get a lot of call for them in a warehouse, odd as that sounds.”

“Because everything is already shipped in one.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll find you some more. Don’t open too many more boxes until we get them, all the way at least.”

“You going to peek inside?”

“Are you kidding, this might as well be Christmas.”

“What’s that?”

Roger glanced at him. “Sorry, figured you were older. It was a holiday where you got presents.”

“What for?”

“No reason, you just got them on that day.”

“Sounds odd. I thought holidays were for parties.”

“Both in some cases.”

“How can you get a present without a reason? That makes no sense.”

“Just one of those cultural quirks that got lost with time,” Roger said, walking over to another unopened box. “But come Christmas morning you felt something like this.”

“But you earned these?”

Roger laughed. “Never mind. If you didn’t live through that era you wouldn’t understand.”

“Guess not, but I understand this,” he said, stepping onto a mobile lift and heading up to the top with Roger and a cutting team. “Surprise boxes.”

“That’s pretty much what Christmas was,” the trailblazer said, waiting for them to tear the top corner off. When they did his jaw dropped as he smelled the contents. They were tropical, almost fruity but with a very metallic/coppery scent that was hard to explain but impossible to forget.

The tech reached into the packing material and pulled out a small cube. “Heavy sucker,” he said, handing it to Roger.

“Damn,” he said, taking another sniff.

“What is it?”

“Take a whiff.”

“I can already smell it. Strong stuff.”

“That’s a scent you will never forget…and this,” he said, holding the cube between them, “is a raw arc element.”

The tech pointed towards it reverently. “You mean this…”

“Yep,” he said, glancing at the packing material that held many more of the tiny cubes in regal fashion.

“Holy shit. What the hell was that question you answered?”

“Something important…that I hope they learn a lesson from.”

“Expensive lesson.”

Roger’s expression dimmed just a touch as his mind flicked back to the Dsevmat/H’bat’i battle.

“Very.”

9

February 3, 2659

Fvatt System (lizard territory)

Kri’mas

The Hycre scout ship sat in orbit along with the rest of the debris fields that had once been their orbital infrastructure, ships, and even the hulks of their attackers. All still floated mostly where they had been when the Hycre had been forced to evacuate the system, and other than a few reconnaissance probes thrown into the mix there was nothing functioning or alive here, from either race.

Those probes were short range, meaning that a lizard ship would have to come through the system to pick up their records of activity, from which the Hycre there had been none for the past 164 years. After the lizards had completed their destruction of everything they could find they’d apparently been satisfied and left, given that there were no habitable worlds available for them to colonize. The gas giant of Kri’mas was still inhospitable to them, and other than deposing the Hycre, they seemed not to care about the system at all.

The scout ship had come ahead to survey the location for a second time so that when the colonization fleet arrived they could have a sitrep available immediately to them. The small Hycre vessel was transmitting it continuously, and once the fleet learned that there was no enemy presence to contend with they jumped out from the star and began to litter orbit with all manner of ships, including a warfleet composed entirely of Shaven.

Some of them immediately began to focus their attention on the debris, clearing it away and opening up the sections of orbit that were tagged as restricted travel zones. They’d want those back after they got the system in working order, for several of them crossed over major jumplines out from the planet during various times in the planet’s cyclical revolution. Meanwhile other ships headed down into the thick atmosphere of the planet, slowly descending further and further in altitude until they found the clusters that had been hidden there long ago.

To their relief their hails were acknowledged and docking instructions were given, with the tightly packed work crews and colonists crossing over into the Hycre equivalent of cities and meeting up with the denizens who had volunteered to stay behind and maintain them in the depths where the enemy could not go. Only a few had remained, with some having died in the interim, but their preservation mission had been a success and the clusters hadn’t fallen into disarray and sank to the planet’s core or floated up to the detection range of the lizards.

They got a welcome committee quickly as the crews moved in and began to bring the clusters back to life, feeding them fuel and other supplies as they gradually increased their elevation and brought the clusters back to their preferred depth. Dozens of them rose up across the planet, giving the Hycre an infrastructure base that they would not have to rebuild and the ability to start producing auxiliary equipment that would enable the planet to return to self-sufficiency on a remarkably short timetable.

Those who had cared for and maintained the clusters in their ‘stored’ mode had been living off of a modicum of supplies that they were able to produce for themselves along with the reserves that had been left in the cluster. Those were near depletion and the caretakers partially malnourished, but most had survived and would have continued to go on doing so indefinitely if needed. They were greeted and welcomed back into Hycre society as heroes as the floating clusters came back to life and the population of the planet suddenly jumped by some 200,000%.

The lizard probes were found and destroyed, but eventually one of their ships would come around to find the planet back in Hycre possession, sitting in the middle of lizard territory as many current and former Hycre worlds were, but that was part of the plan set forth by Star Force. The Hycre had always intended to come back and reclaim their dormant worlds, else they wouldn’t have left people behind to maintain their most valuable infrastructure, but now they were doing so both to retake what had once been theirs and to put pressure on the lizards.

‘Pressure’ was the key focus of the overall battle plan against their common enemy, with the Human warlord Paul having insisted that they make the lizards play defense rather than dictate when and where the fighting would occur. Star Force was hitting, probing, and confusing the lizards on multiple fronts, as were the Voku and Protovic, with the Hycre’s contribution being the reclamation of their old worlds. The lizards would have to choose who to push back against, all the while funneling most of their reinforcements towards the Skarron front whose level of fighting was beyond anything the Hycre had seen before.

They were continually scouting the regions surrounding the ADZ and others, including the ever moving Skarron/lizard border, and while they suspected there were a lot of conflicts they were missing out on, those they were quietly monitoring and recording were beyond vicious. The lizards had finally found an enemy that they couldn’t overwhelm with sheer numbers and the amount of ships both sides were deploying into the war, and subsequently losing, was staggering.

Knowing this Star Force and the Hycre’s other allies were committed to pushing back on multiple fronts, not in any big way, but enough to pressure and test the lizards to see how much they could or would defend. Already there were gains being made and worlds retaken, but some were drawing large responses while others were not. One didn’t know when and where the lizards would strike back, but for the first time the Alliance was getting a few easy wins in.

The Hycre didn’t know if/when the lizards would hit them back, or maybe because they couldn’t use the gas giants for their own purposes they wouldn’t bother trying this time around. Regardless, the Hycre now had enough Shaven, their line of ships that included the tech gifts from Star Force, to defend themselves against the lizards short of their enemy throwing the hammer down at them…and currently that hammer was being occupied by larger targets.

Kri’mas was operational again within 4 hours, but it would not be rebuilt to its former status for several years to come. Many clusters had been lost in the invasion and the mass of orbital infrastructure had been wiped out completely. Given what they knew of the lizards and their tactics the Hycre would not be rebuilding it in their outer colonies, instead choosing to build their facilities entirely in atmosphere, even when it was disadvantageous to do so.

They felt the tradeoff was worth the inefficiency and other hassles that would result so long as they were able to shield them inside the planet and make the enemy come down to attack them directly, for any battle within the thick atmosphere was almost an automatic win for the Hycre, and if the lizards chose to bombard them from orbit as they had done before the Shaven would go after those priority targets rather than leaving floating stations that made for easy pickings and locations the Hycre would be forced to defend.

This way the warfleet was free to roam and strike where it chose, and that was the worthwhile tradeoff to the Hycre, for as the years passed and they began to tinker with the cleansing beams and mauler cannons that Star Force had given them they were building stronger and more purposeful Shaven, which only increased their confidence that they could now retake and hold some of their former worlds.

How many was the question, but the Hycre were going to get some now to put pressure on the lizards and begin to reverse the formerly ‘inevitable’ advancement they had been making for centuries.

And with every world reclaimed the Hycre had an additional base behind enemy lines from which to strike out from, not for the purpose of hitting strongholds but to conduct recon and small scale harassment attacks, hitting the enemy where they were weak and forcing them to more heavily defend areas that previously were protected by the intimidation factor the lizards possessed. With that being the case, the enemy was going to have to shore up far more systems than they’d become accustomed to, which would drain even more resources from their overall empire.

There was no mistaking the fact, however, that that empire was still growing by leaps and bounds in multiple directions. That said, the Hycre were confident they could hold their own worlds and take back a few others, no longer having to play the victim and constantly running. They’d held their capitol against numerous attacks, and now it was their turn to start returning the favor and make use of the footholds they’d fought so hard to preserve.

Over the coming years more worlds like Kri’mas would be returning into the fold, and from them the sharks of the space ocean would begin to reassert their dominance, first in raids and then in organized planetary strikes using the cleansing beams coupled with the remote mech technology Star Force had also gifted them with to further harass or wipe out small lizard colonies. Before long the lizards were forced to increase their ship traffic into full blown convoys else risk ships getting poached while in transit, making the large region that was dotted with Hycre worlds hazardous to travel despite most of the claimed worlds in that area still belonging to the lizards.

Pressure was the key, emphasized over and over by the Humans, and with the Hycre gradually tipping the scales of naval combat back into their decided favor, pressure is what they contributed, with the lizards never knowing when or where the growing ‘schools’ of Hycre warships would strike next.

Tennisonne rode the civilian traffic ferries across Earth orbit rather than requisitioning a personal craft to do so, which his position in Star Force afford him the right to do, but he never liked pulling a ship off for his own transit unless time was of the essence, and in research and development it hardly ever was. So he hitched several rides across the orbital rings of habitats, factories, shipyards, and whatever else people had envisioned to build that now gave the planet 8 visible bands circling it like squashed hula hoops, each at different altitudes.

That left huge areas empty to allow for traffic coming off the surface to head directly for jumppoints or the outer halo of starports, but maneuvering within the rings was slow and tedious work. Virtually all altitudes running from Earth to Luna were occupied, with each band of infrastructure rotating around a fixed axis so they wouldn’t collide with each other.

A few facilities were located outside the bands and used anti-grav to augment their irregular orbits or lack thereof, but the small artificial moon that the tech was heading towards wasn’t one of them. It was situated within the third ring and was one of the largest sedas built to date, easily outmassing the Death Star from Star Wars, though to the Archons’ disappointment they hadn’t been able to include a superweapon in the design.

Actually, this station wasn’t mean for battle. Rather, it was a massive industrial station that fed a lot of the higher end materials to Star Force and included research and development facilities that focused on just that purpose. Tennisonne didn’t come here often, but every now and then some project he was working on would take place on the small moon, or rather within, and today was one of those days.

The recent ‘bounty’ given to Star Force by the Dsevmat had been brought here for both analysis and use. Roger had ordered it inspected just in case it contained some sort of Trojan horse, but that was just the Archon being paranoid as usual. That was his job, and Tennisonne was glad he was there to do it, which left the level 6 tech free to focus on the scientific endeavors without worrying about something blowing up…unless he was causing it.

His last leg of the journey up from Earth was a short hop via dropship from a nearby civilian terminal station, passing him through the restricted zone around the station and inside one of thousands of hangar bays that had a continuous flow of ships coming in and out with either raw materials or finished products, most of which were building materials of sorts or processed materials that other facilities would use to produce more specific items.

Once onboard he was greeted with a reception committee made up of other techs and quickly escorted through the internal city to the special hangar were the rarer items in the bounty were being held and inventoried. A lot of the corovon cubes had already been sent off for processing, but there were plenty still left for Tennisonne to see. Though it was nothing new to him, the sight of so much corovon in one place was still awe inspiring…and underscored just how far Star Force had yet to grow. They’d come a long ways, with Tennisonne doing no small part in giving them the tools they needed, but the scope of a civilization that could trade away corovon on this scale was downright impressive and beyond anything they could currently field.

Star Force shipped corovon in ingots the size of his thumb, for that was how rare it was. Then those ingots were almost immediately used to produce compounds that had corovon in them, meaning the raw element was hardly ever seen outside of select facilities and research departments. The giant cubes littering the deck before him were as much a snub as they were a gift, declaring in wealthy fashion just how primitive Star Force was in comparison to the benefactor.

But Tennisonne didn’t care about that, for he was used to being the new kid on the block that couldn’t tie his shoes or walk and chew gum at the same time. Years spent digging through the V’kit’no’sat database and multiple trips down to the pyramid underscored that far more than the Dsevmat ever could, but having so much corovon at hand still made him feel like a kid just being given his first piece of candy.

But that was a metaphor his fellow techs wouldn’t understand, for now candy was free to everyone in the cafeterias…or the simple ones were anyway.

After inspecting the corovon cubes he went straight over to the other items the Dsevmat had included, with there being 7 different ‘presents’ given to them. Two were more basic materials, one being an advanced polymer and the other an assortment of common metals in vast quantities.

The clear spheres with the pixilation in the center had subsequently been classified as fission fuels, but of a type that Star Force didn’t use. They were densely constructed molecules that when deconstructed would release impressive amounts of energy, so much so that they made for extremely potent volume ratios, but the fuel systems that Star Force used and Tennisonne had had his hand in creating were on a tech tree line heading towards bigger and better things, meaning that using these Scvob fuels would be a divergence and not worth the effort.

Still, the compounds themselves could prove useful in research and development and give his assistants something to play with down the road. The same went for two other items in the inventory list, but the smallest one was the sweetest and the reason Tennisonne had come here in person.

There were four crates that had small, palm-sized cubes stacked in elaborate holding materials that made up the majority of the volume of the crates, which Tennisonne considered over packing, but none the less the valuable contents more than made up for the dramatic packing peanuts. In total there were 2048 cubes that were a mix of 26 different arc elements, each far more valuable than their larger corovon twins. To date Star Force had artificially created and produced in large quantities 8 arc elements, with an additional 17 in low levels of production and another 8 in research development only.

Most overlapped with the bounty, but there were 4 that did not. Tennisonne’s people had already identified what they were, with one arc element in particular drawing his attention. They were all immensely valuable, especially the 4 types that Star Force couldn’t produce yet, but the most rare type of them all had only 1 cube in the inventory…and it alone was worth more than all the rest combined.

It was an arc element known as Bi’rovsken’thrnem to the V’kit’no’sat, but to him and the other techs they simply referred to it as Biro. It wasn’t the top tier as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned, but it was an important component in a lot of the machinery they used on a daily basis. That might not sound all that impressive, but since Tennisonne and the others like him had to build the tools to build the tools that built the machinery that made the products, he was limited in what he could build despite knowing how to build bigger and better things.

He wasn’t able to produce Biro, therefore he couldn’t build any tools that required it. But this one little cube would allow him to create a low, but impressive number of new tools that would advance the research and development department ahead by at least 60 years, in some areas. They’d eventually get to the point where they could produce Biro on their own, but having some on hand to use was quite the cheat, and when Tennisonne found and picked up the small blue cube and held it in his hand he literally felt like he was holding onto a piece of the future.

“Alright fellas, keeping doing your thing with the rest. I’m taking this one and getting to work on it immediately,” he said, keeping the warm metalish cube in his hand as he walked a few steps through the tables set up with all the little cubes on them…then he stopped suddenly and reached out telekinetically to pick up a dirty yellow one and drag it through the air to his free hand.

“And that one,” he said so they could log it and not go running around like crazy later when they counted and found it missing.

10

May 21, 2659

Solar System

Earth

Ginsi Korinth transferred off the jumpship and onto a Falcon-class dropship along with six other A7 candidates, settling into the small bank of seats next to a trainer and a handful of other personnel heading down to Atlantis. She was both excited and nervous, for this was the first time she’d ever been to the Solar System, let alone Earth, and everything she was seeing on the trip in was blowing her mind.

Ginsi had been born on Kokiri in the Dancer System, a Human-only world that in the Core Region that held some 22 billion people spread out over a mix of forest and grasslands. It was classified as a heavy grav world, with a 1.34 rating, but Ginsi like the other natives had lived inside cities with normal AG so she hadn’t acclimated to it any more than the people on Earth or Mars, but one difference between the planets was that Kokiri had a forest of ‘small’ infrastructure blanketing the planet and lacked any of the huge structures that were present in Sol.

And not just on the surface either. Kokiri had been one of the original colonies Star Force had created, but it had grown slower than Sol and developed along a less cluttered geography, filling the planet with people and expanding as needed, but never letting the masses grow too large in any one place. Ginsi had been born to parents she didn’t know and didn’t care to know, then immediately taken to a maturia where she’d developed and trained with her classmates up through graduation, all of which occurred in a restricted part of her native city.

It was only 3 months ago that she’d even been able to roam freely and explore the planet, having known it only through vids and maps. Just as soon as she’d begun to feel accustomed to the mojo of it all she’d been whisked away to the very heart of Star Force and was having to go through yet another acclimation process to the organized chaos that was Sol. So far that’d been happening remotely, with her watching the ‘scenery’ via datapad or vid panel as her jumpship had taken her across to Sol, exiting its jump near the yellowish star, then making a slow microjump first to Mars, then Ganymede and Titan before coming in to Earth orbit.

From there it parked near a starport and a flurry of activity ensued with Ginsi watching it all unfold and staring at the great rings of infrastructure orbiting the planet. She’d heard that back in the day it had been a spherical shroud of stations on crisscrossing orbits, but at some point they’d decided to line them all up into the various rings, putting them closer to each other to allow for shorter travel routes, as well as to leave open the large gaps for the quick to ground transit that the civilian public didn’t have access to.

But her dropship did and as it exited the jumpship it flew ‘down’ beneath the ring of stations that the starport serviced and got well clear of the infrastructure before making a tiny jump down towards the atmosphere. There it braked and settled into a looping descent that would bring it a quarter turn around the planet and over the Pacific Ocean to where Atlantis sat. Ginsi still couldn’t believe she was coming here, and ever since they’d told her she’d passed the tests to become an Archon she’d been in a state of denial, expecting there to have been some sort of mistake and still clinging to a bit of worry about that.

She was barely out of maturia training and now here she was heading to Atlantis of all places! It was the most secure and secretive city in the ADZ and she just got a 1-way ticket down to what she didn’t know, but however the Archons trained it was done here, behind closed doors, with few ever glimpsing what went on. There were a wide variety of rumors, but the Archons themselves didn’t care to share about their experiences, nor did Star Force itself, leaving her more than a little worried about what she might be asked, or forced, to do.

She still didn’t think she belonged here, but the other six sitting next to her didn’t seem that different, which made her feel a bit better…and more worried, for some of the rumors said the Archons were cyborgs with the candidates receiving implants and conditioning to make them follow orders like they were nothing more than computers. Ginsi didn’t really believe that, but seeing the other ‘weak’ candidates around her the notion that they were fit to become Archons without some extraordinary augmentation was quite a stretch.

She watched on her datapad as the exterior cameras cleared up from the reentry friction and the ocean below came into view, with a tiny dot marked as the city that they were quickly approaching. Ginsi stared at it, wanting to see what it looked like in realtime, but the trainer sitting next to them stood up and turned around so he could see them all and got their attention.

“Alright younglings, we’re about here,” he said evenly and almost bored, as if he’d done this many times before. “First thing you need to know is that there are many different classes of trainees in Atlantis and you are not all in the same class. When we arrive I’ll take you to a holding area where you will be grouped with your classmates, then you’ll get your first briefing from Head Trainer Wilson and Director Davis himself…and from there you’ll be given instructions about what to do, where to go, this and that. It’s much like your maturia training, only way, way harder. Stick to the program and you’ll probably make it through. Usually the only ones that wash out are people who just decided to quit…and Archons never quit.”

“Davis?” the boy next to Ginsi asked. “We’re going to meet Davis?”

“Yes you will. He keeps a very close relationship with the Archons and meets with every class as they begin their training. He’ll fill you in on some very important things…things the public doesn’t know and that you will need to, but for now I’m here to tell you who you are and where you’re going. You no longer will use your last names, nor does any Archon. You may be trainees right now but you get your number at the outset, not at graduation as some people erroneously believe.”

“Stan…500112. That’s your name from now on, as well as tells you what class you’re in. The last bit anyway. 112 means you’re in the 100s. All of your classmates will have the same first four digits, with the last two ranging from 00 to 99. Emil…you’re 500398 and in a different class. You won’t be seeing each other again except maybe in passing in the hallways on some rare occasions, but you’ll be doing everything with your classmates. They’ll become your brothers and sisters. Bit of advice I like to give the rookies coming in is to be honest with each other. You need to learn to work together as much as you do as an individual, and it works better when you leave your egos behind at the door.”

“If not you’ll lose them eventually, like a lot of other bad habits you’ve picked up from civilian life…and I know some of you are straight out of the maturia. Hopefully that means you haven’t picked up as many, just be aware that your classmates here are going to be on a whole different level. They’re going to be like you, the rarest of the rare, so respect them enough to be honest from the get go. You’re essentially being reborn and going through the maturia all over again, so just mentally start over and learn as you go. Let everything else from your previous lives dissipate and walk into Atlantis as a clean slate.”

“Just some advice. You guys always figure it out eventually. Han…500181. You’re in the same class as Stan. Julie…500001. You’re in the half million mark group. That means nothing other than a lot of zeros in your number, by the way. Ginsi…500289.”

500289, she repeated in her head, memorizing the number. That meant the other three weren’t in her class, nor were the others that the trainer read off next. Glancing down at her datapad she realized the city was right below them and decided to stow it away, no longer feeling like sightseeing. The trainer didn’t have much more to say, but she could already get the feeling that this was a high pressure environment and she needed to have her mind focused on what she was doing, and right now that meant following instructions and not looking out the virtual windows.

When the dropship finally did land the ‘trainees,’ as they were now apparently called, were escorted off first onto the open surface of the city. The humidity struck Ginsi immediately, given that she’d grown up on a world that had no oceans or bodies of water larger than a small lake. The wet air hit her nose right off, as did the wind that whipped her loose green hair around like a hurricane with her swiping it out of her eyes as the seven trainees followed the trainer over to a nearby building entrance.

Once inside her hair settled down and she was split up from the others, with a different trainer taking her off on his own and the pair heading for a lift. From there they traveled through the city interior, which wasn’t all that different from what she was used to, though it did feel a bit more ancient, if that was a feeling that one could feel.

Out of the lift they walked a bit more then passed through a checkpoint and into what the man said was the Archon training areas where the rest of Atlantis’s personnel weren’t permitted. From there Ginsi was escorted to the holding area the first trainer had promised and she was left to mingle with her new family until they were called for, with some six trainers stationed nearby to look after them. She got the feeling they were being handled a bit like younglings, but since she didn’t have a clue what was going on she was actually glad for it.

“Nice hair,” a girl behind her commented.

Ginsi turned around, then ran her fingers through the mess a few times. “That stupid wind.”

“Actually I meant the color. I like the green.”

“Thanks. I’m Ginsi by the way. 289. Or, well, 500289. Don’t think we’ll be using the first 3 very much since they’re all the same.”

“First four actually. I’m Sax-500211.”

“Right, four.”

“Looks like we’re only 3 shy now.”

“If you say so,” Ginsi said, looking around at all the others. Most were near her height of 5’10’’ but a few looked to be near the 6’5’’ range.

“I’ve been counting.”

“Did they tell you we were going to see Davis?”

“Yes,” Sax said eagerly.

“They also said something about secrets.”

“Archon only stuff…I can’t wait.”

“I didn’t realize being hot was one of the requirements for being an Archon,” a guy said, walking up beside Sax.

“It’s not,” she said, glaring at him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

He looped an arm around her shoulders. “Now that’s starting to sound like my sister already.”

“I’m Ginsi…89.”

“Matt…34.”

“And thanks for the compliment.”

“Just pointing out the obvious,” he said, letting go of Sax. “Some of us have been here a few hours already and we’re getting a bit tired of waiting.”

“Did anyone say how long it would take?”

“No,” Sax answered. “So we’re just chitchatting to pass the time.”

“Ugh…and here I really hate small talk.”

“Apparently all of us do,” Matt commented. “That’s one of the first things we figured out.”

“Really?” Ginsi said, starting to feel an odd familiarity with them already.

“Would you like to make out instead?”

“Why not,” she said, calling his bluff and taking a step towards him while grabbing his neck with her right hand and laying the biggest kiss on him that she could manage before slowly pulling back. “Here or would you prefer some place more out in the open?”

Matt coughed once, catching his breath. “Wow. You’re even more sarcastic than me. I humbly admit defeat,” he said with a short bow.

“Slayed with a kiss,” Sax said, lightly punching Matt in the stomach. “Now that’s a new one.”

“Looks like our last 3 are here,” he said, pointing to the entrance as two guys and a girl were brought in wearing the same white with blue stripe uniforms that the rest of them had been given prior to transit to Atlantis.

“Just in time to wait some more,” Sax said dryly, and she was right, for the group wasn’t taken away to another chamber till an hour later. There they were seated in a small amphitheater with her taking a seat in the second row with a tall, muscular man standing before them that introduced himself as Wilson, their Head Trainer. He spoke briefly, then another man walked up and exchanged places with him.

Ginsi almost didn’t recognize Davis in person, for his hair was all short and spikey, but as soon as he started speaking there was no mistake. He spoke quickly yet clearly, and outlined why they were here, what they had been chosen for, the challenges ahead, and the ‘secrets’ that had been alluded to.

By the end of it all Ginsi was nearly speechless. After all this time and 6 centuries of building and growth and war, the general population still had no idea of who the true enemy was and the threat they posed. She found that staggering, but also empowering, because she was being trusted with the secret and the responsibility to do something about it by completing her basic training and becoming an Archon.

Little did she know how big a role she’d play in the future, for like any proper Archon she kept her mind focused on the here and now. Ginsi didn’t need any coaching on that, for once the V’kit’no’sat were revealed to her everything in her life seemed to crystalize into one undeniable purpose…and from that day on she worked just as hard as the others, if not harder, to earn her spot in the Archon ranks and begin her meteoric rise up through the levels.

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1

June 19, 2674

Unnamed System (lizard Core)

Low Stellar Orbit

The first few hundred H’kar battleships sat around the incoming jumppoint, sniping the lizard cruisers throwing themselves at the invaders before most of their insane number could get into plasma range. Their destars had about six times the firing distance before the photon slurry destabilized and disintegrated into small, spherical novas of intense light, which would do damage on its own, but the nature of the weapon gave it a medium range that still outdistanced the lizard weapons, making for easy 1 or 2 shot kills against the cruisers as the H’kar covered for more of their ships to enter the system.

This wasn’t a stealth entry, so the H’kar had their active sensors scanning the moment the first ship arrived and they could see the disposition of the nearest enemy fleets. The cruisers hitting them now were merely the scattered elements closest to the star and were trying to disrupt or poach the incoming ships, which the H’kar already in place were not allowing them to do…but the mass of ships heading their way was an entirely different matter.

They were moving towards them in the hundreds of thousands, coming in from 5 different planets and various deep space positions around the system. Those were delayed, for they didn’t have the gravity intensity required for a standard microjump, but the ones coming directly off the planets would be within weapons range before the whole H’kar fleet arrived, thus it was up to Yren’s ship and the others already on station to buy them the cover they needed.

Yren was one of the battleships’ commanders and a seasoned veteran, having spent over 120 years in his race’s navy and the past 6 years fighting in the raiding fleets along with Star Force and their allies. He’d learned a great deal about fighting the H’kar’s arch nemesis from the Human commanders, but today they were not involved. This was payback time and a strategic strike against one of the Li’vorkrachnika’s strongholds, which Star Force scouts had finally been able to locate. Now that they had a big target to hit the H’kar were going to do what they did best and punch the enemy in the face, metaphorically speaking.

But to do that they needed their full fleet, and Yren and the others had to hold position long enough for the long jump convoy to arrive. With every minute that passed more warships entered the system and strengthened their lines, increasing the destar fire going out and picking off the enemy cruisers like the inconsequential gnats they were, but at the same time the number of enemy ships was rising faster than the reinforcements were coming in, meaning that Yren had his work cut out for him.

Standing on the command deck of his ship the H’kar has his four pointy legs inserted into small depressions in the floor to allow him to stand firm while working the controls around him. His pod was a solitary one, for the rest of the crew were located out of sight and sound while still on the main floor, leaving his central compartment completely shut off from them so that he could think clearly without any background distractions. His orders to the crew were carried out remotely, with his six arms working the controls in a mixed flurry of motion and moments of stillness as he studied the battlefield around him and made adjustments to their tactics accordingly.

While the crew fought, flew, and made ready to repair damage he was left to think and see clearly what was happening around them, with his pitch black quartet of eyes tracking the bright streaks of destars as they leapt out instantaneously to pierce the yellow/tan hulls of the enemy ships. Mentally he was feeling out their numbers rather than counting and he could already sense the tide shifting. There were more cruisers arriving than they had destars to fire, meaning that the enemy was now getting some ships in through the growing debris field and into firing range.

Yren’s ship was taking some hits, minor as they were, and the only way the Li’vorkrachnika could get through their Nexus-built shields was with sustained damage from a high number of targets. That intensity wasn’t present yet, but the battleship commander knew it was coming and the bloodbath that would result. He didn’t know if he’d live out the day, but he was confident that the others would take down their target…which was the giant shipyard ring circling the third planet.

Yren’s mental counter reset as one of their behemoths arrived in a blur of braking motion and began to reposition over to support the screening fleets, which were engaged in three different positions. The massive vessel was fortunately coming to his, increasing his odds of survival as more and more cruisers began chipping away at his ship’s shields. Secondary defenses were firing back at them, but they didn’t have the kill power of the destar conduit, meaning it would take time for them to burn through the cruisers’ shields and hull armor before doing any real damage.

But the H’kar commander had learned in his time with the raiding parties that he had to protect his main weapon, for the enemy liked to target it specifically. To decrease the odds of them landing the pinpoint plasma attacks necessary to knock it out prior to shield collapse, he had the helm keep moving the ship around while about two thirds of the others merely held position and fired on the enemies that came closest to them.

Yren knew they were old school commanders who either hadn’t been part of the joint operations or those who hadn’t learned from the mission reports coming back to the empire. Those battleships that were maneuvering about were commanded by those who had, and they were giving the enemy a constantly shifting formation to line up against, adding a little bit of uncertainty as to where they should hit the hardest.

He input a few more navigational commands, tapping buttons and sending the orders off to others who would carry them out as he saw one of the neighboring battleships turning back and retreating from the lines…while its shields were still up. Yren knew that would infuriate some of the other commanders but his group commander had spent even more years fighting with Star Force than he had and wouldn’t condemn the act as cowardice. The battleship in question had been getting picked on harder than the rest and its shields were in danger of dropping, hence it was pulling back to recharge them prior to reengaging in battle.

The old school H’kar philosophy would have had it sit and continue firing and do as much damage as it could up until it was destroyed, and as Yren watched he saw a portion of the enemy fleet disengage from other vessels and go after it, intending to knock its shields down whether the H’kar liked it or not.

Yren immediately gave new firing orders, having his ship rotate around to port and target one of the chasing cruisers. Several other battleships did as well, sniping some of the pursuit as the retreating ship gained speed and pulled back towards the jumpline. Yren let the rest of the cruisers go after it, for more of the reinforcements were coming their way and adding to the sniping, insuring that the weakened ship would get clear and have a chance to recharge and come back into the fight at nearly full strength again.

That little maneuver alone had cost the enemy at least 15 cruisers, and it was small tweaks in strategy like that that had given the raiding fleets such an impressive record. Yren almost wished one of the Human warlords was here to guide this battle as they had done many others, but this was the H’kar’s payback for centuries of defeats that had amounted to trillions of deaths. That made it more personal than the other battles he’d fought, though this one was also a Nexus affair.

As the H’kar battle near the star continued to escalate to the point where some of the chess pieces were beginning to reposition away from the planets and head towards the fight, a second jumpline on the other side of the star opened up and additional ships started pouring in…but they weren’t H’kar, they were Gfatt.

These didn’t stick around to fight, nor did they transition over to assist the H’kar. They were here for one purpose and one purpose only…and that was to get to the giant ring. The H’kar were the bait and distraction, with the hammer blow going to come from the more technologically advanced race.

They’d been planning this assault for the past 12 years after getting the intel from Star Force. Since then other ring shipyards had been discovered in different systems, but this one was the closest to the H’kar border and the others were much better guarded. As it was this attack was not a system-conquering one, nor even a battle to destroy the ships in orbit. There were too many for the H’kar and Gfatt to take out and they knew it, but they’d finally assembled enough strength from both their fleets to be able to deny the Li’vorkrachnika one of their big prizes.

The hourglass-shaped Gfatt warships came in multiple sizes, but all had the same basic design and tore through the out of place defending fleets around the third planet when they began making microjumps in to it immediately. A long trail of their warships stretched across the system as the first few to arrive didn’t delay, knowing that their presence was going to be detected immediately. As soon as they hit planetary orbit they went straight for the nearest enemy warships and unleashed a torrent of Haxtrel blasts at multiple targets simultaneously.

The light show was emanating from the narrow point of the Gfatt ships and sending out squirt gun-like streaks of multi-colored light that had a visible delay in hitting their targets, unlike the destars in the H’kar fleet that traveled at the speed of light. The Haxtrel beams were matter that had been broken down into subatomic particles and forced into an unnatural state that had it recombining or breaking apart en route to the target, which produced the light show.

Some beams were designed to produce particles or energy bursts that would drain shields, while others were meant to rip apart matter by destabilizing its molecular bonds with a switch out to the new particles incoming. Still other beams had different functions, some working like mini explosives on contact and others that compromised hull integrity by altering the structure of it into something less robust. Last of all was a white beam that was purely for cutting, structured much like a plasma stream only much more exotically lethal.

The Gfatt were firing at the surrounding ships with every Haxtrel they had whether it was the prime moment for it or not trying to do as much damage as they could, for when the bulk of their ships arrived they were going to ignore the defending fleet and go straight for the ring shipyard regardless of how much damage they took in the process.

The Li’vorkrachnika’s defending ships didn’t stand a chance at first, but others nearby began to reposition and group up to come at them…with several pairs and trios of the hourglasses moving off from their rendezvous point to engage them before they could get clustered up to dangerous levels. All the while the H’kar were taking the brunt of the attack in near the star, with their fleet still yet to fully arrive.

If the enemy pulled back from that engagement to fight the Gfatt then they’d signal the H’kar to jump into the planet to assist them in making the run for the shipyard…if not the H’kar would fight and die as a distraction while the Gfatt made their dive for the target. Either way the shipyard was going down, it was just a matter of how many ships they’d lose in the process. This was not going to be a clean victory and they knew going in that it would be messy, but this was the first big target the Li’vorkrachnika were known to have and the Nexus was going to take it from them one way or another.

Once enough Gfatt ships arrived they sent a scattering out as skirmishers while the bulk headed straight for the shipyard…with a huge defense fleet standing in the way that included multiple invokers and even an assault pillar, though the latter’s primary weapon would be next to useless against moving targets…which is what the Gfatt were, for they didn’t stop to engage the fleet, instead choosing to run right through it firing as they went and counting on their superior shields to get them through the loose but otherwise intimidating blockade.

They made sure to avoid the invokers’ energy arcs, diverting around them like a school of fat fish evading a whale, then the Gfatt ships decelerated hard just above the 12-mile wide ring and started firing blue streaks down into it and disrupting its thin defense shields. As they did the Li’vorkrachnika’s slower ships began to catch up to them, as did their plasma weapons, but the Gfatt ignored all but the invokers, moving to keep out of their attack range while maintaining fire on one piece of the ring. Additional Gfatt ships entering planetary orbit followed the others in, making a long river of continuously moving warships that the enemy attempted futilely to disrupt.

They were weakening shields and doing hull damage in a few cases, but they couldn’t prevent the Gfatt from getting to their target. When they did arrive they were sitting ducks for the Li’vorkrachnika to shoot at, but the attackers didn’t care and hammered away at the shipyard shields until they finally dropped over a mile-wide segment. When that happened armageddon unleashed and a slew of missiles raced down to the surface of the shipyard and detonated in a continuous firecracker string that lasted over five minutes.

When it finished and the debris clouds were mushrooming out to the point where you could see through them again the Li’vorkrachnika saw that the Gfatt ships had already moved down into the crater and were firing all of their various colored Haxtrel beams at the surrounding structure, along with sporadic big booms coming from their primary weapons. Those were the equivalent of a Kamehameha being shot out from the narrow point in the hourglasses, with the orb flying into the shipyard, melting its way inside, then blasting out a huge new crater…after which there was a recharge period before each Gfatt ship could fire the main weapon again, chipping out more of the enormous shipyard.

Every ship that entered the initial large crater was equipped with the Jakdems and were instructed to fire them in very specific locations, as if each ship was a hungry beaver trying to carve out a specific section of the giant tree trunk. The Gfatt expanded on the crater enough to get the bulk of their ships inside, then they went laterally no more and focused on cutting up and down from the crater, as well as on through the center.

Not all of their ships could enter the breach point initially, and those outside provided cover for the others, fighting the enemy ships and even going after one of the invokers. Those engagements were meant to delay and reduce the firepower the enemy was throwing at them, and even the invoker attack was meant to scare it off and away from the cutting fleet, though they had to sacrifice two of their ships in order to damage the chess piece enough to make it withdraw.

The others firing on invoker let it go and pulled back into the growing sphere of ships around the crater in the shipyard ring, with more and more Gfatt entering the breach as it grew larger and adding their ‘chewing’ capability to it. Meanwhile the H’kar had their hands full, for the enemy was not pulling back the forces they’d sent to hit it. Costly as it was, their distraction was buying time and the Gfatt were burning through the ring like a slow chainsaw blade, with numerous bits of debris being flung out that added to the damage being done to the cruiser horde…with the Gfatt guiding several of the larger pieces through their formation and launching them at the Li’vorkrachnika like giant rocks thrown out of a slingshot thanks to their control beams.

It took quite a while to carve all the way through the 12 mile wide ring, and then to expand that piercing hole all the way across it up and down to completely sever the shipyard into two halves. By that time the defending ships outside the breach had either gone in to help the others or had been destroyed, leaving only a wedge of ships between the two thick sidewalls…which put the Gfatt in a very bad place when the Li’vorkrachnika spammed the opening with cruisers so thick you couldn’t even see the light of the star through them.

But the two sidewalls also provided cover for the Gfatt, who didn’t care how many enemy ships there were. They’d cut the giant ring in half, but it was still in orbit and that amount of damage, massive as it was, was minor compared to the sheer size of the thing. No, in order to kill it they needed help…and that help was going to be gravity.

Once the cut was made all the way through the Gfatt ships snuggled up against the port sidewall, latched on with their control beams…and pulled. Using all the grip and engine power they could apply without ripping pieces off, they started to move the port piece down towards the planet, leaving the other sitting in space where it had originally been.

The Li’vorkrachnika immediately knew what the Gfatt were doing and those in the shipyard increased the power to its gravity drives, which augmented the slow orbit to keep the giant thing in space and locked to the rotation of the planet below. That made it a tug of war between the two and while the Gfatt fleet didn’t have nearly enough strength to pull the entire ring down, for there were millions of gravity drives helping keep it suspended above the surface, they didn’t need to pull all of it down…just the end piece.

Several segments broke off as the Gfatt increased their pull, with those ships flying out on momentum then back in again to latch on as the Li’vorkrachnika fleet poured in around them now that the other sidewall was no longer blocking their attacks. They hammered the Gfatt ships that had their flat tops pressed near the shipyard and their flat undersides taking the majority of the weaponsfire, protecting their inner choke points with a wall of armor. That bought them more time as they slowly pulled the end of the giant ring down, dragging the rest of the nearby station with it in a very subtle bend that had hull plates warping, compressing, and cracking apart down the length of it but the superstructure held together and kept the ring intact.

Eventually the Gfatt brought the end piece all the way down into the upper atmosphere, with the centrifugal force helping to maintain its orbit diminishing with altitude. Soon it began falling fast but the Gfatt didn’t let go for fear of it somehow being able to rise again. They rode it down to within 10 miles of the surface before finally breaking free with their surviving ships and running for orbit through the enemy fleets that now clogged the atmosphere above. They fought as they ran, making numerous kills in the process but losing many of their damaged own that weren’t strong enough to make it through the gauntlet back up to even the most awkward jumppoints.

A few of the Gfatt did make it and jumped out, signaling the H’kar to do likewise. Meanwhile the end of the shipyard ring hit the surface and its crumpling mass pulled the next closest section down with it…and like a giant noodle running the entire circumference of the planet each piece yanked down the part next to it, dropping a 12 mile thick ‘rope’ down to the surface, crushing the orbital tethers underneath that were partially keeping it erect as they were pulled sideways then snapped off in a domino-like effect that the Gfatt didn’t wait around to see the finish of. They knew physics would take care of the rest and burned hard for distance away from the swarming enemy fleet that was even more out for blood now than they had been before.

A fair number of Gfatt ships made it back to a stellar jumppoint, but most did not, having been whittled down by inconsequential plasma fire throughout the engagement only to have the pathetically weak enemy cruisers make kills against the larger warships. They didn’t die in massive explosions, but rather were picked apart when their engines failed and they were left helpless. There was nothing their fellow ships could do, for now that the objective had been accomplished and their fleet wrecked, it was every ship for itself and they were running as fast as they could.

Yren’s battleship was one of the lucky ones, surviving to the end of the engagement with only partial gravity drive loss…but enough remained for the ship to make a slow jump away from the system.

The same couldn’t be said for most of the others desperately running away from the planet.

2

October 13, 2674

Quixva System (Skarron territory)

Quixstan

Morgan watched the reconnaissance reports coming in from her bridge command chair along with the rest of the crew. The warship she was commanding was sitting with six others in stellar orbit along with a partial Voku conglomerate as transmissions were returning from a handful of their scout ship ‘pieces’ that had gone on ahead to the one inhabited planet in the system. They’d known it would only be a matter of time before the world fell, and thanks to the Hycre’s tireless efforts to track enemy fleet movements the trailblazer had been able to time their arrival accordingly.

The planet’s orbital paths were already overrun with lizard ships, the naval battle having been previously fought and won, but the surface action on the moderately developed Skarron world looked to still be in its infancy. As she watched, Morgan could see multiple cruisers already in atmosphere tangling with Skarron walkers and the Archon was tempted to sit back and watch a bit, but they already had a prime opportunity as it was and she didn’t feel like waiting for their luck to change.

The longer the fighting continued the less ships the lizards would have, but Morgan’s fleet already outmatched the 794 cruisers and two battleships in orbit…plus she wanted to hit their jumpships immediately, and right now they were sitting in planetary orbit virtually by themselves while the rest of the fleet was either in atmosphere or clustered into three other holding groups. It looked like some of the jumpships were troop transports as well, for they were already beginning to send small streams of kirbies and larger dropships down to the surface.

The captain of the warship turned and gave her a questioning glance, with Morgan nodding as she stood up and headed over to the side room where the command nexus was located. They hadn’t known what to expect initially for all they’d known was a lizard fleet was spotted in this general area, but with the reconnaissance coming in telling her pretty much everything she’d hoped this mission could avail it was time to get to work.

Stepping around the wall and into the nexus she contacted the Voku and worked out the basic battle plan, which would have them going after the jumpships while Morgan’s fleets deployed and engaged the cruisers. The Voku were faster and better armed for their size, which meant they’d have slightly better odds of hitting and disabling them before they were able to jump out, but the troop transports sitting at the lowest altitude were all Morgan’s.

Working out the best approach jumplines the trailblazer began issuing orders to her warship and the others while setting a countdown clock that she shared with the Voku, then all of them broke up and made microjumps out to their preplanned positions. Morgan’s ship made a lazy jump towards the planet then hard braked to come up short and outside both lizard and Skarron sensor range, which was no small feat for a vessel of that size.

With the planet being the size of Morgan’s fist on the holographic viewscreen, she waited until the countdown clock passed their departure mark and the crew made their final microjump, pulling on the planet’s gravity for most of its acceleration. The fist-sized planet grew visibly larger until it filled the viewscreen, with Morgan shifting over to a tactical view and the realtime camera images moving to auxiliary positions around the edges of her little battle nook.

Lizard contacts began popping up on the map everywhere, slightly updated from the passive scans they’d just been monitoring from range, as did the other Star Force jumpships as they all came in at once along with the Voku, leaving little time for any of the enemy craft to maneuver. Morgan signaled through the nexus for her jumpship to begin firing immediately with its bloon launcher at one of the troop jumpships that was now sitting a handful of kilometers in front of them while the Star Force carrier dispersed its drones as quickly as possible. The little black bricks began spewing out as the first glowing energy balls were launched, with the lizard cruiser formations beginning to move to intercept.

The first of the energy-filled bloons splashed against the transport’s hull, with it not even raising shields in time to block it. The bluish/red orb spread out an IDF-saturated energy goo that clung to the ship and isolated an area of it with the effect…and the placement hadn’t been random, for within that region of the vessel was one of their gravity drives, now currently disabled by the field and limiting their movement options. The next one to hit was the same variety, and the next, with the Star Force warship trying to pin the enemy jumpship in place while its drones came out.

They needn’t have bothered because the lizards were taken completely off guard, thinking they’d just won control of the system from the Skarrons. Star Force had never been known to operate this far away from the ADZ, with them being past the ‘no-go’ line and on the coreward side of Achkor. Also the precise jump in had given the lizards no warning, not to mention they were still offloading kirbies full of ground troops.

The shields on the enemy jumpship finally raised, but the goo was still inside them and would last more than a minute before it depleted its charge. The hits that came next had the goo sticking to the shields and accomplishing the same effect, though the bloon strikes that followed were stopped by the barrier.

Those were orange orbs containing mauler energy, which savaged the shield strength and opened up gaping holes in the defense field for the few drones that had already deployed to shoot through, landing Ta’lin’yi columns against the hull in explosive fashion and trying to damage enough key systems to disable the big thing. There were four other jumpships nearby, and two of them began to bug out a few minutes after Morgan sprung her trap, though they started getting peppered by cleansing beams in an attempt to knock out their gravity drives directly as more and more drones got into the field.

It was a race to critically hit the big ships and one that saw some losses. Three of the lizard ground troop transports managed to jump out, but the others did not. Likewise the Voku made 16 jumpship kills, two of which came at the star as they pursued them on their way out. The others had successfully managed to flee the system, but a few of the stragglers were not so lucky.

Meanwhile the lizards threw their warships against the Star Force fleet, knowing they were outmatched and going to die but as always trying to do as much damage as they could in the process. Even some of the cruisers in atmosphere began to come up to assist, though most of them came too late to do anything more than just make themselves easy kills. A pair of them tried to make a kamikaze jump against Morgan’s jumpship, but the crew spotted the lineup in time to deploy acceleration dampener shields. They didn’t surround the entire ship, but rather put up a wall against one approach vector that stretched out into a square column of invisible energy.

That energy acted like a crash bag, collapsing and resisting the physical momentum and forcing a braking maneuver on the ships that left them trying to push through the field with their gravity drives still active less than a kilometer away from the hull. Weapons batteries all over the jumpship opened up and tore the cruisers apart before they could push their way through and lightly ram the ship, ending the threat in what would have been a facepalm moment for the lizards had they still been alive.

If the ship’s crew hadn’t seen it coming it would have been another matter entirely, or if the warship had been surrounded by an assaulting fleet then they would have taken hull damage, for the power charge flowing to the main shields had to be diverted to the ‘cushion’ in order to inflate and reinforce the already existing capacitor charge. The sheer amount of energy needed to stop physical momentum on that scale was staggering, which was why it made for such a useful last ditch technique and any power reactor that didn’t use at least arc elements didn’t stand a chance of providing enough juice to pull off the defensive block.

As it was, to shield a vessel the size of a jumpship with a sufficiently wide and deep wall of collapsible shield energy required not only the output of the reactors, but a huge amount of energy prestored in a special capacitor…though rare moments like this proved the engineering feat more than worth the over-burdensome design.

Once the threat was gone the power generators switched back to reinforcing the decaying primary shield as a handful of enemy ships were still taking potshots at it. Those vessels were eliminated from the battlefield in a handful of minutes, leaving only a few other scattered engagements still occurring in orbit away from Morgan’s group.

She checked on them with a few mental prompts and glances, pulling as much information directly into her mind as she saw with her eyes. It was a technique that no newbie Archon could achieve, but one that she’d grown accustomed to over time. Her mind acted like a part of the computer system and she’d learned to receive information in the same way, with it playing out in mind’s eye…or at least as much as she’d learned to handle. Paul’s skill in this department was far beyond hers, though Bo had both of them whipped with the sheer amount of information his Sav allowed him to process.

The other fleets cleaned up shortly thereafter, with the raid having been a smooth victory given that the lizard fleet had already been heavily reduced in number given the previous battle with the Skarrons. That was the moment of opportunity that Morgan had hoped to catch, but they hadn’t come all this way out from the ADZ just to kill some lizard ships, for there were plenty closer to home to go after had that been their aim.

This system was in the large region surrounding the fallen Skarron capitol, and according to the Hycre the lizards were sweeping up the systems in the area even as the Skarrons mounted a series of counteroffensives in selective spots. The problem was there were too many systems and the lizards were hitting most of them like a tidal wave with smaller fleets, knowing that the Skarron colonies wouldn’t be getting reinforced from their capitol now that it was no longer there.

That was literally handing the lizards a huge chunk of territory on a silver platter given the widespread number of ships and resources they were committing to take it. The Skarrons weren’t making it easy on them, but systems like this one that weren’t of high population density or importance were basically on their own now, with no hope of reinforcements coming and the lizards knowing this. Rather than let them stand, the lizards were hitting them fast and hard, deploying what forces they thought were necessary to take them then starting their own colonies in their place.

But that also meant that they weren’t coming in with overwhelming numbers, and while the Skarrons might not have been in a position to reinforce this system Star Force and the Voku had been, making for a load of easy kills given the lizard fleet’s weakened state. And now, without the mass of troops on their destroyed/fled jumpships, their ground invasion was beyond hopeless, even if there had been some cruisers remaining to deal with the Skarron walkers…which there weren’t.

Once the naval battles were completed Morgan and the Voku began searching the orbital rubble, not only from this small battle but the larger Skarron/lizard one from the previous days, or weeks. They couldn’t be sure when it happened but there were a lot of hulks left in orbit with some of them beginning to degrade and fall towards the atmosphere. They intercepted and moved them into safe orbits while searching the remains for survivors. Those lizards they found they killed on the spot rather than let them slowly starve or freeze to death, but it was the few Skarrons they found still alive that they went to the bother of rescuing and taking prisoner.

Meanwhile the Voku sent a tiny piece of their conglomerate back to the star where it made a jump towards a nearby system where the rest of Morgan’s fleet was waiting. It would deliver the all-clear message then return with the cargo ships, for the second half of this mission was about to begin.

Throughout her recent years Morgan had tasked herself with recovering and rescuing as many Hobbits from their Skarron slavery as she could manage, sometimes in ones and twos on solo missions and others in large scale battles where, with a little nudging, she could get groups of them to switch sides before they were destroyed. The reason she had brought this raiding fleet out this far was because of the unique situation that it presented…and the hopelessness of the reality that these Skarron worlds were doomed to fall to the lizards without the necessary help that she knew they wouldn’t be receiving.

Morgan didn’t care for the Skarrons much, but their slave races were another matter. The jumpships the Voku were going back to pick up were configured as personnel transports that she hoped would be filled with new ‘rescues’ on the return trip to the ADZ, for this was the first of some 6 systems on her list that she was going to try and pick up recruits from, one way or another.

Already there was a growing free Aronsic ward within Star Force, and she even had a few of them with her onboard her warship to assist in the negotiations on the planet, either by comm or sneak missions to get a direct conversation with the Hobbits down there. With their Skarron masters still in play it was going to be tricky getting to them, and in this case they were probably going to have to assault the planet for themselves and kill the Skarrons before any of their slaves would be able to choose freedom.

But there were many cities on the planet, some with more Hobbits than Skarrons, and Morgan begin looking at those as first choices for invasion points all the while the Voku began making preparations for mech drops to deal with the walkers the lizards hadn’t gotten around to destroying yet…and there were still many. Morgan was in a conversation with the Voku about coordinating cleansing beam fire on some of those walker targets when she got an interrupting prompt from her captain.

It was flagged urgent, so she politely asked the Voku commander to hold for a moment and opened the comm line to the man sitting in the room only a few dozen meters away on the other side of the wall.

“What is it?”

“I issued the standard offer for surrender as usual, and we just got the Skarron reply. They’ve accepted.”

“What?!” Morgan asked, shocked. Star Force always offered a surrender to their enemies, but only on some very rare or bizarre occasions had the Skarrons ever accepted…and to this day the lizards never had.

“I just double checked with them, and they’re surrendering. The entire planet is surrendering to us.”

3

October 28, 2674

Quixva System (Skarron territory)

Quixstan

Morgan rode a dropship down to the landing zone her ground troops had just set up, still not believing that this was a legit surrender. Her mind kept expecting an ambush or some form of deceit, but in the couple of weeks it took for her troop ships to arrive the Skarrons had complied with every edict she’d sent down. They’d sent their walkers out away from their bases and abandoned them there, and their elites had removed their armor and likewise piled it and all their handheld weapons up in large piles out in the open.

They’d even begun relocating as specified, but it didn’t feel right to Morgan. The Hobbits she could understand, and the Engineers with them…but not the Skarrons. Never the less the surrender offer was legit and she was going to keep them alive so long as they didn’t try anything, but something deep down inside said that they would, though what it would gain them at this point she didn’t know. She’d parted them from their weapons and the few ships they had, including their fighters and even their ground transports, so if they were going to do some sort of mischief how they were going to accomplish it was beyond her.

When she finally landed on planet she brought with her several Star Force Aronsic who’d previously switched sides, and through them she began to get some answers. They knew the Skarron empire better than she did and quickly put pressure to the points where needed, without rubbing it in the Skarrons’ faces…on Morgan’s orders.

It turned out that after the recent lizard invasion and overall buttwhipping that Star Force and the Voku had just interrupted, the Skarrons didn’t have the stomach for any further fighting. The recent invasion had been the last gasp of their defiance, for it turned out that they knew they’d been abandoned by the empire along with a lot of other systems in the local region. With Skillion gone, the regional capitol that directly fed and controlled this region, there was no longer any oversight. This world and the others were categorized as losses, with any fleets coming in from other regions going straight towards vengeance rather than reinforcement.

If the abandoned systems were going to survive they were going to have to do it on their own merits, and if they could, then some day they might reunite with the rest of the empire, but the writing on the wall said otherwise and the Skarrons here had already known their time was near even before the lizards arrived. With Star Force and the Voku showing up to kill their mutual enemy then offer a surrender option that would keep them alive rather than being wiped out by the new arrivals, they’d decided to take it…given that they didn’t have any warships left to fight with and the number of walkers remaining on the planet would be insufficient to stop the orbit bombardment that they knew would be forthcoming.

Already abandoned by their empire, the Skarrons made the choice to officially cut ties and not fight to the death. It wasn’t a matter of them being disloyal, but in not having any options left. Star Force had offered them one and they took it, simple as that.

Morgan still wasn’t totally convinced and kept her troops operating on a tight lockdown and constant patrols, with her doing her own little snoop recon on occasions…but there was no misbehavior to be found. There were many Skarrons who didn’t like being taken prisoner, but just as many who were mentally subdued, clearly having given up any resistance. Both complied with orders, and Morgan made sure her people paid them a certain amount of respect and didn’t needle them. If she wanted to try and provoke a reaction she’d do it herself.

Slowly the transports came down from orbit, having disconnected from their carrier jumpships, and landed their massive hulks on the surface. It took some reworking of the interior to accommodate the Skarrons, for she’d been expecting Hobbits and maybe some Engineers, not the larger race. This wasn’t their first evac though, so the ships had been built with considerable flexibility and adjustments were eventually made. The Skarrons were put into separate ships than their slave races, and Morgan made sure that split was maintained from here on out so that the Hobbits and Engineers would never have to see them again.

She kept expecting an individual or two to lose it and go rogue, but none of them did. Once they saw that they were being treated well there was no resistance at all and the now prison ships were loaded to the brim, given that there were far more people being picked up than expected. Morgan made sure they could fit them all in, despite the discomfort of the close quarters, and confiscated a lot of the Skarron foodstuffs from their cities to bolster their own supplies long enough to get the prisoners back to the ADZ. She’d expected to hit several systems on this tour, but now that wasn’t going to be an option.

Nor was keeping the planet, which the Skarrons had expected them to do. According to the Star Force Aronsic, to whom the other Hobbits had taken to immediately, when the surrender offer had come down they’d expected this world to be annexed by either Star Force or the Voku, as had been rumored to have happened on a few other worlds the Skarrons previously owned. When word was spread around that they were leaving the planet uninhabited there had been confusion as to why Star Force had even come in the first place.

The Star Force Aronsic had explained that it was to rescue their kin. That didn’t get accepted at first, but as Morgan’s little emissaries continued to talk and explain their own lives and how they’d come to be in Star Force there was a shift in attitude and more than a bit of awe that anyone would care enough to come get them, let alone fight to free them.

The Engineers were indifferent, content to serve whoever was in charge. Such had been their role since before they could remember, and they simply switched from taking Skarron and Aronsic orders to taking Star Force ones. They expected to be put to work when they returned to Star Force space, trading one master for another, and no matter how many discussions the Star Force Aronsic had with them they couldn’t shake them from this self-assigned fate.

The Skarrons refused to believe that Star Force had come for the Aronsic, and Morgan didn’t spend much time worrying about what they thought. They were being taken back as straight up prisoners, while the Hobbits and Engineers were being treated a bit differently. They wouldn’t be free upon arrival, but would have to earn their freedom and place within Star Force, with a well-established procedure already in place for the Aronsic.

It took a while for the fleet to get back to the ADZ, with the Voku peeling off at Achkor and not returning with them, but eventually Morgan brought them to an airless world in Beta Region known as Tartarus. It was one of six planets in the system that Star Force inhabited, all of which contained overseeing colonies for a number of wards that made up the bulk of the system’s population.

Tartarus was not a ward planet, but a prison one. Rather than keeping the individuals in isolation as typical prisons were, when Star Force offered a surrender and enemy troops accepted they were treated with a different status than ‘criminals.’ What they were was involuntary guests, with Star Force building small cities for them to inhabit. Foodstuffs and other materials were provided to maintain the population, with them making nothing for themselves and being left more or less alone so long as they didn’t start misbehaving with regards to the other prisoners.

This was by far the largest haul of Skarron prisoners ever taken, with most of those already in possession having been captured against their will at the very end of engagements where strays were being hunted down. More often than not Skarrons and Hobbits would be stunned and captured, though that no longer happened for the lizards, knowing how much of a pain they were to keep prisoner, with most of them killing themselves as soon as they saw there was nothing they could do to hurt Star Force.

The Skarrons were a bit different, and not just because of their elephant-like size. While they weren’t agreeable prisoners, to say the least, typically they didn’t offer up much trouble moving them around and they didn’t try to commit suicide…nor did they have the claws to do so. Previous prisoners held considerable animosity towards their captors but it was more in the form of spite. They didn’t think they were still in the fight, and acted more like prisoners than the active combatants that the lizards always were.

This lot was even more subdued, given the fact that they saw this as a way to stay alive rather than being captured against their will. They had to be kept onboard their transports for several weeks after arrival in order for appropriate accommodations to be made, for there weren’t enough Skarron facilities to hold them all. The Hobbit facilities were much more massive, given that they expected to bring a lot of them into the fold. Those were located on a different planet and used as a holding/testing facility. If they didn’t take to Star Force they’d eventually be relocated over to Tartarus, while the ones who did would be added to the Aronsic ward that had a colony in this system and several others.

The Engineers were sent to Tartarus as well and held as war prisoners along with the Skarrons, though in separate facilities. Those also had to be enlarged, or rather other standby facilities had to be reconfigured to hold them all. Each race had different requirements, and while some were universal amongst similar body types there were usually little tweaks that had to be made to get it right. Star Force didn’t ascribe to making prisoners suffer in any way, they were simply denied their freedom and nothing else, with no punitive philosophy involved. They’d been taken out of the enemy’s arsenal, and that was what mattered most.

It was true that Star Force was devoting a considerable amount of resources to keep them fed and housed, but that was just one of the responsibilities of a proper civilization. Others would execute prisoners rather than spend resources on them, or put them to work as slave labor…along with other nastiness that even involved eating them for some races. Star Force was going to have none of that and dealt with races that did harshly, so it was no wonder the Skarrons and their slave races entered Star Force territory with some trepidation.

What they found was none of that. They were treated as guests…strictly confined guests, but no shackles, subdermal tracking chips, restrain or punishment collars, or surgical subduement.  The food wasn’t to their liking, for it was Star Force produced, but they’d get used to it in time. The guards were virtually never seen, leaving the Skarrons to live quietly alone with each other and unaware of what was transpiring in the outside world. They were completely cut off from their former empire, but then again they’d already been when the lizard invasion had robbed them of their supply lines, so mentally it wasn’t such a huge transition, though it did take some time to fully adjust to.

The Engineers adapted instantaneously, though they quickly became bored and soon began asking for tasks to do when they weren’t being used as slave labor as they’d expected. They really didn’t want to be left with nothing to do, and that at least was something Star Force could sympathize with. It wasn’t long before a training/work program was established to allow them to both keep busy while helping to contribute to Star Force…and in the process begin a long path to earning their freedom.

Freedom, however, wasn’t something that they desired. They simply wanted to work, and given that their treatment by Star Force as prisoners was better than their treatment by the Skarron empire as ‘forced’ members, they didn’t want to leave. They kept to themselves and their assignments, with an Archon and an Administrator being assigned to begin developing a place for them in their empire as a ward, soon to begin filling with those that earned their way out of prisoner status…with a discrete mental check to make sure they were on the level and not just playing nice so they could get in a position to sabotage something else later.

The Skarrons’ mentality was completely different. They were the masters of their own empire and weren’t interested in being anything but that. These wanted to live, but identity wise they had no interest in changing, let alone sides. Star Force was content with that, merely keeping them contained and alive, but they weren’t going to subject all of them to that fate and kept a route of ‘escape’ possible for those wanting more than to just exist in captivity.

There were a fair number who fell into the escapist category, which began with physical training missions. Once they learned to train and follow orders they were moved into a third nearby facility, already having been taken away from the areas when they first declared their intentions to ‘rebel’ a bit further. The move was both for their own safety and to mentally disconnect them from the others, into which they went from a group system into the seclusion similar to a normal Star Force prison.

The difference with the third stage was that this was a work assignment and when they made the second transition they were given provisional status and a bit of access to the data grids, allowing them to learn about Star Force and outside events. It was during this period that they were discretely visited by an Archon or other psionic-capable Human that did a check of their intentions, with about 2/3rds of those claiming to be working towards a place in Star Force having no intention of helping their captors. They were playing ‘friendly’ in order to get out, gather intelligence, or find a way to sabotage something.

Those individuals were then dumped back into the primary group with no word as to why, other than that they weren’t serious about their commitment to working their way out of the prison. They were told that they’d have another opportunity to begin again 6 months later, and in that way Star Force enabled their prisoners to work their way to freedom without running the risk of unwittingly creating an internal resistance group in the process.

Not that there was a significant threat from that. The ADZ was full of malcontents that Star Force had been dealing with for decades, not to mention people in Axius and even Humans in the Core Region that were anti-Star Force. They weren’t a real threat and were looked on as little more than children playing make believe, but even if they were a threat Star Force wouldn’t have condemned the Skarrons or others to permanent imprisonment. The sovereignty of the individual wasn’t just a high flung concept that you abandoned out of necessity, it was an acknowledgement that people didn’t get to choose where they were born or into what civilization, and Star Force wasn’t going to give up on anyone.

That, and Star Force had learned long ago that the fakers couldn’t take a long string of training and would eventually crack and eliminate themselves, leaving only those willing to work hard to earn their place left behind to exit the prisons and take a place in Star Force. Challenges were the best way to ferret out who was worthy and who wasn’t, but when you needed answers more quickly an Archon mental probe was definitely the way to go.

Morgan didn’t stick around to watch all this go down. Once she delivered the prisoners and resupplied her ships she returned to Achkor and picked up another Voku escort, then went back out hunting more Hobbits on the Skarron worlds that had been cut off by the lizards razing the regional capitol.

Not all of them surrendered, in fact most didn’t. Some hadn’t been visited by the lizards yet and Morgan had to conquer the planets in order to get to the Hobbits, killing many in the process before they could be convinced to surrender. Most of the Skarrons fought to the death, but like in Quixva there were some who didn’t see the point in further resistance and accepted the surrender offer. Some were individual cities, others military bases or even individual walkers. No full planets surrendered until they were reduced to scraps, with Morgan not needing to make a one and done campaign to head back with a full load of prisoners.

One by one she went around to the weakened or under attack systems, catching one in the very end of a lizard attack and only able to rescue a few thousand individuals after her fleet kicked the crap out of the invaders. The trailblazer made use of the transitional nightmare in the region, picking up survivors where she could as the lizards methodically chewed apart withering pieces of the Skarron supply lines and claiming the worlds for themselves with infantile colonies, some of which she destroyed when she came across them for good measure.

But even with several large Skarron fleets roaming the region and hitting targets there were too many lizard startups to eliminate, meaning that no matter how many big fights the Skarrons won the lizards were taking territory…and with every year that passed those little seeds grew, making them even harder to eliminate down the road up until the point where they were no longer vulnerable and full-fledged strongholds.

The collapse of the region didn’t happen quickly, taking decades to accomplish, but by the end of it all the former Skarron border with Achkor would completely disappear, leaving nothing but lizard colonies and the systems they chose not to take interest in, with the ADZ being further swallowed up by the lizard advance.

4

February 7, 2675

Gravis System (beyond Protovic border)

Hampric

Paul watched from the command nexus onboard the Ma’kri as the ship’s Ka’sevron cannons fired off their own projectiles along with the nearby drone fleet’s rail gun rounds. All fell to the planet’s surface and the small lizard colony there, with only one shield dome left to penetrate. The rail guns were going there, but the Ka’sevron rounds were falling on one of the exposed cities.

The hollow rounds hit buildings and sunk through the infrastructure, using their kinetic mass to punch through before the internal energy cocktail reached overload. It never happened at exactly the same moment, but within a few seconds of impact each of the imbedded rounds exploded from within, creating far more damage than the rail gun slugs or even the cleansing beams could manage. Right now those were pinpoint targeting lizard structures in a number of exposed cities, while Paul was reserving the Ka’sevron rounds for where he needed to level a given area.

They were also useful in naval warfare in select circumstances, but because they wouldn’t detonate on contact they were virtually useless against shields save for their kinetic value. If fired against a warship with sufficient shields to hold up to the physical assault the rounds would hit and either deform or deflect, sending them off into space where they would then detonate with little or no secondary damage done to the ship.

Then again if a ship’s shields were down and you landed one inside their hull…pretty much instant confetti. Down side was their casings weren’t quite strong enough to survive the pass through an invoker’s energy arcs, but give the techs another 50 years or so and that little problem would be remedied. Right now the Ka’sevron cannons were more useful in assaulting larger enemy ships and stations, but like the rail guns they had limited ammunition that had to be stored before charging. Once the charge was set the round was ‘live’ and had to be fired, else it’d explode inside your own ship.

That made for a volatile weapon, but in the right hands and the right circumstances it was highly effective, such as at the moment where each Ka’sevron round was saving some 100+ rail gun slugs with each detonation within a shipyard facility that Paul was slagging on the surface. There were two partially constructed cruisers there, and while the cleansing beams could have cut them up at range, the Ka’sevron rounds made the job oh so much easier.

At present only the Ma’kri had the weapons, and that would remain the case, for the other weapon systems coming their way from techland would be implemented on the drone fleet and would take them to a whole new level of badass. Those weren’t out of prototype stage yet, so it’d been decided to give the Ma’kri some extra bang in the interim with the Ka’sevron cannons…which otherwise would have been reserved for specialized assault craft rather than the fleet standard.

The Canderians also really liked the weapon system and were implementing it large scale. To each their own, Paul knew, but useful as it was now the weapon wasn’t going to fit in with their long term plans for the mainline fleet, nor for Clan Saber. A few of the other Clans might dabble with the Ka’sevrons, as they’d done with other weapons that Star Force had built and subsequently decided not to use large scale, but Saber and the mainline fleet were pretty much one and the same as far as tech went, due in no small part to the fact that Paul was the primary architect in both.

The planet that he was current chewing up was yet another lizard expansion into the neutral zone around the ADZ, this one just above the Protovic region on the border between Beta and Zeta Regions. No matter how many Star Force killed, the lizards kept trying to sneak others in, meaning that Paul and others had to keep mowing the grass or face an overgrowth, with the lizards hoping they’d eventually grow tired or lax and allow them to creep up on the fortified region.

But that wasn’t going to happen so long as the trailblazers were in command. The lizards were used to rolling over rookies, and they were anything but. These missions were tedious, and Paul had several other systems he had to raze/check on, but it was necessary work, bloody as it was. This one though had to be eradicated completely, for it was too close to the ADZ to leave anything standing. That was why Paul was willing to waste the Ka’sevron rounds, because he needed as many dead lizards as buildings before he sent his ground troops down to clean up, literally.

Not only would they be hunting down the surviving lizards they would also be removing their infrastructure…and that was always easier if it was rubble rather than just sliced up segments. Paul needed to erase this colony from the neutral zone entirely and not leave anything remaining for the lizards to return to. Had this planet been deeper into lizard territory he’d have been content just to wreck it and force them to rebuild, but unfortunately this one had to become a blood bath…which he never liked.

The demolition from orbit continued until the last city was shieldless and devoid of anything looking like a standing structure, after which Paul took a skeet down from the Ma’kri and joined his ground troops as they scoured the rubble fields looking for lizards…and finding many still alive, most of whom were moving around looking for and setting up ambush locations. Paul flew over them, close enough to scan with his Ikrid and spot potential traps, but eventually when the surface survivors were taken care of he had to come down to ground and help the infantry make their way underground.

Some of the subsurface infrastructure had been pulverized by the Ka’sevron cannons, but a lot was too deep for them to hit, meaning some nasty fighting was still underway for Paul wasn’t going to turn the machines loose on the rubble with living people still in it…even if they were enemies trying to kill them at every turn. He also wasn’t going to try to take any prisoners this go around, knowing the futility of it, but he could at least give the lizards a fighting death and saw to killing many of them himself as he took point to ferret them out with his Ikrid.

Every last one fought viciously to the death, like always, but in the end it didn’t matter. Star Force lost no personnel and only a few aircraft/mechs in the ground combat, most of which was due to hidden explosives. Weeks later, when Paul was sure the cities were clear, he had the ‘chewies’ brought down from orbit and turned them loose on the rubble. The anti-grav platforms grasped pieces with tentacle-like arms, scoops, nets, and several other contraptions, all of which were designed to move it up and into compartments on the exterior that would funnel the junk to interior factories that would mash it up into the equivalent of dust.

That dust was then dumped back onto the ground, either directly under the chewie or off to another location via a boom, eventually leaving a dune field where the cities had been, or in the case of the subterranean structures a massive pit filled with the sharp sand. In other situations Star Force would have recycled that debris, but out here on a planet they didn’t intend to retain possession of, this was as far as they were willing to go.

With the dunes marking the planet like scars Paul eventually closed up shop and jumped to the next system on his list, but not before swinging back into the ADZ to hook up with the grid and get caught up with events, for these purging missions took a considerable amount of time. With Protovic territory being the closest his Ma’kri swung by while the rest of his fleet traveled to a standby point near the next target, which he would be at with only a few days delay thanks to the superior gravity drives that the newer Ma’kri possessed.

But when Paul arrived and connected his ship to the relay grid he didn’t jump back out immediately, for there was a flag on a message that came from Roger. Knowing that he might need to respond to it he kept the Ma’kri sitting in place rather than swinging back out to an exiting jumpline as he read the message regarding the Nexus raid on a lizard core world.

Roger’s sentiments were dark and mirrored his own, with Paul physically pounding the arm of his command chair as he read them…drawing the attention of the ship captain and the rest of the bridge crew.

Paul ignored them and read on. According to the reports the ring shipyard had successfully been destroyed, which was a huge victory and would reduce lizard ship building production by a significant fraction, but the H’kar had lost 73% of their fleet and the Gfatt had lost 88% in the assault…and those weren’t drone warships. They had crews on all of them, and their lives had just been sacrificed in order to achieve a strategic victory. It wasn’t a last ditch effort to hurt the enemy or to save a planet. This was a planned assault, undertaken by choice, and they’d just traded away those people’s lives in order to knock out the lizard shipyard.

From the way the H’kar report read, which they’d translated and sent to Star Force as a FYI, they saw this as a huge victory and payback for all the defeats they’d suffered in the past, and the Nexus saw it as a key strategic victory. Neither faction saw it as anything but positive, though there was a subnote that indicated that hitting another ring in the near future wasn’t an option for lack of available ships.

Roger obviously had a problem with that, as did Paul and Star Force in general, but the Nexus was completely oblivious to the horror they’d just committed, trading away people’s lives as they had. Each one of those deaths was a defeat, a loss, but like the lizards they just saw those crews as replaceable assets rather than prizes to be safeguarded. They’d just handed them to the enemy in what arguably was the biggest tower dive Paul had ever read about. Even the V’kit’no’sat were never this sloppy, despite the drastic lengths they sometimes went to achieve objectives.

The Nexus had sent those troops in without any intention of them surviving. They simply wanted the shipyard dead and knew their superior technology would allow the ships to survive long enough to accomplish their objective if they went full bore against it and didn’t get distracted with anything so trivial as defending themselves.

Paul pounded the armrest of his chair again, this time standing up and walking around to the back of it and gripping the top of the cushion with both hands in a stranglehold.

“What’s wrong?” the Captain asked, spinning around in his own chair to face him.

“The Nexus has taken out a lizard ring in one of their core worlds.”

The Captain’s eyes widened in surprise, then just as quickly narrowed again in suspicion. “What’s the bad news?”

“They sacrificed almost all of a combined H’kar and Gfatt fleet in order to do it…including several of the commanders we’ve been training to avoid that kind of stupidity!” Paul finished with a half yell.

The Captain was silent for a moment, as was the bridge crew, and he let the Archon have a moment before he spoke again, seeing that he was clearly fuming. “How many?”

“18 million H’kar, and around 12 million Gfatt,” Paul said, squeezing his eyes shut at the horrific numbers. Those were all soldiers who had trained long and hard to develop their skills, serving their races for years upon years…and now they were gone, not because the enemy had surprised them or overwhelmed them, but because their leaders had decided to trade their lives away in exchange for a damn shipyard.

“No matter how powerful the Nexus is, they can’t afford to lose that many ships.”

“No they can’t,” Paul agreed, “but it’s their typical bluff. Hit the enemy hard and in place that really hurts them and hope they back down or submit. We know that won’t happen with the lizards. The H’kar should know that won’t happen with the lizards, they’ve been fighting them longer than we have.”

“How vulnerable do you think this makes the H’kar?”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t know. If they expected to lose the fleet then they should have more than enough to hold their territory without them, but it’s going to seriously inhibit their ability to push back on the creep advance. This was stupid no matter how you slice it, but all they can see is the big prize they bagged.”

Another moment of silence followed before the Captain spoke.

“Do you need to go somewhere else?”

Paul sighed. “I want to beat the brains out of the H’kar, but that’s already being handled by others. No, go ahead and get us moving. We’ve got a mission list to complete.”

“Do you have all the data you need?”

“Yeah. I’m going to go through it more closely before I send any messages, so there’s no need to wait. I’ll be in the sanctum hitting something,” Paul said, spinning around and walking off the bridge.

“Get us to the Jaxvot jumppoint,” the Captain told the helmsman after he’d left. “And be glad you were born Human and not H’kar.”

“Very glad,” the helmsman muttered, plotting the course and goosing the gravity drives enough to get them moving around stellar orbit.

Taryn stood in the V’kit’no’sat pyramid watching as the medtech took several of her Clan Croft adepts through the ‘genetic carwash’ and unlocked their 7 basic psionics from the ‘rust’ that had rendered them dormant from so many generations of illicit Zen’zat breeding. Normally Taryn wouldn’t have brought them here herself, but today was a special case.

As a brand new acolyte stepped out of the chamber Ginsi stepped in, taking his place with Taryn throwing her a wink when their eyelines crossed. It had only been some 14 years ago when the trainee had graduated from basic training and the trailblazer had luckily been able to bring her into her Clan. Her scores had been impressive but not groundbreaking going through basic and she’d been highly sought after, but even Taryn had no idea what a monster she’d become after being ‘released’ from the group training and allowed to fly free as all adepts did, more or less.

Previously Morgan had held the record of the quickest elevation to acolyte, both in age and in years training. She’d been 74 at the time and had spent 49 years after graduating from basic training, from which Archons emerged at a variety of ages. That record had been eclipsed a few decades ago by an Archon named Mathias-489220 who’d squeaked in at 48 years training and an age of 110, with him being one of the ‘slower starters’ who didn’t pass Archon testing during the last phases of the maturia training but had volunteered to give it another go years later after some further development (often along with a host of other tests) and found that he’d improved to the point of trainee candidacy.

Some of his physical skills were head of his classmates, which some had argued gave him a head start, but Taryn had looked up his scores at the time and while they were strong they weren’t record setting. She and the others, Morgan not included, had pretty much agreed it was time that someone had reached acolyte faster than the slow troll that most Archons progressed through simply because the process had been so polished since Taryn and the others had literally been making it up as they went along the first time.

The Archon trials were a huge boost, as were the various training methods and equipment that had been established, not to mention the peerdom available within the Clans that gave you stronger trainer partners to work with…all of which the trailblazers never had. That said, even the ‘inferior’ Archons should have been reaching acolyte faster than they had been, and when one finally beat Morgan’s training years mark it had generally been accepted as something that had been very long overdue.

But Ginsi was totally different. She’d accomplished in 14 years what had taken Morgan 48, and she was only 41 years old. Her rapid rise had caught the trailblazers’ attention, and even Davis was keeping a close watch on her, prompting the discussion as to how fast Taryn and her classmates would have leveled up if they’d been born into this generation and had all the advantages afforded to trainees and adepts today.

Even when they had that discussion there was a lot of doubt as to if they could have achieved what Ginsi had, so as Taryn watched her get her psionics the trailblazer wondered what was laying in store for her in the future…and knowing that nothing was automatic. Ginsi had been busting her butt in training ever since graduation, but 14 years was a far cry from 600, and there were some side bets going as to how long she could keep this up. Many thought she’d plateau eventually, as many other Archons had, but so far Taryn didn’t see it happening, though with the inclusion of psionics into the level requirements there was no knowing how she’d progress.

On one level Taryn did resent her a bit, though that was little more than competitive envy. She could snap her like a twig if she needed to, but the look in Morgan’s eye whenever her name was mentioned was more than worth it, for her fellow trailblazer didn’t like losing records, of any kind, and had gradually worked her way back up to top Archon status after being at a decided disadvantage to those who’d camped out in the advanced training group while she was off on field missions.

But this was different, for she not only lost the record but had it literally blown off the map. The trailblazers weren’t quite sure what to make of her, and despite that fact that she was so young and weak compared to them Taryn and the others looked at Ginsi like a little sister, wondering just how long this hot streak would last and if she was truly in their league…or perhaps even better.

Taryn didn’t know, for a big part of being a trailblazer was figuring things out for yourself or with your peers and Ginsi was having everything fed to her. That’s what the trailblazers had worked to build, so weaker Archons could gain greater strength by following their example and using training programs and drills refined to perfection before they were even born. It was a very good thing, but there was a higher level for those who managed to do it on their own, which left Ginsi in ambiguity as to what her caliber was as far as Taryn and the others were concerned.

So they were in wait and see mode, with Taryn keeping a very close eye on her little sister and fellow Clansmen heading forward.

5

December 28, 2679

Pooovalla System (H’kar territory)

Ratchniva

Gavra walked down one of the long, curvy corridors that typically made up H’kar infrastructure, coming to a dead end and stepping on the elevation pad that lowered him down to the next level. The four-legged armored ‘crab’ walked on, finding another pad nearby and moving down a second level, then another 8 until he came to a guard post with a pair of fellow H’kar soldiers with weapons strapped to two of their six arms.

He was known to them, so with a nod of recognition he passed through the checkpoint and into one of the off limits areas of the command complex where only a few high ranking H’kar were allowed to enter. There he walked through a few more corridors, traveling from memory rather than the navigational markings on the ceiling, until he came to the main receiving chamber where a small assembly was ongoing.

The Royal halted their conversation the moment he saw Gavra, clicking a welcoming tone on his mandibles and getting the crowd to part ways to allow the senior military commander access to the central slot in the approach bank. The H’kar formerly standing there backed away, leaving two other niches in the narrow, curved table occupied by non-military personnel but otherwise high ranking officials with the H’kar. They faced the Royal, situated inside the shallow arc of the approach bank and surrounded by control boards and display screens/holos.

Gavra ignored them all, along with the tidbits of conversation he had heard upon entry. Without a word he began pressing buttons and accessing a secure file that even the Royal didn’t have the access codes for, bringing up a map amendment that changed the regional holo that was centered on Pooovalla and showed the scattering of H’kar systems butting up against the Li’vorkrachnika border.

When the update was applied, several new dots interspaced between the H’kar systems changed color, indicating new acquisitions by their enemy. None of the systems were previously H’kar owned, but it was clear that they were failing in their Nexus mandate to control the local region.

“The situation has worsened far more than we anticipated,” Gavra said sternly, his respect for the Royal present in his tone but it not masking his anger and frustration. “We wrongly assumed the Li’vorkrachnika would strike back at one of our worlds in retaliation for the strike on their core worlds. To be truthful we hoped they would, for such an attack would be to our advantage by consolidating a large percentage of their fleet into a single location for us to destroy in our greatest place of strength.”

“The Li’vorkrachnika have not been so stupid. They continue to strike us where we are weak, but they are retaliating. The number of expansions we’ve previously noted have increased by 23% since the combined strike with the Gfatt, but the latest survey numbers indicate a much larger increase…in the realm of 340%. They are devoting far more resources to this region, all without any large fleet action. The loss of the majority of our strike fleet had diminished our ability to hunt down and eliminate these expansions, but do not mistake that as being the primary cause of this onslaught. The enemy has increased its attention here, and we are unable to stop them.”

The Royal remained passive, then held up one of its pointy, fingerless arms. “Have we lost an engagement?”

“No. The enemy is not engaging us when they have the option to run. Those times when they cannot they are doing what damage they can, targeting individual ships for destruction. I’ve instructed our commanders to withdrawal those vessels in such occasions, but we have lost a few when they stupidly chose to remain in position. Each ship we lose is a defeat, but we have not lost a full battle since the core world strike.”

“Then in what danger are we?” the Royal asked obtusely.

“We are in danger of allowing the enemy to grow to a level where they can threaten us. Joining the Nexus advanced us considerably, but we are not safe. The Li’vorkrachnika have not been beaten, and now that we’ve shown we can hit their core worlds they are paying us more attention than before. It is only a matter of time before we are isolated and surrounded,” he said, bringing up a specific intelligence report that he’d only received 18 days ago.

“This is the beginning of a trend, I fear,” Gavra said, highlighting a neutral system on the starmap situated in between two widely spaced H’kar worlds. “The Li’vorkrachnika have placed a semi-permanent raiding fleet in the Kiltuum System. They are disrupting traffic, killing what civilian ships they can, then running when our warships arrive. I believe they will continue to do so, and we do not have the ships necessary to secure our shipping lanes. If this continues we will either have to dedicate vessels to Kiltuum or reroute traffic flow. Either way is a win for the enemy.”

“Assume they do the same for 100 other systems, and tell me again how safe we are.”

The H’kar to Gavra’s left bristled with the insult that the military commander was throwing the Royal’s way. “Then it’s time to recall our ships from the ADZ. We obviously need them to secure our own territory.”

Gavra made a click/clash noise so violent that all the H’kar around him visibly shook with surprise.

“You have said as much yourself,” the Royal reminded him calmly.

“I have been stupid and unwilling to see the truth,” Gavra admitted. “Recent events have forced my vision to clear. We are making the same mistakes we made before, emboldened by Nexus membership. Our methods saw us lose the first time, nearly to the point of extinction before Samenra ordered the evacuation. He was shamed and exiled for that decision later, but it saved our race. Had we stood our ground and fought it out we would not be here today.”

“He was right to do so,” the H’kar on Gavra’s right said irreverently, “for it brought us into contact with the Nexus.”

“But you still speak of him with shame, as most of us do. We did not learn, and now that we have superior technology to the enemy we have fallen back to using flawed strategy, myself included. I however am learning to adapt…or at the very least learning how to read a scorecard,” he said, bringing up another display, this one with numerical tallies.

“This is the killcount for our fleets operating out of Star Force territory. Compare with those here…”

“Those numbers are being augmented…”

“No,” Gavra said, cutting off the H’kar to his left. “I have omitted partial ship kills. These are those resulting only from our weaponry. Our fleets, when operating under Star Force command, are destroying more enemy ships than those here, and the Star Force warlords are keeping our fleets virtually untouched in the engagements. I will not recall them when they are doing more damage to the enemy there than we are doing here.”

“Our mandate takes priority here.”

“The enemy is the same, their ships do not belong to any one region. If we kill them here or there it does not matter, only the number is relevant. Furthermore, the performance rates of those crews who have participated in the raiding fleets increases once they are cycled back into our standard forces. We are not only killing Li’vorkrachnika in considerable numbers there, we are learning how to fight them better. I will not recall those fleets, and I am here to recommend we augment them.”

“If we are already shorthanded,” the Royal said, beginning to think Gavra was going senile, “how can we spare anymore?”

“Our worlds are secure for the moment, and we are losing the region regardless. We need to fuel our successes, and right now those are only occurring in the raiding fleets.”

“We have a mandate to acquit,” the H’kar senior diplomatic officer said, whose primary duty was dealing with Nexus issues.

Gavra pivoted around, shuffling his footpoints until he squarely faced the H’kar on his left. “It is time we acknowledge that we have failed in our mandate and move on.”

“We cannot!”

“It has already occurred.”

“If we admit failure,” the Royal interrupted, “we run the risk of losing our Nexus membership. If that happens they will reclaim the technology granted to us. Our civilization will be cannibalized.”

“That will not happen, and I am not suggesting any political push. I am saying that we should admit to ourselves that we have failed and stop trying to protect systems that we cannot. We must focus on the long term while we still have the benefit of strong worlds. The Li’vorkrachnika will take them eventually, this I can promise you, if we do not alter our course.”

“You are talking nonsense, Gavra,” the diplomatic officer said, exchanging a questioning glance with the Royal. “No Nexus member world has ever fallen without an immediate and massive reprisal from the other members. They are our insurance against the Li’vorkrachnika. If we abandon our mandate we abandon them…and we will be committing the equivalent of suicide.”

“Define ‘immediate?’” Gavra demanded, throwing the other H’kar off balance with the simple question.

“You know the battle history better than I do, I assume.”

“Yes I do, but I no longer underestimate our enemy. We hit one of their most valuable worlds and took away an equally valuable asset, one that no one, to my knowledge, has ever touched before. And how do they respond? Calmly. They increase their efforts here drastically, but with no overt moves. No big battles. In fact, they are attacking less than before. Perhaps the resilience of our ships scared them, but they do not quit. Instead they hit us where we are weak, where we cannot defend.”

“I ask you this,” he said, raising his voice and using it to verbally beat down the non-military H’kar, “what happens if the enemy strikes ALL of our worlds simultaneously, with enough numbers to destroy our populations? They will undoubtedly lose their fleets in the process, such as we did to kill their shipyard, but our people will be dead, our industry crippled, and our defeat all but complete before even one ship from the other races arrives to avenge us.”

“So I ask you again, will their backup be immediate? Or is that just a comforting lie you tell yourself to preserve this false security you cling to.”

“You speak of fiction yourself,” the H’kar on his opposite side said. “They cannot launch such an attack of this scale, not against all of our worlds.”

“Perhaps not today, but they are growing. How long do we have until they reach that numerical strength?”

The H’kar didn’t answer. He wasn’t convinced, but didn’t have a retort handy.

“How does increasing our fleet size in the ADZ help counter this possibility?” the Royal asked.

“We cannot defeat the Li’vorkrachnika,” Gavra said plainly, his words essentially treason as far as H’kar philosophy was concerned. “But they are, slowly, in small parts. They are holding their territory and slowly expanding it. The Li’vorkrachnika are expanding faster, growing larger, but they are, for reasons I don’t fully understand, unable or unwilling to topple Star Force and its allies, one of whom I’m told has come from further away to specifically aid Star Force. An ally that has, what is rumored to be, Nexus-level technology. For whatever reason they value Star Force’s ability to stand against the enemy and are assisting in their raiding fleets as well.”

“We would be wise to do the same, and I for one will not risk the future of our race to appease those who foolishly cling to the old ways. I admit, until recently I was one of them, but through the strategic savvy of our enemy in recent days and the lashings of my old master I have forced myself to reconsider many things. I will not waste my time trying to do the same with you,” he said, looking at those non-military personnel that ran most of the empire for the Royals, “nor will I waste our limited resources on strategies that the Li’vorkrachnika have proven time and again to be impotent.”

“Are the other commanders in agreement with your assessments?” the Royal asked, suspecting otherwise.

“Most are not,” Gavra admitted.

“Why then should I sanction this ambiguous new strategy?”

Gavra stared back at the Royal, this time with no respect. “To keep the empire from fracturing.”

“Explain yourself,” the Royal said, the first hint of anger in his voice.

“Most of the other commanders are not in agreement, but a few are. More importantly I have already sent orders to dispatch the appropriate ships to Star Force territory, as have some of the others.”

“You have no authority!” one of the H’kar standing behind the three in front of the Royal shouted.

“I am in command,” Gavra said forcefully, “and it is my mandate to protect our people. I will not fail in it, even if I end up suffering the same fate as Samenra. And there are others who are of similar mind.”

“But more important that that is this,” he continued before anyone else could speak, though there was considerable mandible clicking that he had to raise his voice to talk over. “Vedja has come out of retirement because he senses the danger we face, and the new ire we have invoked in the Li’vorkrachnika with our strike on their shipyard.”

The clicks shifted in a heartbeat at the mention of the legendary commander who almost singlehandedly had saved them from destruction during the time just prior to Nexus membership. He was held in great esteem, and his name alone gave weight to what Gavra was saying, not to mention the fact that the commander had been one of Vedja’s primary students.

“Who authorized his return to service?” the Royal asked, his tone uncertain as to which side to take in this dangerous schism that was forming. If one of the other Royals had done so he should have heard about it by now.

“I did,” Gavra said firmly. “And my old master is already en route to our colony in Star Force territory.”

“Colony? It is little more than an embassy,” the diplomatic officer said as the Royal virtually blanched, though his exoskeleton wouldn’t allow for any color change.

“It will grow if needed, for my Master has informed me that he intends to pursue this war bond with Star Force regardless of Royal sanction. He has few years left in him, and is willing to risk exile if it is necessary to save our race. I and a few others are willing to follow him, so I submit that sanctioning this endeavor is in the best interests of unity, for it is happening regardless of how many stubborn traditions we have to trample in the process.”

“You are far beyond your birthright,” the Royal warned.

“I know. But my mandate supersedes it, whether officially recognized or not.”

The Royal was silent for a long moment, but Gavra didn’t break his stare, underscoring that he was fully committed to this. Others would be as well, with Vedja involved.

“Why did you not come to me with these concerns earlier?”

“I was stubborn and did not want to admit the losing position that we are in.”

“And you believe that we are showing the same stubbornness?”

“I recognize it well.”

The Royal considered what Gavra was saying, not from a military position but from a political one. Nexus membership guaranteed the H’kar’s survival, so the threat of their defeat was farcical. Their mandate to protect their allotted region was not, and in that they were failing, though he’d never admit it publically. The only risk came from a revocation of membership, but he was aware that the Gfatt didn’t currently fault the H’kar for their inability to stop the Li’vorkrachnika, though that could always change going forward.

Vedja, however, changed things. The old warrior was a legend, and his involvement in this none too subtle treason made the Royal wonder if there was a greater threat involved or if he also realized the risk of a revocation of membership. Regardless, siding against him could very well split the H’kar empire and even run the small risk of triggering a civil war, not in a military sense, but by fracturing the political bonds that held them together.

They were safe, the Royal reminded himself, so long as the Nexus did not abandon them.

“If Vedja thinks this is of merit, then let us not bicker. Keep what ships are necessary to defend our worlds and maintain a semblance of our duty to the Nexus mandate, then send as many others as you wish. We will fully support Vedja in this, and hope that his genius leads to a second pivotal moment in our race’s history.”

Gavra didn’t say anything further, nor did he gloat. He simply offered a small gesture of respect before withdrawing, realizing he’d just won the political war and gained more than he’d hoped. How the rest of the H’kar empire would respond he didn’t know, but this region’s resources were going to the ADZ…as many as he could spare, anyway.

6

May 31, 2680

Szequat System (Voku territory)

Nergthen

When Cal-com arrived back at his race’s homeworld it was with some displeasure. He had been summoned to return, but without any notification as to why. The priority summons couldn’t be ignored, but it had come during one of his planning sessions with Warlord Paul as they began mapping out the reconquest of what had once been Calavari territory. Such a task was a bold one, and Cal-com wasn’t convinced that it could be done so quickly, but the pair worked so well together they were laying out the difficulties and devising countermeasures in an attempt to see just how far down the road their plans could become reality when the summons had arrived.

He’d left immediately, with all apologies given to Paul, and headed back across the long journey between the ADZ and Voku space. During that time he wondered what would have been important enough to recall him, and now that he’d finally arrived he still couldn’t deduce a valid reason. Only two individuals had the authority to summon him back in such a manner, one was the Brosika and the other the Letrifiv.

The Brosika was the Voku’s chief of tranquility, tasked with maintaining the inner workings of their civilization and hunting down problems before they began. With any interstellar empire, let alone one the size that the Voku sported, divisions could easily occur with the distances and communication lag, thus preserving a single cultural identity was a huge necessity that could not be overstated. The Brosika held the responsibility of holding the Voku together, not through censorship or restraints, but through a gentle push or pull here or there dictated by the tenants of wisdom.

The Letrifiv was the complete opposite and responsible for the day to day running of the empire. It was the highest administratorial position and also the most difficult, with an insane amount of data to process daily. Even with a support staff the Letrifiv needed to know everything that was going on in order to insure that an oversight didn’t leave a planet without enough foodstuffs for the coming year or that the fuel supply wouldn’t exhaust itself leaving ships stranded insystem. While local administrators accomplished a variety of tasks independently, it was the Letrifiv that had to keep the empire’s priorities fulfilled, and as such he was the most knowledgeable person in the empire when it came to current events.

Both leaders held a slightly higher position within Voku society than a Renimar, but they respected each other enough not to give orders. The military was separate and the third part of the trinary that made up Voku society, but technically the Letrifiv and Brosika were co-rulers…though the term ‘ruler’ had a different meaning for the Voku, since they all served the Elders’ will.

The small conglomerate that brought Cal-com back home passed through their orbital defense grids without delay, being allowed immediate and priority access through the defense fleet screens, bypassing the Kastas, and coming into very low orbit where a tiny bit of the conglomerate broke off and headed down into the thin atmosphere of the planet with the Renimar onboard. It was allowed direct access to the Hall of Majesty, which was the capitol within the capitol and the home of the Letrifiv and Brosika, when the Brosika was insystem, for he was traveling almost nonstop.

When Cal-com’s ship landed he was escorted by an honor guard into the sprawling complex that he had become well accustomed to since he became a Renimar, though most of his duties kept him away, similar to the Brosika. So it wasn’t a great surprise that he noticed the change in architecture within the Hall of Majesty when they entered a particular wing. Cal-com remained silent and simply observed, seeing more and more alterations that appeared to be of extremely new construction, yet all were complete with no signs of ongoing work.

Then when they turned a corner the size of the architecture changed drastically, and the Renimar saw himself standing in a foyer large enough for a starship to land in, and in fact he could see on the distant roof the markings indicating that there was a hidden exit to the sky built into the structure that could be opened at will. But it was the huge doors that stood closed before him and the presence of both Yev’jat and the Letrifiv waiting for him that truly shocked him.

The honor guard stopped in their tracks as Yev’jat waved them off, leaving only the three leaders behind as the infantry retreated to a respectful distance away from the doors.

“What is this place?” Cal-com asked, having to crane his neck up to see the top of the doors that stretched a third of the way up to the ceiling.

“An Elder is here,” the Letrifiv said, almost a whisper.

Cal-com immediately stiffened with awe and shock, then forced himself to push the foolish emotions aside. “Why have I been recalled?”

“The Elder specifically requested your presence. I am sorry I could not tell you by message,” his fellow Renimar said, “but his presence is not to be made known to the public. He comes and goes as he chooses, but aside from the nearby eyes no trace of him is recorded. Our machines will not betray his existence, and I could not do so in message either.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, but he has made many changes since his arrival. The first of which was the creation of this,” Yev’jat said, pointing at the chamber in which they now stood. “What lies beyond the doors if of Elder technology, and none are allowed to enter except by invitation. You have yours.”

The Letrifiv stepped over to the doors and pressed a hand against them, with the touch creating a split that pulled apart the lower halves like a zipper about twice Cal-com’s height then stopped, with the two flaps bending outwards and bracketing the threesome.

“We have not been requested,” the Letrifiv said simply, then stepped back.

Cal-com didn’t delay nor fawn over the presence of the Elder and walked through the opening, intent to be as efficient as possible. If the Elder wanted to speak with him, then he was going to show himself promptly.

As soon as he walked through the doors resealed behind him and Cal-com found himself standing on the edge of a ridged floor that circled up into a large tunnel. Almost immediately he felt a presence in his mind, guiding him forward, and he began hopping from one flat-topped ridge to another and bypassing the small toughs in between. The architecture was not straight, and the Voku had to meander through several tunnel branches before he finally came to the end of the ridged tunnels, thankfully before he hit one of the down ‘ramps’ that would have been much harder to traverse.

The chamber just to the left of the ramp had a smooth floor that led up to a dome with a low lying wall, and as Cal-com got halfway up to it the dragon behind it rose up, giving the Voku his first glimpse of the red, scaly skin that covered its lithe body.

“Welcome home, Renimar,” the Elder said graciously. “You have done well in your absence.”

Cal-com dropped to a knee respectfully, but a tisking noise that was both physical and mental halted his reverence. “Rise. I have no need of supplicant servants today.”

As the dragon said so Cal-com’s eye line returned to the neck that was reaching above the wall and the bit of body connected to it, then a pair of arms reached up to grip the edge and pulled the Elder over top of it, with his body sliding over the rim as he came fully into view and dropped down onto the solid floor in front of the Voku, who was now standing back up as ordered. The dragon’s wings were tucked along its body, looking like little more than patches of wrinkly skin and blending in well with the rest of the scaly tube, but the deep red was both intimidating and surprising, for the Elder that had visited them previously had been colored grey, or so he had been told. The size of this one was also considerably smaller, but the presence it emanated could not be denied and the Voku felt very small in comparison despite the fact that the Elder stood only half again as tall as him.

“You honor me with your praise, and your presence. What have you summoned me for?”

The dragon walked sideways in front of the stationary Voku, then twisted its long neck back towards him, looking him in his artificial eye from only a meter away.

“The Voku are not the only race we have guided from afar. There are others, like you, who serve us across the galaxy. Some old, some new, but they are few and the threats many. You and the other Voku have done well during our long absence to preserve yourselves and the knowledge we granted you, and in return I am here now to elevate you to the next level. This will be done in secret, as always, but of you personally I have another task.”

The dragon sat back on its tail and hind legs, rearing up to bring its front two off the ground and stretch out its wings. The thin material flexed with remarkable strength as a wind was summoned forth simply by him reaching out and stroking the air a few times.

And as he did so a sea of holograms surrounded the Voku, with him fixating on one in particular that was a galaxy map. It slowly zoomed in until he recognized their own empire and the ADZ, but it also showed a great deal more, including the current domain of the lizards, the Skarrons, and many others that he did not know of, but all were detailed before him, with images of various races swirling about that he did not recognize.

“You have done well to safeguard Star Force, and it is growing in size and strength rapidly. Your task there is done, but you are correct in assuming that the ‘lizards’ as you call them will eventually reach the Voku. Star Force will survive and prosper, but your enemy cannot be so easily stopped.”

Various areas of lizard territory were highlighted by an eerie glow that seemed to defy any technology, leaving Cal-com in awe at the spectacle but with his mind also working furiously as a tactician to soak up all the data before him…and its implications.

“The enemy is fighting hard to expand, but as they do they are encountering those who do not submit easily. You are aware of two such engagements. The Skarrons and the Nexus. As you can see here, there are others. The enemy has found that it is not alone and seeks to quickly devour systems so to stay on the offensive to cover their overreach. They are temporarily weakened, and not for the loss of one of their shipyards. They are processing through a growth surge that will make them far more deadly in the future, but for now they must digest their holdings and develop them.”

“They are not so weak as to allow you to defeat them, but you can deny them significant gains if you progress wisely and quickly. If you wait until they are on your doorstep, you will not survive given your present strength…which I am now amplifying. When completed, you will have no need to fear this enemy at home. Your fight with them will be abroad. I require a warfleet to secure this region,” the dragon said, highlighting a much larger squashed sphere around present day Voku territory that ran all the way up to the ADZ as well as bit into a large chunk of Skarron space…not to mention traveling out below the galactic plane to the scattering of systems that didn’t hold to the boundaries.

In fact Cal-com saw several star clusters out there that would be difficult to reach, but if the Elder commanded it they would find a way to make it happen. That determination aside, this new mandate was beyond anything the Voku had expected of them and was indeed a fitting task for the promised upgrades to their empire.

“This task will put you into direct conflict with the lizards that Star Force now fights. You cannot destroy them so do not try. The Voku’s task is to hold and protect the territory assigned to you, much as you have done in the past with your current territory…do not concern yourself with the Nexus,” the Elder said, reading his thoughts. “They are fools with delusions of grandeur. Powerful they may be in technology, but in wisdom they are lacking. Their time is coming to an end, but that end will not be soon. In the interim allow them to fight the lizards as they will, but they are a temporary power that will fade, so draw no close bonds with them.”

“Look closely, Renimar,” the dragon prompted, highlighting a few new sections of the galaxy map that bordered lizard space on multiple sides. “These are some of our other servants, all of which have or will come into conflict with the lizards shortly. Alone they will not survive what is coming, for they are not as large nor as gifted as the Voku, and we will not give them that which they have not yet earned.”

“We do not wish them destroyed in their infancy, so I have a special task for you, Cal-com. You are no longer a Renimar, but the first Dafchor from the Voku. From this day forward your race will take orders from you, as will these others. You are my personal emissary and war leader, and I task you with preserving and shielding my servants against the lizards.”

Cal-com wanted to bow, but refrained from doing so. “How am I to accomplish this?”

“The task is not straightforward, nor simple. If it were a Dafchor would not be required. I will teach you what you need to know, and guide you from time to time, but you and you alone will be in command of the 9 races I am entrusting you with, including your own, though your people are more than capable of handling their own affairs. You will not be remaining here, for this is too distant from the conflict. You must go to the heart of the problem and solve it from within.”

The galaxy map shrunk again slightly, with the ADZ almost disappearing off the edges as lizard space expanded.

“These are the strongest lizard worlds,” the dragon said, highlighting a region that was not in the center, as Cal-com already knew, but further rimward in the lizards’ current territory. “You will avoid them. Here is where you must go,” he said as a single star system was highlighted up closer to the edge of the galactic plane and more in the center of lizard territory but still askew to the ADZ side. “This system you will conquer and claim, and from it you will establish contact with the races I am entrusting you with. With the gifts I am granting the Voku you will build a stronghold here that the enemy will not be able to touch, but you cannot share those gifts with those you will protect.”

That last sentiment was emphasized telepathically as a line that could never be crossed, even if it meant risking their demise.

“You must use them and their abilities to defend as you see fit. You can place your strengths within them, but they must never possess them. I trust you understand the difference?”

“I do,” Cal-com said solemnly.

“They will obey your commands, retool them as you like. If you put them astray of the path we wish of them I will correct you. If I say nothing proceed as you will. Be wise and wary, but do not delay. Once the lizards consume their holdings they will pose a threat your races cannot withstand on their own. You must strengthen them before the storm arrives on their shores.”

“What of Star Force?”

“They are not one of our servants, but they are more valuable to us than the Voku. You need no longer safeguard them, but they are a common ally against the lizards and others. Let them grow on their own accord, but keep close the ties you already possess and continue your planning work with the one called Paul. Modify it to act as a bridge to your target system.”

“How much time do I have to prepare my wards?”

“Even we do not know that for certain, but the storm is coming. There is no guarantee of your success, nor will we intervene if you fail. I may be giving you an untenable task if our time estimates are overly generous. You are to work the problem, not be consumed with the outcome. You are a Dafchor because we have no doubts as to your loyalty or skills. This is not a test of you, you are proven. Apply your skills and let fate make what it may.”

Cal-com crossed both arms over his chest and thumped them twice in a Voku gesture of pride and eagerness that signaled he was willing and able to accept the challenge.

The holograms suddenly disappeared and the dragon’s wings returned to his sides as his front legs came down and he went back to being a quadruped, but from behind the low wall that obscured Cal-com’s vision of what lay on the other side floated a small object that came up over the Elder’s back and hovered beside its head.

“Remove your eyepiece.”

Cal-com did as ordered, taking the artificial enhancement off and revealing his natural eyes to the dim, unfiltered light of the Elder’s chamber. When he did so the tiny, shiny object flew up into the inserts in Cal-com’s head and suddenly his face became numb. The next thing he knew the old implants came out and fell to the floor, then feeling returned to his head and for the first time he sensed a new facet to his mind.

“I have added a component that you will carry unseen beneath your eyepiece. No one is to attempt to examine it, or it will destroy the machines attempting to do so. Within it is knowledge that I am granting you and I will update it as needed going forward. This is how you will receive my commands at a distance, but you will not be able to respond. Replace your eyepiece.”

Cal-com pushed it back up and slid the short pylons into the new receptacles, returning to his advanced vision.

“Return to Achkor, Dafchor. Every day delayed from this point forward is a waste,” the dragon said, climbing back up over the low wall and disappearing from view as Cal-com turned about and walked off, taking the Elder at his word and not intending to waste a single moment of the time that he knew was going to be in short supply. He doubted he had more than 200 years, based on the knowledge now creeping into his mind, before the lizards overran the Daswa…and he wasn’t about to let any servants of the Elders perish on his watch.

7

August 20, 2680

Banner System (Core Region)

Loki

The elder H’kar walked across the soft floors of the command deck slowly, with an aide at his side ready to support him if necessary but the old war leader wanted no assistance with movement and per his orders the larger H’kar at his side merely paced him as he moved towards his oversight position on the dreadnaught’s observation platform. When he reached the small stair steps that led to it Vedja nearly stopped, taking each step with care, but with three contact points at all times he was in no danger of falling and mounted the four rises with precision before walking over to his stool.

There he sat against the backrest and spun it around through a complete circle, noting the position of the displays, control boards, and the view out over the rest of the command deck where the ship’s commander would be handling all the normal functions from his pod except when Vedja decided to step in, as was typical of a fleet commander. What was not typical was the dreadnaught, or rather the prototype that had just arrived from back home along with a slew of additional reinforcements…with the blessings of multiple Royals.

All pretense, he knew, but the troops were real enough. Vedja was nearing the end of his life and it was much simpler for the Royals to give him what he wanted in the short term than risk an uprising. The fools were so determined to maintain tradition that they couldn’t see the continuing threat the Li’vorkrachnika posed, though after so many centuries of war no H’kar should doubt their power or ingenuity. Joining the Nexus had bought the H’kar a new life, but that was a far cry from victory…and their enemy was knocking on the door once again, trying to slowly advance their way into a position to take the H’kar’s empire from them a second time.

Vedja would not live to see it, and would have remained in quiet isolation during his remaining years had the former fleet leader not sent their ships on a suicide mission that had drawn the ire of the Li’vorkrachnika. Their attention was now centered on the H’kar, with far more enemy vessels migrating towards their worlds and snatching up the surrounding systems, making it clear that there would be a price to pay for the shipyard they had destroyed along with the Gfatt.

The H’kar’s only saving grace was the other Nexus races, or he was sure that the Li’vorkrachnika would be mounting a killing blow right now. Their backing would buy the H’kar time but he didn’t think it would prevent their demise. Tech upgrades were one thing, but there was no substitute for the sheer numbers the enemy commanded and would command in coming years as their territory continued to grow. That should have been obvious to all, but rather than use their advantage to its maximum potential now, they were sitting and waiting for the enemy to grow stronger.

Vedja did not want his legacy to have been only a short reprise for the H’kar before their eventual defeat, thus he had returned to prominence and asserted his reputation to take command of ships that technically he had no authority over. That technicality did not matter in the slightest now that he was here, deep inside Li’vorkrachnika territory and the small oasis of tranquility that Star Force had somehow managed to carve out. He was in command and no one here questioned that, and given the task ahead of him Vedja doubted he’d live to return to the empire, so he did not care what they had to say of the matter.

The dreadnaught he was taking possession of orbited about the moon named Loki that Star Force had graciously given half of to the H’kar and was one of a handful of the newest ships built by his people. Star Force design elements had been incorporated into the standard design, which Vedja did not approve of, but it was the largest warship in the fleet available to him. The behemoths that he possessed were not as formidable, given that they were mobile battle stations rather than a proper warship, and had this been a standard dreadnaught its smaller frame would contain slightly more firepower…though with this new prototype Vedja did not know for sure.

The primary weapon had been diminished in strength down to what the battleships carried, with the destar being tripled into separate weapons. The combined strength was less than a single typical dreadnaught destar, which Vedja thought was a grave design mistake. The upside was being able to target different ships simultaneously, and with the Li’vorkrachnika preferring to use cruiser swarms against the H’kar they might well kill more with this design, but the larger enemy ships would be a different matter and Vedja wished he’d had a proper dreadnaught under his command, but he was going to make do with what he had.

His mission here was twofold…learn and teach a new fighting style against the Li’vorkrachnika to the troops that would return home to fight there, and to kill as many of the enemy here as he could. All combat would be joint operations and he would still be operating under Star Force command, something that normally he never would have allowed, but their war record was undeniable and his willingness to submit to their authority only further ingrained that there were lessons to be learned here, with his troops opening their eyes further and taking a peek outside of tradition.

He intended to take that peek and stretch it as far as he could here and now before he was gone, for their sakes, but Vedja was just as interested in killing enemy ships for his own. The H’kar was 254 years old, having retired just as the Nexus upgrades were being implemented in the fleet and their position as a member secured them against the Li’vorkrachnika with the Gfatt fleet positioning vessels to safeguard them until they could hold their own. Figuring his task was done Vedja stepped down and let others build as he attended to personal matters, a hero amongst the H’kar and with far too much attention placed on him.

He’d taken seclusion as his reward and stepped away from the public, rarely making an appearance other than on a few occasions that he chose to nudge events to his liking. That nudging had made him somewhat aggravating to the Royals because of the influence he maintained, but they allowed him his due and didn’t interfere, knowing that he’d return to seclusion again soon enough.

Vedja had kept a link to the fleet, monitoring the Nexus upgrades and how they were implemented, with various officials coming to him for advice or with problems to solve. He attended to such things quietly, behind the scenes, but had never had the fortunate of commanding one of their upgraded vessels in combat…but now it seemed he was going to get that chance after all.

In the past the Li’vorkrachnika had even tech with the H’kar, or approximately so. Both races used plasma-based weapons and other similar motifs but with different applications. Now the H’kar didn’t use plasma at all, having upgraded to far more powerful weapons that the enemy could not stand up against head to head. It was their numbers that they were using to continually defeat the H’kar, this time by surrounding their new worlds with too many conquests for the fleet to adequately prevent.

But the battles the raiding fleets were engaging in were not lopsided affairs. More often than not the ship count that Star Force would bring to bear would be nearly even, with the tech advantage allowing the H’kar to utterly destroy their opponents during battle…and that was something that Vedja wanted to experience firsthand after so many decades of hard fought retreats just trying to keep his people on the move and alive.

The elder H’kar had been reviewing the stats ever since they’d started returning to the empire, and he was amazed at how the Star Force commanders were deploying the H’kar so effectively. They were very rarely losing a ship, and that fact coupled with the tech advantage meant that a low number of H’kar vessels could do an immense amount of damage to the enemy fleets. If that strategic wisdom could be learned and duplicated throughout the entire H’kar fleet then Vedja had no doubt that they would be able to repulse the Li’vorkrachnika from their assigned Nexus territory without the help of the Gfatt or anyone else.

Which was why Vedja was willing to take command of the dreadnaught, giving Star Force and the H’kar designers that they’d worked with the benefit of the doubt. He intended to learn what wisdom they had melded into the design and hoped there was something here he wasn’t immediately seeing. That said, the ship was still vastly stronger than a battleship…and there was no way a proper war commander would oversee a fleet from a behemoth.

While his aide stood quiet watch behind Vedja the fleet commander settled in and got himself acquainted with the new design. It was mostly standard H’kar, but there were a few tweaks here and there that he thought might have come from Star Force…or some overzealous H’kar designers who liked to change things simply to put their own stamp on them.

Never the less the design was sound and he adjusted his mind to it accordingly as the final preparations were made amongst the fleet sitting alongside his new flagship in orbit of Loki. He was the last major piece to arrive, and after the last few minor checks were attended to he ordered the dreadnaught to the head of the fleet and they began their microjumps over to system’s center, some 1,394 ships in all that would be traveling to a rendezvous point in Zeta Region before splitting off into three separate groups that would meld with Star Force fleets and constitute the newest raiding groups heading out.

Already there were H’kar ships out there, fighting and presumably winning battles. They were due back over the coming two years, with Vedja leaving instructions on how to restructure them when they arrived so they could be dispatched with additional fleets comprised in his absence. He didn’t have time to train a new subordinate, so he was just going to work with posted orders. The elder H’kar didn’t have time to do things properly, so the others were simply going to have to adapt on the go and earn their marks.

Vedja remained on the command deck for many hours, mostly silent and learning about the ship and crew through his displays but vocalizing commands and questions to the crew when needed as any commander would. He would have preferred taking a tour of the ship once it was mid jump but he didn’t have the strength, so instead he stayed put and soaked in the feel of being in command again before finally heading off to his personal quarters where he put himself into a nutrient bath to help reinforce his weakening exoskeleton.

Soaking in the supplements he studied holographic schematics of the Star Force ships in detail, working off of scans the H’kar had taken given that they had never been trusted with blueprints. That wasn’t uncommon, for allies were only allies to a point, and even the H’kar had never given full blueprints for their warships to Star Force when co-designing the new vessels in order to maintain security and the Nexus edicts about sharing technology.

The Star Force vessels were curious, and now that he was here he had access to a great deal more information than had made its way back home. Vedja studied their drone system intently, for it was completely foreign to H’kar philosophy and he all but knew therein lie an advantage, but at the moment he couldn’t see it. For as radical as he was a commander within the H’kar, he was still tightly bound by tradition. He might loosen the strings on occasion, but his mind was very firm when it came to how to go about doing things, as were all H’kar.

But he would learn, slowly, as he studied reports during the jumps out to the rendezvous point and then even more so when he finally engaged in combat alongside Star Force, who also had a Voku vessel with them. Its technology was mind-baffling, in that Vedja never knew how many vessels it truly was. They broke apart and reformed into many hull varieties, offering them plenty of formation options without him being able to figure out just how they were able to accomplish it.

Their battle strategies were likewise fluid and even more alien than those used by Star Force, but the orders given to Vedja’s fleet were straightforward enough. Wisely he followed them all even if he disagreed with them, and while Star Force passed up many an opportunity to make kills they succeeded in preserving all of the H’kar ships during their first system raid…which was when Vedja had his first epiphany.

Star Force wasn’t fighting in a way to destroy enemy ships, but to weaken them so that they could kill them later while preserving their own vessels. Moreover, they were seeking to do damage to the enemy while only losing shield strength. That was why they appeared to be so hesitant and often ordered H’kar ships to withdrawal when they were undamaged.

What would have taken an Archon all of 5 minutes, at most, to figure out, the elder H’kar had finally saw…and when he did he connected it to reports that had come back from previous raids in which Star Force had tried to explain what they were doing to the H’kar commanders. Their words had been farcical then, but now they appeared to crystalize into perfect clarity in retrospect.

So strong was the H’kar urge to lock onto a target and destroy it that learning to engage and disengage as common practice was something that was going to take a fundamental shift in H’kar psychology to accomplish, but Vedja knew it had to happen. He wasn’t going to be able to do it on his own and began drafting a series of messages to his former students that now commanded the majority of the fleet back home, outlining in better terms what Star Force had been trying to tell them all along and imploring them to begin making alterations in the training programs immediately to make the upcoming recruits more open to the new combat philosophy.

Vedja also realized one other thing, and that was the reason why the ships coming back home after spending time in the raiding fleets showed less than the stellar stats that were being reported from the joint raids. When the H’kar were following orders they didn’t attach their egos to the assignments and were able to mentally leave the outcome in the hands of their alien commanders…but once back under their own direction they could not think like Star Force did, at least not completely. Some small amount of tactical knowledge was coming back with those ships and crews, but in order to maintain this overpowering kill to death rate the H’kar had to work jointly with Star Force.

Vedja had known that hooking up with the Humans was necessary in order to learn from them, but now he saw that it was more than that. Their psyche was operating on a different level than the H’kar, and it happened to be in a way that directly countered the Li’vorkrachnika. Vedja doubted it would be as effective against the Nexus races or others, but against this enemy Star Force’s curious ways were more effective than H’kar battle philosophy had ever approached being, and in order to hurt their common enemy the most the H’kar had to do joint battle as often as possible.

As Vedja wrote his messages he outlined this as well, noting that in the short term it would be easier just to use the Star Force commanders rather than attempting to retrain the entire H’kar military. They could incorporate lessons learned and modify their existing philosophy rather than attempting an immediate and total overhaul…but in order to make it work there would have to be an unprecedented level of cooperation, for without the Star Force commanders the H’kar could not defeat the Li’vorkrachnika.

But with them, and a lot of favor…it might just be possible.

And that was something that no H’kar had legitimately imagined since the early days of the war.

8

March 16, 2682

Achkor System

Zenniza

The Excalibur dropped into planetary orbit around the Voku world, with Paul immediately seeing the bolstered ship count that Cal-com had spoken of in his last message. They hadn’t met one another since he’d been recalled back to his homeworld, communicating through the relay system as Paul had gone out on another raiding mission into lizard territory. Their conversations were intermittent and delayed, but they’d continued making plans for the war going forward in piecemeal knowing that they’d have to get back together again for a proper planning session at some point.

The trailblazers didn’t need face to face conversations to coordinate, for they practically knew what each other was thinking with only a few lines of text being shared across lightyears, but Cal-com, as much as Paul had grown to know him, operated on a completely different mental frequency that required a lot of back and forth between the two in order to hammer out strategy. They worked well together, but it was a communication heavy relationship that just couldn’t work over distance with an endeavor this complex.

Cal-com had said he’d be getting more resources, enough to push up their timetable for the reconquest of Calavari territory…a little project that was only in the planning stages, for aside from the handful of systems along the ADZ border there was no major push underway for territory, merely nipping at the lizards here and there while disrupting their holdings with more and more raids.

When the Voku had sent the message requesting their meeting as soon as possible Paul had arranged for his raiding tour to allow him to split off while the bulk of the H’kar fleet cycled back to the Core Systems for refueling and damage repair. The Star Force vessels were stopping off short at Rotunna for resupply then heading back out with a mixed Calavari/Bsidd support fleet in lieu of the H’kar for some smaller strikes with Paul catching up eventually. He’d taken his command ship, which didn’t require resupply yet given its larger cargo holds, and had gone straight to Achkor, now arriving amongst a sea of Voku conglomerates sitting in orbit like an asteroid field composed of small moons.

He took a dropship down to the surface along with a Voku escort that led him directly to the facility where he’d met Cal-com on previous visits. The two had their own private planning center to themselves, constructed on Cal-com’s orders, with a lot of Paul’s personal data stored there for him to utilize on visits like this rather than having to work from scratch.

Cal-com was already inside when he arrived, but even before he saw his friend he felt a change in him. The always serious Voku mind was even more sharp than before, but also more relaxed as he made some casual adjustments to the starcharts before him, sorting through a variety of options without committing to anything until he had Paul’s input.

“Welcome back,” the taller alien said when the Archon arrived in his dark blue armor. Cal-com triggered the door to close behind him and Paul pulled off his helmet, setting it aside. If this had been a Star Force facility he would have come down in his casual uniform, but whenever somewhere else he wanted to be in his armor just in case something unexpected happened.

“Important trip I take it?” Paul asked.

“And beneficial,” Cal-com said with a mental twitch so large that it stood out to Paul’s casual feel of his mood. Curious, he probed deeper…following the twitch to the source and opening up the memories of the recall.

Paul didn’t say anything for several seconds, merely looking up at the dark black face of his friend as he pulled out the memories. Usually he didn’t pry, but fortunately this time he had.

Cal-com twitched his head to the side. “What’s wrong?”

Paul set his helmet on one of the nearby planning tables. “Is this room being monitored or recorded in any way?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I suggest we be honest with each other.”

“Have you not been previously?” Cal-com challenged casually.

“You met with an Elder,” Paul said flatly, getting the surge of shock that he’d expected, but also with a desperation that he quickly tracked back to the order of secrecy given to him. “Relax, your secret is safe.”

“How do you know this?” the Voku said, half angry half curious.

“The Elder read your mind the same way that I can read yours. I’ve been able to do so since you first arrived. We knew the Elders sent you here to help us.”

Cal-com took a step back, shocked and humbled at the same time.

“Furthermore,” Paul continued, “we’ve met your Elders and they know we have this ability. The one you met spoke my name, so it had to know from your memories that I had access to yours. You have not betrayed their trust, and I believe they are also sending me a message through you.”

“And you didn’t think I could be trusted with this knowledge before?”

“Few know of our full abilities, which are many. While there are rumors abound no one knows the true extent of the powers we possess and we prefer to keep it that way. We also knew you were told not to tell us of the Elders when you first arrived, and we felt it best if we let you maintain that…illusion.”

“Then why tell me now?”

“Because I trust you…and because we’re going to have to work together without interference. If you try to hide your given mission and I pretend not to know our troops movements will have to be curtailed to maintain this fantasy. We cannot afford that restriction.”

“I am annoyed, but I cannot find fault in your logic.”

“I know,” Paul said with an almost apologetic smirk.

Cal-com huffed and leaned forward, setting his big fists on the table between them. “And all the times you’ve had me explain Voku strategy was for show?”

“I don’t read your mind continuously, and it makes it easier to access memories if you’re thinking about them actively.”

“Is there anything that you don’t know?”

“Plenty. Don’t assume I always know what you’re thinking. It takes some effort and I can’t think freely when I’m in someone else’s head, so most of the time during these planning sessions I don’t know what you’re thinking and don’t pry unless there’s a language issue.”

“And here I thought the Voku were the superior. You’ve hidden your true strength well, and I fault myself for not linking your telekinetic ability with this sooner.”

“Moving objects and reading minds are completely different abilities.”

“And you gave no clue with regards to your words. You hid your stolen knowledge well.”

Paul shrugged. “I wouldn’t like it either if someone could pry into my mind, but as long as I can…”

“You should make use of the ability,” Cal-com reluctantly agreed. “I’m beginning to see why the Elders value you so.”

“That was the message I referred to,” Paul said, taking a moment to pull more of the memories from his friend concerning that discussion, as well as visuals. The dragon he’d spoken with was not the one Paul had seen on Earth, meaning those eggs that Kara had told him about had apparently hatched.

“How so?”

Paul looked at the floor for a moment, then glanced back up at Cal-com. “I possess a secret of yours, though not by your choice. Can I trust you with one of mine?”

“If I lied you’d know,” the Voku quipped with a bit of frustrated merriment.

“If I was paying attention,” Paul amended, trying to give his friend some parameters as to his ability in order to calm his mind. Omnipotence was a myth, but as an illusion it was very effective at making someone worry with indecision, for if you didn’t know the capabilities of an opponent you would have no way of knowing if you could effectively fight them or would be walking into a beatdown.

“What is your secret?”

“We have many,” he added, “but the relevant one involves the Elders. We share a common enemy, one so powerful that if either of us are discovered we’re as good as dead. When the Elder told you that we were valuable to them, I think he was sending me a message stating that one day in the future that fight is going to come to both of us, and they want us to survive and develop to the point where we can at least cause our enemy some damage.”

“You are not allies then?”

“Not exactly. We share some common ancestry, which is why we both have the ability to read minds, but we have only had one encounter, and I am speaking for Star Force on the whole. We did them a favor and they did us one in return…then we went our separate ways. I would not call that an ally, but it seems they think we’re an asset to potentially use in an end game far into the future.”

“This common foe you speak of. Is it the power in the galactic core that you will not approach?” he asked, referencing the Star Force no-go line that had come up in their previous discussions.

“It is.”

“I find it hard to imagine any foe capable of matching, let alone exceeding the Elders…and it scares me,” Cal-com admitted, knowing that Paul could sense the emotion anyway.

“It would scare you even more to know the details.”

“Your race…why is it so primitive technologically? Given your rapid advancement I would guess you are in the process of reclaiming a familiar level rather than researching into the unknown.”

Paul smiled. “Good guess.”

“Deduction.”

“Same thing.”

“It is not…and it seems I don’t need to explain why.”

“Don’t let my abilities be an excuse for your laziness.”

Cal-com breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. “This will take some getting used to.”

“Only Archons acolyte level and above possess this ability, along with a scattering of other specialized individuals,” Paul offered.

“It is artificial then?”

“No, just dormant until we wake it up. More reclamation.”

“I feel that…”

“Yes,” Paul said, answering his question regarding other secrets that he wasn’t going to reveal.

“Do I even need to speak your language?”

“Yes you do. I can barely understand yours.”

“So most of my knowledge you can’t translate?”

“It makes it difficult, but there are a few cheats I can use.”

“So, my mind is not a complete status report for you.”

“As I said, it takes some effort…and skill. When I first got this ability I could barely use it until I learned how, and then I had to develop it the same way one does their physical skills. Digging out memories is very difficult, and few of my people are capable of doing it to the degree that I can.”

That admission seemed to settle the Voku considerably, knowing that it had to be trained for rather than just a default biological function.

“You then know of my mission? Or do you need me to add missed details?”

“I know what the Elder commanded you, but I do not know what you have planned…and I’d prefer if you told me rather than forcing me to try and find it in that huge head of yours.”

“I sense you are being polite.”

“The more different the mind from mine the more difficult it is. Humans are far easier to read.”

“You know of the upgrades then?”

“I know what the Elder said, but nothing beyond that.”

“The fleet that has arrived here is the first of many current vessels coming to us. More will come when they are replaced with new ones, giving me a much larger force to work with before any of the new upgrades become available. I am told it will take some time to adjust our infrastructure, so I will not be able to produce any here on Achkor for some time, but give me 20 years and that will change. I have to protect our current territory and the bulk of the new tech will go to that priority first, but once it is secured there will be a flow of vessels coming here above and beyond what we can produce locally.”

“What you have in orbit already is impressive enough.”

“According to the reports I’ve been receiving, they are mere toys in comparison.”

“Ooh…now you’ve got me being envious.”

“Yet I get the feeling that your own advancement won’t be far behind?”

“It will continue, but I get the feeling you’re going to maintain your advantage for a while.”

“So…you do expect to exceed us over time.”

“Yep.”

Cal-com laughed. “It is good we had this sharing. I prefer a strong ally, and your strength has been well hidden for some time. I will need it if I am to accomplish my mission.”

“What’s that new title of yours?”

“Dafchor…and it is not a Voku title. I now supersede my race.”

“I caught that. You have full command of them and the others?”

“I do, but as of now I do not believe the others know it, though it is possible the Elder has foretold of my coming.”

“Makes you rather popular.”

“I worry about getting to them in time. They are weaker than the Voku, and smaller. The lizards will destroy them in time if I cannot reach them.”

“Where exactly is this target system?”

Cal-com pulled up the map he’d been fiddling with and highlighted the location the Elder had provided him…along with the other hidden data that he hadn’t been planning on showing Paul.

“Other side of Calavari space,” the Archon commented.

“I must create a supply route there from Achkor, then create auxiliaries on a more direct route if possible. For that I ask for your help.”

“What do you need?”

“I need fire support…and you to eventually pull your border all the way out to here. I can help hold it once the foothold is established, but I’d rather not have a single system sitting in the middle of enemy territory. I can make it work if I have to, but it’ll require far more ships to secure supply lines and delay movement. I need a secure route back to Voku space, even if it means traveling extra lightyears to accomplish it.”

“You want me to guard your supply lines by extending our border while you do what?”

“Create a string of outposts linking to the races I’m tasked to defend, all the while destroying nearby lizard worlds.”

“We would stand a better chance timing our operations to coincide. More firepower for us and less available ships for them to counter with when they have to split their attention.”

“Not just on us, but the other threats to the lizards. Do you have a hidden map as well?”

“Not a current one, no. We’ve shared what we have with you.”

“And the one from your ancient empire?” Cal-com guessed/prodded.

“Too ancient to be relevant,” Paul half answered.

“Then allow me,” Cal-com said, bringing up the secure file that he’d constructed for use based off the knowledge downloaded into his mind via the Elder’s implants. The whole of lizard space was finally available for Paul to see, along with numerous highlighted smaller regions around the edges.

“Damn, they’ve got a lot of territory.”

“And adversaries. Recently they have been consuming new territory faster than they can maintain it. I am told they will be forced to go through a consolidation period. It is not apparent to outsiders, for they still retain the strength to counter incursions and continue to expand, but the bulk of their territory is not reinforced as strongly as one would expect. As you and I assumed previously, if we apply consistent pressure they will be unable to respond with such effectiveness as everyone assumes is their norm.”

“How stretched are they?”

“Not enough to deliver a lethal blow, unfortunately, nor to make easy gains against, but a strong push will result in a counterattack…but the counterattack will be vulnerable. If we can sustain ourselves against it they will have little to follow up afterwards. It is a bluff, but a dangerous one on their part, for they still have the ability to do great damage. If we expand recklessly they will be able to overwhelm us. If we proceed wisely, with the additional troops I will be bringing to bear, we can break their hold and run rampant over this region for a time.”

“Then we have to turtle up as the rest of their gains begin to reinforce them.”

“They are going to become very strong once the new territory reaches further advancement, as you well know. No one can kill them before that time, not even the Nexus if they chose to devote their full resources. I wish they would, because they would cripple them, but the lizards have too many systems for them to strike at. Even if we could take out their core systems it would not stop them.”

“What do you know of the Nexus?”

“More than you, I would wager. They too are spread thin, but their technology allows them to maintain dominance.”

“That much I suspected.”

“There is no power in the lizards’ path that is capable of defeating them, except for the Skarrons…and they cannot because they are out of position. By the time they realize the true nature of the threat, the lizards will be too strong for even them to stop.”

“So we’re going to get you to your wards, turtle up…and then what?”

“That is my mission. I leave the rest to you.”

Paul nodded slowly. “I can work with that…but before we start making any firm plans I need to know what your new tech is going to be capable of doing.”

“I could say the same to you,” Cal-com countered.

“I think yours will be online a bit sooner.”

“Honestly I do not yet know. I have received speculations only.”

“Alright then, let’s pull this back a bit. What can or should we go after in the next decade?”

“That will also depend on how many H’kar you have at your command. I hear more are coming by the day?”

“Their new commander is a legend to them, but to be honest he’s a glorified newb. I met with him once and he’s close to dying. No sense of training or strategy above and beyond tradition. He has made a few wise deviations, but he is not in our league.”

“They are regimented?”

“They fight like dumb brutes,” Paul said flatly. “But they’re slowly learning, and more are coming based solely on this commander’s reputation.”

“They have fought well in our raids.”

“They have not fought so well on their own borders, which is why they’re coming here. It’s also why Vedja came out of retirement to come here. He wants to kill lizards and finds his fleets are able to do so better under our command.”

“Curious.”

“Annoying. They are a very obtuse race, and without self-sufficiency they don’t live long enough to learn. If they were part of Star Force we could counter the problem, but as they are, they’re going to be lagging behind in the strategy department.”

“So long as you command them that is not a major concern.”

“Not for our purposes here, no.”

“Then let’s put them to use immediately along with what I have here.”

“Do you have a target in mind?”

“Nothing specific, but the longer we delay the stronger the enemy will become.”

“But we can’t provoke the counterstrike just yet. Not unless we can force it against the Sentinel line.”

“I was not thinking of anything so large.”

“Feel free to clue me in.”

“Just read my mind.”

“I’d prefer the map, if you don’t mind. I’ll brain raid only if we get stuck.”

“Terms accepted,” Cal-com said, with them striking a friendly deal going forward for how they’d handle the telepathic issue. Cal-com was too much of a warrior to expect Paul not to use it, and Paul was too respectful to use it on a whim. With the balance set they began moving forward with their planning, and within a week they had a basic strategy that Paul sent out over the network for the other trailblazers to chew on and improve.

Meanwhile Paul and Cal-com began theoretical planning deep into the future, exploring many options and scenarios as they plotted out the development of both of their empires and tried to intertwine them as much as possible to mutual advantage.

9

July 3, 2683

Nephla System (near to Achkor)

Neph

When the Voku warship/mini conglomerate emerged into planetary orbit it was immediately detected and the fleet of lizard cruisers that had been guarding the world for the past 9 months moved to engage quickly. Strong as the Voku were technologically, one large warship wasn’t going to be enough to beat the cruisers that were protecting the infantile colony on what had previously been a Skarron world. The lizards had recently moved in, eliminated the opposition, and were now devoting a significant amount of their smaller vessels to holding it.

They knew the Voku’s approximate strength, and sensing a mismatch they moved en mass towards it, intent on taking advantage of the opportunity while it existed, fully aware that there might be more ships nearby.

The Voku simply held their position in orbit not far from their jumppoint, waiting for the cruisers to come up to them. They were almost in plasma range when addition contacts began jumping in behind the Voku, with the green crystals that appeared opening fire immediately on the lizard ships with their sammies and burning into their shields with the constant topaz beams.

As the Dvapp warships continued to arrive more beams leapt out, touching targets and quickly getting through their shields to the hulls as four, five, six or beams would be attacking an individual ship at once. More and more green crystals appeared out of the jumppoint and flew forward, encircling the Voku ship that hadn’t moved nor engaged the enemy…and it wasn’t going to save for self-defense. It was armed but not here for the naval battle, rather carrying Voku ground troops for the forthcoming assault.

There were lizard incursions occurring all along the edge of the ADZ that stretched out to Achkor as they preyed upon weak Skarron worlds and others, with Star Force and the Voku countering them wherever they appeared within the new annex to the ADZ loosely termed the ‘Achkor Region.’ It had no firm boundaries like the ADZ, but rather stretched out beyond Beta Region to Achkor itself, from which there was a string of worlds being colonized to create a second defense line.

Some were uninhabited worlds, but many were formerly Skarron or now lizard colonies that were being removed. Nearly all of the Skarron worlds in the Achkor Region had now been reclaimed, but with the lizards creeping in it had been necessary to skip over the last few and start defining a border…as well as to knock down these small colonies before they could grow stronger or receive additional reinforcements.

With conflicts occurring on multiple battlefronts the Dvapp had volunteered to use their reconstituted fleet to take this one…with a little Voku assistance on the ground where they didn’t fare so well. The Dvapp would also be keeping this world for themselves and taking a place on the new border, plugging one hole out of many, but it was one that the major powers in the ADZ wouldn’t have to fill and an opportunity on the part of the Dvapp to start reclaiming their status after the nearly fatal losses their civilization had taken during the Skarron war.

That, and it was time for some payback against the lizards, who had done far more damage to the Dvapp than the Skarrons ever could.

And a good number of the Dvapp troops had lived through that time, seeing their empire diminished against a weapon they couldn’t counter, then the evacuation to the ADZ and their short lived regrowth before the Skarrons had nearly ended them. But now was different, both because the ADZ and their new homeworlds were now secure and the fact that Star Force’s alteration to their crystalline technology now made the lizards’ chemical weapon against them useless.

Not that these enemy ships were equipped with it anyway, but now that the Dvapp’s hulls wouldn’t melt under its infectious contamination the strength of their weaponry was more than enough to shred the enemy cruisers under sustained fire that they’d never been able to mount before given the presence of the chemical weapon.

The lizards weren’t stupid, but having no other options they fought the Dvapp head on while the single jumpship within the system ran, hoping to make it to the star and evacuate the system before it could be destroyed. The Dvapp let it go, more than happy that the cruisers were fighting them head on and giving them a chance to really lay out the damage. In a satisfying, one-sided beatdown the Dvapp fleet ran through the cruisers and claimed orbit, with a few jumping off to the star to make sure the lizards had actually left while the Voku ship moved down just above the atmosphere and began spewing pieces of itself down towards the planet.

Part of the Dvapp fleet followed them down, entering the atmosphere and heading for the shield plate that was protecting the single large lizard colony. There were several spurs already beginning to form, but they weren’t shielded and would make easy targets for the Voku who were coming down some distance around the perimeter. The Dvapp moved in directly over the colony, taking the first bits of overranged plasma fire as they settled into position and began stretching out their energy beams, multiple ones per ship, and pouring firepower down into the shield rather than trying to skirt under its exposed edges.

Slowly they drained it, with the lizards unable to get through the Dvapp shields given that the sammies far outranged their plasma weapons. Streams of wisps came up from the colony in an attempt to get at the warships but they were more or less impotent against the larger ships who all but ignored them as they continued to pound the colony’s shield until it finally fell and the shield tower in center was exposed.

That tower had secondary shields covering itself, but those didn’t hold up for more than a handful of seconds as dozens of beams targeted and burned through it, wrecking the tower and insuring that the shield plate would not go up again. The Dvapp could have stayed at range and sniped the lizard buildings from there, but instead they chose to move in and hit the defensive plasma batteries directly, suffering a little hull damage on a few ships whose shields went down but quickly establishing dominance over the air as their weaponry also ate through the wisp swarms when they finally turned their attention to them.

As those were thinned a scattering of Voku fighters moved in to mop up the rest as their mechs approached the colony’s edges and began working their way in, targeting key structures and ground troops that managed to survive long enough to get to them. The Dvapp were roasting everything that popped its head up within the colony, with none of the lizard tanks even able to get into position to fire on the Voku.

Along with their Stranom mechs came transports dropping three man teams at various points around the colony where they began chewing up the bits of infantry in the streets that the Dvapp had left alive and the masses still inside the buildings and underground passageways. They knew their job was to be scouts/hunters, seeking out the enemy and destroying what they could while Dvapp troops would follow them in…and were even now starting to flow out of two low flying transports that bathed the yellow/tan buildings in a slight red glow from their hull crystal.

Barely 10 meters off the ground, white globs of liquid dropped out as if the ship was a giant, red leaky bucket and splattered on the streets and rooftops. Those splatters quickly pulled themselves together into a variety of shapes and grouped up, some traveling the streets as long snakes, others moving in arcs, taking one ‘footstep’ at a time while constantly flipping one end of their body tube over the other, while still others went bipedal and pounded their way forward, tracking down the Voku beacons and closing in on the larger lizard formations that they weren’t confident they could take alone.

This was the first time the Dvapp and Voku had worked together, but both races had plenty of experience fighting the lizards and knew the danger they posed even in a huge mismatch such as this. With the Dvapp relying on the Voku to sniff out ambushes, explosives, and other potential dangers, the amorphous crystals cleared building after building and level after level, creating a perimeter around various structures then calling in pinpoint fire from their warships floating overhead, more often than not to cut passageways down into the understructure where the lizards hadn’t planned on defending from, but also to destroy buildings so the lizards wouldn’t have positions to fall back to and so the Dvapp wouldn’t have to waste troops placing guards on them.

Given that this wasn’t a raid and the Dvapp intended to keep the planet they had to make sure every lizard was destroyed and they didn’t intend to leave the city standing. That said, they preferred to search it while it was still mostly intact, though it was a common sight for the Voku to see several warships in the sky nearby blasting specific sections into powdery rubble that was sending up debris clouds that the ships were containing with energy shields and shunting skyward to keep them from hindering the troops on the ground.

Jas-mek was one of those Voku, operating as the ‘Hammer’ in his trio as they flushed out the lizards from one of their tank bays. It was empty but intact, with a plethora of equipment that gave the enemy lots of cover to either ambush from or hide within. With their intricate shield generators protecting their otherwise armorless bodies, Jas-mek followed his two skirmishers in, leaving the sight of the overhead warships behind, and began flushing out the lizards from what the Voku guessed were their typical hiding spots.

They were sneaky, but they tended to think alike and Jas-mek had a pretty good idea where to look as his fellow Voku led him to the spots he would have picked first off had he been in the lead. That wasn’t his job here, and as one of his skirmishers directed him to a particular spot he activated his chest-mounted dwio and fired a small orb of red/pink oscillating energy across the floor and caused it to curve hard right, swinging around the corner of a large piece of machinery and disappearing from view for a split second before exploding and throwing debris and lizard bodies out everywhere.

His two skirmishers jumped in from different angles, finishing off the other lizards that were left alive as he heard commotion back at the entrance and turned to see several dozen Dvapp arriving. He signaled to them with a set of predetermined motions, given that neither spoke each other’s language and they didn’t have time for computer translations.

They got the message and moved off to the positions he indicated as the skirmishers likewise transitioned on, identifying a few more ambushes waiting for them, either by scouting them out or drawing their fire. With the Dvapp present the Voku trio were able to be a bit more aggressive and pressed their search faster, often using their odd allies to finish off the lizards while they just went around busting up their formations.

Once that building was cleared they moved to an adjacent other, then three more before Jas-mek saw the sky again with more conical clouds rising up marking the place where the Dvapp were already remodeling. He appreciated that efficiency, for the quicker this world was rid of the lizards and their infrastructure the sooner it would begin growing into an allied stronghold, with the Dvapp having promised to reinforce it heavily.

That would be one less point in Achkor’s area where the Voku would have to patrol, which was the main motivation for Jas-mek to be here. The more he could assist the lesser races in taking and securing worlds the less drain there would be on Voku resources babysitting them. His fleet had held this region secure for a long time, locking down and containing the Skarrons here and elsewhere while withering them away with diminished or sometimes completely cut off supply lines, forcing them to either die or produce enough resources to sustain themselves.

That wasn’t the type of task Jas-mek preferred, with him being forced into naval duty far too often. He and the others would do whatever was necessary, but he much preferred being on the ground fighting the enemy, whoever they were, in hand to hand, racking up kills and taking territory. Today he was doing that, even if the Voku weren’t going to keep this planet. Word was once this area was secured they’d be moving on to more proper assaults that would result in actual territorial gains as the Voku spread out from Achkor and firmly cemented their hold in this part of the galaxy.

For a long time the Voku had been fighting defensive wars, important enough, but there hadn’t been a grand push for anything of consequence. With Jas-mek liking to fight on the ground he was content with one battle at a time, no matter where it was, but when he could sit back and look at the big picture he hadn’t seen any goal in play, only never-ending defense.

Now that had changed, with the newly minted Dafchor setting the Voku on what was rumored to be a nearly impossible agenda…which was exactly the kind Jas-mek liked, not to mention the rumors of a massive expansion of their empire. He didn’t know how it all fit together but knew it was more than just rumor. The Voku were on the move again, with a purpose, and even if Jas-mek didn’t know what it was yet, just knowing that there was one was enough for him. He wanted a grand conquest to work for, and the faster they got through helping the locals tidy up here and elsewhere around Achkor the sooner they’d be free to move on to securing their own gains.

For the Dvapp this was their grand crusade, and a world that they were taking from the enemy rather than being given out of charity by Star Force. They liked and appreciated their ally very much, for they had literally saved them from annihilation twice, as well as giving them the fix to their chemical weapon vulnerability, but there was just something missing for a race like the Dvapp if they weren’t able to stand on their own merits.

It was true they had taken a lot of blows by the Skarrons in order to shield Star Force and their allies, but those were still losses. This was different because they were on the upswing and winning, heavily, in this battle. The Voku were here to assist, so it wasn’t entirely a Dvapp affair, but the responsibility for securing this world after the Voku left would be entirely theirs and any reprisals by the lizards or Skarrons would be theirs alone to handle.

And after that, when they’d built the planet up considerably, they’d begin patrolling the surrounding systems, establishing a small footprint similar to what the Voku had done. This system was their piece of the gigantic puzzle and as pride had it the Dvapp were going to own it in every way, shape, and form…with the chance to fight and kick the crap out of the lizards being a sweet payback that was long in coming.

It wouldn’t be the last, for the Dvapp were staking out their spot on the new front lines, with many more conflicts to come in the following years as the lizards further consolidated their growing conquest of the Skarron systems around the ADZ.

10

August 17, 2687

Zeta Region

Mid Jump

Vedja was in his personal quarters onboard his flagship and had been there for several days, moving as little as he could for his joints were paining him terribly. When H’kar neared the end of their life one of three things typically happened…their carapaces weakened to the point of cracking, their digestive systems malfunctioned and began to leak acid into the rest of their body, or their carapaces overhardened, extending their firmness into tissue where it didn’t belong.

The elderly H’kar was experiencing the latter, barely able to move without extreme effort and pain. He only came to the command deck when battle was imminent, and ever since this recent campaign had concluded he’d become a recluse, with all food and other sustenance being brought to him by a single aide. The rest of the crew didn’t have access to him, nor did Vedja want them to. Right now the only thing he was holding onto was his duty, and with his fleet on a return trip to Loki with a host of Li’vorkrachnika kills to add to their already impressive totals he had nothing to do but review battle data and wait for the next opportunity to be of value.

But he wouldn’t make it back to the Star Force core worlds. Forcing himself out of his unrestful sleep he slowly walked across his quarters, pushing through movements that felt like he was lifting weights given the resistance in his joints as he headed to the adjacent chamber to relieve himself. He wasn’t so far gone that he’d become completely sessile and was determined never to be, with him putting as much effort as required to make the short walk to where he could properly empty his internal bladder…which for a H’kar couldn’t expand much given the rigid volume of their bodies.

Vedja made it halfway there when he felt something inside him snap. A few moments later his vision blurred and he lost consciousness, then a few minutes later he was dead…but standing in place, for without the effort of his muscles his stiffened joints held him still like a statue that his aide would discover several hours later.

When the younger H’kar entered the elder’s quarters and found him frozen in place he knew immediately that he was gone, but did the various biological checks to be certain. Before he informed the captain of the dreadnaught he walked over to a storage compartment that Vedja had instructed him to open on the occasion of his death, for inside it contained his final orders.

The aide pulled out the small data storage device and quietly input it into a nearby reader, seeing a mass of text as well as visual records. He sorted through them, for they were itemized in great detail, even as the statue corpse seemed to look over his shoulder as he did so. It didn’t take long for the aide to find the order meant for him and read it through thoroughly, for it was simple text only.

Complying with his orders he took the data device with him and immediately had it copied, securing several in device form and hiding them away within the ship before taking one to the Captain and informing him of what had occurred.

That conversation occurred on a lightly staffed command deck, for mid jump there was little to do but the Captain preferred to remain there when on duty. There was no surprise when he revealed Vedja’s death, for they had known it was coming for a while now. There was only a deep sadness and resignation, knowing the loss that the H’kar had just suffered. Within the orders was one directed specifically to the Captain and the aide referred him to it, then left the rest of the assigned task in his hands, for now his only job was to preserve copies to insure that they did not become ‘lost’ in the coming days.

There was no risk of that occurring on the dreadnaught, for the crew were fiercely loyal to Vedja. The Captain immediately read through the order specified for him, then had the crew carefully preserve the elder’s body in a stasis pod that was put into storage until they arrived back at their ever growing colony on Loki. It was then when the H’kar were informed of Vedja’s passing and the Captain met with the other H’kar commanders on the moon. They went through his final orders, which were many…some not to take effect for years to come, but sending a message via courier ship back to their empire was the first priority.

That message was not going back to the Royals, however. It was going to Vedja’s former students, many of which held high positions within the military and who had supported his move to the ADZ. They had to be informed first, so as to prepare themselves for what Vedja assumed would follow news of his passing reaching the empire at large.

Gavra received his message first, via a specialized courier ship sent directly to him. His portion of the orders, of which he got a complete copy, were extensive. Vedja did not want a recall from the joint Star Force mission...in fact he wanted escalation and, if his predictions were valid, a backdoor assault on the Li’vorkrachnika invading the H’kar’s assigned Nexus territory. Gavra didn’t understand at first, then it finally clicked that he wanted to turn Star Force’s territory into the primary warfront.

That was not going to go over well, for the idea of fighting through the full length of enemy territory in order to get back to H’kar space was ludicrous. They couldn’t even defend their own region, how then were they expected to fight through the thickest and strongest Li’vorkrachnika colonies?

But Vedja had a plan for that as well, and after the third read through Gavra reluctantly agreed with his former master…though he knew the Royals would never go through with it. It put primary emphasis on aiding Star Force and defeating the enemy through them while basically abandoning their Nexus mandate to protect their assigned territory. On the face of it there was no possible way to convince others of the wisdom hidden within the order, even with the numbers that Vedja provided. Gavra knew their significance, but others would not.

The H’kar fleet, under Vedja’s command, was killing so many enemy ships that they dare not assign them anywhere else. They were actively pushing the Li’vorkrachnika back in several areas and raiding even more systems deeper into enemy territory, racking up results that the H’kar had never come close to matching throughout the entire history of their losing war.

Vedja was adamant in his final orders that victory could be achieved in a joint venture with Star Force and their assembled allies, with or without other Nexus support, and his master implored his former students to find a way to make it happen. For so long victory hadn’t been more than a foolish notion for the H’kar, who were so decimated and demoralized that, even when they received Nexus membership, only hoped to survive and hold the enemy back.

Victory was what Vedja and others had long sought and never achieved, so even a whiff of that sentiment from his old master put Gavra into a state of anxiety…for he knew that the Royals would never allow them to do what was needed, but that if they had such a chance they could not let it pass by and allow their enemy to continue to grow stronger.

Fortunately Vedja had also included several contingency plans, with one that seemed to fit the circumstance.

But this wasn’t something that Gavra could do alone, so he immediately sent out messages to Vedja’s other supporters informing them to gather at a rendezvous point so they could discuss matters amongst themselves. Once the messages were sent the H’kar departed on a ship of his own, traveling to the secret summit even as Vedja’s messages began to arrive at the others.

Slowly his followers began to assemble and take action, whereas before they’d been spectators reading the reports coming back from the ADZ. Now it was up to them, and they agreed that they would do whatever was necessary to give the H’kar a chance at true victory and honor Vedja’s last orders, impossible as they were.

They considered keeping his death a secret from the empire, but knew that word would eventually leak out or his absence would be noted indirectly no matter how close a charade they concocted. It was also noted that such a deception could backfire, so they decided to go with the polar opposite and make his death public knowledge…but with a political push going along with it.

It was many months later when Vedja’s body eventually returned to the empire, escorted by a massive honor guard fleet that grew in number as it began a long ceremonial tour of each and every H’kar world. With his body came the open publication of some of his final orders, with Vedja’s students loudly declaring that they would be followed and trying to preempt the Royals from making any decisions to the contrary.

That built backlash that was contained but brewing, with the Royals being patient but ready to begin removing Vedja’s supporters now that he was gone, one by one if necessary to keep the empire calm and secure, but they had no intention of letting this presumptuous faction gain defacto control.

That was until they began getting reports back of the reaction that the ceremonial tour was having on the worlds Vedja’s remains were visiting…as well as the promise that victory was possible, followed up with the legend’s last orders and predictions detailing what he thought would happen if they were implemented.

The ground swell of support broke all expectations and eventually became fervor, with the empire having been subconsciously waiting for the seed of hope to grasp onto. The Nexus had once been that hope, but with the stalemate that it brought that hope had faded, with it seeming that no matter what the H’kar did they would never be able to defeat the Li’vorkrachnika. For if even with Nexus support they could only survive and not push the enemy back, with them being fated to be survivors at best and never victors.

The combination of that lingering bitterness, the gravity of Vedja’s death, and his assertion that there was a way to win hit every world the honor guard visited like a storm, reawakening belief in even the most ardent doubters when they saw that the legend had not only promised a possibility of victory, but had laid out a battle plan…his last contribution to the H’kar…of what exactly they had to do to achieve it.

When word reached the Royals they went into a panic, for there was no resisting this patriotic uprising. They immediately sought a way to steer it off course or to put it to their own use, but with Vedja having laid out in detail what had to happen, and his former students making sure there was no misinterpretation allowed, there was no way to stop the uprising short of instigating a civil war.

That possibility was considered as a necessary step in order to maintain control, but the Royals’ military advisors pointed out that such a drastic step would have cataclysmic effects on the empire…not to mention the fact that most of the military would probably side with the patriots and the Royals would end up losing their power in a full-fledged revolution.

For a long time the Royals were publically silent, watching the ceremonial procession moving from planet to planet and gaining supporters with each transition. When it finally culminated at their homeworld they’d seen the writing on the wall and had arranged to back the supporters, organizing and funding a much larger ceremony as Vedja’s body was brought to its final resting place

That place was a new monument built in the center of the capitol city, with several very important buildings being leveled to create the artificial plain amongst the chaos of the tightly packed infrastructure. In the center of that 6 kilometer-wide plain was a single structure…a narrow spire that reached up higher than any other object within the city, seeming to defy the parameters of physics.

The ‘sky needle’ had at its base a single interior room that held Vedja’s preserved corpse, still locked into the rigid position of his death, and surrounded with the enshrined orders that he had left for the H’kar so that anyone visiting the monument could look upon him and receive the orders personally, with an endless line of visitors forming outside and stretching back into the city.

That line would exist for years to come without a break, and the site became the central rallying point within H’kar society. The sky needle was the symbolic spear that would be sent into the heart of their enemy, delivering them their long awaited retribution against the Li’vorkrachnika. Eventually the buildings surrounding the monument would be reconstructed to service the site and the pilgrimages being made to visit it. Whatever small hope that the Royals initially had of their being able to wait out the fervor and return the empire’s future into their hands withered away as the public demanded reports of what was happening in the joint operations with Star Force.

Those reports became the most important and scrutinized news within H’kar society, and as the resources and ships continued to flow out to the distant empire the impressive results only got better, showing to everyone that the Li’vorkrachnika could in fact be beaten and the H’kar learning in detail just how it was being done…with Star Force becoming revered second only to Vedja himself.

Hope was powerful enough, but give people actual results and their hope quickly became belief, then belief became confidence as the list of star systems being reclaimed from the Li’vorkrachnika began to grow. That list was eventually displayed at the monument in the form of small pedestals, with each conquest labeled and arranged in a rough map of enemy space around the sky needle.

The trend caught on, with each addition pumping more adrenaline into the H’kar…with someone even going so far as to paint the spot where the pedestal for the original H’kar homeworld would go should they ever get that far.

The mark hadn’t been official, just some hopeful graffiti added by an overzealous citizen, but the thought of one day returning and reclaiming their old worlds spread like wildfire throughout the H’kar, with even the Royals genuinely getting onboard with the idea and fully setting their entire civilization towards that goal, despite the fact that Star Force was nowhere near to them and was in fact on the other side of the Li’vorkrachnika core worlds.

That didn’t matter to the H’kar, for even if they were inching their way forward they now saw a way to one day reclaim what was lost to them, and even if they didn’t live to see it happen they were committed to doing their part in the here and now to make it happen for their descendants…with their legend leaving them the blueprints for how to do it.

And it was those final orders from Vedja that ultimately transformed H’kar society, for prior to them the H’kar were always the one that carried the battles. They were the focal point, the strong arm that did the heavy lifting and took on the biggest battles…but Vedja had made it clear that they couldn’t beat the enemy on their own merits, nor could they lead others to victory. No, the ultimate victory over the Li’vorkrachnika was rooted in the H’kar becoming a support empire and their doing all the auxiliary tasks that they had previously ignored out of a mix of tradition and arrogance.

But that no longer was the case, with their pride now rooted in supporting Star Force.

Vedja had said that given enough backing the Human-led empire would one day, in the distant future, lead the H’kar to ultimate victory…and with the initial results seeming to confirm his predictions the H’kar went all-in in their new role, with the single focus of their civilization becoming the reclamation of their true homeworld, and them no longer settling for mere survivor or anything less than full and final retribution.

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Table of Contents

- Star Force: Nexus
- Star Force: Empire
- Star Force: Shame
- Star Force: Retribution