Star Force 77-80
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Colonization; Dystopian; Galactic Empire; High Tech; Military; Space Fleet; 90 Minutes (44-64 Pages); Literature & Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Adventure; Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages); Action & Adventure; Space Opera; Genre Fiction; War; Health; Fitness & Dieting; Exercise & Fitness; Yoga; War & Military; Space Marine; Teen & Young Adult; Star Force
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force 77-80
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Contents

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- 8
- 9
- 10

1

May 12, 2966

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Demmcha walked through the hallways of the Star Force colony in full armor, drawing mild attention from those he passed but not nearly so fierce as his attention for them. Nearly every person in the colony was Shanplenix, yet they weren’t. Where he had yellow patches of skin and yellow eyes, these had red in exactly the same proportions against the base green and black exoskeletal patches. These people were the same race as him, yet in all his life he had never seen a Shanplenix of another color, nor knew that any existed outside of the three systems they controlled.

Sure, there were always rogue individuals roaming the spacelanes, but an entire civilization was more than he ever expected, let alone two. Archon Paul had explained much to him initially, but when he’d parted the Gvaris System it was with the escort of another lower ranking Archon. The two ships had come here, whereupon another peer of Paul’s had met him in orbit and they’d have a very long discussion concerning everything Shanplenix…to which Archon Brad had added a great deal of information about the ‘Protovic’ that left Demmcha with more questions than he had started with.

But it was only now, walking through their city on their planet did it all fully sink in…then he passed an oddball amongst the sea of red and green, with the first purple-skinned coming into sight. Again, the same patterns but a different color.

“What occurs when the two interbreed?” he asked Brad who was walking beside him, via the translation software in the Shanplenix’s triangular helmet.

“The female’s genetics take priority as far as bioluminescence is concerned. All other biological aspects are identical. You may look different, but you are in fact the same race.”

“Very curious…” Demmcha mewed as they walked through one of the main promenades until they got to a lift car that took them up into the higher reaches of one of the Star Force buildings. He’d been learning a great deal more about their empire as well, with it being more impressive than he’d heard. The ability for them to incorporate so many races together was virtually unheard of without a leadership matrix defining who had priority. The Humans were clearly in charge here, but the more he learned it seemed they viewed everyone as peers…to a degree.

This was the first Star Force world the Shanplenix had ever been on, so he was having to reference information on the others. These Protovic were a faction of their own as well as being part of another faction called Axius. That one was a conglomeration of dozens, if not hundreds of races split between two size categories, ostensibly so the larger ones wouldn’t be stepping on and killing the smaller ones when they cohabitated. The Protovic had been part of Axius for a very long time, the purple skins anyway, with the red skins being a new addition via conquest of a quite unsavory civilization…if Star Force’s information was accurate. One could never be sure of such things, but Cal-com had vouched for them and for Demmcha that increased the likelihood that the information was accurate.

The fact that Star Force had attacked and conquered a twin race to the Shanplenix was disturbing and immediately set them at odds within the delegation that had arrived here. They’d been told in loose terms what had happened by Paul, but it was Brad’s detailed account of the invasion that had almost put their accords into jeopardy…not that the Shanplenix were in a position to wage any kind of war against Star Force. Weapon-wise it was about an even fight, but size-wise Star Force was huge and had many client races to pull soldiers from. What would have occurred was an ‘icing’ diplomatically, though what stalled that was the accounts of what these Veliquesh were doing and the fact that Star Force had gone to the excessive trouble of using stun weaponry to take them all captive.

Typically when one conquered a race blood was shed, but this had apparently been a clean invasion and that was what softened Demmcha. Star Force hadn’t been interested in the Veliquesh’s territory, but rather its people. The fact that most of the 3 trillion population had died out in prison wasn’t a high note, but seeing those red skinned individuals in person here and now, walking these corridors casually, suggested that Star Force may have done them a favor if the rumors of their living sacrifices were even remotely true.

“How many are here?”

“This system holds the bulk of Star Force’s Protovic population, though a significant number still exist within Axius. There are 4.7 billion here with a scattering of other races, skilled individuals that have helped develop this civilization or those that have migrated here for similar reasons.”

“You allow intermixing outside of Axius?”

“When the occasion merits,” the Archon said as they stepped out of the lift car and began to walk through a large, elongated chamber with various holograms situated on both sides depicting what he wasn’t sure, but the individuals were not Protovic and mostly Human, involved in various types of combat. “Travel is permitted with few restrictions throughout Star Force, though this is one of a handful of regions where it is limited. Those that can travel here cannot live here permanently, and therein lies the distinction. The divisions do not exist for cultural reasons, but biological ones. We have learned from Axius that there are both advantages and disadvantages in living in close confines with varied races, and Star Force aims to have enough diversity to allow for both options. Hence this colony is a Protovic one.”

“Yet you, a Human, lead it?”

“That’s what Archons do for Star Force. All of Star Force.”

“And are there any Archons that are not Human?”

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because you cannot do this,” the Archon said as he held his arm up and pointed his hand at Demmcha…then suddenly the Shanplenix’s feet left the ground and he lost control of his body, floating in midair.

“What are you doing?”

“No, this is not a form of anti-grav,” the Human assured him as the few Protovic passing by stopped to watch from a safe distance. “This is what we call psionics. Archons have special powers that not even all Humans possess. We are rare, and these powers are partly a reason why we are Archons.”

Demmcha returned to the ground and the constriction around his chest vanished.

“We are leaders and protectors,” he continued to explain as Demmcha tried to get a handle on what just happened, “because we have the ability. Those that do not cannot be Archons. I was tested a long time ago to learn if I had potential, and only a very few Humans did. No other race has the same abilities that we do, though a few outside of Star Force have been known to have one or two.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“I created an invisible energy field that allows me to manipulate matter. An invisible third arm, if you understand the metaphor.”

“Not completely,” Demmcha admitted. “What other races?”

“Are you familiar with The Nexus?”

“Somewhat.”

“We know of one, and rumors of others that have psionics. The Dsevmat have telepathy.”

“You mean they can read minds?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that was fiction.”

“I used to think so as well,” the Archon said as they reached the far side of the holograms and two small doors pulled open. They entered a lush indoor park that was lightly populated with only three Protovic in sight, though with the greenery there could have been dozens more hidden elsewhere. It was quiet though, save for the sound of running water, and the Archon pointed Demmcha on a path to the right.

“Do Archons have telepathy.”

“Our abilities are not widely known, and we prefer to keep it that way. But yes, we do.”

Demmcha took a half step, suddenly realizing how vulnerable he was if that was true.

“You can relax. We are not your enemies. And had Paul sensed any duplicity in you he would not have sent you here,” the Human assured as he turned around and looked at where Demmcha had stopped. This was all happening so fast and he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“Let me fast track this for you,” the Archon offered. “I am far more powerful than you. No, you can’t insulate your mind from me. Yes, I can dig out memories if I wish. And no, you can’t keep secrets very well if we get curious about something, but do not assume we are constantly monitoring the minds around us, for we are not. The effort required is not a small one, so we only pry when needed.”

“But you still pry.”

“It helps us spot the liars,” Brad said evenly. “And allows us to build an honest empire.”

“And what happens to those that are not honest?”

“They are not trusted with responsibilities.”

“Yet you have prisons.”

“Mainly for those who insist on bothering others. Star Force feels that individuals should be allowed a bit of respect and space to live their lives as they wish. But if someone is insistent on interfering with and hurting others, being able to read minds helps us determine the truth and take action quickly. Which is why only those with these powers can become Archons, and only Humans within Star Force have the potential.”

“Some would say you have too much power to be trusted.”

“If one is trustworthy, the amount of power they have is irrelevant. If someone is untrustworthy, then they are a threat no matter how small their power is. Star Force doesn’t fear power. The more we have, the more people we can protect…and rescue.”

“So you say,” Demmcha said, though he made his mind obvious that he was not passing judgement on Star Force, merely not taking anything at face value.

“Which is why you’re here,” the Archon said as they passed through a bottleneck of bushes and came into a small courtyard with a wall-spanning window that looked out onto the city with 8 Protovic standing in front of it and apparently waiting for them to arrive. “To learn.”

Six of them were red skinned, with the other two being purple. All wore Star Force uniforms save for one of the purple ones.

“You and I have talked a great deal,” the Archon continued. “Now it’s time for you to get acquainted. Ask whatever you like, the more questions the better. You can lose the helmet now.”

Demmcha reached up and hit the external releases, then pulled the triangular helmet off revealing the green/yellow glow from his facial skin, then the pure yellow beams coming from his eyes. The other Shanplenix were visibly shocked when they saw him, but adjusted quickly enough. They stared at each other for many seconds, speaking a language he could not understand until he eventually put the helmet back on and the translation software kicked in.

“Seven of them are Star Force,” the Archon said, then pointed to the one in a different style uniform. “This one is not. She is from the independent Protovic and another observer here, much like you. I believe the two of you will want to have a separate conversation latter, but for now I will leave all of you alone. I will return when you are finished, or wish a break. There is much to discuss.”

“Yes there is,” Demmcha said as the Archon turned to walk away, with him wondering how far his telepathic range was. If he picked up on that thought he didn’t say anything, disappearing back through the path into the bushes and leaving him with his oddly colored kin.

“Hello brothers and sisters,” Demmcha greeted them with a shallow bow. “Do not be shy, and please tell me everything. Then I will reciprocate to your satisfaction.”

“What?” Clark-066 said when walking into the genetics lab behind Vortison and a handful of other high level medtechs.

“Sorry, did I interrupt your snack?” Star Force’s lead geneticist quipped as he turned around from his holographic displays and looked at the trailblazer.

Clark smirked. “What did you find?”

“Concerning that sample Paul sent back,” Vortison said, highlighting one hologram to the room’s central display. “I still don’t have nearly enough data to work with, but I have confirmed, to my satisfaction, that this is a genetic locking device.”

“Suppressing what, exactly?”

Vortison shook his head. “Not suppressing. Whatever this is, it does not exist in their genome. What each of these three races have is an incomplete book, not in chapters but in letters. The original Protovic have a full book but only every 3rd letter. Add in the Veliquesh variant and you get the 5th letter, now the 2nd with the Shanplenix. That’s not enough to read the words, metaphorically speaking. You’d need at least six or seven of the eight components to be able to guess at the contents, but whatever this is, it is huge, size-wise. I’m guestimating 13% of their overall genome is missing, or you could call this an addition. I have no way to know, yet.”

“Wait,” Clark said, holding up a finger. “You said 8. I thought there were 7 variants.”

“So the stories from the nutjobs said.”

“Right. What about the coloration? That’s not dormant.”

“No, it’s not. They have different genes there, rather than suppressed varieties inherent in all of them. We already knew this from the cross-breedings, for the offspring only had one genetic signature rather than carrying a latent second. It’s a guess, but I think the colorations are to mark which piece of the puzzle each variant has.”

“Natural or genetic engineering?”

“My credits say engineering. On a level that rivals the V’kit’no’sat.”

Clark’s eyes widened.

“No, it’s not their handiwork. The coding is significantly different, which is why it’s going to be next to impossible to guess at what it does without a nearly complete ‘book.’ I honestly have no idea what the genetic sequences are for.”

“Genetic memory?”

“Some of it, perhaps, but not all of it,” Vortison said, bringing up another hologram. “You probably aren’t going to recognize any of this, so I’ll point and you can pretend.”

“Thanks,” Clark said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome. Here is one place where the puzzle pieces will connect with their existing genome. We may not know what the pieces are, but we can make some assumptions about the connections because we have one side of them. Part of them are mental, as in software, while at least 60% are physical hardware. I can’t say which section of the body, but the idea that they just have a massive store of information woven into their genome is inaccurate. They might have it, but they have physical changes as well.”

“Upgrades?”

“I hardly think they’d be downgrades.”

“For what purpose?”

“It’s not breeding. I know that much. I have a suspicion that it will take all 8 variants located in the same place at the same time to put the puzzle pieces together.”

“Together how?”

“Humans create pheromones, viruses, and a few more exotic means of biological communication between individuals, and that’s not uncommon in about 85% of races. The Protovic have receptor slots for something they’re not producing, which is very odd. It’s possible that some other stimulus will cause the ‘messengers’ to be created, then when all 7 match up with an individual the magic happens…and I have no idea what it will be.”

“If it is genetic programming our Protovic could be at risk,” Clark said warily.

“The idea of a faction of Star Force going rogue and becoming an enemy is a nightmare that has kept me up many nights trying to make out what this coding is. Now that I have the third piece I should be closer to an answer, but I’m not. I need more tissue samples to compare, and presently we don’t know where the other 5 are, correct?”

“Until now I didn’t know there even were 5 others. The Shanplenix said they have no knowledge of Protovic beyond their own borders, past or present. They’re not exactly close to the Veliquesh homeworlds, but it’s odd that they never heard of them pre-lizards.”

“Actually it’s not,” Vortison said, adjusting the hologram to another set of genetic codes that Clark only vaguely understood. He wasn’t a newb as far as genetics were concerned, but Vortison was operating on a level far beyond him and they both knew it. Trouble was there had to be V’kit’no’sat even more knowledgeable than Star Force’s top staff, and they were constantly trying to close that gap given the outdated records they possessed, which were still more than they could fully grasp at their young age.

“Geographically speaking,” Clark clarified.

Vortison raised a finger. “Behaviorally speaking, there is an impulse to explore buried in their coding, similar to the sensation of thirst when you’re low on water, but much more subtle. It is, however, superseded by a stronger impulse to turtle up. A type of survival instinct, I believe.”

“No reckless expansion.”

“Such things affect individuals rather than control them. You’re evidence of that, for the sexuality programming in Humans is quite strong, yet you ignore it.”

“Such programming has a strong effect on the weak minded, and I can assure you that we are not weak minded,” Clark said firmly, though he knew the masses in Star Force, Humans and otherwise, unfortunately were. Maturia training helped with that, giving people an opportunity to grow stronger, but once they graduated they were on their own and if they didn’t have the will to improve they would stagnate and their strength would wane, making them more susceptible to genetic programming…a much weaker version than what guided/controlled the lizards.

“Obviously,” Vortison echoed. “But when you’re dealing with an entire race even the smallest nudge can have visible effects. I think these variants were tasted to survive first, seek each other out second, so that this genetic playbook could be assembled and implemented.”

“You think they did this themselves or someone did it to them?”

“Unknown.”

Clark rubbed his forehead, imagining the variations of disaster that this could turn into if it went south. “Is there a way to block the puzzle pieces from coming together?”

“Yes, but to do it properly and not some butcher job, I’d need to rewrite the Protovic genetic code to remove their section of the playbook entirely. A stopgap would be to rewrite a smaller portion to block the combination. Both would require skills that I am not confident in yet. The V’kit’no’sat could do it on their lunch break, but I haven’t had the experience needed and there’s no one with greater experience to ask for help. I’m confident I can do it eventually, but right now I’m wise enough to know not to try, else I’d risk messing them up, which I won’t do.”

“Let us know when you think you can. Make removal of their playbook a priority.”

“As an option or a goal? If the changes are beneficial we won’t want to strip them out…and putting them back in is far harder to do.”

“As our primary option. We’re going to find out what’s going on, and when we do get all 8 pieces we’re going to put them together and see what happens, either in a lab or with volunteers. If it goes badly, I want the ability to inoculate our population in short order.”

“I understand,” Vortison said gravely. “Do you know where to look for the others?”

“Not a clue. We’re going to have to go on a scavenger hunt.”

“I have no idea how you would even begin to do that on a galactic scale.”

“These three variants weren’t that far apart,” Clark pointed out.

“As far as genetic diversity and insuring that all puzzle pieces survive,” Vortison added, “I would assume there would be multiple civilizations of the same variant, else this entire project, whatever it is, could fail if one was wiped out. You might just find redundants nearby.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy.”

“What is?”

“We’ve both got our challenges then,” Clark cemented. “Keep us notified of your progress and we’ll see what we can do about getting you some more variant samples.”

2

July 19, 2969

Nexus Grid Point 146

Parking Orbit

Trey-555 sat in the command chair onboard his Ma’kri-class warship as he looked at the visual and tactical displays of the ship traffic around them. Most of the thousands of ships were parked as they were, but there was a steady flow of incoming and outgoing traffic on the single jumpline used to get to the neighboring star system from the grid point, for its gravity was too weak to make an interstellar jump from.

That said, it was the biggest space station Trey had ever seen by far. Looking like a pair of sunglasses with two huge discs connected by a thick stalk in the middle, the overall length of the construct was 4 times the width of Earth, but it was very flat and didn’t have half its mass. It was enough to make slow jumps off of if you knew where to look for it, with most non-Nexus traffic wandering about the galaxy never stumbling upon its location.

Which was odd, given the traffic involved. This was very much a public place, though one for only those in the know. There was nothing here for anyone who didn’t belong, no planets, moons, or even asteroids…just a massive construct and a flotilla of ships and other craft nearby it. Some of those craft were stations supplying fuel and other services to customers, some were defense stations, but most of the dots on the holographic map were ships waiting for their turn to ride the ferry to the other end of the line and deep into Nexus territory.

And to think this was only a ‘small’ grid point. Others had more than 1 station, for each link operated like stargates, save these were always activated. They made for one massive highway running in a straight line, with bigger hubs having multiple ones coming in and out requiring multiple constructs to generate the insanely large but stable magnetic fields that the specially designed Nexus jumpships could use to accelerate and decelerate far faster than gravity would ever allow. This was the first time Trey had ever been to this location, and only the 4th time Star Force had sent a ship. Typically involvement with The Nexus was facilitated by the H’kar, but Trey’s mission was going to take him far beyond their borders.

Information digging within The Nexus was dicey, but Star Force had made several inroads previously thanks to Director Davis’s efforts that had allowed them to do a racial search throughout their massive territory. The source admitted that The Nexus’s records were incomplete and that they had not fully cataloged every star system within their domain, but it had also noted that the database available to Star Force was not the full one that The Nexus used for internal matters. It was enough, however, to give Trey a location in which to seek out more wayward Protovic.

He wasn’t the only one on this chase, with Archons pursuing leads across the ADZ and beyond, rifling through historical records and stories trying to hunt down any mention of the Protovic and their variants. As it turned out there were many breadcrumbs to follow, with Trey being informed of 3 locations suspected of having Protovic. His was the furthest, being located in the Perseus galactic arm and far beyond where Star Force had eeked its own quiet Tether out to. It was now beyond the Orion arm in which the ADZ and lizards, Voku, and Preema domains existed, having passed through the less dense star clusters separating the galactic swirls and branched out quietly into systems within The Nexus dominion without making any waves.

Those Tether systems were not all a secret, for some had connections with the local star systems, but most were a private line of colonization that Star Force was not making public back in the ADZ, nor were most of the maps updated with their locations. If the V’kit’no’sat returned and blew apart the ADZ, then Star Force needed somewhere to fall back to and announcing the locations of your secret bases wasn’t a good idea, making the few maps that the higher level Archons and Monarchs had at their disposal closely guarded secrets.

Trey had access to one such monster map back in the ADZ, but there wasn’t one onboard this Ma’kri and he hadn’t felt the need to bring a personal copy with him. Still, he knew that where they were going on this mission was far beyond the current tip of the Tether on the order of 8,000 light years. The galaxy on the whole was approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, meaning this little field trip was taking Trey and his Ma’kri 1/6th of the distance from galactic core to outer rim, which was only possible thanks to The Nexus allowing them to use their grid point transit system…for a fee.

And it was no small price, but through the H’kar Star Force had acquired access to The Nexus’s currency in lieu of bartering precious resources and getting scammed in the process. The Nexus wasn’t totally insular, allowing commerce with outsiders on a regular basis, but they often price gouged them as a way of favoring member states rather than giving them a break. Everyone had to pay for their ride on the interstellar ferry, just some paid more than others.

Star Force had been given access to the grid point system a while back but rarely had cause to use it. It connected far flung regions of The Nexus and unless you had business assets there it was far too costly to use just for sightseeing. This mission had been given enough of a priority for Davis to fund it, with Trey being given enough currency to move about The Nexus at will rather than trying to huff it on gravity drives alone, which would have taken years to make the trip rather than a couple months.

Though that estimate might be stretched further if the waiting lines were this long. The Nexus had a lot of Tilars, their name for the magnetic driven jumpships, each of which was a spec compared to the construct but of whom some were so large they could have carried a Star Force command ship. The one that Trey’s Ma’kri was assigned was considerably smaller, and cheaper, with many of this model coming and going, barely sticking around long enough to refuel before heading back out again. They’d enter, braking against one giant disc, then launch off the other to avoid collisions, and as Trey watched there were routinely tilars easing into the center of the giant slingshot before disappearing with no fanfare.

He’d been told that their turn was next, but he’d been sitting on the bridge for the past 2 hours and was getting ready to say screw it and head back to training when they finally got their go ahead. He had helm follow the navigational prompts out of their parking orbit to avoid hitting the other waiting ships then watched as they approached the massive tilar. They weren’t all the same make, nor design, with this one being painted bright blue and shaped like a crustacean with huge pincers that wrapped around the region where the Ma’kri and other ships would be berthed.

Other tilars were fully enclosed, some looking like sails, and enough oddity of design to suggest that there was more than one race responsible for their construction. When the Ma’kri docked inside the assigned tilar it didn’t interconnect with the ship itself, rather settling into position within the IDF field and being gently nudged into a fixed state by several soft tractor beams. They couldn’t stop it from moving if they engaged their engines, which the Ma’kri had very little of aside from gravity drives that wouldn’t work in the IDF anyway, but it would stop them from drifting into each other or out of the docking perimeter through the gaps between the pinchers.

The loading took a remarkably short time, with Trey thinking that while they made all their customers wait in the parking orbits they weren’t going to delay the tilars one minute if they could avoid it, so before long the Archon was watching the view through the gaps in the tilar’s arms as they and the other 14 ships were carried out over the massive disc and into the directional magnetic field. As soon as they hit the center of it the construct blinked out, with blackness replacing the dull white hull plates.

“Easy peasy,” Trey commented, seeing nothing outside the ship now that it had accelerated up to such a speed that the tilar’s shields were blocking any radiation from hitting its precious cargo and melting through the hull plates.

“I guess the expense is the hardest part,” the Ma’kri Captain commented.

The Archon smiled. “Mind the store, buddy. I’m heading back to my workouts. Let me know if the neighbors get fussy.”

“Before or after I shoot them?” he said deadpan.

“Your call.”

29 days later…

When the Ma’kri arrived at their final destination point on the network they were in the rimward half of The Nexus and still had a few weeks of travel left to go, via the ‘slow’ gravity drives and bouncing from system to system. Using maps obtained from The Nexus early, Trey ordered them to get underway immediately after easing through the congestion around the grid point, though it wasn’t nearly as robust as two of their previous stops. This location only had 1 construct, but it was more congested with traffic than their starting point had been, underscoring how remote The Nexus territory was within the edge of the Orion arm that it creeped into…meaning Star Force and the ADZ were the sticks beyond the sticks as far as they were concerned.

But once they made a slow jump to a nearby star system it was back to solitary traveling. There was a bit of traffic around the system’s star, but there was no inhabitation within the system. Bouncing across new spacelanes and eating up fuel with every stop and acceleration, the Ma’kri made its way out into territory that was considered to be unimportant to The Nexus but technically within their domain. Some records of it were kept, but very little interaction was facilitated other than by a few ‘connected’ races. Most were simply denizens on The Nexus’s lawn and probably didn’t even know the huge conglomerate even existed.

The system they were headed for had no name, just an identification number. It had one populated planet, but nothing of interest for The Nexus or anyone else to bother with. The natives matched the description of the Protovic, and unlike the other two hits Star Force had gotten, these were not purple skinned variants. These were said to be orange skinned, set against the standard green streaks and black exoskeletal patches. Fortunately they weren’t working off of rumor alone, with a few images having been filed that seemed to confirm that they were Protovic.

The thing of it was, the pictures indicated that these Protovic were technologically primitive, making Trey wonder what their starting conditions were like. Did all the variants have access to the same tech and knowledge, then expanded on/lost it over the course of time? There were so many questions lingering that he agreed that this mission was worth the expenditure just to get a little more data to work with, for right now they didn’t have much to go on.

The Shanplenix had no records of their history prior to their homeworld, and the same was true for the original Protovic. The Veliquesh records, which Star Force obtained during the deconstruction of their worlds after their removal, did have mentions to grandiose origins in the form of myths and legends, but nothing concrete. It was said that they had been the devolved form of their predecessors, split up into 7 variants to avoid a horrific fate, only to one day in the future recombine and reclaim their dominance over the galaxy.

Originally that seemed farfetched, and the ‘galaxy’ reference was probably hyperbole, yet here Trey was looking for Protovic in another galactic arm, so he granted there might be a bit more to the legends than they originally thought. That said, the Veliquesh had been crazy, so their records had to be viewed with a skeptical eye.

All records were, in truth, for people had a tendency to lie. Star Force records were the anomaly in that they were accurate, as far as the recorder was concerned, though they might still have misunderstood or mischaracterized something unintentionally. That was why it was always better to view the subject matter first hand, and Trey didn’t know for sure what he was going to find when they arrived, if anything. If this had been a wild goose chase he was going to be ticked, then again these Protovic could also have been wiped out since the records had been made.

There was no way of knowing until they arrived, and when they did they found an empty system, as far as starship traffic was concerned. They transited to the planet in question easily enough, then sat in orbit taking scans of the entirety of the surface on multiple laps gathering data on what was a very primitive civilization.

Like mud huts primitive. There were no EM signatures whatsoever, meaning these guys hadn’t even developed radio or TV, scary as that thought was. Trey’s life would have been considerably different if he’d never been exposed to The Simpsons, and he felt for these poor bastards in ways that he couldn’t even comprehend.

Scanning a planet wasn’t a simple point and click procedure, so when they didn’t pick up any EM in the initial laps Trey ordered a more detailed scan, region by region, trying to pick up any signs of real technology, even if it just be a metal roof. As the bridge crew worked through those orders Trey familiarized himself with the population distribution patterns. There were settlements on several continents, with yellow seas separating them. They were toxic, as far as Humans were concerned, but the clouds in the atmosphere were water-based and raining pure down on several sites, making for what looked like a wet planet aside from a few ‘burnt’ patches that were filled with sand dunes.

Trey’s face blanked as he took a second look at those deserts…realizing they weren’t natural. The pattern was recognizable to someone who had seen the results of orbital bombardment on numerous occasions throughout the lizard war, and whatever had hit the planet here had been ordinance on a far greater magnitude than what Star Force used. So it wasn’t with too much surprise when the Ma’kri crew told him that there were subsurface traces of technology beneath those deserts.

Without any more evidence he could already guess what had happened. Someone had blasted the hell out of these Protovic and only a few managed to survive, with their civilization regrowing but in a very primitive fashion. When you lost your engineers, doctors, scientists, and fabricators all your ‘common’ tech suddenly became out of reach to the average person. Within a generation such things were lost from the common cultural awareness, and when the originals died off the eradication of the previous civilization was complete, leaving these roots to grow in whatever fashion they could, in this case being a collection of small villages spread across most of the planet but without even an attempt at a large city.

“Not what you were expecting?” the Captain asked.

“Another puzzle piece,” Trey commented. “And those blast zones add another dimension to this mystery.”

“You think this was original damage or something later on from the locals?”

“Good question. Whoever attacked here had one big boomstick at their disposal. Assemble a ground team and keep constant scans going. I don’t know how long we’ll stick around, but I want to give the analysts back home as much data to work with as we can.”

“I assume you’re going down as well?”

Trey gave him a dumb look, then pointed his thumb at his chest. “Archon…duh.”

“With the collection team,” he amended.

“I may end up roaming, but we’re starting out together.”

“How big of a team?”

“Three dropships, with everyone that’s not ship’s crew. I don’t think anyone wants to sit up here and twiddle their thumbs. They came here to work, so let’s get to it.”

“As you wish,” the Captain said, turning around and typing into a terminal attached to his own command chair.

Trey raised an eyebrow, not sure if that was random or a Princess Bride reference, then headed back to his quarters to grab his armor.

3

Trey knelt on the surface of the planet feeling the heavy gravity tugging on his muscles. 1.6g wasn’t something that was going to stress him much, given the high gravity training that he was used to putting an hour or two in at up to 5.5g, but his team he was worried about a bit. To that end he put a time limit on their excursion and kept the dropships close by so they could get a breather inside the regular gravity when needed.

Dipping a hand down into the sand, the Archon ran his fingers through it and got a feel for the magnitude of the weapons damage to the planet’s surface. This wasn’t ground up rock as much as it was vaporized material flash frozen into particulates. A few weapon systems he knew of had this result, and none of them were common within the galaxy. Hit a target with enough power and you essentially got a bowl of confetti as a result, and given the 160 miles of desert that he was kneeling in this place had been hit by either something massive or a lot of smaller things in repetition…which he assumed was the case given the lack of a single blast crater.

“Archon.”

“What is it, Captain?” Trey answered the comm call.

“We’ve currently got our sensors focused on your location and have discovered an anomaly. Approximately two miles to the northwest there are deep residue of what appears to be structures. Not much left, but they stretch for miles.”

“How deep?”

“A little over 4 miles.”

Trey frowned. “I didn’t pack a shovel that big.”

“No. We’d need a proper digging team to get down there. I just wanted to confirm that there was more than mud huts here in the past.”

“Thank you…is it all sand that deep?”

“One moment,” he said, followed by a long pause. “Difficult to tell, but our best guess is yes.”

“That’s a lot of city destroyed.”

“Adding in surface features.”

“You reading anything more than foundations?”

“Impossible to say without a closer scan.”

“I need to know. Bring her in low.”

“How low?”

“Close enough for me to toss pebbles at.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“The ship’s designed to do it.”

“But…”

“But what? Afraid the natives are going to shoot arrows at you?”

“They have arrows?”

“No clue yet, there are none around here.”

“If we squash you, don’t blame me.”

“No promises,” Trey said, cutting the comm and standing up. A lot of naval officers didn’t like bringing starships into atmosphere but Paul had proven long ago that it wasn’t a big deal. The gravity at the surface was almost identical to that in orbit, and unless you had hurricane-caliber winds or tried to descend too fast you weren’t going to have trouble as long as you had a veteran pilot. Atmosphere did cause random movements for a ship no matter how large where vacuum didn’t, but it was more a fear thing than a real danger. Technically a seda could come down and hover a meter off the ground if it wanted to, and a Ma’kri was much more nimble than that.

What it did do was burn fuel at a constant rate. Not a lot, but gravity drives were typically used in large bursts with lots of rest time in between. Hover rates weren’t bad, but not knowing how long they’d be in position left the crews unable to calculate fuel expenditure beforehand. The Ma’kri had more than enough to accomplish this little shore visit, and getting the sensors a bit closer to their target would enhance the accuracy, hopefully enough to know whether or not a return trip with a digging crew was warranted.

“Archon,” one of the analysis team said, stepping up beside him holding a satchel of equipment that was dragging on her shoulder heavily. “The sand is partially organic in origin, but there are significant traces of technological residue within it.”

“There also appears to be some foundations left buried deep under the sand, according to orbital sensors.”

“Salvageable?”

“Don’t know yet. I’m having them take a closer look. Anything on the weaponry used?”

“The damage is ancient, so we can only extrapolate, but it appears to be similar to a vertron inhibitor.”

“Based on?”

“The crystallization patterns. There are defects that time hasn’t completely washed away yet. This entire desert may have once been lush forest, given the organic traces still present, but the more recent ones concern me.”

“Oh?”

“There is non-crystalized organic traces, minute, but probably from lifeforms inhabiting here after the planetary damage.”

“What kind?”

“The burrowing kind,” she said with a cringe, looking up at his opaque golden faceplate.

He remained silent for a moment, then a head twitch brought his vision back on her. “There’s nothing in the immediate area.”

“The compaction rates are all wrong. This sand has been churned over the years, I’m almost sure of it.”

“So a lot of burrowers?”

“Or environment turbulence. We’ll have to compare to bedrock scans to be sure.”

“How much more time do you need here?”

“Another hour should do. We want to be thorough.”

“Alright. Take your time and I’ll watch out for worm sign.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How you doing with the gravity?”

“Getting my workout in for the day. That’s another thing, the gravity should be compacting the sand more than it is.”

“Add another mystery to the list.”

“We might be able to figure this one out,” she said, spinning a circle in the sand with her heel as she turned around and walked back towards one of the sample sites spread around a quarter mile perimeter from the dropships.

Trey held position, watching with both his eyes and his psionics to make sure his unarmored team came to no harm. They were literally in the middle of nowhere with only some short dunes on the horizon around them. The nearest village was over a hundred miles away on the outskirts of the desert, leaving them alone on a cloudy day that would probably keep the Ma’kri invisible despite its size.

Trey waited for it to come down, watching the battlemap and his team for the moment when the clouds pushed down above them like a wall of cotton candy headed for the ground. They never got there, with the hull plates of the dark grey Ma’kri forcing the white puffs aside as the 6 kilometer long warship appeared to pancake the ground nearby them to the immediate west with almost all of his team physically jerking as the sudden arrival spooked them.

When they were finished collecting their samples the Ma’kri had already returned to orbit, having confirmed at least a few levels of infrastructure buried deep beneath the sands. What condition it was in was unknown, but Trey hated to leave without finding out what it was. Coming back on a second trip just for this might be a huge waste of time or a vital discovery, he couldn’t be sure, but digging down to that level by hand wasn’t going to happen either.

The three dropships stayed together rather than splitting up so Trey could keep an eye on everyone, which amounted to a 63 man team of techs and a couple of commandos. They could have babysat the other dropships but right now the Archon didn’t want to let anyone out of his sight until he got a feel for the planet. Primitive civilizations weren’t the same as being safe, and he didn’t want to risk harm to any of his team from unknown factors just yet. Once they got a feel for what the planet had in store for them they’d split up, but right now they needed eyes on the locals and at least one tissue grab.

To that end he had the dropships skim the surface behind a ridgeline all the way up to a nearby village where they were going to land out of sight and head in on foot.

“Wait,” he said before they’d gotten to their landing zone, a couple of kilometers out. “Full stop,” he ordered the pilots. “There’s someone below us. Hover here until I say otherwise and open the rear hatch,” he said, leaving the cockpit in a rush. Trey pushed by the others in the ship’s corridors then ran out the hatch before it was even fully open, dropping a dozen meters down into the treetops and letting the supple branches slow his fall. He hit one not so supple one and tipped head over heels as he was crashing through the leaves, but he managed to create a telekinetic ‘crash bag’ beneath him that cushioned his landing and let him twist over to land a knee on the moist ground, sinking in a couple of inches before he was gone in a flash, running through the forest in pursuit of the mental signature he’d detected.

It was also running, probably scared out of its mind, but Trey figured the first meet and greet would go better with a single individual than with a crowd whose paranoia could feed off of each other’s. Running in the high gravity slowed Trey a bit, but he was surprised at how fast this individual was moving. Terror-inspired adrenaline aside, they weren’t letting the Archon catch up as rapidly as he hoped, with him having to eventually use his Ikrid to get the person to slow down before they made it all the way back to the village.

He’d hoped to just cause a sense of fatigue, but given the distance and his own physical effort apparently he doped the person up too much, for they fell down and didn’t get back up. That allowed him to catch up quickly, but it wasn’t what he intended.

When he did finally get to their position the person still wasn’t moving, and he began to sense pain before he got within Pefbar range and could see through the brush. The person was on the ground with their ankle wedged between two roots. Rather than burst through the leaves and freak them out even more, he put the person to sleep then walked up into view, pushing a branch aside and seeing a glowing orange/green Protovic female dressed in a short skirt and bandoleer top…with her ankle bent in an unnatural angle.

“Ah crap,” Trey said, walking over to her in his golden armor and using a combination of fingers and telekinesis to pull the roots apart and release her foot that was wrapped up in a sandal that was more straps than anything. Definitely not a running shoe, which made her speed even more impressive.

Trey disconnected his left glove, taking it off and making skin to skin contact with her ankle. Hacking into her nervous system he got a better feel for the injury and was able to confirm a broken bone. More of a crack than a clean break, but not good regardless. Feeling like a moron, he checked the perimeter and ensured that they were alone, then focused on a seldom used psionic that had been a pain in the butt to acquire called Haemra.

Kip had been the first one to achieve it, and it hadn’t been training related. The ascension prompt only triggered when one was trying to heal an injury, so whenever someone wanted to share the ability with another they had to give themselves at least a long, nasty knife blade cut on their arm or plasma burn. Then while healing it they had to get to the proper ascension prompt that would trigger the other person in the ‘share’ to ascend. And while that was bad enough, if you missed it the first time you had to repeat injuring yourself until they got it.

It was a Tier 2 ability and not that catastrophic with regards to cascade issues. Trey had got it on the first try and only missed a day of training. He made that choice rather than put Aaron through an extra injury to share it with him. Hurting yourself like that was basically against everything that Star Force operated off of, but since this was a cheat process they couldn’t blame the V’kit’no’sat for it. Sharing had never been intended, so the Archons made the gruesome choice to inflict the injuries in order to share the ability that was a much more powerful version of Sesspik.

Haemra could be used on yourself for rapid healing, as Aaron had done when he’d triggered Trey’s ascension, or it could be used on someone else to heal them in a lesser fashion. Skill work was huge with this one, and if you weren’t getting injured or helping with other people’s injuries you couldn’t train it. That said, it was extremely valuable to have and Trey was glad for it in this circumstance, otherwise he would have had to take this native all the way back up to the Ma’kri for several days to get this break healed up properly.

Using the physical contact, Trey took control of the Protovic’s body and essentially ordered it to start regrowing in the proper places. Since she wasn’t Human the control was less, because Trey was less familiar with their physiology, but they were among the closest to Humans out of all the races Star Force had and he was able to trigger the necessary grow process…which was incredibly painful at the rate he was pressing it. It was a form of flash tissue growth, like his own ascensions, though slower and in this case not much additional material was needed to reseal the break.

That said, it was preferable that she be unconscious during the process…else it’d feel like he was doing anything but fixing her ankle.

It took him and his feeble skills more than half an hour to fix her up, during which he ordered the dropships to set down nearby wherever they could find a gap in the trees. One of the medtechs came out and took a tissue sample from the woman, several actually and Trey healed the not so small one on her arm. He glared at the tech who’d taken it, but didn’t say anything as she retreated back to the dropship. Another 8 minutes and that bloody spot was healed up and he brought her back to a semi-conscious state, attempting to get some information from her mind before waking her up entirely.

The rest of the analysis team was restricted to the dropships for this meet and greet, but Trey did have one commando with him watching his back while he did his mind meld thing. He wasn’t surprised to find that these natives didn’t speak any language that he was familiar with, so he was going to have to try and piece together some form of communication starting with mental assurances that he wasn’t an enemy.

He kept his hand on her wrist as he woke her up, then felt her jerk physically and mentally when she saw his gold helmet beside her. She tried to run but he held her firm, all the while sending the telepathic calming urges that did little to quiet her paranoia. After a few seconds of her flailing around and finding her vocal chords weren’t working, he went ahead and froze her body in place too, only allowing her head to operate under her own power while he had a lock on the rest of her.

“Viron, take your helmet off. I can’t calm her down.”

The commando took a step forward and knelt before where she was sitting on the ground, then he hit the release on his helmet that had it pull back from his face to a knot on the back of his neck, revealing his purple/green glowing Protovic face.

“I doubt anything I say will matter,” the commando said, looking straight at her and smiling, but talking to Trey.

“Just let her hear your voice. I can use that.”

“Alright then. Relax sweetheart, we’re not going to hurt you.”

“I didn’t say hit on her.”

“Why not if it’ll calm her down?” he answered dryly. “I hope you’re watching the surrounding area. I’m surprised she hasn’t screamed yet.”

“I’m stopping her from talking, and only somewhat watching. This is taking a lot of brain power.”

“You holding her body too?”

“Have to.”

“Release a bit if you want her to calm down,” he said, holding steady and just looking at her scared face as he talked.

“I’ll try to keep her to a whisper, but I’m not sure how well this is going to work,” Trey said, loosening her speaking ability enough that she began babbling rapidly, but quietly. Viron talked to her, though neither understood the other, but Trey began to pick up on a few connections that allowed him to send thoughts into her mind that she recognized. Concepts, not words, and after more than an hour she relaxed enough that he was able to release his hold on her.

That was a mistake, for when he did she saw his hand and freaked out again when she realized he was an alien. Trey mentally froze her and glanced at the commando. “This is going to take forever.”

“Not my fault you’re ugly,” he said with a smirk. “Can she still see and hear me?”

“Not right now, I’ve got her in popsicle mode.”

“Let her see me again…after you do a quick check of the perimeter.”

Trey pushed out his Ikrid while maintaining his hold on her, looking for other nearby minds.

“No one has left the village yet. I think I better keep my helmet on though,” he said, with the woman suddenly back awake and babbling like she’d never stopped.

Viron waved a hand in front of her in a calming gesture, then stood up and took a step back. His armor peeled apart and he walked out of it, knelt down again, and took her other hand in his own, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

“Oh brother,” Trey commented.

“Work with me on this,” Viron insisted, lowering her hand but maintaining a grip on it as her eyes flicked from him to the alien and back again rapidly. “Do you need to hold onto her?”

“It increases my ability.”

“Can you let go for a few minutes? And just keep her voice in a whisper, let go of everything else.”

“Alright, we’ll try it your way. If I have to I can knock her out again remotely.”

“Do it,” Viron said, with the woman suddenly getting control of her body back as the alien released her. She scrambled away from him but Viron still had hold of her hand and pulled her over to him, dragging her onto her feet and away from the Human where he held her in a firm, but polite embrace.

“Relax little beauty, you’re among friends.”

Trey rolled his eyes but went along with it, for some reason it was working and starting to calm her down again.

4

November 11, 2969

System 39282

Planet 7 (Protovic Civilization)

Over the past month Viron had made quite the impression on the single village that the expedition team had made contact with. He couldn’t speak their language, and vice versa, but that didn’t diminish the effect his visage had on them. With the help of some linguists that Trey had brought with him, and a whole lot of psionic influence, they’d established some basic words but most communication occurred through the Archon in the form of thoughts and feelings. He was being used as a translator more than the translators as the villagers wondered who these magical visitors were and word spread to the nearby settlements, with pilgrimages being made by their neighbors to come see the rumored miracles.

The fear in the villagers was now gone, and that had taken some doing. It wasn’t brainwashing technically, but a lot of emotional correction on Trey’s part to get a few of these Protovic to the point of being comfortable around him and especially Viron. Like a snowball, once he got it rolling the sentiments spread and any new arrivals got an education from the others in that there was nothing to fear, especially when Trey was healing up a number of small injuries they had. Word of that was beginning to spread as well, with a few badly injured individuals being brought to him from surrounding villages in the hopes of him healing, or in some cases, saving their lives.

He didn’t try to work on all of them, deferring to his medtechs and letting them treat the Protovic with equipment from the dropships and eventually, once they were trusted enough, they’d landed one of them right in the middle of the village to use as a makeshift medbay. The cultural exchange continued from there with his team moving around freely taking samples and adding to their very limited linguistic database. Some of the villagers helped out, but most were just watching in awe. Trey was now able to remove his helmet without sparking fear in the Protovic, for now they saw him as a great healer and asset rather than a threat.

Fortunately they didn’t know how much of a badass he was, otherwise they never would have calmed down.

He’d dispatched other small teams across the planet taking samples from uninhabited regions and doing the boring legwork of digging up data for analysts to use later while he got to play Doctor Who with the villagers, with his psionics working as well or better than psychic paper. He just hated not being able to have a meaningful conversation with them…and the fact that they were living in horrid conditions.

He’d seen worse, by far, but they were so primitive and ignorant that it hurt, yet they were eager to learn despite the road bumps. Cultural clashes were occurring every day, but after Trey got to the root of the problem and literally jumped into their heads to wash away the resistance they began to learn and learn fast…so much so that new arrivals began to turn on the locals for violating their cultural protocol.

That was when Trey had to step in, pulling a Vader on the first beating he observed and telekinetically grabbing and holding aloft the outsider that was issuing the appropriate response based on their local culture…or whatever other excuse you liked. It was still unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. When the locals saw the magic that the Archon was capable of, above and beyond the healing, the obvious protests stopped but he could still feel the searing looks of those that considered this whole village to be heresy.

“Where have you been?” Trey asked Viron when he came back up into the dropship where the Archon was sitting chewing on a snack bar while the crowd outside stayed a respectful 4 meters back beyond the line he had drawn in the sand as he had instructed them to do. They were not to come into the dropship or even touch it without permission, and so far there hadn’t been too many violations of that edict.

“Impregnating some locals,” the Commando said deadpan, walking in out of armor. Dangerous as that was it had become imperative that the villagers interact with him on a more personal level than the hardened battle plates allowed. “What’s up?”

“How do you feel about a camping trip?”

“Here or somewhere else on the planet?”

“Here. I want to bring down supplies and send the Ma’kri back for support. We need a digging team and…a lot of other things.”

“And you don’t want to leave?”

“I’m worried about what will happen if we do. Take away our protection and I get the feeling that some of the outsiders would torch this place and everyone in it.”

“I have been getting some strange looks from them, but I’m not in their heads like you are. You think a fight’s coming?”

“They’re too afraid with us here, me in particular. But if we leave I’m not sure what will happen, but I fear something bad.”

“You want more time to work on the other villages before we pack up for good?”

“Not exactly.”

“We can’t stay here forever. If a fight’s coming we can only protect them to a point…unless you want to take these villagers with us back to the ADZ.”

Trey tapped a finger on his own head. “Now you’re thinking…but too small.”

Viron looked at him for a moment, then his glowing purple eyes widened. “The whole planet?”

“Why not? We can’t fit them on the Ma’kri, but after processing 3 trillion Veliquesh the 428,000 on this planet will be a piece of cake.”

“Just like that? We take them away from their homes without even asking them if they want to go?”

“Annexing this planet is out of the question. Too far away and we’d be dependent on The Nexus grid point system.”

“Not what I meant.”

Trey sighed and gestured out the open dropship hatch to the villagers standing there watching them talk but unable to understand their words. “Look at their living conditions. They’re dying from injuries and illnesses that we can squash with a single medpack. Their huts are sturdy, I’ll give them that, but they’re little more than crude tents. Their food supply is partly meat, which is unacceptable, and pathetic beyond that. Leaving them here would be cruel.”

“I can’t argue with that, but it is their world. Shouldn’t we at least ask them?”

“Feel free to explain what Star Force and the ADZ are. And even if you convince some of them to go, what about the rest that are too scared or stubborn to come. More importantly, what of their children? Should they have to live like this because of their parents? And what of those yet to be born? We were lucky being born into Star Force. These people weren’t, but we can fix that problem right now…or in a handful of months anyway.”

Viron shook his head. “I don’t think stunning them is the way to go about it.”

“For the grumpy ones it will be, but yeah the rest will need to be handled differently. You’re their favorite, so…”

“I still can’t talk to them, so what do you want me to do?”

“I’d like you to volunteer for a follow up assignment…noncombat.”

“This isn’t exactly combat, you know. What do you have in mind?”

“A friendly face to walk them through indoctrination. Even if they want to go it’s going to be traumatic to them.”

“Do we have facilities to handle them?”

“If not they can be built quickly enough for this small a number. The travel lag will afford that. I’m putting together a report to be sent back with instructions. The return convoy won’t come until everything is set in motion, though the digging crews will come immediately. I want a look at those ruins before we pack up shop.”

“How do I babysit 400,000 people?”

“For those who want to come, personally. For all the rest via recordings. Better to have you speaking their language than a Human or even another Protovic. The more familiarity the better.”

“You’re right about this, but it’s still going to be a punch in the gut that I hate to give these people. They don’t deserve that…some of them anyway. A few I wouldn’t mind punching the old fashioned way.”

“Do you know a better way?”

“Other than claiming this planet and upgrading them here, no. How much would it cost to do it that way, as a transition, with us abandoning this world eventually after they adjusted?”

“Time.”

“Time?”

“No matter how we handle this there are going to be transitional pains. Do we let the newborns of the next month be raised in these conditions or do we send them straight back to the ADZ or a twin maturia built here? Either way their parents are going to throw a fit. If we camp out here and do it the slow way we’re holding back the next generation in favor of easing the transition of those that are already here. If someone has to take the hit, better it be the adults.”

“True, but something about this still sucks.”

“We didn’t put these people in this situation, and they’ve done well to just survive whoever attacked them here. If you get a thorn jammed into your foot it needs to come out, but pulling it out is more painful whereas leaving it in is less so.”

“Healing doesn’t always feel good,” Viron agreed, “but it has to happen regardless.”

“There are so few Protovic here that we can evacuate them all straight back to the ADZ. In this case, their primitive state is to their advantage, because we can’t do this with the Shanplenix or other more advanced Protovic civilizations.”

“Because they’d shoot us if we tried?”

“Pretty much. And on that point, when the day comes, I’d put your armor on. Those arrows they use aren’t plasma rifles, but they can still do damage.”

“Ok, bigger question…what about our workouts?”

Trey cringed. “Makeshift setup here. Lots of running, sparring, and making do until the Ma’kri gets back.”

“You’re willing to put up with that?”

“To bring these people back with us? Yes.”

“Alright then. Consider me volunteered.”

“I figured you would…if only to spend more time with your girlfriends.”

Viron glanced outside. “I will admit, I’ve never been this popular before.”

“And you’re going to get a whole lot more popular when the rest of the planet gets to know you.”

“Yeah, but then they’ll be integrated into Star Force and realize there are a lot more handsome Protovic out there.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Trey said, finishing his snack with a swig of water from a bottle.

“So ordered,” Viron said with a smirk as he headed back out of the dropship to mingle with the natives and continue adding to Star Force’s limited database of their language and culture. They were going to need all they could get if they were really going to try and create an indoctrination program for these people in a matter of months. He knew there were experts for that sort of thing, but mastering their language was going to take time no matter how many Archons they had to help them with their psionics. Telling someone to do something was totally different than explaining concepts, and to do that you needed to understand the finer details of the way these people communicated.

It was those finer details that were totally lost on Viron now, but he’d been teaching these Protovic some of his own words and gestures. That wouldn’t work for the entire planet’s population, so whoever Trey called for was going to have their work cut out for them. If they wanted him to be their mouthpiece so be it. He’d do what he could, if only to make the transition a little less traumatic on his new friends.

“Got a package for you,” a junior tech said, walking into Vortison’s research chamber. It was a private room with more displays than actual experiments, but there were numerous racks of canisters containing tissue samples from every race in Star Force, the ADZ, and as many outside it as they had collected to date, including the more recent ones from the Shanplenix.

“Oh?” the geneticist said, turning away from his holograms and looking at the box she was carrying with both hands.

“Number 4,” the medtech said with eagerness as she set it down on a nearby table and let him open it.

When Vortison pulled the lid open he saw dozens of smaller canisters that held tissue samples, along with data chips stacked in racks beside them.

“Where did this come from?”

“An expedition into The Nexus.”

“Which variant?” he asked as he pulled out several canisters and took them over to an empty rack on the wall.

“Protovic Orange, I’m told.”

“Orange? Do we have a map location?”

“I assume it’s on the chips.”

“Begin downloading them and find it for me. Have Jenson and Melly help you. I want it prepped to our purposes as soon as possible.”

“On it,” she said, scooping up the data chips and heading to another room in the lab.

“Alright, Orange,” Vortison said, holding up one of the tiny canisters in front of him and looking in through the clear cube at the spec in the center. “Let’s see what secrets you hold.”

“Wait, say that again?” Clark insisted, holding up a finger in front of him for emphasis.

Vortison cringed. “I…was…wrong.”

“See, that’s what I thought I heard. But that can’t be true, you guys never make mistakes.”

The medtech sighed. “Not so much as a mistake than I was looking in the wrong places and making unwarranted assumptions. Label it as you like, but I’ve learned that the 8 variants are not identical copies with different easter egg puzzle pieces. The physical attributes of the Orange variant are too high for gravity alone to account for. Once I realized that I began reassessing previous data on the others and found some minor, but significant differences.”

“Kind of counterintuitive there.”

“They’re ‘minor’ until they become ‘significant.’ I think, and be aware I could be wrong again, that they’re a timelock. The Orange variant samples that I was sent indicate that their lock has been opened, thus activating physical upgrades. The Purple and Red variants have not been so unlocked, but I have been able to identify that they are there and they are not strength upgrades. Purple has a latent sensory package and Red has a higher cognitive level akin to your Sav. Not anywhere in that magnitude, but similar in structure. It’s hard to say without actually having active samples to analyze, but the coding is similar enough to your psionics tissue that I’m fairly certain I’m interpreting it correctly.”

“You’re saying they’ve got a suppressed version of psionics?”

“On a much lesser level, yes. And each variant has something different. Orange has increased strength, speed, flexibility…not exactly a traditional psionic but somewhat similar to your Kex.”

“Not mine. You haven’t found the trigger for that one yet,” Clark pointed out.

“Your in the plural. They’re similar to V’kit’no’sat psionics in that they are enhancements, so you might want to refer to them as such going forward.”

“What about the Shanplenix?”

“They have one too, but it’s too unfamiliar for me to isolate…yet. It’s there and locked down, but I need more time to figure out what it is.”

“And you’re sure it’s different from the others?”

“Positive.”

“Are these ‘enhancements’ shared once all the puzzle pieces come together?”

Vortison shook his head with a rueful smile. “That’s the curious thing. I have a hunch that the transformative code will give an individual all of them in addition to other things, but as is they do not factor in to it. This is code that is complete and present in each variant as of now, and thanks to some of the medical scans made of the Orange variant I can conclude that the enhancement comes along with the activation key.”

“Activation key?”

“Remember when I said that even if all the variants came together there would have to be a means of sharing their code?”

Clark frowned. “Timelock or earned advancement?”

“An interesting point. Whatever the case, Orange has achieved it and is spreading a virus-like key that will transfer to all other Protovic that come in contact with them.”

“Do we need a quarantine?”

Vortison bit his lip as he thought. “No, I don’t think so. Even if we had all 8 variants the transformation can’t trigger without them all being active. Only Orange is so far, and we only have 4 of the 8 located.”

“Any problems with integrating Orange in with our Protovic faction?”

“Other than them being stronger and faster than average? No.”

“How much superior are they?”

“I don’t have enough data to say for sure, but I’d say they might have 50 or 100 years head start on other Commandos if they chose to train in that discipline...where base stats are concerned. Skills will be unaffected, unless they have a greater aptitude. I’ll need training data on them as soon as you have any.”

“You’ll get it. This mystery keeps getting deeper the further we dig.”

“We’ve got something big here, Clark. Maybe not V’kit’no’sat big, but in the ball park would be my bet.”

“Big good or big bad?”

Vortison shook his head. “There’s only one way to find out.”

5

July 19, 2970

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Brad-050 sat in his tower-top office with his feet up on his desk looking out the panoramic windows at the Protovic planet. It’d been 117 years since he’d taken on the task of building a Protovic faction within Star Force, and in all that time he’d never left them. It had been his job to get them started, but unlike the origin story of the other factions this one had seen him continue to guide the Protovic forward personally rather than from afar, such as Larissa had done with the Bsidd. They were pretty much independent now, though she kept tabs on them and helped them out from time to time.

The Protovic had developed quite far over the past century, but Brad still felt like they weren’t out of the woods yet, and not because of any lingering problems with the Veliquesh. That civilization and culture had been destroyed completely, but his Protovic were still young compared to the rest of Star Force and he never felt like he could leave them on their own. He’d grown more attached to them than he had his own Clan Beyond, which was about the same size to date. Unlike the Bsidd or Kiritas, the Protovic didn’t reproduce annoyingly fast and the vast majority of the 3 trillion Veliquesh that were rescued and imprisoned in the Broj System had never left there, dying out within the prisons when they refused to earn their freedom or attain their self-sufficiency.

Some that did had went to the ADZ, into Axius rather than to Aphat and the new Protovic faction. None that he knew of had gone to the independent Protovic, for they had wanted none of the Veliquesh to coexist in their society given the horrors that had occurred. A good number were still in Broj, on the Axius colony on Onyx where the prisons had been built and then slowly dismantled as they were no longer needed, leaving Brad with a far smaller population than most people thought given how many Veliquesh had been captured and brought back from that war.

Clan Beyond currently had a mixed population of 5 billion and was one of the midlevel Clans as far as numbers went. Clan Star Fox was the true juggernaut, with over half a trillion members at present and rising fast, made up mostly of Kiritas, while the overall Human population in Star Force had only risen to 23 trillion. They were still the minority within the empire, with the Kiritas outside the Clans numbering 189 trillion, the Kiritak at 237 trillion, Axius at 431 trillion and the Bsidd at 598 trillion, who were growing more rapidly than any other faction with resources from across the empire being funneled into creating the infrastructure to hold them all.

Growth within the ADZ had been moving at a furious pace the last 200 years for both Star Force and others, with a decent percentage of that still being made up by immigrants fleeing the lizards and other dangers. How Davis had managed to keep the cities building fast enough to hold them all was still a mystery to Brad, but he knew that the Kiritas/Kiritak populations, along with the Bsidd, were handled in a nonrandom fashion, meaning that all reproduction occurred under controlled situations and the number of eggs fertilized was the exact number that Star Force wanted, else those two races would have spread beyond the empire’s ability to feed and house.

Other populations like Humans, Calavari, and the Protovic reproduced randomly. All infants, or in the case of Protovic egg sacks, were taken into maturias but no population control was in effect. Sexual excursions and the choice of individuals wanting to reproduce dictated those numbers, meaning that Brad’s Protovic population 4.8 billion wasn’t going to be expanding rapidly. They weren’t a powerhouse in the empire and wouldn’t be in the foreseeable future, definitely not population wise, but Brad wanted to carve them out a niche of their own and still felt like the task was undone, hence his staying in direct control of them longer than even he had initially anticipated.

But today he was glad he was still here, for there was an issue on the horizon that required a trailblazer’s touch. Trey had reported back the situation the Protovic civilization he’d found in The Nexus was in and that he wanted them all moved into Star Force. 428,000 wasn’t a small number, but given the populations both he and Star Force were used to dealing with it was almost an afterthought. Fortunately not all of the facilities in Broj were dismantled, and he’d already ordered some of them to be prepped for the incoming ‘Oranges’ but with a different indoctrination program that he was still in the process of making.

These Protovic weren’t prisoners, but they did have a culture that needed eliminating…that being of the primitive mindset. Without a full linguistic write up that Trey had said would be forthcoming it was going to be difficult, if not impossible to fashion a full program, but he knew from his experience with the Veliquesh what the first few necessary steps would be.

Instead of isolation, these Protovic were going to be kept together in small groups for the duration of their indoctrination, save for those labeled troublesome. Brad was keeping some of the isolation wings as is in case they needed to be sent there, for he wouldn’t have one person holding up another’s progress if they proved disruptive. That said, if a group was committed to making the transition it would sometimes be preferable to have them move through the process together…in theory anyway. That was something he’d never been able to experiment with during the Veliquesh indoctrination, though in their case it was more about unlearning what they’d already learned.

For these Protovic primitives he figured it would mostly be a matter of teaching them what they’d never been exposed to and Trey said efforts to do that on site were already going well with a good portion of them, so he’d let them keep familiar faces around while they learned of Star Force and the way they lived, for that was what indoctrination was. Without it they’d be fish out of a barrel if they were just thrown into the Protovic society here on Nym.

Brad was willing and a bit eager to get his hands on another group of Protovic and to meet the challenge of bringing them into the fold, but it also opened up a larger question, and that was about their race in general. He’d been following the discoveries and questions flowing out of the research being done in Sol but the biggest question for him was whether or not they were going to start collection Protovic from across the galaxy and bringing them into Star Force?

Groups like the Shanplenix weren’t joining, though a small delegation had been sent to learn about Star Force via becoming residents in an Axius colony. More like obvious spies than anything, Star Force had welcome them in like many other refugees but Brad had no doubt they’d be filing reports about everything and everyone Star Force had access to and filling out more regions on the Shanplenix maps than they’d had to date.

That wasn’t a problem, for Star Force and the ADZ in general was an open society where information wasn’t withheld, but as of yet there were no actual migrations coming from the Shanplenix and he didn’t think there would be going forward, though he hadn’t written it off entirely. Immigrants from the independent Protovic had come over to join the Star Force faction in a continuous trickle of numbers, some coming through Axius first, but others specifically requesting to be allowed to join his people here on Nym.

They all had their own indoctrinations to come through, even those coming out of Axius that already were part of Star Force. What Brad had built here was unique, as was each faction, so he had a playbook already written as how to send people through their indoctrination cycle and get them up to speed so they could hit the ground running when they arrived here. All indoctrination facilities were in other systems, mainly Broj, and he intended that to remain a constant, meaning that only full Protovic citizens were allowed on Nym so there would be no ‘newbs’ around to slow things down.

He didn’t know how long it would take for these Oranges to get here, but he was certain they would and any stubborn ones would be accommodated elsewhere. They would not be confined to the prisons that most of the Veliquesh had lived out their lives in, but if there were some Oranges that didn’t want to become part of Star Force he’d make sure they lived better lives than they had back in their primitive villages. Brad would consider them a ward of the Protovic faction and leave the door open for them joining the rest of them on Nym at some point if they later made the choice, but he expected most of them to be eager to learn, based on Trey’s reports, and that meant a whole new avenue for population growth might be knocking on the trailblazer’s door.

As the search for more Protovic continued Brad was being fed the intel coming in even though he wasn’t handling any aspect of the searches and he knew that the Protovic colonies were starting to pop up like weeds on the map. There were at least rumors all the way from the home Voku territory out to beyond the Preema, and the deeper they dug, with currency rewards made public for any tips that resulted in a positive find, the more they were beginning to realize that there were Protovic spread all across this arm of the galaxy shotgun style.

Should they be inviting them to back to Star Force? They certainly couldn’t extend their borders out to them, at least not without creating supply problems. Yes, Star Force colonies were self-sufficient by design, but Davis kept them reigned in for a reason with the exception of the Tether. Star Force colonized regions rather than an individual system here and there, and Trey’s planet was a good example as of why. It was located within The Nexus’s domain, and Brad agreed they didn’t want to get into a potential conflict out there with no backing. Bringing these Oranges back was a good idea, but what about the others?

Should they offer it as an option? If they did he’d have to come up with a much more robust indoctrination program, for he couldn’t just let them move in here and make this into an Axius for the Protovic. That would undo a lot of what he had built, for they were a single unified faction with no exterior ties. Axius was a mix of more races and agendas than you could count, though after living there long enough they all tended to gel together, due in no small part to the enforced maturia system. Parents couldn’t raise their own offspring and pass on their bad habits, so long term problems tended to dissolve within Axius.

Brad didn’t want any of those problems coming here, but the more he learned about the Protovic the more he realized that they had been genetically engineered specifically to be reunited someday down the road. They still didn’t understand the particulars of that, but something big was going on here and he was sure that each of these long lost Protovic colonies were a seed put down to build or regenerate something very important sometime in the future.

Star Force was going to find out what that was, no matter how long the search took to find the other 4 variants. But even then, what he did with the Protovic faction was another matter, and it was days like today that he just sat in front of his office windows thinking for long blocks of time trying to figure out what the best way forward was, and what he wanted the Protovic to become within Star Force.

Right now they weren’t specialized. They had achieved economic self-sufficiency for the most part. Arc elements, Solari, Corovon, etc were still having to be shipped in, though he was in the process of locating a nearby system where he could put down a corovon mine. There were a few sites available, but he was still looking for the concentrations he wanted. There was none to be found on Nym, and only the barest of traces elsewhere in the system. Too small to be worth picking up, so he was going to need another source.

Right now he was importing it from the rest of Star Force and exporting very little. He’d wanted to go broadband and built up naval, aerial, mech, aquatic, and commando units of decent size from the get-go and had done the same with their industry. They were a ‘jack of all trades’ right now with nothing special about their faction, save for the robust commando tactics that their exoskeletons allowed. Other than that the rest of the factions did everything better than them, making the Protovic the backup band rather than a headliner.

Brad wanted to find them something to latch onto, but so far he hadn’t discovered it. Whatever these upgrades were could be their defining moment, but he wasn’t counting on that. It could also be something nasty that Star Force would need to wipe from their genome, so he was looking at it as a possible bonus rather than something he was planning on. Interesting to no end, but he still wanted to build up the Protovic in another way that he hadn’t quite put his finger on yet.

But regardless of what that path eventually became for them, he did need a higher population. He’d been tempted to offer incentives for reproduction, but didn’t want to reward such things. Getting laid and giving birth, even if it was to a fleshy egg sack, wasn’t exactly something of merit, just a function of biology. An important one for any civilization, granted, but with all of Star Force geared towards earning advancements the idea of giving rewards for reproduction didn’t feel right so he had never gone down that path. One needed to train to improve themselves in order to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency, not turn their body into a baby factory and wreck it by pumping out too many too fast and precluding any long training blocks.

Cloning was always an option, but one that Davis had warned against. He’d stated that Star Force was going to allow natural birthing procedures rather than trying to automate it, and they’d held to that with the development of each faction. For the Bsidd that didn’t mean much, for they laid eggs and that was the end of their natural procedure. In the case of Human and Calavari they carried their young internally until they were fully developed, then gave birth to functioning, albeit marginal, individuals.

The Protovic had the same procedure, only it was halved. They carried their young through the first phase of development, then gave birth to the egg sacks that operated independently through the final phase. Cloning, in this case, would involve bypassing that first stage and creating artificial wombs to grow the egg sacks in and, like Davis, he didn’t have a good feeling about that even if their biotech was to the point where that was possible.

But the more Protovic that he brought in from outside sources would mean more egg sacks that would then be fed into maturias, in addition to the individuals that had to go through indoctrination to enter. That would certainly help the Protovic’s population rate increase, but there was something appealing about the idea of gathering up the scattered remains of ‘lost’ colonies and rescuing them from their plights. Because, let’s face it, sending out or setting up colonies across space and letting them fend for themselves against who knows what was just plain cold.

Trey’s notes had said that these Oranges had once been a highly advanced civilization that had been blasted back into the stone ages. No one had come to help them, and the few that had survived had spawned the primitive people that he’d found and come to be friends with. In his gut Brad knew he wanted to bring in everyone like that they discovered, but what about the others?

He still wasn’t sure, and their independent Protovic ally wasn’t about to join Star Force. That had been established long ago and they were basically brothers sharing the same dorm room that was the ADZ. More than neighbors, but they weren’t going to be annexed into the empire. How many others out there should be, or would want to be? For that matter, how many of them were out there in the first place?

Brad had more questions than answers at this point, but the first Oranges should be reaching Broj within a month and he was curious to see how well they adapted and hoped he could learn enough from them to build a larger program to help reunite at least some of the scattered Protovic, regardless of whether or not they were able to collect a full-colored deck.

6

February 27, 3007

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Brad watched from the side of the sparring ring as one of his senior Protovic Commandos was taking on two of the Oranges in hand to hand combat and having a tough time at it, but moderately prevailing. He was the stronger of the three, but not by as much as he was used to. These Oranges were only a few years out of the maturia and yet the pair were giving him almost as much resistance as he could handle, with only his experience allowing him to take advantage of their coordination issues to let him get the best of them.

Undaunted, every time one of the Commandos in training were knocked down they’d spring back to their feet like a veteran, save for the fact they weren’t. Such reflexes and agility were typically reserved for those who had put in a century of solid training, but as Brad had seen for himself throughout their maturia development the Oranges were different from the rest of the Protovic and he was glad that he’d kept them all grouped together rather than mix the maturias, else there would have been problems.

All Protovic used the same standards, but he’d had to constantly revise the maturia program for the Oranges to take into account their physical superiority. Integrating them into the rest of his civilization was less of an issue, for there were other Protovic stronger than them but at the cost of years. A lot of the Oranges were leaping ahead in the Commando division because of their advantage, though the other segments of the military and society overall didn’t focus selectively on the physical skills were only moderately affected. More of a nice bonus to the skills they had to learn and develop, but with the Commandos there was an inequity involved that was resulting in the development of egos.

All of Star Force was predicated on earned advancement, which these Oranges were essentially skipping in the early stages. That gave them a false sense of superiority that Brad needed to quash while his Protovic civilization was still young. Give it enough time to develop some depth and this wouldn’t be an issue, but with very few veterans that could surpass the Oranges at present there was a lack of understanding on their part when they weren’t being given equal assignments and being treated like the younglings they were.

So Brad had brought the top 50 Oranges here for a lesson, beginning with his veterans showing them that they were still ahead of the newbs with orders from Brad to expose as many of the Oranges’ weaknesses as possible, both as a cure to their ego and as a way of making them solid enough that he could entrust them with some of the leadership positions. Right now Makron was doing a good job of proving that he could handle not one, but two of them at once, though what he was reading in the Oranges’ minds that were watching the sparring match and waiting their turn was not what he wanted.

They were finding excuses where they didn’t exist, lying to salve their egos…and those had to be removed, one way or another.

When Makron was finished with this pair he took a break and another veteran, this one a Red, went one on one with an Orange. Hadrick was younger than Makron, but still one of their top Commandos with more than 4 decades of combat experience against the lizards. He was part of a small unit that had fought in the Gvaris System alongside the Clans and was thoroughly ticked at the attitudes of some of the Oranges…which he was taking out on them now, though he couldn’t handle a 2v1 like Makron could.

He did take on three in a row, then one of the Oranges that hadn’t fought yet walked up to Brad and stared him down.

“If the point of this is to show that we’re not the best, you’re wasting your time, Archon. We already know that.”

“Do you?” Brad asked quizzically as the 50 Oranges, 12 Purples, and 6 Reds took notice and started taking a few steps closer as they listened.

The Orange, Benthral, nodded. “Yes we do. We’re close, but not there yet, though it’s only a matter of time.”

“Your advantage is a head start,” Brad corrected him. “Do not assume you will level up faster than the others.”

“But we already have,” Benthral countered.

“No, you passed through levels that you only had to work on a few skill areas to complete. Only now are you reaching levels where nearly everything requires an enhancement to achieve. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that you will level up through those any faster than the others, Protovic or other races alike.”

“We’re better than them,” the Orange insisted. “It’s just a matter of time until we hold all the top slots.”

Brad sighed and shook his head. “You think you know better than me?”

“I am wondering why you are missing the obvious,” he said respectfully.

“The Commando rankings, along with all others within the military, are designed to mark what you are capable of here and now. They are not determined by past actions, nor by future predictions. A level 10 Commando is the same as all other level 10s regardless of how many years it took them to get to that position. They measure the destination, not the length of the journey.”

“Our journeys are starting off on a more rapid pace that will continue past them,” Benthral said, pointing to the Protovic that had just finished defeating the other Oranges.

“You assume,” Brad insisted. “You may be right, you may be wrong. Do not count on anything or you will find yourselves in a world of trouble,” he said, addressing them all. “I have seen many Commandos, Archons even, advance rapidly through the levels to a point, then they plateau until they can find a way past it. Upgrading yourselves is not automatic, nor can you do the same things repetitively and get the same results. You constantly have to adapt and adjust to the challenges before you, and because of that you never know what tomorrow will bring.”

“But I can see words are mostly pointless right now. Your minds are made up. You are better than them, despite the fact that they just kicked your asses. Perhaps the level of ass kicking needs to be higher in order for you to absorb the lesson in it,” he said, pointing to the ring. “All of the Oranges, now. The veterans get to stand by and watch this one.”

There were several questioning glances on both sides as they moved, some away from the ring and others into it, packing it full of Oranges whose collective ego was stifling. Brad wanted to beat it out of them, but that wouldn’t work here. He had to embarrass them in order to get them self-analyzing.

The trailblazer walked to the side of the ring and stopped just outside it.

“Your mission is simple. Knock me to the ground and you win,” he said, then stepped inside and hesitated for a moment, raising his left hand and beckoning them forward with only his middle finger.

Before they could even register the insult he moved in a flash to his right and drove a palm into one of their chests, punching him backwards and into two others before playfully hopping back to his starting position.

“What? You don’t want to play? Or am I just too fast for your superior reflexes?”

One of the Oranges smirked, finding the sarcasm funny, and jogged towards Brad for a few steps…but the Archon didn’t respond to him. Instead he sidestepped him entirely, darting over to another Orange that was standing still and knocked his legs out from under him with a lightning quick leg sweep that came up into a stiffened knee that knocked another Orange onto his back with a blow to the chest.

“Come on guys, or are you just going to sit there and wait your turn. If you really think you have superior skills, then impress me.”

Egotistical as they were, these were still Star Force Protovic and they relished a challenge, suddenly reorganizing themselves into attack groups and communicating with hand signals to try and get a good angle on their opponent. It was rare when they had a chance to spar against a Human, let alone an Archon. The chance to go up against a trailblazer was rarer than rare, and he could sense they figured they had a chance if all 50 of them worked together.

He didn’t bother telling them in words that they didn’t, knowing that this was a lesson they had to learn directly through experience.

Making a conscious choice not to use his psionics, Brad gave a taunting laugh and hurled himself ahead and to the right, taking down three of the Oranges so fast the others barely had time to respond, then the Archon moved off and paused just long enough to laugh again, then he zipped to his left and knocked another down, ending with a slow, theatrical twirl that left him standing like a statue in partial bow.

“I’m getting bored, fellas,” he said as his face was down towards the ground, then he darted to his right and knocked down another pair, one with each hand as he drove palms into torso so fast and so hard they couldn’t have stayed on their feet even if they’d had time to prepare. “Any time now.”

That last taunt and his dance-like twirl with his hands spread wide spurred all 50 of them into a frenzy, coming at him from multiple directions. He responded with a yawn, covering his mouth with his left hand before whipping it around and grabbing the neck of one of the Oranges. He used the leverage there and tossed him across his body and into two others, knowing that his exoskeleton would keep his neck from snapping in the process. From there Brad made several sharp movements, dodging some of the incoming blows and landing a few of his own that spurted a body or two out above the crowd as the veterans looked on from out of bounds with varied expressions of humor and satisfaction.

The trailblazer would fight in a flash, then find a brief hole in their group and take a micropause long enough to throw another taunt before returning to fighting. He did it again and again, laughing while he was dodging and doing it literally right in their faces so much that the Oranges were starting to get mad. All 50 of them couldn’t even land a single blow to his body, let alone take him down to the ground or force him out of bounds. The spectacle continued for several gratifying minutes until he knocked several of them back long enough to give himself a bit of a podium to speak from.

“Enough,” he said, holding up a hand to keep the others back, then pointing to the spectators. “Let’s give you younglings some help, though I doubt it will do much good. All of you come at me, and remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow,” Brad said before lunging back into the Oranges and bowling a dozen of them over before offering another taunting laugh as he danced over their bodies and back into a gap in the crowded ring.

“Oh great,” Makron said, heading for the ring. “We are so going to get our asses kicked.”

“Probably,” Laantrel agreed, “but there’s only one of him. Try and grab an arm or leg when he hits you and we might get lucky.”

“Worth a try,” Makron said as he ran into the ring along with the other 17 veterans, making it a 68 v 1 with Brad continuing to laugh and taunt even though there was virtually no room left in the ring for him to hide in, yet he still found a calm moment here and there to gesture in mocking fashion.

“Come on, you fight like Gnar,” he said between ducking and dodging several attacks without hitting back. “Are you guys fast or what?”

Two of the veterans ran towards him with their arms interlocked into a clothesline…the best attempt yet, but he ducked underneath it by dropping down to his knees in a short slide, then kicking back at one of them to launch himself into a handstand that he immediately flipped out of. Acrobatics aside, the longer one spent inverted the more vulnerable they were, especially when he wasn’t using Pefbar to augment his situation awareness.

Brad dropped back to the mat with his butt kissing his heels as three arms swung above him, missing his head and giving him a good counterpunch opportunity, but he passed on it. He didn’t need these guys disoriented from body blows, he wanted them thinking and hearing his insults clearly, so he rolled out between two of them and ran a couple steps, avoiding their tackle so quick and smooth he barely brushed against their bodies on the way out.

“You…guys…are so…damn…slow,” he said, weaving in and out of them despite there being no visible room to maneuver, then he got to the side of the ring and almost comically knocked two out of bounds. “Oops…sorry,” he said, ducking back in and maneuvering for moments to utter a word or two between whiffs, “did you…want…to stay in?”

The two Protovic that got knocked, one a Red and the other an Orange, glanced at each other as they sat on the floor, both perturbed by the mocking, and got back up and moving into the ring again this time focused on getting the Human. Their rivalry temporarily forgotten, they worked together with hand signals they all had learned in their identical training and began to organize what had quickly become a rabble.

The coordination and sentiments spread quickly, with the veterans implementing some strategies the Oranges hadn’t thought of…including sending several bodies down to the floor before the Archon knocked them down to act like land mines, trying to trip him up with kicks or grabs as he hopped over and through them. One got hold of his left leg for a split second, turning Brad around but he just spun out of it and danced over the roadblocks.

“Whoa…that one was…close. I’m…getting…worried now,” he mocked, and continued to do so for more than 20 minutes. Over and over he evaded them, never once using his psionics and relying only on his speed, agility, endurance, and strength, showing up all the Protovic no matter how hard they tried. During the sparring match he kept getting glimpses of their thoughts and emotions, letting him judge when and where to push his taunts. When he felt them finally coming around to the mindset of a proper beatdown he gave it another minute or two then switched tactics…going from evasion to offense and knocking them down with blows so strong that they literally took the wind out of the Protovic.

And he was hitting them on their exoskeletal patches every damn time, jarring them considerably without damaging them, but giving them the knowledge and fear of what would happen to their bodies should he miss and hit a ‘soft’ section. He never did, and before they realized what was happening they were looking at each other on the ground as the Human was prancing around the ring above them knocking down the last few so hard they had to catch their wind before getting back up again.

“I think you’ve had enough,” he declared with disdain, standing still and raising his arms above his head in an obvious stretch. “As for me, it’s time to get my workouts started. Thanks for the warmup.”

The Protovic…Orange, Red, and Purple…sat there gasping from the impacts and their fatigue as the trailblazer hop, skipped, and jumped his way out of the ring over their downed bodies and left them there, disappearing out a side door whistling as he went.

The Oranges sat there looking around at each other and the Reds and Purples, feeling a newfound kinship centered around anger at the Archon. The disrespect hadn’t been faked, nor had it been sarcastic. He had insulted all of them over and over again, with them being completely unable to lay more than a fleeting hand on him.

Eventually they all picked themselves up and went their separate ways, but even the veterans harbored a mild disdain for him following that day. Where they had been teammates before, now there was a bit of adversarialism present, and not from the sparring. That was just a part of being Star Force and one could get beat badly and just walk it off as a training exercise. This was different, because the taunts were personal and obviously meant to be that way. The Archon had shown a side of himself that the Protovic didn’t like, and though that didn’t mean they didn’t respect him anymore, it did mean they weren’t going to be so amicable going forward.

Before now he had been more of a wise mentor teaching them things they needed to know. Now he was that, but also a bit of a jerk, with that putting some iciness in their demeanor any time he was mentioned or they saw him in person.

But what they didn’t realize was that in the process of him becoming an adversary, all those that had gotten insulted and beat up were now on the same side rather than being rivals. The Human had become an overarching rival, so much so that the lesser divisions between them were gradually forgotten…which was exactly what Brad had intended. Makron understood that, having been around the trailblazer more than others, but some of those verbal stings didn’t fade away even for him

He put that down to the Archon’s skill in taunting, amongst other things. He had a knack for making the insults stick, and going forward a little wink or gesture here and there would bring that resentment back for all those who had been involved in that fight, like a healing wound that got a knife blade jammed back into it just as the pain was about to fade away.

Brad kept the wounds fresh, becoming the rival they needed in order for them to gel and stop focusing on besting each other. A few more sparring sessions with other Protovic and some ‘in your face’ spectacles of skill were enough to eventually solve the Orange’s ego problem. When being logical, honest, and friendly didn’t create common ground to bond people together, sometimes you need an enemy to rally around, with your common ground being your pain, insults, and inability to defeat them.

The trailblazers had learned that lesson well from the Black Knight, and Brad was more than happy to whip out that technique whenever necessary to help his Protovic…though the insults were more of an Archon flare that he’d added on. Vermaire was more the ‘silent and break your bones’ type.

7

January 31, 3011

Deeran System (Benoid)

Wexfa

Jarod-896331 slid to the right half a step to allow a Nevvan past him, for the lumbering quadruped could barely fit through the walkways on the Star Force station without bowling people over as it was. The waystation was on the interstellar link between the ADZ and Voku home territory that had become a huge economic boon, not only to the two empires but everyone else along the way. In fact there were far more non-Star Force races passing through than one would think with an occasional, but not too rare, Voku adding to the widespread mix of faces and limbs that the Archon cohabitated with on a daily basis.

Jarod was a level 96 acolyte assigned as security to this massive pancake-shaped commerce station in orbit of Wexfa, one of the member worlds in the Benoid, which was a miniaturized version of the ADZ situated between that huge bulk of worlds and the distant Voku territories. It was situated out in the middle of nowhere and the main watering hole on the trade route between the two and other branches heading off into the surrounding regions giving Star Force at least a small presence out among the mostly overlooked stretches of this galactic arm that had not yet encountered the lizards or the Skarrons.

There were no major powers out here, but a lot of lesser races that were using the Star Force infrastructure to strengthen themselves and their economies. This commerce station sat next to the original that had been built in this system and was now woefully inadequate. Dozens of others had also been built in orbit, but this was the largest and the primary, linked to a number of starports that would facilitate any travel down to the planet, but most people weren’t here to land on the surface, merely passing through or conducting business on the station.

It had become the economic watering hole for many nearby races and a stop off for travelers passing through, so it wasn’t unusual for Jarod to see new races popping up now and again. Whenever he did he made a note to check the database with his helmet cam recordings or, when he was without his armor, pulling up the hallway monitors so he could familiarize himself with everyone who was visiting his station. He was chief of security, in fact if not in name, and he wanted to be kept aware of what all their visitors were capable of just in case he had to take action.

Normally that wasn’t necessary, but now and then you’d get people here who weren’t familiar with Star Force and their protocols and he’d have to break up a fight or stop someone from killing someone else. That was one of the hazards of dealing with the masses coming in from the wilderness to get a taste of civilization and why this station was here…to screen out people who didn’t belong from accessing the planet or other orbital installations, making this the hotbed of activity and warranting a pair of Archons onboard in addition to Star Force security.

After letting the bulky quadruped pass, Jarod stepped back into the traffic and made his way out onto one of the main promenades that circled the station’s center like concentric rings. These were much wider and had hundreds of people passing each other every second, coming in and out of kiosks and making for a chaotic, yet mostly tranquil intermixing of races. Jarod was making a patrol, just out walking the grounds to let his armor be seen and to get a feel for what was going on while security manned all the checkpoints and monitoring stations. Jarod was backup, but could take the lead whenever he wanted while his partner was busy training, soon to switch positions in a few hours.

As he walked through the crowd scanning them visually and with his Ikrid, he sensed so many minds so fast that his first days here had given him headaches, though his skill had increased so much in response that his Ikrid levels were now well beyond the rest of his marks. He wanted to make ranger bad, though was one of the slower developing Archons. He prided himself on the fact that his Ikrid was all the way up to ranger level 77, for before coming here it had been one of his weaker areas.

Walking through the crowd he picked up a mind that was unusual, given that he didn’t see many of them out here. There was a Protovic somewhere in the crowd that he couldn’t see, and he made a point of heading in that direction and easing through the traffic to get a look and pull a tighter mental scan. He could just be a lone individual on private business, but Jarod wanted to know if he was Star Force or maybe from the independent Protovic nation, for so far they’d had no business correspondence this far out on the other side of the ADZ from their territory.

Seeing his mind before his clothing, Jarod soon realized that he didn’t think in English. That was a telltale sign that he wasn’t Star Force. Expecting to see an independent Protovic he was surprised when he spotted a robbed figure where the mind was coming from. Rather than a dark interior beneath the hood there was the glow of light typical of their race. Many preferred to wear fully body armor so as not to attract attention, and this one wearing robes made sense. It also wore gloves, leaving only a narrow slit between the dark red cloth to see through, but the light coming out made Jarod frown. The telltale green was there, but something wasn’t right.

Casually walking towards him but seeming to be going about his business, the Archon got in front of him and tried to look within the folds, having to use a little telekinetic tug to get them to part enough that he could see his face.

When he did an alarm bell immediately went off, for this Protovic was not from the independent nation nor any of the other colonies that Star Force had discovered in past years. He let the man pass him by as they walked separate directions, then he turned off into a kiosk where he paused, getting on his comm and contacting security so they could begin to set up a quiet trace on the individual.

They needed to know where he had come from and where he was going, preferably without stopping him and asking, though that was next on Jarod’s to-do list if they couldn’t scrounge the information via other means. He’d obviously arrived here by ship, so they just had to track down which one it was before he left and begin following the breadcrumb trail from there. If he didn’t speak English it might be difficult to interrogate him directly, though if he was here he probably spoke something that some of the locals did.

Jarod didn’t know many of the native languages out here aside from a few phrases and a decent amount of Vi’tol, but there were linguists he could recruit to the task if need be. Right now he just needed to get the ball rolling and not let this Protovic slip away, to which end he circled around after his comm call and began working his way through the crowd until he picked up the mind again with a little direction from the monitor watchers in the control room giving him directions.

He stuck with that mental signature and quietly tailed him, for he knew Star Force was looking for more Protovic out in the uncharted regions and he was pretty damn sure that none found to date had blue skin.

It took another three years for an expedition to be mounted and for the results to make their way back to Brad on Nym, for this Protovic civilization was located within Skarron territory. Fortunately they hadn’t been targeted for conquest, as a lot of systems within their domain were likewise spared/ignored, and this one had been riding out anonymously within a pocket of a massive nebula that only allowed two jumplanes in, one of which was too long for most starships to make accurately.

Their world was called Knalll, and while they had spacecraft they hadn’t spread beyond a pair of small colonies on the planet’s moons. These Protovic were essentially hermits, participating in trade with a few of their neighbors but otherwise remaining in place and doing…nothing. As Brad read through a summary of their history it seemed that there was a great catastrophe in the past that had essentially scared them into a status quo state where they were extremely reluctant to experiment or expand. He hadn’t dug into the ample material that had been sent back to him far enough to find out what it was yet, but the notes suggested that a minority on the planet did not take to the seclusion and chose to leave on their own merits to explore the galaxy.

Brad saw both genetic imperatives at work there, woven into the Protovic how long ago he wondered? And this was yet another example of what was probably a more advanced colony suffering a degrade. How many Protovic civilizations had been seeded out there? And how many had been wiped off the map over the years?

There had to be a lot if this long term plan had been thought through carefully. To date they’d found some 14 different Purple colonies out there, along with 2 Reds and 3 Yellows. Only one Orange so far, and this made the first Blue. He wondered what the distribution pattern had originally been and how much spreading had occurred after that point. Also, who had done the seeding? Were they still out there and the 8th variant that the Veliquesh hadn’t known about? There were a lot of questions popping into his mind that he still didn’t have answers for, but with this new find came something else of importance…another origin story.

This one didn’t specify how many variants there were, but it was said that the Protovic had been split apart long ago and destined to be reunited. The Knalllie had read that to mean all they had to do was wait and survive until they were found rather than trying to make it happen on their own. In fact, as Brad read through the notes further, that was the driving reason behind their world. To simply exist until that day, fearing that anything more would be wasted in that it might not match their destiny when it was revealed.

Tissue samples had been recovered, he saw, and were being brought back to Sol via a separate route than the…observers.

Brad read further in the notes, compiled by the second gen titan that had been dispatched to handle the first contact situation. It seemed the Blues were eager for the reunion to take place and had actually requested to send representatives to the communal Protovic world. Allysa-527 had agreed and was bringing/sending 72 of them here. Apparently that was a lucky number for them, and Brad should be expecting them within 3 or 4 months.

The Archon sat back in his chair and blew out a slow breath. This wasn’t the first tour he’d given to Protovic civilizations, but typically they only sent a handful, 6 or 7 at best. Sending 72 of them was overkill, not to mention it was a long journey for them to make. He expected they’d want to stay a while, though others had not. They’d been here to look and then go, but from the continued summary Allysa had sent it seemed they were not only interested, but hell bent on making this connection.

That could be a problem, because Brad wasn’t going to incorporate them into his faction as is. If they wanted to join up he’d take them, but they’d have to go through indoctrination and that wasn’t a friendly process from an outsider’s point of view, for it didn’t hold them to be equals until they earned that status. If these Protovic wanted to be included in the community it wasn’t going to happen their way, and the more he read through both her notes and the historical files he got the sense that they held a certain amount of disdain for non-Protovic and were planning on using Star Force as little more than a conference room while they negotiated with the other variants of their race here.

Allysa made a point to mention that they were referring to the Humans as ‘intermediaries’ and Brad could see the writing on the wall. Another reason for sending 72 of them was so they could maintain their pack mentality and not be absorbed into their new surroundings. Safety in numbers, so to speak, and it also suggested that they weren’t here just to look around but to make their presence known.

Going through their historical records over the next month, he also got the feeling that their ambition and dive hadn’t been eradicated by what had been a biological disaster on their world. They’d been experimenting with viral research and had accidentally wiped out 83% of their population. Since that day they’d instituted the ‘good enough’ protocol, keeping their civilization stable and intact without the risks inherent in attempted advancement. But that genetic imperative, in addition to any ambitions they had of their own, was lurking underneath and now had an avenue for release.

Brad got the feeling these 72 planned on doing a lot more than just observing, and he made a note to keep them away from the other long term observers here. There were 17 of them from 12 different civilizations, all of which had not wished a reunification at the drop of the hat. Some, Brad knew, were looking to develop closer ties with the Star Force Protovic without going so far to join them, while others were here to learn and report back, something that Brad allowed freely so long as they obeyed certain rules regarding their conduct. They basically couldn’t do anything other than look and listen, while having to put in at least a tiny workout each day to earn their right to remain here.

He’d argued that to understand Star Force, and this faction of Protovic, you had to understand training. So sampling it was a non-negotiable requirement for a long term observer post, which for some had already stretched into multiple decades with them becoming sort of ambassadors to the Protovic here rather than maintaining diplomatic connections with Star Force overall.

Brad was not going to allow the Blues access to them. He was going to have to come up with something unique to deal with them and size them up. Allysa’s notes aside, he wasn’t really going to get a feel for them until he could pick their minds, so he needed a chance to contain them for a while before settling on a final course…and he only had a matter of weeks to figure it out and make the necessary arrangements before they arrived.

Another little challenge in this overall mystery, and one that he was more than willing to take on. He’d freed other Protovic from cultural shackles and ignorance before, so this would just be a new variation on an old practice…but the trick was that no culture was identical to another, and by that measure new forms of stupidity could blindside you very easily.

Logic was predictable, for there was an inherent reason to it, but stupidity was quite random and almost impossible to predict unless you’d witnessed a particular version before. With new cultures you never knew what to expect, but with Allysa’s notes Brad hoped to be able to get at least one step ahead of them and then take it from there.

With the knowledge that the Blues also knew of the other variants and the reunification idea, Brad finally accepted that this Protovic recombination, whatever it was, was going to occur eventually somewhere, somehow. And if that was the case he wanted it to be on Star Force terms, meaning that there was going to be a cultural war taking place, and one that the Blues looked eager to start engaging in.

Whatever the hidden genetic material contained, Brad knew he needed Star Force to be in possession of it. If it was half as important as he guessed, let some other group attain it and you could end up with a very powerful enemy if the lesser physical enhancements of the Oranges were to be taken as a sign of things to come.

Whereas before he’d wanted to reunite the Protovic for sentimental reasons, now it was clear there was a greater reason to do it. He had to be the driving force behind it, utilizing Star Force as the medium and collection point, and not let the various civilizations call the shots. To that end his Protovic faction had to stay pure, without bringing in any fresh bodies without them first becoming part of Star Force.

Play ‘nice’ and just let them all co-mingle here and he’d be inviting a disaster. This had to happen on his terms or not at all, and to that end he realized he needed to keep the Blues isolated immediately upon arrival…and even before that.

He sent a message out to the rest of Star Force, wherever the Blues’ transit point may be, and instructed that they not be given access to any other Protovic under any conditions. They were to be isolated for the duration of their visit until he said otherwise.

Brad knew it was possible that they had already met some, but he doubted they had run into any non-Star Force Protovic yet and he wanted to keep it that way. If the Blues didn’t want to play ball with him then they’d remain anonymous as far as the rest of the galaxy was concerned, and they could sit quietly alone on their world for as long as they liked. They weren’t here to pass judgement on Star Force, but rather the other way around and he knew he had to make that point immediately upon arrival.

To that end he began drawing up program plans, allowing for multiple contingencies prior to his first meeting them and getting a sense of how much resistance they would put up to Star Force philosophy.

8

March 18, 3054

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“You busy?”

Brad glanced up from his short holographic displays on his desk and locked eyes with the glowing red orbs of Jadren, his one and only naval Admiral. “Always. Need something?”

“Just wanted to report that the fleet is ready to leave.”

“Then you have permission to depart. Happy hunting.”

“Why aren’t you going?”

Brad sighed. “Someone has to stay back and mind the store.”

“The other trailblazers are out fighting the lizards, but you haven’t been since before I was born. I know your naval skills far surpass mine, so why aren’t you leading our fleet, or your Clan Beyond, or a Mainline fleet out to conquer more lizard worlds and push towards their homeworld like the others?”

Brad touched a button and made the holograms disappear. “Worried you’re not up to the task?”

“Perhaps a bit, but more confused as to your priorities. Is there something more important for you to be doing?”

“We each take on the missions we choose, and if I felt you weren’t up to the task I wouldn’t be sending you or our fleet. But the mission already has a mage commander and Aris is more than up to the task of picking off some small lizard systems with your help, so my presence is unnecessary.”

“But you could be going after some of the bigger ones like the others are.”

“I could be. Right now my work here is more important.”

Jadren pulled a chair over and spun it around, sitting down and resting his arms on the backrest. “That’s the part I don’t understand.”

“There was a great deal you didn’t understand when you first came out of the maturia. Now you do. But there are a great deal more things that you do not know, and are not privy to, that I have to deal with.”

“Anything we can do to help lighten the load?”

Brad snorted. “You are the load.”

Jadren frowned, but the Archon held up a hand to forestall any reply.

“By that I mean that the future of the Protovic is not as assured as you might imagine. There’s still a lot in flux that I have to manage.”

“We seem pretty solid. Is there a problem I don’t know about?”

“Challenges heading into the future rather than current problems.”

“Is this about that colony of Whites that were brought back?”

“Yes and no. How close have you been paying attention to our rosters?”

“I watch the active lists, but I don’t know who all you have tucked away going through indoctrination.”

“Let me share that with you then,” Brad said as he brought up a series of holographic lists and maps, not in the sense of geography, but in the designs of the Protovic faction. The 5 military divisions were listed, along with all the civilian branches, and then there was a section off to the side that was labeled ‘Indoctees’ that Jadren had never seen before.

“As you can see, there are quite a few Protovic that want to join us but aren’t ready yet.”

“That’s more than a few,” the young Admiral said, looking at the demographics. The Whites that they’d discovered on the very bottom of the galactic plane were there, all 8 billion of them that they’d transported back here leaving nothing behind but an empty pair of planets. Then there were a small number of Purples coming in from either Axius or one of the independent Protovic nations. The one that actually bore that name had been supplying them with a steady stream of volunteers, while the others saw bunches coming over at irregular times. Some wanted to join Star Force, others wanted to get away from their previous lives, but no one was allowed straight into Brad’s faction without proving themselves first.

Others were going into Axius, where there was no extensive indoctrination gauntlet to run. They were allowed to live there and adjust as needed, mixing in with the rest of the varied races and literally being overwhelmed by it all for Axius was so large that a million refugees could be lost within it easily and Star Force made a habit of splitting up large incoming populations between different planets and systems rather than to allow any group to stake out a bit of a colony as their own. If they were going to live in Axius then they were going to be part of Axius, not a rogue entity competing with the rest of the faction.

But the Protovic were different, and Brad had made them that way on purpose. They were unified in purpose and working together more like a Clan than a faction. There was a civilian aspect to them, but it was much more diminished than in other factions. Axius had the largest civilian wing, while the Protovic had the smallest. There was no mandatory work, as such was forbidden within Star Force, but most Protovic were interested in helping their faction grow rather than pursuing solely personal agendas.

And besting Canderous in that category was no small feat, as Brad had noted previously. No, the Protovic were the hardest working, most on task faction within Star Force despite their small size…which was why Jadren didn’t understand why their trailblazer was constantly watching over them rather than going out and fighting like the others were.

“I didn’t realize there were so many waiting in line to get in.”

“Not in line,” Brad clarified, “for each is on an individual program. Most of these groups are undergoing isolation protocols in order to speed up their indoctrination. Only a few are on the slower group plans. Mostly by choice, because they want to get here as soon as possible.”

“I didn’t realize we were that popular amongst the other Protovic colonies.”

“It depends on who you’re talking about. A lot of them just want to be left alone, officially, but when there’s a means for individuals to make a choice and travel here we get a steady flow of the curious. As for their governments, the Whites are the exception.”

“What made them all want to join?”

“Part of it was because they feel a kinship with the rest of you. The other part was because one of their worlds was dying. Their moon was in a descending orbit, and that rid them of their sentimentality.”

“So they came here because they had no other choice?”

“Actually we offered to give it a nudge, but they still requested to join us.”

“Did you give it a nudge?”

“No. That would have required building some considerable infrastructure on the surface.”

“Really? If it was a gradual deterioration wouldn’t a couple of command ships have been enough to push it?”

“Yes, but we would still need to build a device that would allow the necessary force to be transitioned to the planet rather than burying the ships into the surface. Big as they are, the command ships would punch right through the planet’s crush given enough sustained thrust.”

“Interesting…I hadn’t considered that.”

“Because we normally extend IDF around whatever we’re hauling.”

“And we can’t do that with a planetoid.”

“Not that big. Not yet, anyway.”

Jadren looked at him with a raised eye ridge. “Pet project?”

“Not that I know of. But I am familiar with the seda gravity drives and their planet-like dimensions.”

“Well then,” the Admiral said, sinking a finger into the holographic data. “What does this have to do with your staying here?”

“For your ears only.”

Jadren nodded.

“The variants are not just a curiosity that we’re pursuing. They’re deliberate.”

“How so?”

“I’m not going to tell you everything just yet. The time isn’t right. But there is a genetic impulse imbedded within all Protovic to seek each other out and bring the variants together from across the galaxy. This is why I think so many individuals and groups are coming to us and willing to go through the pain in the ass indoctrination to get here. There’s a subtle tug on their subconscious tipping the scales of their priorities, whether they realize it or not. We’ve been keeping the Protovic in Axius split up for the most part so this reunification can’t occur there, though we are seeing a few individuals seek each other out regardless of the geography. It’s not much right now, but I have observed that the more Protovic there are in one place the greater the drive becomes.”

“What kind of ‘drive’ are you talking about, exactly?”

“To seek each other out, or more specifically, to seek out other colors. Genetically something will occur when all 8 variants are gathered together and some special criteria are met. This is going to happen soon or later, and if it is going to happen I need to be the one guiding it so it happens on our timetable and on our turf.”

“Whoa, wait a second,” Jadren said, standing up from his chair. “What is going to happen?”

“We don’t know for sure.”

“You’re worried it might be something bad…or dangerous, that you don’t want falling into the wrong hands. Or something dangerous that could harm the Protovic themselves outside of Star Force?”

“All of the above and more.”

“Did you say 8 variants?”

Brad nodded. “We’re still missing one. The Whites were number 7.”

“I thought that makes 6,” Jadren corrected him.

“Check again,” he said, pointing at the indoctee lists. “There’s a small group of 600 or so Aquas that we discovered a while back, or actually the Voku did. They were all in a Menqwel prison. We brought them back here and I have them in a full prison isolation similar to what your ancestors were put in and few came out of. These Aquas have a small chance, if they work hard and long enough, of earning their freedom. I don’t know if any of them will make it, none have seemed too inclined as of yet to fully commit, but there were a handful of eggs collected from them and those 18 Protovic Aquas are currently nearing the end of their maturia days.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?”

“None of them are here yet. When the first one arrives I was going to let the rest of you know.”

“So we’re missing one puzzle piece…for what? What are you worried about happening? Are we in danger? You said genetic, does that mean our offspring or that we’ll actually, physically change?”

“Until we get genetic samples from all the variants we can’t be sure, but we think there will be a physical change in any Protovic affected, not just future offspring.”

“And you don’t know what this change will be?”

“Not yet, no.”

“So everything we’ve built could be in jeopardy?”

“Possibly.”

“And how does your staying here help solve that problem? I assume that’s the reason you’re not off kicking ass.”

“The problem is twofold,” Brad explained, choosing to trust one of his most loyal Protovic with more information than any of the others knew yet. “The genetic transformation is an unknown, but we know it will only happen when all 8 variants are assembled, along with some other things that have to take place. It seems each variant has to undergo an upgrade prior to them all combining. The Oranges have already underwent theirs, which is why they have a physical head start on the rest of you.”

Jadren stared at him for a moment, putting those two pieces together. “And you didn’t feel like telling us this before?”

“We’re going to figure this out before it can cause a problem,” Brad promised him. “We’ve got the appropriate people on the taskforce, so telling the rest of you would just give you cause to worry without the ability to help. Better to keep you all in the dark until there is actually something to do.”

“So why are you telling me now?”

“You accusing me of being a slacker. Can’t have that,” Brad said sarcastically.

“Seriously.”

The Archon glanced down at his desktop for a moment. “I don’t know how this is going to play out, but so long as the Protovic are following an impulse to gather I want them gathering here and adding to our strength. But it has to be as a part of Star Force. In some ways I see them all as family, in others I recognize the threat they pose. When the Blues first came here they wanted to call the shots and they were quite vocal about not being able to. They tried to turn some of you away from Star Force and begin assembling a different type of union before we sent them packing. Those that have come back are doing so on our terms now and as you can see there are a lot of them.”

“You’re worried that there’s more than just a genetic imperative to assemble,” Jadren surmised. “You think it might be something cultural as well. Something that would erode us from the inside out.”

“No matter how much genetic impulses one has, you always has a choice. Sometimes you just don’t realize it. A strong mind guides itself. A weak mind follows and is ruled by the genetic impulses. Star Force trains all of us to develop into strong minded individuals, so…”

“You’re trying to counter a potential threat by bringing as many of us into the fold as possible.”

“And at the same time further develop our little piece of the empire. The changes that this reunification will make may very well be beneficial. Time will tell, but if it is something undesirable we’re going to rewrite your genetic code to make you immune to it.”

Jadren straightened, sensing another layer to Brad’s reluctance to leave the Protovic. “You can do that?”

“Not yet, but we’re learning. And the more variants we find the more data our medtechs have to figure out what’s going on and how to deal with it.”

“You’re trying to save us from a potential doomsday on the horizon.”

“If there is one, I need to shield you from it before it happens.”

Jadren looked down at his glowing hand, striped in both green and red bioluminescent bands that were mostly uniform amongst all Protovic, but always slightly different per individual. “Is this a natural thing or engineered?”

“I can’t say for sure, but the going theory is engineered. There have also been bits of mythos collected from the various civilizations that refer to a reunification and the glory that will follow. Stories that they have had before they had contact with other variants.”

“As if someone had told them what was coming…and scattered them?”

“Something went down. Right now we have mostly guesses.”

Jadren was silent for a long moment, with Brad peeking in on his thoughts as he sorted through all this. “What’s the last variant color?”

“We don’t know, nor did we know any of the others prior to finding them, save for some rumors, some of which turned out not to be true.”

“And you don’t know how many civilizations were out there originally?”

“We’ve found evidence of some that have since been destroyed, so we assume there were many of each variant. We have also found a genetic imperative, stronger than the assembly, that urges you to turtle up and survive. We think this is why a reunification hasn’t occurred yet, prompting each civilization to err on the side of caution before reaching out to group with others.”

“By design?”

Brad nodded.

“So someone put our ancestors out there in danger and told them to survive, and you know that a lot of them didn’t make it?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“And it makes you worry that whoever started all this were dishonorable bastards?”

Brad looked him straight in his glowing red eyes. “That thought has occurred to me.”

9

November 1, 3056

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Brad stood waiting on the edge of the landing platform as a dropship came down through the overhead shield dome that was keeping bugs and birds out of the city’s interior while maintaining the open air approach. The higher mass of the ship easily punched through the weak shield that was designed to dent rather than lightly crunch anything hitting it and flew in to the otherwise empty pad reserved for special traffic. The Eagle-class dropship lowered its boarding ramp and a trio of medtechs walked out with a host of cargo pallets following them, each pushed by techs wearing dark green uniforms that had black stripes, indicating that they were handlers for precision and sensitive equipment. Computer hardware fell under that category, but Brad knew that’s not why these were here.

Of the three medtechs dressed in their aqua-colored uniforms, most prominent among them was someone he truly had never expected to see anywhere outside of Sol, with the other two being his support staff, he assumed.

“I’m surprised you came here yourself,” Brad said as he walked out to greet Vortison.

“If something goes wrong I can’t fix it from Earth,” the geneticist argued.

“Have you even been outside of Sol before?”

“Twice. This makes the third. You have some place for us to set up shop?”

“Are you sure you can do this without a pyramid trip?”

“Our tech is sufficient. It’s the manipulation that is the question mark…which is why I’m here in case onsite improvisation is needed.”

“Alright then, follow me. You have enough guys to move everything in one trip or you need some extra hands?”

Vortison glanced over his shoulder, with Brad’s glance being directed to one of the techs.

“There’s a lot more where this came from,” she said.

Brad reached out telekinetically to one of his people in a nearby control facility and requested assistance as he looked at the other two medtechs. “Should I know you two?”

“Only after today,” the man said. “Name’s Brenson.”

“Tahiri,” the other said, offering the Archon a nod.

“They’re here to relieve me of some of the mundane work,” Vortison explained, “and to catch any mistakes I make before they can be implemented.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Like never,” Tahiri muttered.

“This is too important to take chances with,” Vortison insisted.

“Agreed,” Brad said as a handful of Protovic emerged from a nearby door. “There’s your extra hands. I want everything moved together. It’s a bit of a hike to get to your lab.”

“I assume you have volunteers,” Vortison said plainly in the otherwise empty hangar bay, for they’d come down into what amounted to a private facility within the Protovic city and not one of the primary spaceports.

“I do.”

“Purples I assume?”

“Of course. You can do this, right?”

“I believe so. If I can, do you have a plan for how it will be implemented within this society?”

“Yep. That’s the easy part.”

“How so?”

“We already do it for Archons.”

“Hmmn. I expected a bit more widespread distribution.”

“We can always expand later.”

“True,” Vortison said as more crates on hover sleds came down out of the dropship hold. “I’ll leave that to your judgement then. Get me to my lab and we’ll make this happen.”

“How long are you staying?” Brad asked as he turned and walked side by side with the man towards the landing bay exit into the city’s interior corridors.

“As long as necessary. Perhaps longer if a few subsequent inquiries pan out.”

“You’re getting close?”

“Closer. I have been able to formulate some guesses though, which we’ll get into later. Right now we need to get this equipment set up.”

“How long?”

“Two hours tops,” the hardware tech answered when Vortison deferred to her.

“How soon do you want the volunteers?”

“About 15 minutes later.”

Prentha and four other Protovic stood next to Brad in a medical lab off limits to the rest of the colony as a handful of medtechs worked their various devices setting up for the first trial run…which was to be him. Previously he and the others had been recruited in a pool of some 500 that they had to earn their way out of. All of them were high level veterans within the Protovic faction of Star Force and the competition had been fierce. Prentha was surprised he’d been one of the five to make it through, then he’d been brought into the trailblazer’s office for a private conversation in which he was told what this program was about.

He’d been asked then if he wanted to continue, with Brad noting that four others had declined when asked. That meant Prentha may have been in the top 9 rather than top 5, but that ultimately didn’t matter. However the candidates shook out, he’d been selected for an experimental biological upgrade that was apparently only applicable to Purples. The other four with him were the same, and they’d been told what was actually happening was an unlocking of some dormant genetic code, so even the medtechs and the Archon didn’t know what would happen…hence the potential danger.

Knowing that this was the first time they’d ever tried this made him unbelievably proud, as was the presence of the Human medtechs that had come out here all the way from Earth. He’d never been to the Star Force capitol before, nor had anyone else he’d known. Travel there was highly restricted, more so than the other factions. Axius had open access, but like this world Earth was off limits to general tourist traffic, as was the entire star system. One had to get permission to go there or have a free pass ID that he did not have, so whenever someone that lived and worked in Sol came here he knew they were on a special mission.

How long Nym would be closed to outsiders he didn’t know but other factions, including the Humans, had some worlds where travelers could come and go, Star Force citizens or not. Thus far the Protovic had been shut off completely, with rumors that that was going to change in time, but all the factions kept some worlds exclusive to themselves and Earth had always been the most secluded of the Human worlds. He didn’t know what it was like there, but all the most important people in Star Force had ties to it. If there was a problem that couldn’t be solved, you sent it to Earth…or had people from Earth come out to solve it, including the Archons.

The fact that they had a trailblazer of their own on Nym running and growing their faction was impressive enough, but now that these medtechs had come out it meant something big was going on and he was glad to be a part of it. Star Force had taught him that no one, anywhere, at any time was ever completely safe, so if there was extra danger in this procedure he was ok with it. The experts from Earth were here and so was Archon Brad. If he couldn’t trust them, he couldn’t trust anyone.

“Prentha, you ready?” the Archon asked.

The Protovic nodded. “Still not sure what this is all about, but ready and willing to dive in head first.”

“We’re not sure either, hence you five are the prototypes. Step into the machine,” he said, pointing to the slightly altered copy of the V’kit’no’sat medical station that Star Force was now using in a few exclusive locations. It wasn’t quite as advanced software wise, but they’d finally been able to replicate the hardware and had fashioned a duplicate device built to Star Force design specs and using their own altered version of the advanced tech.

Prentha walked over to the booth-like chamber and stepped inside. One of the medtechs pulled a mechanical arm down across the entryway completing a thin ring around him waist. “What do I need to do?”

“Put your hands on the sphere in front of you and keep them there until I say otherwise,” one of the medtechs instructed.

“Alright,” Prentha said, placing both of his glowing green/purple hands onto the cool sphere.

“You may feel a slight numbing sensation. Do not be alarmed,” the medtech said a moment before he lost the feeling in his hands…or actually he could still feel them he just couldn’t move them. He wasn’t trying to, but it felt like he was firmly rooted in place.

“Connection made, now just hold still. You’re going to have tissue changes in your body occur at a rapid pace. There should be no pain involved, but your senses might get disoriented. Try to remain still and standing for the next few minutes.”

“Will do,” Prentha said as the slight numbing sensation began creeping up his arms and into his torso, spreading throughout his body.

“Why is this taking longer than us?” the trailblazer asked.

“Because we wrote this program and it hasn’t been polished over the millennia.”

“How much tissue?”

“A fair amount. Judging by the uptake rates he’s going to gain a couple pounds.”

“So he’s active now?”

“Yes. The timelock has been removed and the growth rate of the new tissue is being ramped up slowly. Without a base to work off of this is unexplored territory and I don’t want to force the rates as fast as the equipment is capable of doing. Right now the…”

The medtechs words blurred out from there as the outside world got foggy as far as Prentha was concerned. Soon he lost his concept of time and was awash in disorientation that passed without him knowing how long he had been incapacitated. The numbing retreated from his body faster than it had taken over and he found himself standing with his hands on the sphere like before, save his legs had repositioned into a wider stance.

“How you doing?” Brad asked, his voice sounding a bit odd.

“I’m fine…whoa.”

“What?”

“Everything sounds weird. I can…I don’t know how to explain this,” he said, looking down at his hands.

“Take your time,” the medtech urged. “Tell us what you can but please remain inside the machine. You can remove your hands from the sphere now.”

Prentha pulled them off and flexed his fingers, feeling a rush of adrenaline. “I can feel everything.”

“Try to be more specific.”

“I can feel what I’m looking at. Its dimensions. I can even feel what’s behind me. I can taste the air and smell…it’s like my nose just opened up. My hearing is like everything is super loud and distorted. Is this supposed to happen?”

“I believe so. The data we’re getting from you now is promising, but for the next few weeks you’ll need to wear one of these biomonitors.”

“Here, take this one,” Brad said, but didn’t move a muscle. A weird sensation prompted Prentha to turn around where he saw a tiny circular device floating in the air behind him.

“Proximity sense confirmed,” the medtech noted.

“It goes on your forehead,” Brad said, floating it over to him and attaching it with a telekinetic press. “It’ll transmit data back to our systems wherever you go within the city.”

“You can step out now,” the medtech said as the other stepped forward and raised the mechanical arm. “Number 2 please.”

“Ileen, you’re up.”

Prentha passed the female Protovic on the way out, brushing arms with her and getting a huge emotional surge.

“Whoa…you’re a lot hotter than before.”

The trailblazer and medtech exchanged glances, but it was the medtech that spoke, more to himself than anyone else. “You’ve received a sensory package upgrade. Biologically speaking, sexual attraction is tied into one’s senses as a software add-on. This could have an effect on that.”

“Do you mean we’re going to get more horny?” Ileen asked, stopping a step outside the machine.

“A small possibility,” the medtech admitted. “This is probably just a reaction to the new senses. Give it some time to sink in and I think your sexuality will adjust accordingly. You might have a period of heightened incentive during the transition though.”

“We’re not permitted to mate, right?”

“Not for the foreseeable future, no,” Brad confirmed. “Prentha, think you can control yourself for a while?”

The Protovic laughed. “I’m not that bad off, I’ve just never seen a girl look this way before. Use your Archon superpowers and see for yourself.”

Brad was silent for a moment and Prentha didn’t feel anything different while he was, but that wasn’t news to him. It was well known amongst the Protovic that the Archon could read their minds, and they often made weird or rude thoughts when passing him just to test whether or not he was taking a peek inside, some of which he responded to in hilarious ways. His level of sarcasm was not to be underestimated, and rather than feel violated the Protovic had come to welcome him looking over their shoulder, so to speak. They had nothing to hide from him and resented anyone who did.

“You’re right,” he said at last. “She is extremely hot.”

“For real or an illusion?” Ileen asked, accepting the compliment with skepticism.

“He’s got more information about you than before. As if you were looking at a colorless sensor feed and suddenly the color returned. You’re in ‘color’ now, as is everything else, so all the other chicks probably look just as hot.”

“Thanks.”

“When you’re finished with your transformation you two can stare at each other over in the corner,” the trailblazer offered, then glanced at the lead medtech. “I think we can confirm they’ve got spidey senses. How much so we’ll have to figure out through training, but Prentha can feel things in proximity. He didn’t react immediately though, so I don’t think this is on Pefbar level.”

“It’s not,” the medtech said, looking at a monitor. “But it’s also more than that. There are upgrades to all of their existing senses plus the addition of the ‘proximity’ tissue. I’m not detecting any anomalies in the flash growth, so let’s get the other four through and start with the testing.”

“You still up for this Ileen?” Brad asked.

“I was until the ‘horny’ part. Promise me you’ll restrain me if I get the urge to jump one of these guys?”

“I promise.”

“Then I’m good to go,” she said, stepping inside the machine and placing her hands on the sphere. “Zap me.”

“And?” Brad asked hours later in Vortison’s temporary office as he was pouring over the biomonitor data.

The geneticist shook his head slowly. “I thought I understood this before, but reading code and seeing it implemented is considerably more different than I allowed. This is the first time I’ve ever dealt with a complete unknown. Every other code sequence I knew what it would be in physical form from previous experience or from database entries. Individual aspects always crop up leading to unexpected variations, but this is far beyond that.”

“Is that your way of saying there’s a problem?”

“Not with these 5, as far as I can see. My predictions as to what the other upgrades are are now suspect, because I didn’t get these right. What the big score will be is now in even more doubt if I can’t interpret the smaller bits of code correctly.”

“How close are you to the other bits?”

“Reds will be soon. My staff back on Earth are still working on it and are close to finalizing. I thought about delaying until we had both, but decided it was best to run this trial before risking the Reds. I’m glad there were no anomalies and they’re all unharmed, but my faith in my abilities had taken a serious hit in the foresight department.”

“You’re still missing a variant anyway, so I never expected a complete picture.”

“But I’ve been able to come to some conclusions, and not all the ones I informed you about previously. Now I have cause to second guess them all.”

“Meaning the only way we’ll know for sure is to turn it on and see what happens?”

“Yes…though it won’t turn on without our say so. The biomonitors are confirming that these five are not transmitting activation material. We were able to turn it off successfully. Hopefully that’s permanent, but only time will tell.”

“Can we do the same for the Oranges?”

“In theory yes, but I’d like some more time to study this case before we start widespread implementation of the genetic blocks.”

“You’re blocking or removing the activation material?”

“At this point deactivating so they’re not produced, but the mechanisms to produce them are still in their genome. I’m not close to being confident in our ability to strip them away entirely without side effects.”

“Even more so now?”

“The more data we get the better I’ll be able to make predictions, but right now my confidence in that department is lacking. These sensory upgrades are different than I expected, in multiple ways, and I’m not sure why yet.”

“Different good or different bad?”

“Nothing is bad as far as I can tell, it just works differently than I assumed…in some places. Others did come through more or less as expected. That is even more annoying, because if my method of prediction was flawed it should render them all incorrect. A partial success is more problematic.”

“Ultimately I don’t need predictions, just results. And for the record, we don’t always predict lizard strategy correctly. They adapt well, and have caught us off guard on more than one occasion.”

“Thank you, but I doubt you’re very happy when that happens.”

“We don’t let it get to us. It’s a challenge and we just focus on working the problem in round 2…or 2,000 at this point.”

“But you don’t do the harm if you’re wrong, they do. Working with genetics is me risking other people’s bodies and lives on me being right.”

“Try attacking a city and only shooting the bad guys.”

“All the lizards are bad guys.”

“We don’t only fight the lizards, and I’m still waiting for the day where we find a lizard that doesn’t want to fight us. If and when that happens how do you think we’ll feel about all the cities we’ve razed from orbit?”

“Unknown strangers versus people I’m looking at face to face, though I suppose both situations hold unique perils. I just don’t want other people to pay for my mistakes.”

“Same here.”

10

April 30, 3058

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“What are you going to do?” Kyp asked Brad as they both stood in an observation post high above one of the larger advanced training centers on Nym where the ‘enhanced’ volunteers were going about a variety of training drills. It was little more than an elevated platform, but the windows were energy shields that only allowed light in and looked black to those on the outside. To the pair of trailblazers they had an open air perch to watch the calisthenics, sparring, and running drills across the park-like terrain, though the entire facility was indoors.

“The Oranges already have their enhancement unlocked,” Brad reminded him.

“Have any left this planet for Axius or elsewhere?”

“Not yet, but when they do the females will spread it. Possibly beyond Star Force boundaries. These aren’t psionics, but they’re abilities that the general populations of the galaxy do not possess. I have the feeling that if we let this get out we could be grooming more powerful enemies than we already have.”

“These timelocks are going to expire anyway.”

“Eventually yes, but Vortison said they’re more than just a countdown. Experience factors in, with whatever this group of Oranges went through advancing their timetable. He thinks it’s skill related. Those that prove themselves worthy by some internal gage are shoved ahead on the path…or it might be a safety mechanism designed to insure that those who are opened to the big prize aren’t pond scum.”

“The tests we did of the independent Protovic suggest it will be millennia before their timelocks expire, and they all seem to be on the same clock as far as we could tell.”

“Did you tell the Chancellor?”

Kyp nodded. “He wants to know what’s going on as much as we do.”

“Does he want the upgrades?”

“He’s worried about unknowns, but the sensory package is very appealing to them. Fear of what they might unlock had kept him from making a direct request. Right now he just wants information.”

“I’m more worried about the Reds,” Brad admitted. “We handpicked the volunteers to make sure they were loyal, but their intelligence has spiked considerably. Give that to someone with less than adequate scruples and they could cause a lot of damage.”

“How close are you to the others?”

“Vortison is back on Earth working on it, though he’s complaining about the back and forth and even teased about setting up here permanently.”

“So not long then?”

“He’s close with the Aquas.”

“You only have a handful of them anyway?”

“Very few, and a lot of them are still in prison. We’ve got full maturia batches coming through the system now, thanks to some volunteer surrogates, so by the time Vortison figures it out we should be able to find at least a few viable candidates.”

“Why the tinkering? All you really needed was a tissue sample.”

“To chase the big prize, yeah, but I want uniformity in the maturia classes. The Oranges have had to have a different program and if we end up going that route with the others they’re all going to need to start out with peers.”

“So you are thinking about unlocking the general population?”

Brad cringed. “The Oranges aren’t so bad. They’re stronger than other Protovic but weaker than some of other races so it doesn’t stand out. Other than making them hard to sneak up on, having the sensory upgrades in the Purples doesn’t strike me as a bad idea across the board. It’s the others that worry me.”

“How are the Oranges blending with the others post maturia?”

“They have an advantage physically, but one that is matched with years of training in the others. Now that we’ve got sufficiently advanced veterans that supersede the Oranges coming out of the maturias it isn’t an issue, but before it was.”

“You’re thinking it might be better to keep all the variants on the same page and only upgrade individuals?”

“That or break them up into Clans.”

Kyr raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“There’s a reason we don’t have Humans and Calavari training together, save for some special situations. If the Protovic variants differentiate enough it could cause rifts to form out of necessity, in which case it would be better to restructure this faction into subunits that worked closely with one another rather than trying to force a single system on the whole.”

“And for that you’ll need a lot more aquas down the line?”

“Call me sentimental, but I want them back with the others. Not just a few stragglers that managed to survive.”

“I thought there was another reason,” Kyp said, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked down on a group of oranges running on one of the dirt trails and making decent time. “Normally we leave reproduction alone.”

“I only got 612 to work with initially, all imprisoned for a lot of nastiness. To date two of them have reformed and joined the general population. The others came from their offspring and had to be mixed in with a Red maturia. That worked alright, but I hate the lack of color coordination.”

“Ha. There’s the real reason, you OCD freak.”

Brad smirked. “Haven’t heard that term in a long time. Glad we got rid of all those pseudomedical bitchings along with old Earth.”

“No problems with the surrogates, I assume?”

“Nah. Just a little egg swapping. When the Aquas’ numbers get high enough we won’t need it anymore and we’ll let the civilian population dictate the numbers.”

“How serious are you about this Clan idea?”

“I don’t know,” Brad admitted. “Part of me wants them to get the upgrades on the whole while another says to keep them restricted to an ‘earn only’ group. If the Oranges weren’t already unlocked I probably wouldn’t even be considering this, but right now I’m not sure which way to go.”

“If we encounter other Protovic that are unlocked, then the choice is simple, right?”

“Yeah it would be, but right now only the one group of Oranges is. Every other wayward colony is still timelocked.”

“Have we found other Oranges?”

“Just one, about a decade ago.”

“Are any of them here?”

Brad shook his head. “Nope. We did the meet and greet but they weren’t interested in sharing. If they were closer or in lesser numbers we’d take them by force, but right now it isn’t a good option.”

Kyp looked at him quizzically. “Did I miss something?”

“They’re out on the far side of Preema space and none too nice, about 200 billion of them spread across 4 star systems with a big ‘to conquer’ sticker on their foreheads. They’re not quite up to Veliquesh depravity but they’re bad enough. So no, none of them are here.”

“Did we get a tissue sample from them?”

“Yes, and they’re still timelocked as well.”

“For how long?”

“I’d have to check the records, but no one that we’ve found is close to upgrading. Why our Oranges already made it is still a mystery.”

“How much of this have you told our allied Protovic?”

“Nothing that I haven’t sent through you, though some of their observers here might have picked up something from casual conversation. I don’t interact with them and they pretty much pretend to be furniture taking notes.”

“Do they have different colored data tags?” Kyp joked.

“I haven’t paid that close attention. Should I be? I’ve pretty much let them run under the radar.”

“The Chancellor is trying to keep information away from the public as long as possible. He’s worried and uncertain about where all this is going. His mind is split between holing up and reaching out to the nearest colonies. The Shanplenix have offered a hand of friendship that he is cautious to accept. Right now they’re in wait and see mode.”

“Worried about what exactly?”

“Beyond the transformation? They don’t want to lose their cultural identity in a wash of newcomers, which is why their borders have been closed to Protovic immigration since we conquered the Veliquesh. They’ve got a good thing going with their empire right now and they don’t want to wreck it. If there is value to be gained from the others they know we’ll ferret it out, so they’re keying off of us even if they won’t admit it publically. I wouldn’t worry about their observers here, though I would keep an eye on the others you’ve let in.”

“I already do. A group of Blues is getting kicked out next week. Those idiots just don’t know when to stop playing politics.”

“Again? Why’d you let them back in?”

“If I can get them to just sit and take notes like your buddies then some good may come of it. We’re still getting a steady flow of immigrants from them that are willing to go through indoctrination to get here, so I’d prefer to keep the lines of communication open. Their government observers will be sent back and they’ll have to wait another 10 years before they get another chance. I’ll keep playing the game until they learn if only to keep information going back to their population, from which we may get more immigration.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because for some reason they all feel like family. We still don’t know how they got spread out or how many of their colonies were killed off, but I hate the idea of people being prisoners of their own society and if I can keep the doors open to allow them to move freely I prefer to do so. We do the same with other races, and have for a long time.”

“We’ve also told a lot of races where to shove it,” Kyp added.

“Something else is going on with the Protovic, and until we figure out what it is I don’t like cutting any of them off. The more that are here learning from us the better.”

“Is that why you let the Chancellor’s observers camp out?”

“I know they’re not joining us, but they’re allies and just next door anyway. We can look after them if needed.”

“You’re going to need a second star system soon if you keep growing like this.”

“We’ve got plenty to choose from, but right now I want everyone here where I can monitor them. I’d rather not have to bring in Human Monarchs and right now I don’t have any Protovic Administrators that I feel are up to the promotion yet. They’re still keying off me and my staff and we need to keep it that way until we sort out all these changes. Once we get our identity stabilized we can branch out, but right now we’re still in a lot of flux.”

“Is that why you wanted me here?”

“I need a fresh set of eyes on the problem. I keep feeling like I’m missing something right in front of me.”

“Well, from what I can tell of your elite class they’ve got a decent skillset. They’re obviously still newbs, but they’re showing isolated strengths beyond what we typically see in Humans.”

“That lopsided nature has made creating training programs for them a bit tricky.”

“How similar are the Purples to Pefbar?”

“A poor comparison, but they do have a light perimeter sense in their cocktail. Low level energy field that varies from half a meter up to about 4 when they’re focusing on it. More like a spidey sense than Pefbar.”

“So your notes said. And the rest of the ‘cocktail?’”

“Ask a Knight.”

“Just an increase in the rest of their senses.”

“Yes, but there seems to be some tie-in. When combined they seem to accumulate into a very vivid image, based off the mind reads I’ve done.”

“Nightvision?”

“Better than us, not quite up to Knight level. Pitch black they can’t see any more than us…save for the fact that they glow.”

“A double-edged sword there. Apparently it can be very annoying, according to some of the stories I’ve heard. The full body garb our allies wear isn’t just a fashion trend, but a practical necessity that they developed after several problems they had.”

“Such as?”

“I was told a story of attacks where the civilians were hunted down even when they fled because they couldn’t hide their glow. Add in pursuit, and especially ambush, are all but impossible when your head is a lightbulb. Their glow became a cultural liability, so they just adopted the practice of hiding it completely when in public. That’s been relaxed some after seeing our Axius Protovic roam with free skin, but it’s still a sign of worry with them more than prudence. That pesky survival imperative again.”

“How did the Chancellor take that revelation?”

“That was one bit I did not share with him.”

“Any particular reason?”

“They’ve got enough to take in as is. Telling them they’re puppets that some ancient power is pulling the strings of isn’t going to help their mindset right now.”

“A bit harsh. We have genetic imperatives too.”

“Ours are natural…as far as I know.”

“I doubt the V’kit’no’sat would approve of tinkering in that aspect. If needed it would scream inferiority.”

“Yeah, well, the idea that we might have some Clone Wars era inhibitor chips woven into our DNA has crossed my mind more than once. Our medtechs haven’t found anything, but you never know.”

“Honestly, that thought had never occurred to me,” Brad admitted.

“I don’t think there’s anything there or we’d have found it by now, either in genetic analysis or in the database records. But sometimes you gotta wonder what’s all programmed into us. The Zak’de’ron hid coding from the rest of the V’kit’no’sat concerning Tier 4 psionics and battlemeld, so who knows what else they slid in there.”

“If they put in a kill code I’m going to be pissed,” Brad said half-jokingly.

“Fortunately our bad guy overlords have an ego, else they could very well have done so. If you ask Kara what they’d think of a rebellious Zen’zat she’d probably laugh.”

“Yeah, not looking forward to taking on one of them hand to hand. At least they’re not out to wipe us from existence.”

“Kara got on their good side,” Kyp said, knowing well that there was more to it than that. “How are your guys’ reflexes?”

“Partial improvement with the Purples. Beyond that Protovic standard.”

“And the Oranges?”

“Their speed is faster, but reaction time is the same.”

“And the Reds?”

“They’re damn clever. Not up to Archon standards, but they’re definitely thinkers rather than followers.”

“We don’t want followers,” Kyp reminded him. “We’re in the right, so why should we fear thinkers?”

“They’d make really good serial killers.”

“Their ancestors did well enough in that regard without the enhancement.”

“True,” Brad acknowledged. “Think I’m worrying too much?”

“The V’kit’no’sat don’t worry about such things because they can solve any problem that arises by beating the crap out of it. We’re Archons, we can do the same. You said you were short on Monarch candidates. How do these Reds stack up?”

“Too soon to tell, but Davis has one of his people here looking into it.”

Kyp glanced at him. “Did you request that?”

“I should have. He saw the possibility before I did.”

“That guy has his fingers into everything.”

“Lucky us,” Brad said as his earpiece chirped. He mentally turned it on and heard the voice of one of his command staff giving him a priority update. He remained silent, listening for a long bit as Kyp saw a twitch in him.

“Copy that,” Brad said, shutting off the earpiece with another thought.

“What?” Kyp asked, sensing something important.

“We just got a message packet in from one of our scouting teams. They’ve found the 8th variant.”

Kyp’s insides twisted up with a mix of excitement and trepidation. This was the last piece of the genetic puzzle they’d been searching 90 years for. “What color?”

“Pink.”

Kyp snickered, but when Brad didn’t reciprocate he sensed something was wrong. “And?”

“And they’re unlocked. They have telepathy.”

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1

March 5, 3059

System 10746 (Nexus Domain)

Yvartis

Brad’s Warship-class jumpship coasted lazily through the Jhar defense fleet, staring down the smaller vessels as they parted to allow it through their orbital blockade to a lower holding orbit over the volcanic world that Asnem-1119 had visited a year ago. It was another anomaly within The Nexus, in that it didn’t appear on any official records. The trailblazer got the feeling a lot of systems were like that, for unless they proved themselves to be threats or valuable it seemed the The Nexus simply ignored everyone else within their domain.

This planet had been well hidden, for the Jhar were isolationists out of necessity and only had a few weak links out into the surrounding star systems, but one of them had led Asnem here where he had made contact with the Pink Protovic that inhabited the barely habitable world. The atmosphere was partially toxic, able to sustain you with enough oxygen to let you live long enough for the hazardous chemicals to slowly poison you to death. There was no water on the planet save for in the clouds, but where there would be rivers and lakes on other worlds there were pools of magma on Yvartis dotting the landscape and visible from orbit.

“About as close to Mustafar as I’ve seen,” Kip commented, standing beside Brad in the command nexus as his peer was linked into the system and they were both viewing the orbital spectacle that was the sizeable defense fleet sitting overtop the unfriendly world.

“If you want to keep the neighbors out…” Brad reminded him.

“Have we got our invite yet?”

“Yeah, coordinates match where Asnem landed.”

“At least we have a map then. Any surprises out there?”

“They’ve got a second fleet hidden behind the third moon. I bet they think we can’t see it, but their signal bounces are giving it away.”

“Ambush?”

“I hope they’re not that stupid. Asnem said he gave them a good indication of what we were capable of. This is probably just a backup plan in case we give them trouble.”

“We’re getting a tissue sample, one way or another,” Kip insisted.

“Don’t do anything rash…not with that fleet sitting here and all the defense turrets down there. Easy enough to pick off a dropship.”

“I didn’t say we’d be obvious about it,” Kip said defensively.

Brad smiled. “Armor up. I’ll meet you in the hangar after I tie up a few loose ends here.”

“Why didn’t we ever build a lava proof suit?” the trailblazer muttered as he walked away and back out across the bridge.

“Fair question,” Brad acknowledged as he ordered two frigates to disengage from the jumpship. They slowly slid out of their berths then took up flanking positions while the Jhar fleet keep a respectful distance without letting them out of their weapons range. If something did go down he wanted a couple of quick response assets in place, not to mention that releasing drones under fire played havoc with the defense shields and the enemy could theoretically slide a shot or two inside if they knew when and where to aim.

But they hadn’t come here to fight, so when they’d reached their parking orbit Brad left the bridge and headed back to his quarters to pick up his golden titan armor and then headed to the equipment room to stack his pack with equipment. Even though they were going down without weapon racks he didn’t want to run the risk of getting trapped on the surface without water or food, not to mention a variety of other odds and ends.

When he met up with Kip in the hangar the pair walked up into a Sparrow-class dropship and rode the small craft down to the surface where it landed in one of six major cities on the volcanic world. Off to the east there was one such huge plume of ash billowing out of a conical mountain, but it was far enough away from the city to only coat the dome with precipitation a mix of black and white ash. A large panel opened prior to their arrival, allowing the dropship and the four aerial fighters that were flying escort for them inside.

They passed through an energy shield, then the heavy blast doors slowly resealed and shut them inside the Jhar city that was only slightly better lit than the dim surface environment. The escort fighters took them to a nearby landing pad where they set down in a circle cleared of other craft and with a welcoming committee waiting on the deck nearby.

“Play some cards fellas,” Kip told the pair of pilots. “I don’t know how long we’ll be.”

“And keep the door locked,” Brad added as he and Kip went aft, switching to a private comm channel as they lowered the rear hatch. “I can sense them, but the resistance that Asnem said is there. Let’s play this coy until we get a better feel for them. If we do any snooping let’s make sure they can’t detect it.”

“This is your party, I’ll follow your lead.”

“Just here for the popcorn?” Brad asked as he stepped down the ramp and through the dropship’s atmospheric containment shield.

“There’s popcorn?” Kip replied as he followed. The readout on his helmet’s HUD switched immediately when he passed into the city’s atmosphere, indicating the low level toxins present. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the planet’s natural atmosphere but it was still dirty. Kip had never understood that, for Asnem’s reports had indicated the same. Why, if you were going to create a fully concealed dome, did you not process out all the toxins? “Looks like the maid really did take the day off.”

“Dirty air confirmed. I still don’t get that,” Brad agreed as there were a group of fully armored Protovic headed towards them.

“Maybe they stay in their suits all the time and just don’t care?”

“It’s sloppy, whatever the reason is,” Brad said, switching on the translation computer in his helmet and setting the emitter for the Jhar’s native language.

“You are the promised emissaries?” one of the delegation of 5 thinly garbed individuals asked while they were flanked by columns of armed troopers with a combination of rifles and gear bandoleers, all of which held their pink/green glow contained behind opaque masks.

“We are,” Brad answered.

“Follow us please. The rest of your crew will be staying in the ship?” the Jhar asked as the boarding ramp closed.

“The pilots will stay with their ship. We are all that is necessary to carry out negotiations.”

“We will go inside,” the speaker said before spinning about and backtracking with the guards surrounding the pair of Archons and waiting for them to follow.

They’ve got mental blocks in place, Kip noted. All of them.

Wait for a slip. I have no doubt that we can force our way through, but let’s save that for after we hear them out.

You really think they have anything new to say?

They want something, else they wouldn’t have offered a second visit.

Why didn’t they ask Asnem for it?

Could be prudence or a strategy on their part.

I wish Asnem hadn’t been so polite, Kip complained.

We’re not used to dealing with other telepaths. He was just being careful.

Careful didn’t get us a tissue sample.

If they wore their suits the entire time he didn’t have much of a chance of procuring it through the normal means. We’ve got to play this another way.

And that being?

The Jedi angle.

Peacekeepers?

Yep. If they really are as feared as they suggest, they don’t have many friends. Anyone who is powerful and fair would be taken as an ally…of sorts. We’re going to play that up along with the Protovic link.

And hope one of them takes their helmet off?

I don’t think that’s an option with this many people. Even with rudimentary blocks I don’t think I can be clean enough with them all. Plus there might be camera recordings.

We’ve got to get one sometime or this trip is a bust.

That’s why I’m glad you agreed to come along. If we have to do this the hard way I’m going to need your help.

But you want to try the easy way first. Still hoping to entice some of them to come back with us?

Right now I’m keeping my options open. I’ll do the talking, you Ikrid snoop as much as you can without getting caught.

Only way to be sure where that line is is to get caught, Kip pointed out.

Impress me, Brad dared as they crossed from the exterior to the interior via an oddly shaped tunnel entrance that looked like a ‘W’ with a couple rows of ceiling protrusions that held small light globes that also provided less than usual illumination, as far as Star Force was concerned anyway. At the end of the tunnel was a set of blast doors, a full foot thick, that opened to allow them access then closed again behind them with the internal atmosphere registering better but still with trace amounts of toxins.

From there they were led on a curvy route to a distant chamber where a large circular table was set up with nooks for many people, but no chairs. The guards were met by more already inside the room and took up positions alongside their brethren on the perimeter while the delegates found slots in the table to place themselves next to two Jhar that were already present.

“We are pleased that you have returned,” one of the originals said, “though may we ask why your previous representative is not with you?”

“His mission was to make contact with you, and that is now complete,” Brad explained. “We are his superiors.”

“May I ask to whom you answer?”

“Did he inform you as to what a trailblazer was?”

“He did not.”

“We are the military commanders of Star Force. We answer to no one.”

“You honor us,” the Jhar said, but there was a quiver in his mind that both Kip and Brad noticed. Not enough for more than a peek, but they could both sense agitation within him. Far more than should have been present during a negotiation…unless there was something they needed very badly from them. “Might I inquire as to your business here? Your former representative said you might return, but he did not state for what purpose.”

“As you were told, within our empire there are many others like you. We wish to facilitate an exchange of information. Your race has been spread across the stars, and we are still trying to puzzle out the mystery behind this. Any information you have, even inconsequential on its own, could be useful to us. Likewise we can tell you a great deal about the others, if you wish, and we would also like to establish formal relations, the depth of which is ultimately up to you.”

“But there are none like us there, correct?”

“None with pink skin, no, not yet. You are the first colony of your kind that we have discovered, though we suspect there are many more out there yet to be found.”

“This is of interest to us, but be aware that we are not well liked in this region of the galaxy. Our telepathic abilities has made us an enemy of those that fear our ability to read their minds. We have hidden here, for the most part, and kept to ourselves when applicable. We maintain trade with a few partners who do not fear us, but we are not trusted by anyone. Our history has been one of persecution and violence, with our former homeworld having been destroyed out of such fear. We hope that you, who also have an impressive telepathic ability, will not view us with such fear.”

Again, there was a fluctuation, but Brad didn’t press into it.

“We do not fear you, but we also have no reason to trust you, given that you are new to us. In time, perhaps, but first must come learning.”

“Will you be staying with us long? Or perhaps you have other ships nearby to continue with this cultural exchange, if we so agree?”

“You have been given a map of our territory, yes?”

“We have. It is far from here, which is why I ask.”

“Though we may return later, for this mission we have brought only the one and we will stay as long as we deem necessary. We have no other business within this region.”

“You came out this far just to find us?”

“You are a missing puzzle piece in this mystery we wish to solve.”

Something is wrong, Kip warned.

“Your previous representative mentioned something concerning a reunion. This is not unknown in our legends, but to date we have had no contact, nor knowledge of, any more of our kind. We assumed they too had been destroyed as others attempted to destroy us.”

“Not all of your race are telepathic,” Brad explained as he stretched his Ikrid senses a bit. “In fact, we believe only the ones with your Pink skin are.”

Another fluctuation in his mind, as well as a few others, though none so large. Something was building to a climax, and this Jhar was conflicted about it.

“Then they have not been feared by their neighbors?”

“Each colony is in its own unique position, but those we have gathered within our empire are not feared.”

“They serve you?”

“They are a member faction, and Star Force is also allied with an independent faction of Protovic, who also bear that name. They are equals, not servants.”

“But not mind readers?”

“No.”

“And what of your race? Have you not been persecuted for your abilities, which are apparently far greater than ours? We cannot touch your minds in even the faintest sense.”

Spidey senses tingling, Kip reported.

I felt it too, Brad said. Something sinister was lurking within this Jhar. “We have not made our abilities public knowledge, nor have we abused them. We are hated for other reasons.”

“Such as?”

“Doing the right thing.”

“The right thing?”

“We’re peacekeepers, warriors who fight those who prey on others. Those with good intentions come to favor our presence. Those with bad intentions despise our presence.”

“You are currently engaged in a war of great conquest?”

“We are retaking what has been taken from others.”

“And are you returning it to them or keeping it for yourself?”

“Many of those it was taken from have been annihilated. There is no one to give it back to.”

“Such is the way of the galaxy. Mere survival is something you must fight for, barter for. Hiding away only works to a point, for your enemies eventually find you out.”

“I noticed your warfleet on the way in,” Brad commented.

“It is pitiful compared to others out there, but sufficient to keep the smaller threats at bay.”

“And the larger ones?” Brad pressed, sensing something right beneath the surface of his mind but not daring to push into it for fear of being discovered.

“We cannot stand up to them…not without help.”

“What kind of help do you require?”

I don’t think he means us, Kip said. I’m picking up non-Protovic minds moving our way. A lot of them.

“Protection. While we are feared for what we can do, mind to mind, it cannot save us against enemy fleets and orbital bombardment. We have survived through the benevolence of those that see more wisdom in keeping us alive than destroying us.”

“With you returning the favor through using your telepathy to aid them?” Brad asked suspiciously, sensing the other minds heading their way in the corridors outside.

“Yes we have. We do their bidding in order to preserve ourselves, and at a cost to others, I’m sorry to say.”

“Including us?” Brad asked directly.

The fluctuation in the Jhar’s mind widened and this time Brad didn’t hesitate, diving in and out quickly.

They sold us out, Kip said, beating him to it.

The dropship, Brad reminded him, with Kip getting on the comm to them immediately.

“It was not our choice, though I am sorry that you have come yourselves rather than sending an intermediary again. Your ability to block telepathic prying is quite rare. In fact, it has never been heard of before, and is valuable to those who do not have telepathy.”

“Including your masters?”

“We did not inform them of your presence, but they learned of it upon your first arrival. Some of them remain on this world at all times, and they arranged for your capture should you come back a second time,” the Jhar said a moment before the doors opened and a group of hulking ape-like bipeds burst through standing nearly twice as tall as the Protovic and massing some 10x their thin bodies. They pushed through the Jhar guards, who in sync raised their own weapons along with the forearm mounted pistols the newcomers bore.

“Well, they’re new,” Brad said casually as the two Archons were quickly surrounded with mountains of hairy flesh and the armored suits of the Jhar.

“Remove your armor please,” the delegate asked politely. “Or they will blast through it. You are now their prisoners.”

“Do they speak your language?”

“No, but we have been instructed to speak theirs. Sadly, you will not be able to negotiate with them, and while they prefer to take you alive your corpses will also be of value to them, so I urge you to capitulate.”

“Like you have?” Brad said, stepping away from the table and back to back with Kip as he sensed a battlemeld prompt from him, which he accepted.

“If you try to use your telepathy on them our men will gun you down, so please do not try. Even if you could incapacitate these, there are many more outside. You cannot run, so submit before they grow tired of waiting. Their patience is not large.”

“Can you translate a message for me?” Brad asked irreverently, though that bit didn’t survive the mechanical translation.

“I will grant you that. What would you like me to say to them?” the Jhar asked as one of the hulking apes huffed and stepped forward, coming within a few meters of the Archons and pointing to the ground.

“Tell them to fuck off,” Brad said a second before he and Kip telekinetically picked up Donkey Kong and threw him back through the air into the others.

2

Brad and Kip followed up with a pair of Fornax fields that dropped everyone around them to the ground, giving the pair a moment to charge their Jini. When it reached saturation levels they released the battlemeld ability into the nearest minds, with the Ikrid ‘bomb’ transmitting from one to another like lightning strikes and rendering each of them unconscious. The effect spread like a virus among all those close enough together, sending everyone in the chamber to the ground, including the Protovic with their rudimentary telepathic blocks.

The trailblazers didn’t stay put, running across the downed bodies and out the open door heading back to the dropship that they knew would be in danger. Before they even got halfway there they got a report about ground troops attempting to fight their way past its shields, with both Brad and Kip slipping past the addition ‘Brutes’ in the hallways with ease. They were big and heavily armed, but their minds were weak as hell and they couldn’t touch the Archons save for a stray weapon blast, but their blue orbs were absorbed by the Archon’s energy shields and did nothing to slow them.

Evading the huge arms of the Brutes was easy when all you had to do was mess with their minds, but when the pair came back to the entrance tunnel they ran into the sealed blast doors which were more of a problem.

“They’re targeting us with fighters,” one of the pilots reported over the comm. “Our shields aren’t going to hold up for long and the roof dome is still sealed, so there’s nowhere to run.”

“Adjust shields 90% top and hold on, we’re coming to you,” Kip said as he used his Pefbar to look inside the walls and the door to find the mechanisms holding them in place while Brad covered for him, rendering anyone who came close to them unconscious, usually before they made it around the nearest corner. The big brutes made for good roadblocks, and Brad pushed a couple of them further back with a Jumat blast to hinder the approach angles of the Protovic that were coming. Apparently the number of brutes was limited, for there were many more lightly cloaked minds headed their direction than the open, crude ones that were shining like beacons in the night and easy to spot at distance.

Kip telekinetically leveraged the internal components, unlocking the clamps and forcing the door mechanism to turn. The heavy doors split apart slowly, with him needing to borrow Brad’s strength in order to move them faster. With their combined Nemsa making their Lachka far stronger, they pried open the doors about a meter wide then slipped through, knowing that any brute following wouldn’t be able to get through the gap.

“Taking hits.”

“Almost there. Find something to hide under and ride it out,” Kip said as they ran down the tunnel and up to another blast door. There was no one in their way, so both Archons used their combined strength to pry this one open faster, letting the sounds of weaponsfire drift in as they pushed as hard as they could. When the gap widened they slipped through and into the free air within the dome as six Jhar aerial fighters were hovering near the dropship and unloading their red energy weapons into it…with the shields already down and explosions ripping across its upper surface while a ring of troops keeping their distance were firing on the underside.

The mix of brutes and Protovic saw them coming and suddenly began to ignore the disintegrating dropship, turning their attention to the two Archons and rushing to reform their lines and offer a salvo of weaponsfire while the fighters continued to pound the dropship…then one of the craft ceased shooting and turned to the right, only to open fire on one of its twins a moment later.

Not seeing the attack coming, the other Jhar fighter didn’t respond immediately and was taken down as the Archons flew their remote-controlled fighter over to the next one and repeated the process. That one, along with the others, stopped firing on what was left of the dropship and engaged briefly, only to flee when they realized what was happening. Two of them didn’t make it, with their craft suddenly taking a nose dive and lightly crunching into the landing pad, followed by the damaged puppet that the Archons angrily drove into the surface.

They blew through the infantry next, using a combination of Jumat and Ikrid suppression to dislodge and then render them unconscious with Brad cleaning up the stragglers as Kip ran to the wreckage of their ride…that was now missing the wings and its upper half.

“Captain, we’re under attack,” Brad said as he stood guard and contacted his warship, having to use a higher powered pulse to get through the dome and whatever other countermeasures the Jhar were throwing up, for his normal signal strength wasn’t getting through. “Our dropship has been destroyed and we’re sealed inside the dome. The locals have friends that look like Donkey Kong and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have ships in the area. Lock down orbit and clear the airspace over this city, then arrange for a pickup. We’ll try to find a way to open the dome, if not you’ll have to blast through.”

“Copy that, though there’s no activity up here yet.”

“Make some,” Brad said angrily as he took control of the minds of two armored suits with Protovic inside as they came through the tunnel and out onto the landing pad. Punching through their blocks, even without Kip’s help, wasn’t difficult now that he didn’t care if they noticed or not. They were definitely telepaths, but nowhere on the level of the Archons, let alone the trailblazers. Obviously they didn’t understand the power of their would be victims or they never would have been this stupid, but there was no going back now and they knew it, with many more minds approaching.

The fighters had backed off because they realized that Brad and Kip could take control of them. He’d sensed that just before they’d retreated to the far side of the huge dome and out of his range, which their limited blocks reduced. Why then were they sending more infantry?

Brad searched their minds as he caught and knocked unconscious several more coming through. They thought that if they got enough people in place at the same time they’d overstretch the Humans’ powers…but that didn’t feel right. More like a placebo to tell the ground troops they were sending in, while Brad suspected this was just a cover for something else.

Captain Mendez watched from the bridge as his warship dispersed its full complement of drones and moved them out into defensive positions while the Jhar fleet did the same, sensing a fight was coming. He wasn’t going to give the order to attack until all his ships were off the racks, but either the Jhar were going to retreat from this orbital slot or be destroyed. If they had attacked the trailblazers on the surface he didn’t care about their reasons…they were going to pay for it, one way or another.

As the two sides squared off the fleet behind the moon finally showed itself, but to his mild surprise it wasn’t Jhar ships, rather a different variety altogether and probably belonging to the other player involved that Brad had mentioned. He thought they’d be coming to his current location to aid the Jhar, but as soon as he saw their movement tracks alter towards a surface endpoint he realized that his warship wasn’t the target.

“Damn them,” he said, punching buttons and setting waypoints on his control panels. “They’re going to ground. We have to secure the airspace over that city all the way up to this ship before we can launch dropships. No holding back people, blow us all the cover we need. Comm, get me a translation program and tie it into the message I’m about to send broadband.”

“Copy that…done. You’re live.”

The Captain hit the transmit button, activating the mic on his command chair. “Attention enemy ships. We will not allow you to capture or kill our ground team. Withdraw immediately or you will be destroyed. The firepower we possess is beyond anything you can imagine, and we’re not holding back while our people are in jeopardy. This is fair warning. If you value your lives, get clear now.”

Kip dug through what was left of the dropship’s door using both his hands and his Lachka to pry apart burnt and still hot sections of the hull. Putting his shoulder into a gap he pushed hard and shot his torso through, then pulled himself into the messed up interior that had numerous gaps in the shredded ceiling and divots everywhere in the floor where the weaponsfire had passed through and exploded/melted whatever it had hit.

Given the two minds in the ship, he could sense that both pilots were still alive but he couldn’t see them. There was too much debris in the way that he had to dig through until he got to what had been the cockpit. Armored as it was, the control boards were gone, as were the chairs that were now stumps protruding up from the floor…but the minds were in fact beneath it, and he realized the pilots were in the emergency storage hatches below.

He kicked away debris from the appropriate section of floor then yanked on the handle that broke off in his grasp, having been damaged itself. Using his Lachka he pulled up on the mount, only to realize that the nearly invisible seam had been melted together. He reached out a battlemeld prompt and quickly got Brad’s help from outside, then using their combined strength he tore off the concealed hatch to reveal the pair of tightly packed bodies beneath what had been the floor of the cockpit in a ‘smugglers’ compartment that usually held survival supplies.

“Smart move,” Kip said, then saw that their uniforms were covered in blood. “Damn.”

“We’re alive, but filled with shrapnel,” one of them said, reaching a hand up that Kip took, dragging him out and having to clear off more debris to give him a place to stand. “Most of it’s superficial, but Harry has a deep gash in his leg.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood as is,” Kip said, telekinetically lifting out the other pilot and looking at the wound with his Pefbar. “This is going to hurt, so I’m going to knock you out first.”

“Please do,” the copilot said as his eyes rolled shut.

Holding him aloft over a stack of debris where there was no available foot space, Kip reached inside his leg and gently pried apart his flesh, sending another river of blood out on which the metallic fragment followed. He pinched the flesh back together temporarily, then did his best to remotely start the healing process…failing miserably.

“Hold him up,” Kip said, floating him over to the other pilot and standing him practically on his feet. Reserving all of his mental power to the task, the trailblazer pulled off a golden glove and made flesh to flesh contact with his fingers, triggering the man’s body to start healing rapidly, enough at least to stop the bleeding on the major wound as well as the others. He had more shrapnel, tiny bits, across his left side, but there was no time to work on those. Kip had to get both of them stabilized and that meant stopping them from losing any more blood, so he sealed up all the wounds with temporary heals knowing that he could get the bits of sand and metal chips out later.

When Kip stood up the pilot cringed, having to adjust the copilot’s weight, then it suddenly disappeared as both of the pilots were taken in Kip’s invisible grip and moved back through the remains of the ship.

“I can walk.”

“You’re bleeding out too, so I can’t waste time,” he said, setting the unconscious man down in a little nook and being careful to blunt or reposition any nearby debris so he didn’t get another injury. “Sit down,” Kip ordered, then he took the man’s bloody wrist in his own hand and began to heal over his shrapnel wounds without pulling anything out, for unlike the other he had no large pieces in him.

Incoming, Brad warned with a telepathic flash that indicating falling objects overhead. Kip reflexively emitted his own bioshield into an umbrella that covered both pilots as an explosion occurred…but not overhead. Several more sounded, with Kip’s Pefbar stretching out to see the incoming grenades or mortars being redirected midair, hopefully back towards those shooting at them.

They’re learning to stay out of range.

We can’t go anywhere with that dome closed, Kip replied. And we can’t go after it with these two here.

I know. One of us has to go, but not until we get them some better cover.

Got any ideas?

Take one of their ships and turn it into a fort. One of the big ones they can’t blow up easily.

How far?

Far…and out in the open.

I can carry these two if you can provide cover.

Not yet. Something is up. Get them out of the ship though, I have a feeling they’re going to bring in something bigger than mortars.

Wonderful, Kip said, dropping his bioshields and using his Lachka to redecorate, clearing a path to the twisted door that he’d entered through. “We’ve got to move. I can carry you both if needed, but if he does more than stand he’s going to rip open the patches I made.”

“Just tell me where to go.”

“Over there, squeeze through that hole and just hang out underneath the ship. Don’t go more than a meter away or I’ll have trouble shielding you once I’m out.”

“And before you’re out?”

“I’m coming down right after you. Just stay in line of sight.”

“Alright,” the pilot said, trusting him despite the worry spiking within him at the thought of leaving the somewhat protective confines of their dropship. He walked/crawled over to the opening and held position there as Kip brought the still unconscious copilot through midair, setting a knee to the ground beside the hole and giving the man a nod with his helmeted head.

The unarmored pilot slid through feet first, catching his uniform top on a barb and tearing a new gash in it and his chest but otherwise coming through cleanly into the ‘fresh’ air. Kip heard him cough, but there was nothing he could do about the toxins at the moment. That was another reason they needed to get them into one of the intact ships on the deck.

As promised the Archon came down a split second later, nearly stepping on the pilot who scooted to the right and partly behind one of the landing gear as he saw Brad busy doing his invisible magic casting. There were sporadic explosions nearby but nothing directly overhead, and the pilot was fine with staying right under the ship for now rather than going out there into the direct firing lines.

Kip maneuvering the copilot’s body through the gap, having to widen it at a few spots to avoid cutting him, then he had them both within arm’s reach where he could cover them with bioshields if needed, though is focus was pressed outward to see where the incoming threats were.

Brad extended a battlemeld link and he accepted, suddenly getting his situational awareness and vision added to his own so he could see what was going on around what was left of the dropship while still squatting underneath it.

You picked one yet?

Yeah, but hold on. We’ve got company.

Shit, Kip said, seeing the approach through Brad’s eyes of several mechanized exoskeletons with their pilot’s seats empty. Apparently they could be operated remotely and thus avoid the Human’s psionics.

Combat models by the look.

I can’t help you with them while I’m babysitting.

I know, Brad said. But I can’t block the mortars for you and fight them at the same time.

We’ve still got some ship left. Go full offensive and we’ll turtle up here.

You sure?

Only way we stand a chance.

Alright, Brad said, disconnecting from the battlemeld as a chunk of ship broke free and dropped down over one side of the light coming in from all angles beneath the dropship…a last second addition to the plan.

“Move over there,” Kip said, pointing to the now blocking debris. “We’ve gotta wait this out while Brad kicks ass.”

“Happy to,” the pilot said as he scooted around the landing gear and put it behind his back, giving him a bit of cover in two directions. Kip moved himself and the unconscious copilot on past him, using the bit of cover but not relying on it, knowing it could blow apart with an explosive impact and turn into shrapnel itself…but it would at least block rifle fire if it started up again when Brad left. “Thanks for sticking with us.”

“I get bonus points if I keep you alive,” Kip joked as he stretched out his senses and tried to pick off some of the mortars before they fell on the ship, though a lot were now angling towards where Brad was headed…which was straight to the Jhar combat exoskeletons.

3

Brad didn’t waste time and sprinted towards the empty exoskeletons as they fired at him with what looked like high scale lachars, based on the glow and the pop they made when they hit the ground behind him. He juked and dodged on approach, making it very difficult for either the onboard targeting systems or the manual controllers to hit, then came up in front of the first one and dove into its empty pilot’s chest cavity and impacted the protective dome there, knocking the machine back a step but failing to take it down.

He dropped to the ground in front of it, inside its firing arcs as his shields dropped and a distortion appeared around his arms. A moment later he released an invisible Jumat blast that threw the entire exoskeleton back into two others walking up behind it, bowling them all to the ground and leaving the tiny Human standing in its place.

The rest of the mech-sized exoskeletons continued to converge on his position, stitching the ground with red streaks that blew up bits of the hangar deck on impact as Brad sprinted to his left and jumped into the chest of another one…but this time when he hit he threw it back with a simultaneous Jumat blast, essentially turning himself into an energy-enhanced wrecking ball and slamming it back into a nearby parked transport ship. As it bounced off the immovable rim of the ship, he dropped to the ground and used his Lachka to yank one of the arms of another exoskeleton away from him, causing it to shoot the one beside it with the rocket launcher it was bringing to bear just before he dashed to the side to avoid a rocket from another one that came streaking in next to him.

The smoke cloud momentarily covered him, but he shot out from it and took down another exoskeleton, temporarily, and began bouncing around from one to another and bringing them down to the ground and out of firing range on the remains of the Star Force dropship, making as much of a ruckus as he could to get their attention on him and away from the others.

Once he accomplished that he started taking them apart…literally. He dove beneath the arms of a standing one, with its weaponsfire passing just behind his back as he got near its leg and avoided the crude attempt to stomp him into the ground. Avoiding the foot, he jumped up into the armpit of the machine and lodged himself there. He grabbed onto a structural rib of that arm and balled up, generating as much Jumat as he could above him before releasing it into the joint.

He fell after the blast along with the arm that he was still clutching as he spotted Kip and the two pilots in his peripheral vision shooting across from the dropship to a somewhat distant Jhar ship now that he’d gotten the exoskeletons’ attention on him. Brad didn’t have time to cover them, or even watch their progress, having to dodge another rocket coming in and using a bit of Lachka to deflect it a couple more meters to his left as he juked right. Getting his footing he slowed his speed, trying to bait another rocket attack while avoiding the energy streaks that he now put his shields back up to deflect, for he couldn’t keep using his maximum Jumat at this rate or he’d tap out.

Brad was rewarded with three rockets coming his way. He jerked to the left and ignored two of them, but mentally grabbed hold of the third and swung it around in a very tight turn that redirected it into another exoskeleton’s chest.

It blew apart on impact, gutting what would have been the pilot’s compartment, but the rest of the machine was still intact and walking towards him. After another rocket attack with a similar result, the Jhar stopped sending the projectiles at him and stuck to the energy attacks, forcing him to take them down himself rather than using their own weapons against them.

And that was a problem, for there were dozens of the exoskeletons with more on the way across the wide landing pad. He could sense infantry pooling behind them, but they weren’t getting close for fear of his telepathic abilities. They’d probably thought the exoskeletons would be enough to fix that problem, but they didn’t know of his other psionics and these machines weren’t going to take him down even if they got a few lucky hits in.

Going evasive and just buying time, he ran between the legs of one then jerked to the right as an energy blast hit near that exoskeleton but just missed. He wasn’t sure if they were stupid enough to shoot each other, but he was going to give them the chance by getting in close and wasn’t concerned about the crude machines actually stepping on him, for they were slow as hell.

A few more jukes later and he got a battlemeld prompt from Kip, which he gladly accepted.

About time.

Let’s make this quick, Kip said as Brad telekinetically lifted and threw him onto the back of one of the exoskeletons then ran up to and Jumat-knocked another one down that had a good shot at him as he held on.

Buying him a few precious seconds, Brad engaged and distracted the others while the one Kip was on tried to buck him off, but it was no good. His armor’s adhesive patches stuck him on well enough to let him focus his Pefbar inside the machine, looking for the sweet spots and sharing that information with Brad via the battlemeld.

When a rocket flew in at him Brad deflected it but was unable to hit any of the other exoskeletons…then a red streak hit Kip’s armor, followed by two more before the Archon jumped off and joined Brad on the ground, skittering about with only shield damage and no armor impacts, though that wouldn’t have lasted much longer if he’d continued to hold on.

Knowing more or less what they needed, the two Archons split and ran around the legs of the nearest exoskeleton as they used their Pefbar to look inside and find the delicate machinery that was encased beneath the central armor plates. Using their combined power they pried and ripped apart as much of it as they could on that pass, but the machine continued to function. They had to go separate ways after that, dodging a rain of red blasts coming down from above and all around their perimeter, but they eventually circled back and yanked some more internal components apart, enough to cause the thing to seize up and become a metallic tree on the landing deck.

Now knowing what to do they got much more efficient with the process over the next three, then it was just a matter of time and evasion as they eviscerated the remaining exoskeletons without doing so much as putting a dent in their exteriors. They finished up with the one-armed machine and that left them standing in the middle of the metal forest with no more close range targets to contend with, though there were a few sniper shots floating in at them.

Kip let one hit his shields to register the output and saw it wasn’t much. The Jhar tech wasn’t nearly as advanced as theirs, making their sniper shot nothing more than a regular pistol hit. Dangerous in number but not as a one-shot kill.

“Captain, status report?”

“We’ve got an even fight here,” he replied, a bit of surprise in his voice. “The Jhar ships are confetti, but this other fleet has some teeth. I think we can win out, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to slip a dropship down in this. Any chance of you riding on the hull of a drone?”

“We could, but our pilots have no armor. Kick their ass them come for us. We’ll hold out here until then.”

“I’ll try and make this as quick as I can. Good luck.”

“Likewise,” Kip said as he took off running to follow Brad, who was already headed towards one of the infantry clumps. Through their battlemeld he knew he wasn’t going straight there, but to one of the snipers nearby…but he wanted the sniper to think they hadn’t spotted him. Kip went along with the ruse, then when they got close enough they stretched out with their combined Lachka and plucked the Jhar out of his concealed position on top of a parked ship and pulled him across the gap out to them in the middle of the empty section of the bay near to where the destroyed dropship was.

His weapon flew out of his grip a moment before he landed and into Brad’s hands, with Kip pulling the armored figure over to him and taking his helmet off. The pink/green skin glowed intensely even as the expression on the individual’s face was one of sheer panic. The trailblazers didn’t bother speaking to him, rather Kip just pushed through his pathetic mental barriers and dug around his mind for information…specifically where the control room was to open the doors in the dome above them.

Go, Kip said, rendering the sniper unconscious and beginning to peel his armor off as Brad took off running to the somewhat distant control room. After stripping down the man to his clothing, he telekinetically carried him over to the transport where the two pilots were holed up. He dumped his unconscious body inside, making sure he was going to be out for a while, then he climbed up on top of the ship and stood guard with a good line of sight across the empty region of the landing pad where the smoking remains of the dropship were next to the still exoskeletons, as well as a view of the surrounding ships and the infrastructure on the perimeter where the infantry was waiting.

He could sense them, but they were too far away to affect. There were a few more snipers/scouts closer and two of them were actively moving around, but none were getting too close and the aerial fighters were hovering in the distance, not daring to come back within telepathic range.

“That’s right, stay back,” Kip muttered. “Give us the time we need.”

The control room for the dome wasn’t on the edge of the landing pad, for there were several within the dome and only one control tower. Brad had to work his way through more than 2 miles of city to get to the location, but between his running speed and psionics that wasn’t a problem. Those Jhar that didn’t get out of the way he either knocked aside or disoriented, knowing not to waste time when they had two armorless pilots to evac.

When he got to the base of the tower he forced the doors and entered, clearing out the personnel inside as he made his way to the top of the tower. A few floors from getting there he heard explosions above him and extended his Pefbar just in time to see the top half of the tower get blown apart. Reaching out with his Ikrid he found several fighters nearby firing into the structure, ostensibly to keep him from accessing the controls.

He focused on one of them, stretching his limits and grabbing the pilot’s mind through his mental block. When he did he continued the attack on the tower to not draw suspicion for a few seconds, then he had the pilot turn and fire on the ships around him, knocking two out of the sky before the others turned and ran rather than fight it out and let themselves get caught in the Human’s telepathy.

Bringing the fighter closer he headed up to the top level and pushed his way through the debris, seeing that the equipment and transmitters were trashed, meaning he couldn’t signal the dome to open. He had no idea what these Protovic morons were doing, for they weren’t going to be able to take him prisoner. Trapping them here was going to be a big problem…for them, but Brad didn’t intend to stick around to make them pay for it, so he brought the fighter in closer and jumped up onto the side of it, adhesive finger and toe tips holding him in place, and telepathically ordered his puppet to fly them up to the top of the dome itself.

The Jhar saw what we was doing and immediately sent the rest of their fighters after him, perhaps sensing an opportunity to shoot him out of the sky now that he was vulnerable…but he wasn’t. Rather than taking control of their minds he shot Fornax blasts into each fighter as it approached, making it momentarily lose control and unable to fire back as Brad’s fighter did. With a few Ikrid tricks thrown in he held control of his fighter and slowly took down theirs, chipping away with return shots and largely stalling them out as the numbers gradually shifted to his advantage.

Then several rockets leapt up from the ground and he had to shift his power to turning them back. His puppet regained momentary control in the lapse, but Brad reasserted it quickly enough and had the pilot fly closer to the other fighters as more rockets came up. One last maneuver had it flipping him over so he was directly in the path of the attack, with him generating a bioshield to cover that half of the fighter.

He took one hell of a hit, ripping away most of his bioshield, but when the dust quickly cleared he saw three other fighters falling down to the buildings below, victims of the friendly fire that Brad had just drawn towards them. Rolling the fighter back over he focused on deflecting or capturing the remaining rockets coming up at him and managed to swing one into another fighter as his puppet continued to pump shots into the others.

Brad had to juggle between numerous psionics simultaneously, but it quickly became clear that the more attacks the Jhar threw at him the more of their own troops were going down. When their fighter count dropped to less than 15 they withdrew, leaving only the rockets from the surface coming up at him. Those gradually increased in number, but Brad was staying on top of it as he snuck a few peeks here and there into the dome above to see the inner workings of the dome doors.

It wasn’t enough and he needed more time, so to trick the Jhar he grabbed a few of the incoming rockets and slammed them into the door itself. The material it was made of was too thick to get through easily, but the rocket launchers quickly figured out that their ordinance was going to help him break through them so they almost simultaneously stopped their attacks, giving Brad a moment of peace as he and his puppet pilot reigned as king of the mountain over the city below them.

That gave him the time he needed to see into the dome and find the mechanical sweet spots, which in this case he didn’t need to try and wrench apart, for he realized there were walkways built inside the curve of the dome itself. Locating one of them near the interior, he had the pilot fire into the wall material until he had blown a hole into it, then he flew up next to it and Brad crawled inside, getting away from the fighter and the combat in the dome entirely.

Shoo, Brad said as he released control of the pilot and made sure he understood the sentiment. The Jhar took the warning at face value and flew away, leaving Brad alone in the cramped walkways that led to a manual release for the dome doors. When he got there he found that all that was required was to disengage the remote control, which was locking them in place, and hit the release button that took energy from a backup power cell built into the dome itself. It was a safety mechanism that would allow the doors to be closed or opened in the event of a citywide power loss, and that meant it couldn’t be countermanded save for onsite…and there was no way any of their infantry were getting close to him without getting knocked out.

With a grinding groan, the doors parted and slowly began to retract, with him widening them up to their full width, which was far larger than they had been retracted to allow the dropship inside.

“Captain, we’ve got the dome doors open. How soon before you can get us a ride?”

“Plowing the rode now. We should have a drone in place within minutes to secure the evac site. When the conduit will be clear is anyone’s guess.”

“How rough do you have it up there?”

“Having to play defense to keep from losing ships. Attrition is in our favor at present. Should I expedite the process?”

“Are there any planetary defense cannons I missed?”

“Nothing beyond the medium grade batteries. It’s their aerial fighters that are the main concern.”

“Pull six drones off and box escort one down. We’ve got a handle on the situation at the moment, but these guys are insistent that we don’t leave. We need to be gone before they get more inventive.”

“What about the fighters inside the dome?”

“I’ll handle those. Just get that dropship down to the entrance.”

“Sending now.”

Brad knew he was on the clock, so he went back to the hole the fighter had blown into the inside of the dome and crawled outside it, wishing he still had that fighter under his control. He didn’t have a jump pack, so if he slipped he was in for a long fall that he didn’t think he could cushion himself out of with his Lachka ‘crash bag’ technique. He might survive it, but he figured he’d be busted up by the impact regardless, so he crawled across the wall upside down very slowly, making sure his adhesive holds were secure and that he wasn’t grabbing onto anything that would pry loose.

A single rocket leapt up at him, but he deflected it in time and no more came. More of a trial balloon than anything, he guessed, but it meant they saw him and were just waiting for an opportunity to kill him. Apparently taking them alive wasn’t on the table anymore, or maybe even recovering his body. Right now it just seemed that they didn’t want to let them get away.

When Brad got to the opening he transitioned to vertical climbing that ended with him standing up on top of the dome in the really toxic air. His helmet filter took care of it, but the longer the dome doors were open the more of it was pouring into the city, though the ash was being kept out by the energy shield stretching across the gap. Their pilots were inside one of the ships so they shouldn’t be affected, but the lesser toxins they’d been breathing ever since leaving the dropship weren’t doing them any good. They’d live, but it would be messing with their lungs never the less.

Brad didn’t have to wait long before a Borg-like cube burst through the ash clouds and came to a hover over the dome. The six drones that made up the cube held position save for the bottom one. It pulled away, revealing the hollow interior that a dropship was cradled within. Once it had a free run down into the city Brad commed the pilot and had it fly close enough for him to jump on top, clinging to it and giving the dropship the psionic defense it needed.

Brad had to swat away multiple rockets as the dropship flew down to the pad, but he had Kip’s help when they got close to the surface. Between the two of them and the shields on the dropship they didn’t have any hull hits and they didn’t have to stay around long, with Kip getting the two pilots onboard as Brad slid off the top and dropped to the deck to find four Jhar prisoners in his friend’s tow as well.

“A little help?” Kip asked, with Brad telekinetically grabbing two of them and hauling them inside the dropship as he also swatted away another rocket, accidentally dropping one of them in the process. He picked him back up and threw the glowing pink/green sleeper into the back of the Falcon-class dropship. He stayed outside for a moment, knocking down some more rockets and steering a couple into the parked Jhar ships as he became the last man standing. When the others were aboard he hopped inside but kept his psionics active, reaching through the ship to add to its protection as they quickly flew back up through the dome’s opening and into the gap between the drones as they were busy firing at targets beyond that he couldn’t see.

When the bottom drone slipped back over, it eclipsed most of the exterior light and the whole mass accelerated, with one of the drone’s IDF fields reaching out to grab the much smaller ship and keep it from having to make the joint navigational calculations that the drones were to maintain the cube.

“Souvenirs?” Brad asked as he knelt next to one of the pilots and pulled off his armored glove as Kip was doing the same with the unconscious one.

“We needed a tissue sample, and these ventured a bit too close.”

“Why four?”

“One of these was helping us, and I want to know why.”

“Helping?”

“Shooting at the other Jhar.”

“That makes two then, why four?”

“More minds to interrogate later. Besides, we’re probably doing them a favor.”

“I’m not feeling all that generous at the moment.”

“I’m more interested in those brutes.”

“Their fleet in orbit is giving Captain Mendez a handful.”

“Even more reason to get information.”

“Alright, guests accepted. How’s your guy doing?”

“Messed up but he’ll live. How about him?”

“I’m alright,” the pilot answered. “The numbing helps.”

“Thought it would,” Brad said as he tapped into the battlemap with the orbital data highlighted. “Just sit this out until we get you to a med bay. I think we’re in the clear now.”

4

December 25, 3059

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Brad was running through population figures for his Protovic faction in his office when he sensed a familiar presence a few steps before he entered the open doorway opposite his desk. He looked up from the holograms as Greg walked in, raising an eyebrow in his direction.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m here to put you back on schedule,” the trailblazer said, crossing his arms over his chest with a stern look on his face.

“Schedule?”

“Your men are not working as fast as they can. Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.”

Brad finally realized he was speaking in quotes and decided to respond in kind. “I promise you, this station will be operational as planned.”

“The Emperor does not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation.”

“But he asks the impossible. I need more men,” Brad said, belatedly realizing the truth in his own statement. His Protovic faction did need more population.

“Then perhaps you can tell him when he arrives.”

“The Emperor is coming here?” Brad answered, continuing to play along.

“No,” a voice said from outside as another person walked up to his office entryway. “He’s already here,” Davis said as he came into view.

Brad leaned back in his chair, glancing at Greg who had a slight smile on his face. “You bastard.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to execute you,” the Star Force Director said as he pulled up a chair and sat down as Kip followed him into the room.

“How the hell did you get here without my knowing?”

“Caught you on a training cycle,” Davis said as the other two Archons sat down and looked out the windows at the Protovic city behind Brad.

“I arranged the rest after that,” Kip admitted.

“Oh really?” Brad said in protest, glaring at him.

“I like to make an entrance when I can,” Davis admitted.

“You succeeded,” Brad said, turning his attention back to the matter at hand. “What’s so important that it brings you out from Sol?”

“I didn’t want to have this conversation in bits and pieces via relays, plus Vortison is already here and I have some additional questions for him.”

“Go on.”

“Let’s start with where your head is at,” Greg deflected. “Then we’ll start picking it apart.”

“On which subject?”

“Your recent field trip.”

“Two possible discussions there. I’m guessing that you’ve found something on the brutes?”

“I have,” Davis answered. “The Nexus finally admitted their existence once I directly inquired. They’re called the Urunneg, and are one of their dirty little secrets they like to keep swept under the carpet.”

“Wait, there hasn’t been enough time to get a courier out to them and back again.”

“No, there hasn’t. I got this information from The Nexus ambassador.”

“We have an ambassador?”

“Given our alliance with the Preema they feel we merit that small contact now. We’ve had one for the past 6 years.”

“We’ve been fighting with the Preema far longer than that,” Kip pointed out.

“I’ve been making some further inroads with the H’kar and other members of The Nexus, enough that we’re starting to get popular and exert a bit of influence. By recognizing us they legitimize the contacts rather than having us working as an outside force.”

“Face saving gesture?” Brad asked.

“I think they’re worried about the H’kar leaving and inspiring a few others to do likewise. Their recent efforts against the lizards have done little more than stall their advance into Nexus territory and the H’kar have noticed. They’re not interested in winning the war or reclaiming the H’kar’s lost worlds, but we are and we’re getting it done, slowly, but we’re eventually going to end up on The Nexus’s doorstep. A very undervalued doorstep, but our good will with the H’kar is at such a high level that if I asked them to join Star Force they’d probably accept and that would cause all kinds of havoc within The Nexus.”

“They’re not used to people leaving?” Brad guessed.

“No one has. Ever. Not without having all the advancements given to them stripped from their civilization, which would essentially destroy them. That fear has kept them all together, but the H’kar are small enough that they could get away with it and come directly over to us. This means The Nexus has some competition now, and other member states are in a position to start analyzing the advantages and disadvantages in their membership, as well as the threats of destruction if they’d left. It was never on the table before, but there are discussions happening now. A diplomatic push is on, and in order to start using politics to squash the seeds of rebellion they have established a line of contact with us. Their ambassador supplied the information on the Urunneg.”

“Why if it’s a secret?”

“The Urunneg are one of the many enemies The Nexus has, and they’ve been fighting them in one form or another for nearly a millennia. They could win a proper war against them, but they’re so spread out fighting multiple opponents that they can’t devote the resources to one area without crippling another. Their ambassador wasn’t so forthcoming in that regard, but I’ve acquired enough data from other sources to put the pieces together. The Urunneg control chunks of The Nexus’s domain, unofficially, and are left to roam and plunder so long as they don’t hit a high valued world or cause too much of a ruckus.”

“And that brings you out here why?”

“What do you plan to do with the Pinks?”

“The four here or the others?”

“Both.”

“We,” Brad said, looking at Kip, “hadn’t decided yet.”

“What have you decided?”

“I get the feeling that everything is up in the air now. Why don’t you just save some time and tell me what you want done.”

Davis smirked. “We need to figure out what to do and move forward on this quickly. This is not just a Protovic issue, but one for the entire empire. Starting with their telepathy.”

“Ah,” Brad said, sensing the underlying issue…or at least one of them that had brought Davis out here. “Well, you should know that as of a few days ago Vortison assured me that they don’t have the hardware to do motor control hacks, no matter what their skill level. They can influence, distract, and distort, but they can’t play puppets with anyone.”

Davis inclined his head slightly. “As of now?”

“As of now,” Brad confirmed. “What the special package contains is still up in the air. Vortison has his hands full there, even with all 8 variant samples to work with.”

“You’re keeping them separate, correct?”

“Just in case, yes. Only 2 are unlocked, but on the offhand chance that proximity might change that we’re not letting them comingle. Our Pink guests are in isolation and still undergoing light interrogation. The rebel is talking freely, while the others require mind melds to get useful information out of them.”

“Do you plan on keeping them here?”

“I don’t have a problem with it. You want them sent back?”

“Are you planning on going back?”

“That’s something we’ve been discussing,” Brad said, referring to Kip. “But the larger question of the telepathy needs to be answered first.”

“Now that I have it I can understand the implications of the trouble it could cause in an otherwise vulnerable civilian population, beyond the mere hysteria of ignorance,” Davis commented warily. “The trouble is there are a few races out there that already have telepathy, so we’re going to have to deal with it one way or another at some point. Do we exclude those that have it or…well, I don’t see a good ‘or’ at the moment.”

“Fearing power isn’t something Star Force does,” Greg pointed out. “No matter how weak someone is, they can always hurt others if they’re committed to doing it. Bringing telepaths into Star Force would change our internal dynamic, but I don’t see it being overly dangerous. Just something new.”

“Them not having remote control capability changes things,” Kip added. “But for the sake of argument, what if another race out there does?”

“We have the helmet inhibitors,” Greg reminded them. “So our security forces will be unaffected if it comes to that, but we don’t want to let that tech get out into the open or we’ll lose our primary advantage.”

“Agreed,” Davis said quickly. “Immunizing the population against Ikrid, technologically or biologically isn’t on the table, though I’ve been told before that the biological route isn’t available to us, and that’s one thing I want to take up with Vortison again. And it appears that’s also why the Urunneg tried to capture you.”

“Making yourself immune to telepaths is a far more powerful thing than people realize,” Greg added. “And that only escalates where the V’kit’no’sat are involved. Them giving it to Zen’zat and no one else is beyond huge, for it strips them of most of their power over us. Giving it to everyone out there would even the playing field, but I agree that’s not a good solution even if we were able to do it.”

“So what’s the worst case scenario if we brought the Pinks back and plugged them into Axius?” Davis asked.

“They start messing with others,” Kip answered. “Pulling tricks, cons, invading memories and stealing secrets. Convincing someone to jump off a balcony.”

“All of which can be done through other means,” Greg pointed out.

“But we have no way to trace where the influence comes from,” Brad argued. “If a Calavari picks someone up and tosses them over a balcony to their death we see him do it on surveillance vids. We can’t trace the telepathic signals.”

“But we still have range issues to consider, as well as the ability to mentally check all individuals seen within that radius at the time. So long as a telepath doesn’t get so strong they can block us out, we can still theoretically track down the assailant, correct?”

“Unless they figure out how to wipe each other’s memories,” Kip theorized. “One guy does the deed, then someone else wipes the memory of it from him before we can search his mind. Evidence gone bye bye.”

“What are we going to do now if a telepath from another races enters the ADZ and starts living among us?” Davis floated. “Kick them out because of their potential?”

“Like I said, we don’t fear power,” Greg reminded them. “We can’t take that route.”

“There are so many opportunities to misbehave when you have it,” Brad reminded them.

“Can we rule out mixed maturias then?” Greg asked. “If we do have telepaths from birth and not earned skills, we keep them segregated while they’re younglings so everyone is on an even playing field while they develop. That’s when people tend to be the most mischievous simply because they’re feeling out their capabilities.”

Davis glanced at each of the three trailblazers in turn. “I think we’re in agreement there.”

“We can’t make a rule saying no mental invasion,” Kip continued. “One, because we can’t enforce it, and two, because we do it all the time and it isn’t something wrong. Prying yes, but sometimes you need to pry.”

“Can we train people to defend themselves against it?” Greg wondered.

“Not well,” Brad answered. “Short of having telepathy yourself, there’s no way to stop someone skilled enough from getting in without an active blocking mechanism. You can’t teach people to develop one without the ability to sense when someone is pushing in.”

“So what, we’re just going to have a segment of the population that can play mental havoc with the others and there’s nothing they can do to defend themselves?” Kip floated. “I don’t like that scenario when I put myself in their shoes.”

“Yet this is the reality of the galaxy,” Davis pointed out. “We’ve been immune to it for a while due to geography, but that won’t last forever, regardless of what we do with the Pinks. We need to establish a policy now before we need it rather than scrambling to try and assemble one later.”

“As an addendum to the maturia,” Kip offered, “let’s only train the civilian telepathic population to defend themselves and leave the ‘offensive’ capabilities to special advanced programs. That won’t prevent people from learning on their own, but it’ll keep the strongest telepaths in the ‘earned’ group.”

Brad sighed, coming to a conclusion that he’d been nibbling at but now seemed obvious hearing a couple new voices state angles rather than him just running them through his head. “I guess it all comes down to where do you want to bite the bullet? Have possible telepathic trouble in our civilian population that will be hard to crack down on, or turn a blind eye to telepaths and exclude them from Star Force like they were a plague.”

“As I said,” Greg reminded him, “we don’t fear power.”

“So,” Davis continued after a brief moment of silence, “the issue isn’t whether or not to have telepaths in the civilian population, but in how to manage them in order to avoid major problems. We’ve already got two points on the board, let’s see how many more we can add and what the picture looks like then.”

“Agreed,” Brad said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his desk as he looked at Davis. “Now will you tell me what you want done with the Pinks?”

“These rebels you found. They are not in league with the Urunneg, and the others are only doing so because they are forced to under threat of death. That by no means excuses their actions, but if you remove the threat you remove most of the problem. I say we go in and evacuate them all back here, and if they don’t like that idea we take them anyway similar to the methods used to conquer the Veliquesh.”

Brad’s eyes widened slightly. “Really?”

“Orders of the Urunneg or not, they attacked Star Force. They don’t get to have an opinion anymore.”

“That’s going to be very expensive utilizing the Nexus grid point system.”

“Especially when we have to defend against a counterattack by the Urunneg,” Kip added. “Their tech level is formidable, so we’ll have to have a lot of warships on hand in addition to the transports.”

“These are Protovic being used as slaves by the Urunneg. Freeing them and adding them to our empire is worth the cost, though under prisoner protocols for most of them. We can make some more amenable arrangements for the rebels, but they all have to go through your indoctrination programs. We’re not uprooting their civilization and replanting it here. They’re joining us on our terms.”

“If that’s the way you want it…”

“You disagree?” he asked Brad.

“We’re still a little pissed at getting ambushed,” Kip answered for him.

Davis smiled. “I didn’t say you had to go about it gently.”

5

July 19, 3061

System 10746 (Nexus Domain)

Yvartis

Kip rode the dropship down to the planet seeing the smoke plumes rising from the surface targets that the Star Force fleet in orbit had just got finished destroying. They were all outside or on the dome covering the city, but they were not going to be giving the dropships any trouble on their way down or back up like they had the last time he’d left this place. Scores of Star Force skeets controlled the local airspace ensuring that the Jhar fighters couldn’t get to them while a number of Starscream-class mechs were standing on the dome and busy cutting through the entry doors.

The way would be opened soon enough, with Kip’s dropship being one of the first to move through along with the leading elements of the invasion force. The Urunneg fleet that had been here before had been reduced down to a handful of ships and those fled when they saw the Star Force convoy begin arriving at the planet. They knew they couldn’t handle this fight, so they’d ran clean out of the system save for a single ship that was snooping around the outer planets, perhaps waiting to see what happened or hoping to pick up some of their surface personnel later. Either way, right now Star Force controlled orbit with a mass of warships and drones deployed in intercept positions ensuring that it wouldn’t be able to attack or recuse anyone on the planet without coming under fire.

The same went for the Jhar ships, which had wisely backed down in the face of such overwhelming military might…though most of the Star Force ships were actually personnel transports and not well suited for combat. The Jhar didn’t know that and their bulk was terrifying on its own, but even without that added effect one warship would have been enough to make them cower down into the lower orbits after having seen their threat level displayed in grandiose fashion on the last visit here.

The remaining Jhar warships were now clustered up and being held at gunpoint with orders not to move. Kip intended to keep them there until the recovery efforts began, hoping that they wouldn’t have to board and stun each individual to get them into Star Force custody. He’d come prepared for that while leaving Brad back in Star Force territory to make preparations for the Pinks’ arrival, but he hadn’t come alone.

Beside him in the dropship was Octaviak, one of the four captured Jhar that they’d taken back with them and interrogated. She’d been the one rebel among them, actually firing on the other Pinks to try and help them escape when she’d been taken captive as well. Since then the other three had been remanded to the prison facilities and set on their isolated indoctrination programs, giving them a chance to earn their eventual freedom but being treated as full prisoners given the fact that they’d been shooting at Kip and Brad when they’d been captured.

Octaviak was wearing her fully body armor, showing no sign of her bioluminescence as she waited with the Archon in the rear bay along with a contingent of Commandos and a couple of Knights. All were seasoned veterans who had taken part in the conquest of the Veliquesh so they knew the score and how to handle a population recovery effort like this if things went south, but Kip was hoping Octaviak could help them convince at least part of the Jhar population to come with them willingly.

She was part of a rebel faction that abhorred the indentured servitude placed upon them by the Urunneg and the corrupt Jhar leaders that allowed it. They’d rather fight and die than live with the dishonor, but had no chance of beating the technologically and physiologically superior Urunneg. Their only advantage was their telepathy, and that was of no use against warships in orbit that could obliterate a city at will…which had happened in the past when the Jhar had failed them or showed resistance.

For that reason the rebels were hunted by the Jhar themselves, forcing them to go into hiding and become mostly sleeper agents. Octaviak had revealed herself trying to help the Humans escape the dishonorable kidnapping/murder attempt, and from her Kip had learned that there were many more of them out there, scattered throughout this city and others in small numbers. How many more were sympathetic but unwilling to even talk about dissention was unknown, but it was suspected that a sizeable chunk of the population was unhappy with the arrangement with the Urunneg, just too fearful to even think about doing anything about it.

That was why Kip was bringing Octaviak with him, hoping she could make contact with the other rebels so they could get them off planet first…but right now he had to throw his weight around and essentially take the place of the Urunneg and hopefully bully the Jhar into submission. If they resisted they were back to the Veliquesh again, though he very much hoped living sacrifices wouldn’t be in their battle plans.

With their orbital defenses meekly complying with Kip’s demands, he was hopeful that the surface would comply as well. Despite their sealing of the dome, once the mechs broke through there was no resistance as they landed in the open spots on the pads beneath. Kip had theirs set down on one nearest to the Tajak’s renplex, which translated into ‘governor’s office,’ or whatever the equivalent was within Jhar society. Kip hadn’t spent much time on that himself, knowing that if they were successful their culture and society were going to be wiped out anyway, so there was no use in him getting that well acquainted with it.

When the rear hatch opened there was no incoming weaponsfire and Kip walked out freely with Octaviak beside him, making it clear she was with him rather than a prisoner. His team stayed with the dropship and the others nearby while he moved off with her alone and into the city…a gesture of trust, they might assume, save for those that had fought against him the last time he was here. They knew he wasn’t making a gesture of trust, but one of contempt, for he most definitely didn’t need an escort with the powers he possessed.

His golden armor stood out, for it was the only one amongst the invasion force, and he assumed the Jhar would recognize it as well. Kip didn’t know how long their restraint would last, but they were allowed all the way up to the renplex before they met up with a wall of guards. Kip raised a hand and an invisible wall formed between two of them, spreading out and pushing them aside to give him and Octaviak room to move through.

Not knowing what was happening and being thwarted with such a casual gesture broke the confrontational mood, with the pair moving through the dozens of armed guards without so much as a look behind them. The guards followed, keeping close but out of arms reach, as the Human and his Jhar companion worked their way through the building and up to the Tajak’s edict room rather than his abode.

That seemed to make the guards even more confused, up until Octaviak walked up to the podium and began messing with the controls. An invisible wall from Kip kept the guards back from her as the rebel accessed the city-wide broadcast system and set it to address every terminal on emergency protocols. Halfway through her prep the Tajak himself burst into the room through the guards, yelling more at Octaviak than the Human.

“What do you think you’re doing!”

“This planet is now in their possession,” she explained without looking at him or delaying her setup work. “They have supplanted the Urunneg and are now our masters…or at least that’s all your primitive brain needs to comprehend. The truth is more complex and I’m about to instruct the city on the details.”

“You are forbidden.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“You cannot do this! Step aside,” he said, rushing past the guards. Kip let him get within half a meter of her before physically stepping up and grabbing him by the armored arm.

“You tried to kill me the last time I was here. Don’t give me a reason now to return the gesture,” the trailblazer threatened, with the translation software handling the language barrier adequately.

“How dare you,” the Jhar said in such twisted tones that it sounded like hissing after processing. “You have no idea what you have done. What you’re doing. You’ve doomed us all.”

“Actually, we’re here to save you. So shut up and stand back,” he said, tossing the Protovic into the guards with a flick of his arm. He nearly knocked two of them over, and it was clear that that the Archon’s physical power was just as impressive as his mental ones. “I’ll give you instructions later. Obey and I won’t have to render you unconscious.”

“Ready,” Octaviak said, righting herself behind the podium.

“Begin. I’ll make sure they stay quiet,” Kip said, making a mental link with them all that forcefully broke through their mental blocks and suppressed their ability to utter so much as a word of complaint.

“I am Octaviak, member of the Ishta. For too long we have been slaves of both the Urunneg and those of our own that used that excuse to further their own dishonor. As of today we have been conquered again, by those that came here as friends from far away seeking to unite us with our wayward kin. They took me back with them by mistake, thinking I was one who was trying to kill them. Those that did are still there, imprisoned, but I am here now because they searched my mind and discovered the truth. I am not their enemy. The Ishta are not their enemy. Any loyal Jhar are not their enemy. The true enemy is the Urunneg and those that serve them, telling us that we will be destroyed if we do not fully submit.”

“That may have been true, but for the Ishta and myself I can say that we do not care. Better to die honorably than live as a scoundrel. For this we have been hunted by our own people and forced to hide among them simply to survive. We meet in secret, when we’re able and bold enough, taking some small actions of defiance that ultimately have amounted to nothing more than preserving our sanity. Today we have another option. Our new conquerors are not here to use us for their own agenda, they are here to free us and bring us into their empire so that we will be free of the Urunneg and all those who would kill us for our telepathic abilities.”

“Their abilities far surpass ours, so they do not fear us. The other Jhar with them, whom they call Protovic, do not have our abilities. Nor do most of the many races that are part of their empire, but their leaders, their Archons, are far more powerful than you can imagine. Some of you saw what happened here, when two of them were ambushed by both the Urunneg and our dishonorable security forces. They were not even armed and they tore through them all. They did not need my help, rather they helped me by showing me a better way, an honorable path, and a chance for true freedom.”

“That freedom must be earned, however. We must leave this planet behind entirely. The ships in orbit are both warships and transports brought here to carry us, all of us, away from this retched existence to a world with our kin. We will have to learn their ways, their language, and prove ourselves worthy, but if we do so we will join them as equals…not outcasts.”

“That is why I am calling on all Ishta to come forward, now, boldly identifying yourselves and moving to the locations where there are Star Force landing zones. You need bring nothing with you but yourselves. I will meet you there and we will discuss things further. For everyone else, both those too cowardly to act and those who have acted dishonorably, I bid you farewell. You will not see me again, nor the rest of us. Your path will be a different one laid out by Star Force. And I can honestly say I hope you resist them, and that they let me watch as they put you into submission.”

“Brothers and sisters come with me now, and let us be done with this world,” Octaviak said, backing away from the podium and walking out of view rather than turning it off directly. The Human put a hand on her shoulder, mentally telling her that she had done well, then took her place in front of the podium as he held his captured audience both still and quiet before him.

Meanwhile, true to her word, Octaviak moved off, heading back to the landing zone to meet up with the other Ishta that were bold enough to reveal themselves. She expected that many would not, fearing this was a trap, but Kip had wanted her to try so they could be spared the prison sentence awaiting the others. The Ishta would still have to go through indoctrination, as would she, but they could do so without the penalty phase that was necessitated by the attack on the Archons previously.

She wondered if she was going to be jumped on her way back to the dropship, keeping a sharp lookout for nearby minds but none approached, singly or in groups. In fact, she was given a wide berth the entire walk back, then saw two other Jhar standing with the white armor of the Humans. As she approached she saw their ID tags on her HUD, but knew one of them by his mental signature alone.

“Havrel,” she said, running up behind him and giving him a big hug when he turned around.

“This had better not be a trap,” he warned.

“It isn’t, and if you suspected it was you wouldn’t have come.”

“I came trusting in you. Your words were…clean,” he said, referencing her lack of code words that would have suggested coercion.

“I have been to their empire and seen the other Jhar there. We will be welcome once we earn our place.”

“How so?”

“Training. I have begun mine already. There is so much they can offer us. This is what we have long dreamed of.”

“We dreamt of independence,” another Jhar said, walking up to them.

“This is better. Search my memories,” she offered, lowering her barrier to them. “I am not lying.”

“But are they?” Havrel asked, beginning to pluck images from her mind.

“We are coming with them one way or another,” Octaviak confided. “They are allowing the Ishta an easier transition. The attack on them is not being forgiven. The dishonorable and the apathetic will have a more difficult path to travel to earn their place. Those of the Ishta bold enough to come forward now will be rewarded. Those who do not believe me will be lumped in with the others.”

“So they punish all who do not reveal themselves?” he asked, glancing at one of the dull white helmets a couple meters to his right.

“We betrayed their trust and tried to kill them. If the situation was reversed would we be so accommodating?”

Havrel huffed. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“You will see,” she said, closing her mind again as a few more individuals made their way out of the shadows and onto the pad, with all others staying far away from the alien soldiers but looking on from what they felt was a safe distance.

“How long will they wait?”

“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly, seeing far fewer faces than she’d hoped. This wasn’t the only landing site, but she knew for a fact that there were more Ishta in the city than the few here, and suspected many more that she had no contact with in order to preserve their anonymity. The true number of Ishta was unknown to everyone, for they were united by scruples and literature, not an organizational structure. When several hours had passed and there was only 9 others that had appeared at their location the soldiers instructed them to board the dropship, with the others they’d brought down now being unnecessary.

Octaviak went onboard with the others, knowing that she’d be given no further special treatment and sent into indoctrination along with the other Ishta. She had a head start on them, but would endure the isolation process as well after a transitional group period, earning her way into the Protovic like the others hopefully would.

As she boarded the dropship and the ramp began to close she knew she was looking at this world for the last time, then a firm hand directed her away from the hatch and into the personnel section beyond. There she watched on camera as the dropship took off and passed many more coming in. What exactly was going to happen she didn’t know, but she was glad she and at least some of the Ishta were getting out ahead of it. She’d been told of the Veliquesh and how they’d been rescued, and hoped it didn’t come to that, but she knew that one way or another the others would be taken from this world as well and put into the prison facilities in Star Force territory.

And unless they changed their ways and completed their own training they would stay there, away from the Protovic, for the rest of their lives…meaning she was now done with the dishonorable bastards permanently, and that mere thought was a breath of fresh air to a mind burdened by years of persecution.

6

April 2, 3065

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Octaviak walked into the chamber not knowing what to expect. Over the past year since she’d breezed her way through indoctrination she’d been spending her time training in an advanced maturia and living with the rest of the Protovic on the planet. She’d been the first to make it through, and even now there were only three ‘Pink skins,’ as they were nicknamed, within the free population. They’d been welcomed in with the rest of the Protovic, despite the fact that they had telepathy and the others didn’t.

She tried not to cause any disruptions by using her abilities save for select circumstances, but the more she talked and became one with the other Protovic she realized they were all used to the idea of having a telepath in their minds because their Archon leaders routinely interacted with them that way…and they were far more powerful than Octaviak would ever be. She wasn’t an Archon, so there was a little bit of animosity there, but the mere idea of having someone poking around inside your head wasn’t seen as offensive, because these Protovic had already adjusted to the idea of not having secrets.

That made for a very open community, and as the days passed she allowed herself the luxury of sampling others’ thoughts. They had no blocks to prevent it, save for the Humans which were a total stone to her abilities, and for the first time in her life she didn’t feel that being telepathic came with a curse. It was a great asset and allowed her freedom that she was only now able to explore.

Octaviak didn’t mess with anyone and just kept her forays in the observation category, but by doing so she learned so much more about the Protovic and Star Force than she had during her indoctrination. Not data wise, but the feel of it and what it meant to be a part of the empire. She’d come to think of this as home and had gotten used to her daily training routines when she’d gotten a summons to a special training program. It wasn’t a command, but rather a request and an opportunity she wasn’t going to pass up because it came directly from an Archon, but as she walked through the doorway into the huge chamber in a part of another city that she’d never even set foot in before, Octaviak had no clue what to expect.

“Welcome,” a purple skinned Protovic said in English, which she could now speak well enough without translator equipment. She wasn’t wearing armor anyways, and rarely did now. That was another thing about this planet that was vastly different from her former home, because she could see everyone and their multi-colored glows.

“Hello,” she answered back, looking across a courtyard that had trees blocking her view of what lay beyond.

“You’re Octaviak, I presume?”

“I am.”

“My name is Prentha. Please follow me,” he said, turning to walk away and waiting for her to match his stride.

“No one has told me what I’m doing here yet.”

“Training…experimental training. You’re the first Protovic telepath we’ve had, but everyone here has special abilities. Mine are sensory, like all the other Purples. The Oranges have a strength and speed advantage, which you probably already knew.”

“I heard that. What do you mean by ‘sensor?’”

“Sensory means I can sense things you can, or rather I can sense them in better ways. It means I’m very hard to sneak up on and it is the special skill that Purples have in our genome, but only a few of us have been unlocked. All the Oranges came here or were born here unlocked, but the rest of us are not, save for, now, the Pinks, of which you’re the first,” he explained as they walked a dirt path into and through the trees. “We’re learning to unlock the others, or rather the Human geneticists are, and this program is for us to train and to be studied as both we and the medtechs explore what we’re capable of. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘unlocked.’”

“Hidden skills that will develop or turn on eventually on their own, maybe thousands of years from now. The geneticists are finding ways to advance that and turn them on directly, one individual at a time.”

“And each Protovic color has a different skill?”

“Yes. We’re learning here how to develop them and incorporate them into our civilization, hopefully to advance our faction and give us more power to work with. Do you know how small we are compared to the rest of Star Force?”

“Yes, I learned that. Not the smallest, but far from the largest.”

“And many of the best people eventually leave to join a Clan. Right now most Protovic are choosing to stay here and help us advance, but some have already left. The Clans are an honor, for they are the best of the best, but until we figure out these abilities and how to use them even the Clans want to know what we’re capable of, hence they have sent representatives here to help us experiment and train.”

“The Clans are here?”

“Many are, and not just Protovic members. We are being tested heavily, with the experts telling us what to do. It’s hard work, but we don’t have to think too much. They figure out new drills and weapons for us to use while we work on developing our individual skills. It’s a very exclusive program, and one that you’re not to discuss with others.”

“I understand. I am here because I am the only available Pink?”

“No. We would wait until someone of sufficient skill arrived before taking an inferior. Your records indicate you are fit to join us, so yours is not a lesser membership.”

Octaviak smiled, for that was just what she was wondering. “Are there Human telepaths here?”

“Yes, and they will be working with you more than the others,” Prentha said as they came out of the trees and the full size of the dome became visible across grassy fields and short mountains.

Octaviak’s jaw dropped. “This is all inside?”

“Pretty sweet, isn’t it? Other training programs go outside, but for this one they wanted everyone in a contained environment. There’s even living quarters in here,” he said, pointing off beyond a low hill to the right. “You won’t need to go back into the city for anything, save for some down time if you need it.”

“So this is a training colony?”

“You can think of it that way, yes.”

An apt description, a voice said in Octaviak’s mind.

She physically jerked, which made Prentha smile. “It takes some getting used to,” he said, then frowned. “Is it different than normal?” he asked as an armored figured came strolling down one of the nearby grass-covered hills.

“Their voice is so loud,” she said, staring at the Archon but only being able to see him with her eyes. His mind was totally hidden from her.

Not totally, he corrected her. My aura is visible, you are simply not skilled enough to detect it. I will teach you how.

“This is mage Pel-9833, a member of Clan Samus who has been teaching us how to partially shield our minds, even without telepathy…as well as schooling us in a number of combat disciplines. As an Archon he is an expert in all forms of warfare and a commander in all 5 divisions of the military.”

“I’ll take her from here,” Pel said as he caught up to the pair.

“I thought she needed a tour?”

“I’ll handle that. Go ahead and get back to your unit.”

Prentha turned to face Octaviak. “I’ll talk to you later. Have fun,” he said before taking off at a jog up and over the hill and off to who knew where.

“Now, tell me how my voice is ‘loud?’”

“I…I mean it’s loud. I don’t know a better word,” she said, unsure how to respond.

“What kind of training did you do on your old world?”

“We had some practice sessions when we were young.”

“And when you were mature?”

Octaviak shrugged. “We trained our bodies, but just learned to use our telepathy naturally.”

“Then you are in for a surprise, for you can train your telepathy, just like your body. I’m here to teach you how and to devise a program for other Protovic to follow in your place. We will have to experiment a bit, for your telepathy is a less powerful version than ours, but most of my experience will transfer over to you, I imagine.”

“You’re going to give me knowledge?”

Pel raised an eyebrow, with his helmet currently tucked into storage mode behind his neck. “I suppose I could, but that wasn’t my meaning. The training drills and challenges we use should work for you in most cases, though I imagine some adjustments will have to be made.”

“What can you do?”

“You’re wondering how Kip and Brad took down those fighters?”

“How do you read my mind so easily? I did not even feel you enter it.”

“I haven’t left it since you’ve arrived.”

“How can you do that?”

“By being subtle…and by you not being very skilled. We’re going to fix that though, and to answer your question we have the ability to not only read minds, but to influence. You can do the same, but our ‘influence’ goes beyond what you can do. We can take direct control over a person’s body if they don’t know how to defend themselves.”

“What do you mean…” Octaviak said, her words getting cut off as a sledgehammer hit her mind and her entire body froze up, with her becoming a living statue on the grass.

“This is not pleasant for you, and I apologize, but take a moment to study your situation then I will release you. What I have done is taken priority control away from you, blocking your mental impulses from getting to their target and supplementing my own. This is difficult to do, more so at range, and is enhanced by making flesh to flesh contact. The fighters you saw taken down were defeated because the pilots’ minds were invaded and they were forced to crash them into the ground.”

Octaviak gulped when she was released and her hand came up reflexively to cover her throat. She was beyond shocked, and a bit scared, with her mental blocks going up as strong as they possibly could.

“You could do…anything.”

“Scary, huh?”

“Why have you not been killed?”

“Most people, even within Star Force, don’t know we can do this. We prefer to keep it that way, though we’re not going to hide our skills if they’re needed. It took me a long time to learn how to do this, and then even longer to get good at it. Your brain doesn’t have the necessary tissue to be able to do the same thing, and in that way your telepathy is different from mine. A few other ways too, but this is the big one. And yes, we could do all sorts of nasty things with it, but not all Humans have it. Only those trusted to do the right thing. All Archons acolyte level and above, and a scattering of other individuals who have proved themselves. The rest of the Humans have no telepathy whatsoever, but you will not be able to read them, for they do have an unconscious block, as I do.”

“How does an unconscious block work?”

“It prevents transmission feedback. When I enter your mind, my telepathic link is two way. I send manipulations to you through it, and I receive information back. The block doesn’t allow the information to come back, so I can telepathically transmit to other Humans but I can’t read their thoughts or delve into their memories.”

“And you can’t take control of them?”

“Not without touching them. That gets around the block, but it has to be flesh to flesh to make a physical connection. Clothing or armor prevents it. Does your ability increase with touch?”

“Rumor has that it does, but I haven’t had much opportunity to try.”

“It won’t work on me, because of the nature of my mental structure and yours, but we’re going to have to practice on other Protovic so we can measure the difference. I’m guessing that you can’t read minds directly through contact, but it may enhance it by channeling your energy tethers directly through the body to gain more signal strength.”

“Your words are confusing to me.”

“In time they will not be, but for now let’s walk and talk. I’ll show you around and you can ask questions.”

“What are the other skills the other colors have?”

“Right now 5 of the 8 are unlocked. The Oranges have enhanced strength and speed, though that isn’t obvious because others can catch up to them with time and training. All of the Oranges on this world have it unlocked, but other colonies outside of Star Force do not. We didn’t unlock it, but found them that way and brought them all back here.”

“Did they attack you?”

“No, they were living on a very primitive planet and were welcoming after they got past the shock of seeing new people. They had no knowledge of life beyond their planet. All you Pinks have telepathy, and so far we’ve only found one colony. We brought you all back here, so there’s nothing to unlock with you. The Reds, Purples, and Aquas we did genetically unlock. Prentha back there has sensory enhancements, which mean he can see better, hear better, and sometimes feel things behind him that he can’t see. The Reds have a mental upgrade that makes them smarter, while the Aquas can absorb energy and release it back as low levels of electricity. Not enough to kill, at this point, but try to tackle one that is charged and you’re going to get shocked enough that you can’t hold onto them.”

“They absorb electricity…without damaging themselves?”

“More light and heat, but they can pull directly from some very low power lines. Too much and they are damaged. Right now we’ve only got a few with the ability unlocked and we’re still learning what they can and can’t do.”

“Do you know what the others will have, once you unlock them?”

“We have an idea, but it’s better not to guess until we know for sure.”

“Why do we have these abilities?”

“A very good question that I do not have a full answer for, but we believe they were genetically engineered into you rather than being natural. Why and by whom we do not know. You are here to help us learn how to use them for our benefit. Others will track down what history they can.”

“Do other races have similar things?”

“We know of a few, but most do not.”

“Are they afraid of you?”

“I don’t really care. This is who we are, and they’d better get used to it.”

“I mean no disrespect…”

“But you don’t like losing control of your body.”

“No, I do not.”

“If I was in your position I would feel the same. Which is why I’m going to teach you how to resist it. It may not stop someone from doing it to you, but it will increase their difficulty, shorten their range, etc. The more powerful your telepathy becomes the greater you will be able to shield yourself…so long as you do not allow us to make physical contact. There is little defense to that other than having a stronger mind.”

“And Humans’ are always stronger.”

“Not always, but structurally we’re more advanced. Our greatest strength is our block, though it is something I cannot lower, otherwise I would give you access to my mind so you could see and learn.”

“So you can’t share your thoughts with others?”

“I can send them to you, what I choose, but I can’t give you access to look where you will.”

“Do you have other abilities, besides your telepathy?”

“Yes we do, and many of them we do not share with others. Sometimes it is better when your enemies do not know what you are capable of, and if we share that knowledge with friends it can work its way to them.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

Octaviak cringed. “I’ll risk it,” she said, and before the words were even out of her mouth her chest felt constricted and her feet suddenly left the ground, with her losing control of her body for the second time today…though this time she could still move around, just she wasn’t going anywhere as she floated out of legs reach of the grass.

“Telekinesis, which we call ‘Lachka.’ We can only lift a small pebble when we first gain it, but over time we can strengthen it to move larger objects. Did you see Brad or Kip use this on Yvartis?”

“I saw a person floating. Please put me down.”

“You’re uncomfortable losing control,” Pel said as he lowered her till her feet touched, then he released his grip on her torso. “That is something you will need to work on. Not with everyone, for you should want to remain in control, as I do, but for those you trust you need to be able to actually trust them and let them into your head and body. In time hopefully I can earn that trust, for we will need it in the more advanced training to come. If you are twitchy now that is understandable, but please try to stop subconsciously seeing me as a potential enemy over the days to come.”

“Just you?”

“Me first, then perhaps a few others. It doesn’t work if it’s forced, so it’ll take you some time to check me out. I just wish I could speed it up by giving you access to my mind. Your suspicion runs deep from the former company you kept.”

“Being hunted doesn’t help in the trust department.”

“No, it doesn’t. But you’re not hunted here, so try to relax that part of your mind as time goes on.”

“Do or do not, there is no try.”

Pel raised an eyebrow at her. “I see you’ve discovered Star Wars?”

“A friend showed them to me, and I have watched them many times. The Jedi had your Lachka too. Can you see the future?”

“Nope. Guessing like the rest of you,” he said as they came over a hilltop and a large lake came into view with people swimming in it. “How are you in the water?”

“We didn’t have water like this on Yvartis.”

“You’ve never tried?”

“I don’t like not being able to breathe.”

“It does take some getting used to, but you need to learn to swim just in case you fall into water at some time. In fact, there are ways to use your telepathy to help you navigate underwater when your eyes are no help. It’s on my list of things to teach you, but I guess swimming will have to come first.”

“If it’s that important why wasn’t it part of the indoctrination?”

“Probably because you had to go through that in isolation and swimming is too dangerous for you to learn on your own. Need someone standing by in case you start to drown…and no, that’s not going to happen with you. We’ll start you with a breath mask…after we get through several weeks of other training. It’ll be a minor thing, your telepathy is what we want to focus on.”

“So you’re to be my Jedi Master then?”

“Yes, my young padawan.”

Octaviak smiled widely. “I think I’m going to like this.”

7

July 5, 3066

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“Back again?” Brad asked as he met Vortison’s dropship in the hangar bay.

“I’ve completed the work on the last three variants,” the medtech said as he walked down the ramp alone.

“Oh?”

“And you’re not going to like it.”

Brad frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“For starters,” Vortison said, stopping in front of him as they had the wide hangar deck to themselves, “the Yellows’ ability is poison injection.”

“Poison?”

The geneticist help up his palm and pointed just below the wrist. “A reservoir will grow beneath the skin here, unseen, and will be connected to a visible port here,” he said, tapping just below the center of his hand. “Retractable needle. Whatever they grab onto they can inject within a second.”

“That’s not good,” Brad agreed. “What type of poison?”

“A very potent kind that will kill most Human-sized organisms with a single drop. There’s a built-in immunity within their genome so they can’t kill each other with it…or themselves.”

Brad shook his head firmly. “We’re not giving them that.”

“Unless you want to wait another 50 years on a maybe, we have to with at least 1 person to get the Yellow activation key.”

“Can you reserve the process afterwards?”

“I’m still working on doing that with the Purples and I think we’ll be able to reverse their development soon, but it will require treatment in a medical station. There is no reverse process to access, so it’ll have to be a forceful rebuild.”

“How risky is that?”

“With a physical reversal…not very if I know what I’m doing. Taking the Reds back is something I’m not ready to tackle. Messing with the mind is infinitely harder.”

“What about the other two?”

“As we discussed earlier, the Whites have a significantly enhanced resistance to disease, infection, and an overall healing rate above standard, but the Blues have a hardening of the skin similar to their exoskeletal patches…save that it happens everywhere.”

“They lose their soft tissue?”

“It will transform into a much harder version, as well as losing its bioluminescence. The eyes will remain the same, but they’ll basically be a hard carapace that I doubt will have the type of agility you want.”

“So scratch that one too. Is it safe to assume you can reverse it as well for a volunteer?”

“I should be able to, but this is far more tissue changes than any of the other upgrades.”

“So we should hold off on that one for a while?”

“And the Yellows. I’m here to upgrade the Whites and will stay until we get the Yellows and Blues squared away. At which point we can start tackling the big problem.”

“Problem? What else did you find?”

“Just a metaphor, but you’re right. I did discover a massive amount of genetic memory modules in the coding…and I have a feeling they might be overrides.”

“Put the existing individual’s dormant or overwriting them?”

“I don’t know, but the more I look into the coding I’m seeing that someone wanted to not just upgrade the Protovic, but create an entirely different race. They’ll still be bipedal, two arms and a head, but beyond that they’re going to be something different, and I think the memory modules will allow them to become this new race in mind and culture immediately. I would not recommend having anyone go through with this.”

“A new race?”

“Or an old one. I only have bits and pieces of coding worked out but they’ll be unlike anything the Protovic are now, and my bet will be they’ll be far more advanced. This might be pandora’s box we’re opening here.”

“How close are you to blocking it?”

“Blocking I can do now. Removal of the coding entirely is iffy. We’re getting closer to doing that and it’ll solve the problem entirely, but with so many other Protovic colonies out there the reunification is bound to happen at some point.”

“Which is why we need to know what this new race is. Can you send the coding into a computer simulation?”

Vortison shook his head. “That only works with genetics we’re familiar with, and is basically structured guessing. There are too many unknowns with this, not the least of which is the compressed nature of the coding. I can tell you there will be an unspooling that happens when it is activated, and we’re not going to fully understand what this is until we see it and I can get some active genetic samples. Again, I don’t recommend doing this, but it’s the only way we’re going to get the answers we need.”

“Can you combine the activation keys in samples?”

“Yes and I intend to, but I already know they’re designed for a full organism. They won’t unspool in a few isolated cells. Whoever designed this is brilliant…perhaps a bit twisted, for that poison is not a good sign, but the coding is so complicated and dense I think it’d give the V’kit’no’sat some trouble analyzing.”

“Will this new race have the poison?”

Vortison sighed. “Guess work at this point, but I think each ability is a stepping stone to the new race. How each one is modified is a bit more readily readable, and I have confirmed that the poison glands will continue to exist after transformation, but their form will alter. I can’t give specifics, but I can tell you they won’t go away and they won’t stay the same. As for gaining the other 7 abilities I would guess so, but I am not sure how. I can tell you that the final version is identical for all of them. They will all become the same, exact race. Clones actually, for they’ll all have the same genetic code until they start breeding offspring.”

“Still egg sacks?”

“No clue. That hasn’t been high on my digging priority list.”

Brad put his hands on his hips, looking at the floor for the moment. “Alright, let’s get the White volunteers upgraded first and worry about the rest later. And an antidote to that poison would be nice to come by.”

“Already on my to-do list.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Kip said, kicking another chair away from the one he was sitting on in Brad’s office. “So we either get some poor bastard to try it or we never know what the hell is going on.”

“We’re not trying it, even if someone does volunteer,” Brad said firmly. “At least not until we have a way of undoing it.”

“And if we can’t find one?”

“We’re not sacrificing anyone to chance on this.”

“There’s got to be another way. Vortison has the full code now, can’t he read it given enough time?”

“He says yes, but there are some things we’ll only learn by watching it happen and studying the results…on a person. He says tissue samples won’t cut it.”

“By any chance is this ‘new’ race in the database?”

Brad stiffened slightly. “We don’t have their genetic code, unpacked anyway, to run a search for, but that’s a good question. What if this is an old race that wanted to hide itself?”

“So they created another as carriers of their true genetic code?”

“Plausible, though very grandiose.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Kip muttered.

“Or it could be some Frankenstein creation never before seen.”

“Going by the rumors, the first seems more likely.”

“Ok, let’s work the piece of this that we can. We’d already decided that we weren’t going to suppress the variant upgrades, and find a way to work them into this faction…”

“And out the window that goes.”

“Do we even know of any race…check that, any talking race that has poison?”

“Not that we’ve encountered, but I think there’s probably a few in the database.”

“Say we find some of them, or a Yellow that’s unlocked…what do we do?”

“We can relock the Yellow, right?”

“Undo it, yes. But what about another race? You and I can kill just about anyone within two seconds if we chose, so saying the ability to poison someone is more lethal isn’t accurate. Do we ban it? And if we do how is that fair?”

“Compartmentalize,” Kip said, referencing the problem at hand. “Focus Star Force only.”

“Well that’s easy enough. No one in Star Force gets poison.”

“And if there’s a race we take as a ward, or one that wants to join that has it?”

“We engineer it out of them.”

“Good. That part’s settled anyway. Now, do we let non-Star Force races roam our territory with that ability?”

“Ugh,” Brad said, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling. “I guess we have to.”

“We don’t have to do anything.”

“Kill someone with a lachar or with a poison needle…you’re in trouble with us either way, it’s just the type of weapon used that differs.”

“We don’t let a lot of weapons into our colonies,” Kip reminded him.

“Ok, here’s a scenario. Say we got a weak race whose only defense is a poison bite. Now, one of them is getting beat up and security isn’t there. Does he have to take the beating and potentially die, or can he defend himself with the poison, knowing that one bite will kill his attackers?”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly.”

“If it’s Star Force we can deal with that. If it’s an outsider…he’s got to be able to defend himself.”

“Agreed, but killing someone for punching you in the face isn’t acceptable.”

“Telling someone they have to take the abuse to protect their attacker is also unacceptable.”

“If this is inside Star Force territory…ah hell, that doesn’t matter. When you’re under the gun you use whatever you have to survive. No holds barred. That’s not the way we fight, but I’m not going to begrudge someone else for doing what they had to do when they weren’t in the wrong.”

“So,” Kip said, throwing another wrinkle at him, “if you’ve got some dumb Calavari picking on Mr. Poison and he doesn’t know the guy has poison and he tries to beat him up anyway, it’s fair to kill him in self-defense when he was just ruffing Mr. Poison up and not going to take it any further? He’s in the wrong, but should he have to die for that?”

“No, but he did bring it on himself.”

“What if Mr. Poison deserved an ass kicking?”

“Wear armor when you’re doing it,” Brad quipped.

Kip smiled. “Good point.”

“Alright, alright. We’ve been down this road with the telepathy. The galaxy isn’t a safe place and we’re just going to have to face the threats as they materialize. Just because someone has the ability to do bad things doesn’t mean they will, nor should they be punished or confined because of it. We’re not going to use poison because we don’t fight that way and none of the rest of Star Force will either, but if someone else has it then we’re just going to have to deal with them as is.”

“So the dumb brute just gets killed for picking the wrong sucker to bully?”

“Life is a mine field. We can’t safe them all.”

“And if Mr. Poison decides to pick a fight?”

“If his only weapon is the poison, then that’s an automatic no. If he can only fight by killing, then he doesn’t get to fight unless he is under attack.”

“Ok, so no mandatory genetic alterations unless someone wants to join Star Force?”

“Agreed.”

“But travelers can still come and go with it?”

“That’s something we’re just going to have to deal with, like the telepaths.”

“Fine. So then we don’t need a separate maturia for the Yellows?”

“Crap. Blues too.”

“Well, we can either have advanced groups and non-advanced groups, or we can find a way to give those that don’t have any some copies.”

“Colors still won’t matter.”

“Is that important?”

“Aesthetically, kind of,” Brad admitted. “Everything needs to fit a master plan, and right now we’re just tearing more holes in the one we thought we’d worked out.”

“Ok, let’s work this from the other direction. Do we need Protovic subdivision? Really? Or are we just trying to make what we have fit?”

“They’re already different, once unlocked.”

“So what if we just relock them all, then they’re on the same playing field no matter what their color.”

“For future offspring, sure. But we’re not forcing changes on the people already here.”

“You miss my point. Do we need 8 different types of Protovic?”

“I’m worried that if we tried to give them all the abilities that would be too much for civies.”

“I’m kind of curious to see what would happen there, but you’re probably right. The upgrades need to be earned, but for the Oranges and Pinks it’s default right now.”

“I sense you have a suggestion. Make it. That’s why I brought you here.”

“Why can’t we alter their colors?”

“To do what…oh.”

“Exactly.”

“We’ll still have a couple left over…or one, if we keep one as mundane.”

“Maybe we’ll find something in the master code to keep later…although, we might want to keep the Orange enhancement default to give them a head start. Maybe even the Red.”

“No, not the Red. Keep that as earned. Orange…you might be right. That leaves us with 2 extras again.”

“It can be a skill mark, or we might just not use them at all. It’s just window dressing.”

“But cool window dressing, and I feel like it needs to matter…aside from its original purpose.”

“Jedi apprentice bands were different colors,” Kip offered. “This can be a transitional process getting to full ‘adult’ status and make it whatever we choose. Those who want to go civie will just be stuck with whatever color they ditched the path at.”

“Whoa…wait a second. I think you just had a good idea.”

“Oh? What was it?”

“Non-traditional maturia. A very long one. If you leave you go civie. If you stay you advance up the ranks until you hit ‘Final Form.’”

“Bingo,” Kip said, throwing his hands up in the air like goalposts. “Final Form, that’s genius.”

“And just what we need. We just need to know if and when Vortison can make it happen.”

“So anything we learn from the coding packet will be extra?”

Brad nodded. “We need to get the Protovic squared away sooner rather than later. We can’t wait to see if we find a way of accessing that data.”

“And if we do we can always incorporate it into the later Ultra Maturia levels?”

“‘Ultra’ it is, and yes. I think we’ve got our base now, we just need to get it established and build on it.”

“That means relocking the Pinks’ offspring, for starters.”

“Until we get the ability to shut them all off and share them, we’re going to be in learning mode. We have a plan now, but I think we’ll learn a lot once the Pink younglings start working their way through the standard maturia. None of us were telepathic at birth.”

“So we take it slow, but we do have a direction to head towards?”

“I think we do, and I don’t think Davis will argue.”

“No, I don’t think he will. This is actually better, if Vortison can work his magic on it. But that still leaves the big question in play, and how do we go about dealing with it.”

“We’ll sit on that one for now. Hopefully something Vortison digs up will give us another option to play with.”

“My money still says someone has to go through with it.”

“My gut says the same thing, but we’ve got to have contingency plans in place if it eventually comes to that, and right now we’ve got no hold on that genie once we let it out of the bottle.”

8

July 5, 3069

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“You ready?”

Memma nodded. “All I have to do is stand still, right?”

“And let the machine do the work, yes, but it’ll be your body that’s being altered. No clue what that will feel like after it’s done.”

“How long will I need to stay that way?”

Brad glanced at Vortison, who was standing behind the controls of the medical station. “If something bad happens we can reverse it immediately, but a few hours of study would be preferable. I’ll have you back into your current form inside of 3 hours, though there will be a loss of strength. I suspect it will be negligible, but there will be some restructuring of the muscle tissue and new growths are always weaker than seasoned tissue.”

“Sure you want to take the hit?” Brad asked.

“If it’s what you need, then yes,” the blue-skinned Protovic answered.

“And given this is the first time we’ve tried this, there are no guarantees about anything.”

“I understand. Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

Brad shook his head. “Not good enough.”

Memma blew out a slow breath. “Sorry, just a phrase. I’m good to go, I just don’t like gambling. But if you think you can do this and it’ll give you what you need, then I’m willing to take the chance.”

“Better,” Brad said with a nod. “Step inside.”

Memma turned around and walked inside the chamber as another medtech sealed him in with a single bar across the entryway. “Put your hands on the sphere please and keep them there,” he said as he took a single step back from the device.

“How much is this going to hurt? I may not maintain contact if I flinch.”

“You will feel nothing during the transition,” Vortison assured him. “You’ll be numbed up.”

“Won’t I fall over?”

“No, you won’t. The machine will keep you more or less as you are now. All you need to do is maintain contact until you lose the feeling in your hands. After that just stand still and wait it out. There will be a considerable amount of tissue changes happening, so try not to freak out…but do tell us of any problems once you regain the ability to speak.”

“Ok,” he said, not fully understand how he was going to stay standing but he placed his glowing blue/green hands on the sphere as directed and looked ahead and slightly to the left at his patron trailblazer. “Do it.”

“You heard the man,” Brad echoed as Vortison began to press buttons. He saw Memma go a bit stiff, then his eyes rolled shut. “Is he unconscious?”

“Yes, I don’t want him awake for this.”

“You could have told him that.”

“Better to be on the safe side,” Vortison said as the glowing skin on the Protovic suddenly went dark. “This process is designed to take weeks and we’re speeding it up to a few minutes. Developing poison glands is one thing, but this is far different,” he said as the smooth parts of Memma’s skin began to pucker and split open, but without any blood loss, for they were growing callous-like patches to fill in the gaps.

“How much mass is he gaining?”

“Quite a bit, but his skeletal system isn’t altering. He’ll have an extra layer to his normal dimensions, but otherwise he should remain about the same volume.”

“His shoes?”

Vortison frowned. “Damn it, I forgot.”

“Will my Lachka bother the machine?”

“Shouldn’t.”

“I’ll get them then,” Brad said, loosening then pulling them off him one foot at a time as he lifted a leg up off the floor. His feet were already expanding, and as he removed the second shoe he saw his toes begin melding into one another. “He’s losing his toes?”

“Apparently so. I didn’t see that coming, but it makes sense. His entire surface is becoming hardened and small digits would be troublesome to maneuver.”

“What about his hands?”

“They should be the thinnest, and it doesn’t look like they’re melding together.”

“What about his eyelids?”

“I’m curious about that too. So far they seem unaffected…no, wait, now they’re forming. Looks like a second flap above that can lower in place. Double lids, actually. One armored one not.”

“He’s turning into a tank,” Brad said as the flash growth fed by the biomatter in the machine continued.

“Those patches are of varying densities, but some are the equivalent of low level armor. I don’t know how he’s going to move though. I’m curious to see how they solved the problem.”

“You can undo this if he locks up, right?”

“Same method, only in reverse. It’s the telepathy that I’m still having trouble reversing.”

“What about the Reds?”

“There is no reversing that unless you want to wipe their memories in the process.”

“I thought you said it was possible?”

“Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for them, it’s not an add-on like your Sav. That alone would be damn hard to reverse, given how integrated it has become into the rest of you, but the Reds’ upgrade takes their existing components and alters them. I can’t change them back without killing their functionality. They’d basically have to reset to defaults, assuming they survived the process. I could do it with the hardware alone, but the software they’re currently using would be incompatible with the lesser processors and I’m not sure exactly what would happen. It would be bad, I’d wager, plus we still don’t know how a person’s core is bound to their body, so that’s one area I’m not going to mess with if I don’t have to. Growing a bigger brain is one thing, forcing one to recede is fraught with problems.”

“What does that mean for the big transformation?”

“If it’s a knowledge upload like I suspect, that won’t be an issue…if we’re upgrading an unlocked Red. Anyone else and we’re in the same boat.”

“Because we’d be back to brain shrinkage again?”

“Essentially yes, technically no.”

“And you need the bigger brain to handle the extra knowledge?”

“Still unsure about that one. Hoping that these experiments will let me glean a bit more about their transformation code, but we’re still years away from the big prize,” he said as Memma went through his final changes and a grid-like network of crevices across his body began to glow blue, but with the rest of him being the same exoskeletal black, though those patches were now gone and replaced by the same lumpy material spread over his entire body.

“Damn, he did get ugly,” Brad said with a cringe. “You sure we need to wake him up?”

“Your call, but I’d prefer to get conscious data from him…as well as his perspective.”

“Take it slow. This is going to be a big shock.”

“Understandably,” Vortison said, adjusting the controls to begin waking him up.

Brad made mental contact with him to ease the process, with his voice being the first thing Memma heard in his mind as he returned to reality. The Archon coached him through the process, while also warning him before his senses fully woke up.

His eyelids flicked open, with the same intense blue orbs being there like spotlights, but the rest of him was wholly unrecognizable. Brad thought he looked like a skinny, black version of The Thing from Fantastic Four. “How you doing?”

“Heavy,” Memma said, with approximately the same voice as before, save his lips moved differently and his pronunciation was a bit off. He looked down at his hands, seeing only the thin glow of the lines rather than the previous large patches of skin. Also the green was gone, with only those bits of blue remaining.

“We can knock you out again if needed,” Brad said, feeling Memma start to panic.

“No,” he said, focusing his mind. “I can do this. Take your scans.”

“We are,” Vortison answered. “All you have to do is stay within the chamber. You can raise your hands if you wish.”

Memma lifted one up and twisted it around in front of him. “So heavy.”

“Your body mass has increased by 12%.”

“Why is this a good thing?”

“A type of armor, I’d imagine,” Brad said, walking over to stand beside him just outside the railing. “Try a few stretches. See how much you can move, joint wise.”

Memma twisted at the waist, then flexed his arms wide, over his head, and behind his back. From Brad’s perspective he didn’t move much at all.

“Not good,” Memma said. “I am so stiff.”

“What about your sense of touch?” Brad said, sticking his hand inside and in front of the altered Protovic. “Grab my wrist.”

Memma did as instructed, feeling the Human’s arm with his fingers. Brad could sense the diminished feel, but he was still functional.

“Everything is dull.”

Brad pulled his arm back. “Can he come out for a minute or two?”

“Take as long as you need,” Vortison said.

Brad pulled up the arm bar. “Walk out, slowly.”

Memma did as instructed, taking short steps until he cleared the machine and then began to hop in place experimenting with his new body. “Hit me…lightly,” he requested

“Here goes,” Brad said, stepping forward and palm-punching his chest. The shirt he wore still covered him, hiding the rock hard skin beneath until the Archon made contact with a loud ‘thump.’

“Barely felt that,” Memma said as he rocked in place. “Go harder.”

Brad smirked, gave him a warning, then put a good punch into him. Memma fell backwards, but Brad telekinetically caught him before he hit the floor and pulled him back up to his feet.

“I feel like crap,” Memma admitted, “but that barely hurt.”

“Hit me,” Brad said, pointing at his chest as he steadied himself. Memma stepped forward and swung his fist forward slowly, knocking Brad back a step.

“I have no speed,” Memma said.

“I noticed that, but those spurs on your hands hurt.”

Memma glanced down at his fingers. “I didn’t even feel it.”

“If you don’t mind, we’ll take a tissue sample now,” Vortison interrupted. “Then the sooner we get you reversed the easier it will be on your body and mind.”

“I can handle it if you want to put me through some fitness tests.”

“No, I think we know enough,” Brad said, not wanting to put him through much more of this. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t recommend this transformation?”

“Hell no.”

“Then let’s get the data and get you back to your luminous self,” Brad said, pointing back into the machine. “If we want armored bodies, we build it. We don’t grow it.”

“I 100% agree with you, Archon,” Memma said as he stepped back inside and put his hands on the sphere. “This is not an upgrade.”

“Not for us, but someone else thinks so.”

“Ancestor or not, they’re dumb.”

Brad laughed. “Perhaps, but they went to a lot of trouble to program this into your genome. I’ll wager they had some use for it. We, however, do not.”

“Can you show me what I look like?”

“Of course,” Vortison said, pulling up an auxiliary hologram and configuring it to replicate the live recordings being made. He projected it in front of Memma so he could see.

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Brad agreed. “Quite the change.”

“Externally yes. Internally no,” Vortison added. “Almost all of the changes have occurred on the surface. Inside you’re still basically Protovic.”

“Good to know,” Memma said, “but I don’t feel like it.”

“We’ll get you back soon. Just hang on a little bit.”

“As ordered,” Memma said, shutting his eyes and just focusing on standing in place.

Brad could feel his distress, but he was weathering it well and taking one for the team. Maybe rushing the transformation had a negative side effect and a gradual process would not be traumatic, but there was no way Star Force was going to use this. Memma would be the one and only Blue that they were going to unlock, and once they had the activation key from him and all the data Vortison wanted they were going to permanently lock down the others so this couldn’t happen naturally.

The Protovic were going to stay Protovic, not turn into rock monsters.

7 months later…

Brad walked back into the medical station chamber, finding Vortison and a staff of Humans and Protovic crammed into the small space along with biocrates stacked nearly to the ceiling.

“Is this a bad time?”

“It may look chaotic but I can assure you it is not. Just step carefully, I need to show you something,” Vortison said from the control station.

“Excuse me,” Brad said, stepping between two of the Protovic while easing across the surface of one of the closed crates before he stepped up next to Vortison. “Trouble?”

“No, no…something else,” he said as the medical station was empty, but there was a full genetic profile before him. “I had them bring in some Red eggs along with the rest, just for analysis sake, and it turns out the mental augmentation has not occurred yet. Not even in a minimal way. I’m guessing that it will kick in down the road at some stage, but this is not an anomaly.”

“The Red eggs shouldn’t be unlocked yet.”

“Most aren’t, but a handful are.”

“How?”

“How do you think?”

“The only ones that are unlocked are in the experimental training units, and they’re forbidden from mating for the duration.”

“Forbidden isn’t the same as incapable. You should have mandated temporary sterilization.”

“Who?”

“We’ve traced a single individual that gave us 3 augmented eggs. It was an anomaly that we even found the first one, because I was only going to scan a handful of them. When we located the other two I confirmed my results. The genetics are unlocked, but they’re not formed yet in any of the three. They still have a ways to go before hatching, but we’ve got a window of opportunity here to remove the capability before it kicks in that I previously wasn’t aware of.”

“Noted, but how did this happen? Who did the eggs come from?”

“A civilian not involved in your exclusive group. I’m guessing the father is.”

“Can you determine who it was?”

“Given time, but you should be able to find out quicker with your psionics.”

“True, and I’ll get to that, but we have to find out if there are other eggs out there like these…damn it, there may be younglings already in the maturia if this has been going on for a while.”

“There’s another point worth noting.”

“How the father can pass on his genetics?”

Vortison nodded. “Typically anything that is binary defaultly reverts to the mother’s code, and aside from some genetic glitches everything Protovic is binary.”

“Except the augmentation.”

“We’ve had Oranges impregnate Reds before with no activation, so we didn’t think this was possible. But apparently Red on Red does transfer the unlocked code.”

“Because if a male unlocked first it would be waste,” Brad said, thinking out loud.

“Your guys probably thought there was no risk in transmission and that the restriction was pointless.”

“It’s also about mental focus,” Brad said, thoroughly ticked. At least one of them had violated protocol to get laid, which they had been told could not happen under any circumstances while they were in the program. He’d told them that if they wanted to quit there would be arrangements made to shut off their reproductive capability so they couldn’t transmit the unlocked genetics. Maybe some of them didn’t like that, but it didn’t matter. They’d agreed to the restrictions and then violated it, resulting in what may have been younglings gaining access to the upgrade without earning it.

“I need you to scan all Red unhatched eggs, as well as run tissue samples from the younglings that have been born since the Red program started and give me numbers to work with. If they are in the maturia we need to pull them out and put them into a special version.”

Vortison waved a hand at all the crates. “What do you think all this is?”

“I’ll put an end to the wellspring, but we’re going to have new eggs to test for a while too.”

“Already prepping for it.”

“Have you ordered tissue samples taken yet? Or do you want everyone marched down here one at a time?”

“Samples, and I was going to let your people handle the collection. Just send them to my staff and they’ll get them checked. I’ve got more pressing matters to deal with, but this does mean that we can include all Red offspring going forward, so we no longer have a hole in our plan.”

“How’s the first batch coming?”

“I’ve gotten through 237 so far, and all are accepting the changes without incident. The egg shells remain unchanged, but internally they’re our new Protovic as soon as they come out of the machine.”

“How long does it take…and are there any developmental side effects on the horizon?”

“Unknown at this point, but I doubt it. They’re all accepting the Orange code and their latent mystery genetics are being wiped clean without incident. I think I can do the same with an adult now, but this is much easier.”

“How many variants have you gotten through?”

“Orange, Purple, Yellow, and just now Red. I’ve halted the process to begin scanning the rest of the Reds, but I don’t anticipate any trouble with the other four. Here, let’s run one now,” he said, turning to one of the Protovic maturia staffers. “Get me a Blue egg please.”

The Red Protovic walked over to a crate stack near the wall and opened the case revealing the sterile life support systems inside that were more or less unnecessary, for the eggs didn’t need to be given any fuel other than air access, but Star Force didn’t take chances with them and always stored them in a controlled environment…including during transport.

He pulled out a baseball-sized egg that was soft to the touch but not slimy. It was slightly oblong and blue in color, though not bioluminescent. The handler brought it over to the machine and set it inside a specialized crate that was hooked up to an interface port so biomatter could be added if needed.

When he saw that Brad frowned but when he opened his mouth to ask, Vortison was already a step ahead of him.

“A safety precaution. If there is something wrong with the egg or the infant we can repair it or restock the internal fuel supply. The alterations don’t require enough physical changes to warrant a supplement themselves,” he said as he pulled up the live genetics readout from the Blue egg that was several months away from hatching.

“Basically point and click at this stage. The leg work has already been done in the lab,” he said as he began the mostly automated process with the hologram highlighting the code segments that were being altered. Some small bits were changing, from what Brad could see, with a chunk being added that he assumed was the Orange’s enhanced strength/speed code that all the new Protovic would be getting as default, then he saw what amounted to pages and pages of code being deleted and knew that was the mystery transformation that he had ordered removed from them. Vortison assured him he could put it back in if needed, but it was safer to have the younglings squared away from birth rather than leave this time bomb in place.

If they were ever exposed to all the activation keys it would be of no consequence to them now, whereas the risk of having whole populations start transforming like a plague was not something that was appealing. If the mystery change was beneficial they could add it to everyone a person at a time here or in future eggs just like this, but for now Brad wanted a clean slate with the new Protovic only having the Orange augmentation and the potential for nothing else. The Blue armor modification had just been stripped away from this egg, so this female would never have to worry about going through that unwanted transformation if/when her internal clock ever got to the natural unlocking point, for it was now gone entirely.

“No anomalies detected,” Vortison said after the massive erasure was finished. “Growth sequence stable and unaffected. Easy enough.”

“And the bioluminescence?”

“Already switched. I don’t want to puncture the egg, but if you put a microprobe through the skin you’d see the new Star Force glow.”

Brad put a hand on Vortison’s shoulder. “Good work.”

“That’s what I aim for.”

“I’ll leave you to it then. Right now I’ve got some skulls to crack,” Brad said, meandering his way through the crate stacks as he headed towards the doorway.

9

December 19, 3086

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“You’re back,” Octaviak said from her seated position within the meditative chamber as a Human approached the open doorway. Her eyes were still closed, but she could sense her Master’s familiar presence whenever he was nearby, even within a crowd.

“And you’re stronger,” Pel-9833 said as he walked into view outside his armor but wearing the telltale Archon white uniform with an identifying stripe down the sides. “I can feel it.”

“I do try,” she said, standing up smoothly and turning around to face him…with her eyes widening a bit. “Your stripe is different.”

“I’m a titan now. Level 3 at the moment.”

“I thought you were out fighting lizards, not training.”

“We always train. Taking planets doesn’t happen overnight, and there are opportunities to advance your skills if you know how to take advantage of them.”

“I thought most people stayed even at best and usually lost a bit of strength during lengthy campaigns?”

“We’ve learned to manage most of that, but it does happen. Less so for Archons than Commandos and Knights.”

“My congratulations, titan. To what do I owe the honor of your presence?” she said with a sarcastic little bow.

“Checking on my students,” he said, looking her over. “Why are you still green?”

“I’ve chosen to focus solely on my telepathy.”

Pel raised an eyebrow. “Curious on its own, but that doesn’t preclude you from taking on the Star Force blue.”

“I know, and in my heart I’m pure Star Force, you know that, but the ranking system is built for the younglings coming out of the maturias. I don’t fit in that advancement system because I already have telepathy, so if I took on the coloration of a level 1 I’d be both ahead and behind them. I don’t have the Orange upgrade, so it wouldn’t be a true representation of where I stand. I prefer my own coloration anyway. It marks me as a prior, which I am, rather than me pretending to be something that I’m not.”

“Then you don’t want the other upgrades?”

“No…well, a part of me does, but if I have to choose between pursuing them and furthering my telepathic skills, I choose telepathy. It sets me apart from nearly all others in the galaxy and I need to be as strong in it as possible.”

“You haven’t neglected your physical training?”

“Of course not. Mind balances with body, as you taught me, though I’m beginning to see more depth into it now. How long are you here for?”

“A few years at least.”

“Oh? Aren’t you needed back on the front?”

“The lizard systems are falling fast now, but they’re also becoming more difficult to take. Most of the easy ones are gone, leaving the more developed band around their core…on our side anyway. Over the past two years the amount of reinforcements they were getting have dropped off sharply. We think they’re hoarding them now to protect the core worlds, making naval invasion of their other systems far easier…yet those systems also have a great deal more  defensive infrastructure, both in orbit and on the surface, that we have to fight our way through. The victories are almost assured, so long as we don’t get sloppy, but there’s a lot of work to do in each location, for their anti-orbital defense networks are far more dense than we’re used to dealing with. We punch a hole, then have to work everything through on the ground else we lose far too many ships.”

“And you’re not needed for that?”

“We’re not in a hurry, and we need to cycle people back for many reasons. I need a breather and a chance to work on other projects…including you.”

“You’ve already taught me what I needed to know.”

Pel smiled. “I’ve given you the beginner knowledge. Time to amp it up a bit.”

“How so?”

“You’ve been focusing on solitary skills. Now that there are several of you sufficiently advanced, I’m going to teach you how to make use of interconnected telepathic elements.”

“Team telepathy?”

“Precisely.”

“I thought we couldn’t do that?”

“It’s not battlemeld like I have, but there are ways you can create a pseudo version. You have to be fairly skilled as an individual first, which was why we haven’t delved into this before. I think you’re ready now.”

“When do we start?”

“Now,” he said, turning and heading towards the doorway while raising a hand and curling his finger in a ‘come’ gesture.

Octaviak smiled and followed him out, eager to learn more Archon telepathy secrets.

Brad walked into one of the new genetic alteration medical stations, separate from the one Vortison had set up long ago, with the line of Protovic younglings going wide-eyed when they saw him. All of them were 16 years old and knew of him through their lessons in the maturia, but none of them had expected him to show up here and now, nor had their handlers or the medical staff overseeing the alterations.

“How we doing?” he asked, looking at the lead medtech, one of the few with clearance to actually use the handful of these devices built for this specific purpose and placed within the newly built maturias.

“Just about to start this group,” the Human asked, surrounded by a room full of Protovic. “Is there a problem?”

“No. I was just passing by and felt like dropping in to observe. This is a big day for you guys,” he said, turning his attention to the 14 younglings present. Unlike the handlers and some of the medical staff, these Protovic did not have green bioluminescence. Where the others had green patches, these had Star Force blue signifying that they were the new generation of the race. Where their other color would have been these younglings had dull black patches of soft skin in addition to the exoskeleton of the same color.

The blue/black heads nodded their agreement but said nothing, all staring at him with glowing blue eyes.

“Are you planning to stick with the program or going civie once your basic training ends?”

“I’m staying,” one of the 9 males said.

“Me too,” the female beside him echoed.

Brad nodded. “Protovic maturia are now the longest within Star Force…not counting advanced training units. If you stick around until you make Final Form it’ll take a long time before you join the rest of the population. Think you can handle that?”

“We can’t come back?” another male asked.

“Yes and no,” Brad answered, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you choose to leave when basic is over, you can’t come back to this maturia. If you change your mind, say a day or even a century later, there will be another program you can enter that will complete your training. We never give up on anyone, but if you want to stick with your peers here you’re going to have to stay in the program and keep up. As I hear it, you 14 are top of your class?”

More heads nodded.

“Good for you, but be warned…even Archons do not advance at the same rate through every level. We go fast through some, slow through others. It all depends on the individual and where our aptitudes lie. You’ve done well to get here a little bit ahead of the others, but don’t assume you’ll always stay ahead or that they will always stay behind. Focus on your own progression and keep moving forward no matter what the pace, even if you get frustrated at times. For now though, you’ve earned your transition to second tier and it’s time you received your upgrades,” he finished, nodding at the medtech.

The Human pointed and one of the Protovic assistant medtechs, a Red, placed a glowing hand on one of the youngling’s shoulders and directed him into the machine where she sealed him inside with the arm bar and stepped back. The medtech gave him and the others basic instructions on what to do with his hands and not to move with Brad standing in the back and watching. The younglings’ attention was suddenly off him and onto their peer as the machine activated and they saw the soft black patches on his body come alive and start to subtly glow, getting brighter with each passing second until they were completely gone.

The black exoskeletal segments were still there, but now all of his soft tissue was aglow with the previous blue now added to with streaks of brilliant white. When the youngling opened his eyes they too had changed color, no longer blue but likewise white glowing orbs.

“You’re finished,” the medtech said with a grin. “Congratulations.”

The assistant removed the arm bar and escorted him out a step to make room for the next conversion.

“Feel different?” Brad asked.

“A little queasy,” the youngling admitted, with Brad and his glowing hands competing for his attention.

“That’s the genetic upgrade,” the Archon explained. “Your immune system just got beefed up and it’ll take an hour or so for your equilibrium to reset. Some people feel it, others don’t, but it’ll go away soon enough.”

The youngling stepped further aside as his peers swarmed around him, some poking the new white spots and others giggling with excitement as the second one in line stepped into the chamber. Brad stood back, watching them and judging their reactions, both visibly and telepathically. These were amongst the first generation of the new Protovic to get the tier 2 upgrades. None were old enough yet to have reached tier 3, but the rest of the maturias with unaltered younglings were nearing their end with only a few years left before they all graduated.

When that happened the new ‘Blues’ would take over, in that they would be all the new populations coming forth. Even the eggs from the older greens would be altered prior to their hatching, meaning that their offspring would also be the new Star Force Blues, whose blue patches were opposite the original Blues that had a green base. Blue was the new base for these younglings and would be kept all the way through to their Final Form, separating them from the rest of the Protovic across the galaxy and drawing a distinct difference from even their Purple skinned ally.

These Star Force Protovic would also be far more powerful, given the Orange upgrade as a default then earing the other 5 with telepathy coming last. There would be three more color upgrades following that, as rank indicators similar to his golden armor, but with the telepathy they will have reached Final Form and their very long maturia process would come to an end.

Most of that process was still theoretical, with only a small group of tier 2 Protovic ahead of these. Brad was watching their progress closely, wanting to troubleshoot any difficulties or new advantages as quickly as possible. For so long this faction had been in flux, even before they’d realized that the hidden transformation was within them, and he felt it necessary to get them cemented now, even before they had a chance to probe that mystery further. If they needed to add something later they could, at the end of the maturia phase through special training similar to how the Archons received their psionics after transitioning through the adept ranks, but Brad wanted the civilian base of the Protovic established and codified now so their future would not be in doubt.

As for the existing Protovic population, they were being given access to auxiliary training programs so they could earn their Star Force Blue if they chose, but many weren’t. Some of those were civilians and others were techs and military. That was fine with him, for they were different, in their origins at least, while these Blues were the future of his ever growing Protovic faction. One that would be more powerful than any other within Star Force if his expectations came to fruition. Not in size, but in skill and potential, even more so than Humans.

Archons would still vastly outmatch them, but no other race would have this many abilities at their disposal, especially for a civilian population. The catch was these younglings had to stay in the maturia when they had the option to leave it. How many that would thin from their numbers he didn’t know, but he expected there to be far more Protovic telepaths than there were Archons in short order, and how that dynamic and their other abilities would change this faction he didn’t fully know. That was one reason why he was still keeping this system off limits to normal Star Force traffic and tourists, and it was going to stay closed until these changes worked themselves out.

Then there would be the issue of how these new Protovic affected the rest of Star Force, especially Axius. Davis had been in regular communication with Brad over the changes going forward and brainstorming with him potential problems and advantages. While it didn’t look like much right now, this was going to be a huge transition for the empire down the road and one they had to stay a step or two ahead of at all times.

But the other big thing with these Star Force Blues was that they didn’t have the mystery genetics within them anymore, so there was no chance of them being affected by whatever it was, good or bad. The fear of a faction-wide epidemic sweeping through the Protovic if one began to spontaneously change and spread it to others was no longer a concern for anyone with the Blue base skin, and as their numbers grew the potential problem would lessen. The Greens had already been altered so to not produce activation material, but they hadn’t had the mass of code removed. Doing so with an adult was still a bit tricky, but Vortison had managed it with a few people thus far.

The process was so lengthy that it wasn’t worth putting the full population through just yet. Plus they might need it later, because as Vortison had said, putting it back in was probably going to be harder than taking it out, and to date he hadn’t tried.

Brad knew that Humans would never be given psionics as younglings, nor would the general population for that matter. That had been settled for a long time and this wasn’t going to change that. Protovic having an advantage over Humans didn’t both Brad either, for all of these younglings were pure Star Force, same as the Humans. They were brothers and sisters, and Humans didn’t have to be top dog in every category. As it was they were already punching bags to the Calavari, but Humans still made up the core of Star Force.

As time went on that was evolving a bit, for now there were much older individuals from other races rising through the ranks, both military and tech, that were taking their place in the upper cadre of Star Force leadership. Even a few Monarchs were now non-Human, and put in that position because Davis thought they merited it rather than misguided notions of ‘diversity.’ There had been complaints for a long time within the ADZ about Human domination, but those within Star Force knew there was no basis to the whining. The Humans were older and wiser, hence they held the leadership positions. Now a few others were working their way into that group, and rightly so, but Humans would always be top dogs.

And that came down to their V’kit’no’sat legacy. The Ikrid block was more important than anyone realized, and even with a lot of Protovic telepaths entering the population they wouldn’t be able to read Humans. Also, only Humans could become Archons, Arc Commandos, and Arc Knights. Brad knew they were going to have to develop a fourth category for the advanced Protovic that reached Final Form, but he was waiting on that until Vortison figured out what the mystery coding was and if there was any of it that they could use, but even then the Protovic would never be able to become Archons.

The new Protovic ‘ultras’ might be physically superior to Archon adepts, or even acolytes at similar ages, but there was no matching the raw power woven into the Zen’zat genetics and Star Force wasn’t going to give Protovic the title of ‘Archon’ if they couldn’t fully be Archons. They would find their own niche, and a powerful one if Brad’s speculation was correct about their potential, but the military leadership of Star Force would always be the Archons.

As for the Monarchs, Davis would always be tops and the generation that had developed Star Force along with him would never be superseded…save for the possibility of a Grand Admiral Thrawn type rising up through the ranks. If that ever occurred Brad would be very interested to see how that played out, but he knew that would be a rare individual and not a mass transition.

Humans would dominate the upper Monarch ranks for the same reason the trailblazers were still the top Archons…they got a head start on everyone else, and there was no replacing or duplicating the experience they’d gained building Star Force from the ground up.

Other races would add to and grow Star Force’s population and strength, but the Humans…the elite Humans anyway…would always be the tiny eye in the center of the storm that guided everything else, while the hurricane that the empire had become was, and would continue to be, mostly made up of non-Humans.

But like with these younglings, they might not be Human but they were fully Star Force and his brothers and sisters. So there was no contention between them. Each had their strengths and their niches to fill, Brad’s niche just happened to be a very exclusive one.

10

February 27, 3092

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“You sure about this?” Kip asked. “Last chance to back out.”

Nefron turned his glowing red eyes on the trailblazer a few steps shy of the medical station. “You keep repeating yourself. My mind hasn’t changed.”

“We can reverse the process at any time if needed,” Vortison reminded them from the control board. “Say the word and I’ll end it within 60 seconds of getting you back in the machine.”

“Be sure,” Brad told the Red-skinned Protovic volunteer, one of the oldest amongst the Protovic faction. “We still don’t know all that this will do to you. Your mind especially.”

“There’s only one way to find out, so let’s get to it.”

The two trailblazers in the room exchanged glances, then Kip shrugged. “He’s right.”

“Alright then, let’s jump into this,” Brad said, pointing Nefron into the station. When the green/red Protovic walked inside he telekinetically lowered the bar to lock him in, leaving the three other men outside with no one else here to view this moment. This medical station had been built specifically for this test with an adjacent sterile living quarters and small workout center for Nefron to be confined within during the transformation, for this was going to have to be a gradual one. The physical changes could be activated and rushed via the machine, but Vortison didn’t want to risk complications with the mental side, so they were going to see this process run its course naturally.

Vortison flicked a button and a blue energy shield cut off the medical chamber and the rooms behind it from the control station and the three Humans. Nefron would be of no danger to them, but once the process was activated the medtech feared he might be able to infect other non-Blue Protovic and trigger them to transform as well, thus this experiment had to be conducted in isolation.

“Releasing activation material now,” Vortison said, with a mist from seven special canisters releasing above his head and flowing down over top of Nefron. “Just stand still and wait it out, I want to monitor the process with the scanners as long as possible.”

“Take your time,” the Protovic said as he felt the cool mist drape over him. “I take it you two are watching my mind?”

“We are,” Kip confirmed. “But don’t hesitate to talk. We’re recording images and audio as well, so if there’s anything important, or even trivial that you want to mention, do so.”

“Nothing yet,” Nefron said as the mist plumes continued to fall onto his shoulders and then onto the floor where they were beginning to form a low cloud that extended all the way out to the energy shield.

“It’s already happening,” Vortison said in awe. “All slots have been filled and the prime code is activating. I can see it in progress.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Nefron said.

“It’s prepping you for changes. I don’t know how long it will take before they actually begin to unfold.”

“What about the genetic memories?”

“Also prepping. I have some idea of what you’ll be transforming into, but I have almost no clue what the process will be or what timetable it will take. We’re just going to have to wait this out.”

“Should I…ah,” Nefron said, leaning slightly forward and putting a hand over his abdomen. “That’s new.”

“What?” Vortison asked.

“A sick feeling in my chest that’s spreading out through the rest of my body.”

Vortison studied the holographic displays for a moment, altering several until he found what he needed. “Transition material is being formed. It’ll soak up nutrients and other vital components you’ll need later like a sponge. It’s forming tiny tendrils right now through your entire body…microscopic, but it isn’t wasting any time.”

“Should I start eating now?”

“Give it a few minutes, I need as much data as I can get and the biomonitor is not nearly as effective as this device.”

“You still thinking this will take days?” Brad asked.

The geneticist nodded. “Yes.”

“I’ll take first watch,” he told Kip.

“Alright. I’ll be around if you need me.”

“We should go opposite each other,” Brad added as Kip turned to walk out. “That way we’ll be less likely to miss something big.”

“I’ll get Terry to relieve you in 3 hours,” he told his fellow Archon, then turned back to look at Nefron. “Hang in there buddy. I think you’re in for a wild ride.”

“I’d be disappointed if I wasn’t.”

Kip smirked and threw him a two fingered salute as he headed out, leaving the medtech and the Archon watcher in place as they both monitored his transformation and would continue to do so round the clock going forward.

Twelve hours later Kip returned, finding Vortison still there along with Amy-12199. He was sitting on a stool watching his monitors while she was on the floor in a meditative pose with Nefron nowhere in sight, though Kip could sense him in a nearby room.

“Tag,” he said, walking up behind the mage.

She stood up silently and turned around. “He’s in considerable pain, but weathering it well.”

“I can feel that. How long has this been happening?”

“The past 7 hours,” Vortison answered.

“How long are you sticking around before you need some sleep?”

“At least another 10 hours.”

“And then?”

“I sleep and get back here while my staff takes my place.”

“Where are they?”

“Working the data I’m sending them. We’re learning more by the minute than we’ve uncovered in years previously.”

“Enlighten me,” he said as Amy lightly touched him on the shoulder as she left.

“Both the physical and mental changes have begun, which is causing him the pain. They’re not advancing rapidly enough to incapacitate him, but they’re not moving as slowly as I anticipated. However, there appears to be a lot more going on than I thought so this should still take days to work its course.”

“Welcome back,” Nefron said as he appeared in the lab area again in response to Amy’s departure. “How do I look to a fresh set of eyes?”

Kip glanced at him, immediately seeing the changes in his skin. The red glow persisted, but the green had dimmed so far his skin almost looked black while his exoskeletal patches were actually shedding their outer layers.

“Not good,” he said honestly.

“That’s about how I feel.”

“Any new memories popping up?”

“Just a sense of the importance in this. I feel like crap, but part of me says this is the most important moment of my life. Call it a destiny sense. Can you feel it?”

Kip concentrated, pushing his way through everything else swirling in his mind. “Just a touch. Your head is a mess right now.”

“Not so much a headache as a disconnect. Like I’m fogging over. I’ve stumbled a few times, but I can still move around if I focus.”

“Have you tried sleeping?”

“Hurts too much for that.”

“Running?”

“Did a little earlier and it helped, but tried again an hour ago and my insides complained mightily. I think I’m going into a cocoon or something.”

Kip raised an eyebrow at Vortison.

“A metaphor,” he assured him.

“Need a break from the pain?” Kip offered.

“Amy was helping me a bit, but I don’t want to get reliant on you guys and then have it smash me in the face later.”

“A couple minutes…long enough for me to help you assess what’s going on internally?”

“Sure,” Nefron said, with Kip numbing out most of the pain the next second and the Protovic sucking in an audible breath.

“You didn’t realize how bad it’d gotten.”

“I guess not,” he admitted. “Thanks.”

“Focus on what’s different and I’ll piggyback on your thoughts. Show me around inside your head.”

“I’ll try,” he said, grabbing the wall for support before he closed his eyes and poked around his own thoughts as he stood. Kip followed his mental course, poking around himself off tangents and beginning to get a grip on how much the alterations were affecting him. His entire head felt like soup, with a lot of the foggy areas covering the changes. Kip pressed into a few of them but didn’t have much better luck than he did, though he did pick up a lot of conversion issues.

“I think his genetic memory is unspooling and trying to interface with his language processors. I can feel a lot of back and forth going on.”

“The code is very active and adaptive,” Vortison echoed. “I think it’s looking for the path of least resistance to reduce the damage being done to him in the process. I expect his condition to get a lot worse going forward.”

“You still game?” he asked Nefron.

“This hasn’t licked me yet.”

“Good man. I’ll stick with you the next few hours and whenever you need a break let me know and I’ll numb it out. If you want to try and sleep an hour now I can hold the pain back for that long.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Vortison suggested.

“Your range reach all the way to the bed?” Nefron asked.

“Easily.”

“Then I’ll take you up on that offer. Now that the pain is mostly gone I’m getting drowsy already.”

“Night night,” Kip said, pointing to the doorway.

“Wake me in an hour regardless, ok?”

“Deal.”

“Night then,” he said, disappearing into the other chambers, though Kip could still see him with Pefbar and was connected to him mentally.

“I’m getting a little worried,” he whispered to Vortison.

“I can reverse this and flash heal the physical damage whenever you give the word.”

“Why is the pain this bad?”

“Rather than upgrading his existing body, he’s growing a new one piece by piece and those pieces are incompatible with the old ones. The transitional tissue is holding him all together and keeping him functional, though I imagine it will disappear eventually. When this is done he will cease to be Protovic rather than being an upgraded version. You knew that already.”

“It feels like its tearing him apart from the inside out.”

“More true than not.”

“At least our ascensions happen quickly. This is approaching pure torture.”

“I think it’s a necessity due to the transition material. Leaving him in limbo for a longer period of time to reduce the pain might actually put him at more of a risk of death. He can’t be two races at the same time, and this tissue is cheating to keep him alive while he is. I think the programming is pressing him through the most vulnerable part as quickly as possible…and I think we’re just beginning to enter that phase now. Some of his organs are literally failing and being cannibalized into new ones while the transitional tissue takes over their functionality. Are you feeling it or just numbing it out?”

“I can feel it when I choose to, and it’s getting very nasty. What are your readings saying now? He just fell asleep and I felt a change.”

Vortison studied his displays, cycling through a few options. “Everything just sped up across the board.”

“That’s what I thought. Is that bad or less bad?”

“I’m not sure.”

Brad had been in bed for no more than 10 minutes when Kip’s mental contact slapped him awake, with him not being gentle about it.

Get down here now. We have a problem.

What is it? he asked, shaking himself fully awake.

We screwed up and I need your help. Hurry.

On my way, Brad said, heading straight to the door and telekinetically grabbing his slip-on shoes as he ran. They flew onto his feet as he headed out of his quarters and darted through the hallway traffic in his white pajamas that weren’t all that different from their casual uniforms. Kip didn’t say anything more to him and he took that as a bad sign, running as fast as he could and using his telekinesis to move aside those ahead of him that weren’t responding to his telepathic warnings to clear a path.

He got back to the medical chamber within a few minutes, finding Kip and two other Archons seated next to the energy shield with Nefron standing on the other side looking at them, his glow gone from his skin and eyes and his shirt now removed, with Brad able to see his exoskeleton almost having completely flaked off, now replaced by several growths on his skin and a lesser wrinkling that was beginning to resembled the original Blue enhancement that had turned Memma into a living tank for a short period of time before they’d changed him back.

“Hello…Brad.”

“How you doing?” he asked, mentally making contact and being freaked out by the changes. There was a whirlwind of activity, with the mind that he’d previously known only being partly there…with something entirely new alongside it.

“I don’t…know. Can’t seem to…focus.”

“I screwed up,” Vortison said in a mortified voice.

“How?” Brad demanded, still looking at Nefron.

“I can’t change him back.”

The trailblazer’s eyes turned straight to the medtech. “What…” he said icily.

“I can change his body back, and I can remove the genetic knowledge being given to him. That hasn’t changed. But the coding is doing more than adding memories, it’s corrupting and altering his existing ones. It’s infecting them, so if I remove all the new material, physical and mental, it’ll rip out his old memories along with them. He’ll be a blank slate, not knowing who he is, or was…he may not even be able to walk or breathe. I can’t say for sure, I had no idea the coding could even do something like this, but if I try and change his mind back he will either die or become a vegetable. I’m so sorry, I missed this. I missed this,” Vortison repeated, and Brad could feel the anger the man had for himself.

“Kip?”

“We’re trying to slow the changes and isolate portions of his memory to preserve them, creating a bubble for him to function within. Help us.”

“How?”

Kip and the other two sent him an instantaneous battlemeld link and he accepted from all 3, forming a 4-way bond that answered all his questions immediately. Adding his considerable mental power to theirs he put down walls attempting to block the invasive programming and undoing the bits of it that were creeping in. So long as it was software they had a chance, though physical alterations were outside their ability to manage…but Vortison could handle that with the machine, though Nefron wasn’t standing in it.

“Vortison, we want to try something but we need your help. I’ll feed you the information as we go, but we need some physical blocks made or we’re going to lose him eventually.”

“Ready,” he said, wanting to do something, anything to fix this.

“Nefron, please step back into the chamber,” Brad said.

“My name…” he uttered, not moving and staring confused at the ground in front of him. “My name…”

“Move him inside,” Vortison urged.

“My name…” the transforming Protovic said as his mind suddenly shifted and a clouded piece of it gained focus, “is Radonon.”

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1

February 28, 3092

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Kip telekinetically picked up Nefron and pushed him inside the medical station cage, lowering the arm and holding him there as the Protovic struggled to retain focus as a wash of memories and new mental programming began to take hold.

“Follow my lead,” Brad said as he began sending Vortison mental images and cues as the four Archons fought a losing battle inside Nefron’s mind to ward off the changes being made to his existing memories. He played communicator while Kip took the lead, deciding where to make physical changes as if laying sandbags ahead of a flood.

“This could make things worse,” Vortison cautioned.

“Don’t focus on quality, just get the blocks in place as fast as possible,” Brad said as one of the mages took the physical restraint away from Kip and allowed him to focus totally on the mental war as both of the mages and Brad helped him where they could by disrupting new programming and causing it to have to rewrite itself multiple times. No matter how many pieces of it the Archons undid, it would regenerate itself and continue to spread.

Kip knew they weren’t going to be able to shut that down, so his strategy was to try and isolate a piece of the Protovic’s mind physically like an island, and to do that they needed tissue changes of their own. The structure of Nefron’s mind was changing far less than his body, due in no small part to the fact that you couldn’t tear his brain down and rebuild it without killing him. With the Red’s neural enhancement already in place there were only minor changes being made to the hardware…in addition to new brain tissue being added, but the corruption was being done via software so Kip figured they had a chance of preserving a bit of him if they could get a capsule formed.

“We have to lock it down entirely,” Brad explained as he continued to feed Vortison position data for within the Protovic’s mind as he rapidly grew physical components that were forcing the transformation to seek out new routes into the region they were attempting to protect…and losing fast. “Make it think there’s nothing left of his mind to convert and it might shut itself down.”

“I’ll try,” the geneticist said as he rapidly pressed buttons and the machine made the changes in biology just as fast. “But this is going to be crude as hell.”

“Let us worry about that, just become our tool and forget about the big picture right now,” Brad said as he blanked another tiny segment of the new coding like he was wiping away a rain drop, only to have another one immediately fall in its place. He could continue doing so indefinitely, blocking further corruption, but there were only so many places he could manually control and even with the other three Archons doing the same there was just too much brain for them to cover. Focusing on the sections that they knew to hold reasoning and judgement programs, they drew their no-go line there with Brad having Vortison physically sever inroads so the transformation couldn’t reach it.

That also meant that from Nefron’s clouded point of view he didn’t have access to it either. The Archons were disconnecting a piece of his brain by making the physical blocks, but Kip had no other choice rather than just sit by and watch the Protovic being consumed by the transformation programming. As they worked he had Lina-10388 numbing some of his pain, for the transformation of his physical body wasn’t slowing, but the rest of their focus was so intense that they didn’t even feel Amy come into the room until she offered them a battlemeld prompt. Adding her strength to theirs they continued to wipe away as many new tendrils of corruption as they could while Brad and Vortison added more sandbag blocks around not a physical piece of his brain, but rather a section that held specific programming.

That meant it was stretched out across several areas, with each needing to be encapsulated with the blocks. They focused on the major inroads first, but left themselves access points that they guarded the heaviest. Little by little they held their lines, having drawn them conservatively at first and been fighting well beyond them in a losing effort to buy time for Vortison to throw up the blocks. The more that went in the less ground the five, and soon to be eight Archons once more arrived, were able to firmly hold the rest of the openings until they were no longer in jeopardy of being overwhelmed.

At that point Kip let them continue while he searched other places looking for regions not yet infected…which was when he began to feel the new tissue being grown and coming online. It wasn’t just more brain, but with it was coming the memories, skills, and powers of a very strong telepathic race he’d never encountered before…and it was happening within Nefron. There weren’t two people in his mind, but two customizations…one of which was being repurposed and converted, ostensibly so this new race wouldn’t be clueless as to what was going on in the galaxy and helpless at the outset.

It would know everything that Nefron knew, save for the piece they were walling off, which wasn’t much, but it was all they could do for him. Already Nefron was becoming another race, in mind and body, with very little Protovic left in him.

“You cannot stop this,” he said after several hours of silence being held in place inside the machine, startling everyone in the room with his reverberating voice. He was speaking English, but it had a definitive accent to it that wasn’t there before, being produced on vocal chords that were no longer Protovic. “I am becoming what I was always destined to become, I can feel it happening, and no amount of genetic manipulation is going to stop it. As you already have doubtlessly learned, the transformation is redundant and will continue to make alterations until I am complete. Try to delay as you will, but you will not succeed.”

“What are you?” Brad asked, realizing he was talking to Nefron, but a Nefron who now thought he was someone else.

“I am soon to be Chixzon. A race far older than your memory. We made an error once that nearly destroyed us, forcing us to disappear from the galaxy until we were but myth. Now we are returning, first I, then many more to come.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, I know you Brad. Your powers are impressive, far more than any we’ve encountered before, and I know you are in my head. All of you are in my head,” the peeling black creature said as the growths on his skin continued to bump out into nodules. “I do not have the strength to resist you, so there is little point in deception. Your abilities, that I know of, make you very powerful, but know that I am more so. Not in raw physical strength, but the Chixzon on the whole are superior. I know you will not believe this, and even now you are conflicted with concern for me. Do not be. I am in a great amount of pain, that is true, but this is who I was always meant to become.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“No it wasn’t. You were to learn and then return me to my inferior form. Now you are learning that is not possible, for this is not an upgrade, rather a return to former glory. We had to diminish ourselves in order to survive. An abominable task, but necessary. None of those living at the time were able to do so, only subsequent generations were able to be altered prior to birth. Though I have no way of knowing for certain, it was assumed that all Chixzon would be hunted to extinction. The fact that you have no knowledge of us reinforces this prediction.”

“Hunted by whom?”

“Our enemies, of which there were many. You do not have to be one. The Chixzon will never serve Star Force, but we can coopt you. We can find a place for you to service us. A recompense for hastening a unification to which there was no guarantee. We owe you enough to endow a privileged position…and while your first reaction is to deny, in time you will learn. I will not hold your ignorance against you. You will keep me imprisoned while you search my mind for answers. Until I am strong enough to resist such intrusions I will not attempt to slow you. Learn from me what the Chixzon are and realize that you are better off with us than against us.”

“Is there no other option?” Brad floated, trying to make this an intellectual discussion even as his insides were twisting up in disgust at how Nefron was being hijacked.

“You have grown too large, and developed skills too powerful to be ignored. Your only options are to join with us or be destroyed by us…and killing me will not prevent this. I am not in a position to make demands, but know that our seeding of what you call Protovic occurred throughout the entire perimeter of the galaxy. You only have access to a shred of it, and even your ally The Nexus is not so large as to possess the ability to search out and find all of our wayward seeds. Sooner or later you will encounter us. Better it to be here and now while you have time to make a wise choice rather than as an outsider that must be contended with.”

“Galactic domination is your end goal then?”

“No. There is far too much galaxy for us to control, nor do we wish to do so. We cannot, however, ignore threats. Foremost among them are the core plague known as the Klamensh, of which you have no knowledge. Fortunate, that is, for we feared they may have spread this far out over time. There are…no, you have seen them,” Radonon said, seeing a twitch in Brad’s facial expression. To test that theory he used what was there of his own telepathic ability to transmit the basic knowledge of the Klamensh to the others in the room.

They had the same reaction, a visible twitch, and one of understanding.

“You do know the Klamensh, but by another name I assume. Tell me how far they have come, for you have not made their existence public knowledge. Are they close? Tell me, for I cannot reach into your minds. They are so strong my limited skills are blocked entirely from access.”

Guys, he’s finishing for information, Brad told the others, Vortison included. Finish plugging the holes but do not speak to him. Let me handle the interrogation.

Good idea, Kip said, trying to push that recent revelation out of his mind so he didn’t slip up on the last few necessary holds while Vortison finished creating the capsule.

“You know far more about us than we do you, so it is you that we will focus on.”

“Information shared may garner you favor,” Radonon offered loosely.

“What sort of favor does being your slaves hold?”

“Servants and slaves are not the same. As I previous inferred, the galaxy is vast and we do not wish to hold firm control over most of it. We seek to find and eliminate threats before they can harm us. We failed to do so previously, the same mistake will not be made again. In this form we are vulnerable, and until our empire is rebuilt your assistance can be immensely valuable, for which we would allow you to maintain most of your current holdings and expand upon them with our blessing and guidance. If you align your objectives with ours it can be a great advancement for Star Force, rather than the penalty that your words infer. In this language the term ‘subordinate associates’ would be more accurate.”

“And if we refuse?”

“Then you will probably kill me, but that will not stop our eventual return.  While there are no guarantees, we placed many seeds to counter statistical improbability. And the fact that two of the eight segments had already achieved second state before your beneficial intervention tells me that the time is nearing for others to unify. You may have another million years, but eventually my brethren will come to this part of the galaxy, seeking out potential threats, for which your considerable abilities will take our notice. Better for your empire to be an ally before that happens, for we do not take chances any longer. If there is doubt we will destroy you. No malice intended, but we cannot linger in indecision. You will either join with us or not. Time will not be granted to you to develop a means of battling us.”

“As someone else did?”

“My head is still awash with transformation. Can you not find the answer to that yourself within it?”

“Trying to gage our skill level?”

“Would you not?”

“I’m more interested in why you do not think you are Nefron anymore.”

“Because I am not. I am Radonon, first of the Chixzon to return.”

“How do you know you are the first?”

“My name says so. When I encounter another I will pass on the transformation code along with a temporal marker. When he wakes he will have a different name, based on what number he is.”

“What happens if you encounter many at once?”

“It will sort itself out. We are telepathic, and even though I cannot read your mind I can sense it there. Likewise we can sense each other, as can our code, and it will appropriately name us all, and from those names we will know our purpose.”

“And yours is what?”

“I am to do what you will not allow me to do. Find other ‘Protovic’ and fulfill their destiny to become Chixzon. Because you will not allow this I must negotiate an adequate alliance first. You are in my mind, so you should know I am not being duplicitous. Any agreement made here will be honored into the future, and not just with my faction, but any others that venture into this portion of the galaxy. We act as one, and an agreement made will be honored by all, so when you speak with me you are speaking with the whole of the Chixzon.”

“I’m not impressed yet,” Brad said dismissively. “What are those growths on your body?”

“Additional limbs. We had to disguise our physiology in a somewhat compatible form else our seeds would have been discovered and eradicated. The Protovic physiology is what you would consider to be our base, while we have many additional add-ons…which the medtech is no doubt now realizing.”

Brad raised an eyebrow in Vortison’s direction, but mentally told him not to respond and keep working.

“Enlighten me then.”

“We are quite skilled with biological manipulation, and have altered our own over the course of time to meet our needs. My primary limbs you see here, what are growing off them are secondary ones.”

“And from your back?”

“We share a bit of familiarity with your Bsidd. They are mandibles that have weapon caliber endings.”

“Poison tipped?”

“No, these are physical weapons…with an armor piercing modification. It is so strange to be talking with someone who has access to my own memories, for I can hide nothing from you. Even amongst ourselves there are limits, to which I know you can breach even if I was fully formed. I’m beginning to understand just how much you’ve hidden from everyone else, but tell me, you did not engineer such things. I know this because your biological skills are inferior. Is this truly a natural development? Our telekinesis was not.”

Another twitch from the Human, which Radonon noted…and that he knew the Human knew he noted.

“We can play games as much as you like,” the Chixzon said as another piece of black skin flaked off and fell to the floor of the medical chamber, “but given that I can hide nothing from you let us just speak plainly. Or rather I will, your secrets you will keep until a time that you choose otherwise. Right now you do not understand who and what we are, so the idea of an alliance is ridiculous from your current point of view. You are dominant here and you rightly should not give it up lightly, but know that I can solve your lizard problem with much greater ease. Theirs is a primitive problem solved most efficiently through spreading contagion that will target their biology specifically. Given that they are annihilating every race they come into contact with rather than picking and choosing wisely, they are a plague that must be eradicated by us, so I have no qualms with building the weapon for your use.”

“You should know we don’t fight that way.”

“I know, but you are also calculating and keen warriors. If the lizards are to be all killed, why not use a more direct method. Offer them surrender first, and then when they refuse bombard their planets with canisters. I can assure you only they will die, and it can be made into a numbing death. We typically do not care about such things, but allotments can be made to fit your methods.”

“No,” Brad said flatly.

“Then what do you wish of me? My transformation will require additional time, but soon I will be complete. You no doubt want information from me and my body. Will you kill me thereafter or will you preserve me while you study the…problem? Long enough for you to fully grasp my offer. I am patient when needed, so there is no rush. Mistreatment will be held against you, though I know that is not your way.”

“It is also your way.”

“My protoform, perhaps. My way is that of the Chixzon, and I can feel it returning to me like waking up from a long, suppressive dream. I am becoming myself, I know you can feel this in me. This is who I am supposed to be, do not allow yourself to believe otherwise. As for your neutered Protovic Blues…you may keep them if you wish. Without their true nature buried inside, they were merely empty vessels and no longer seeds.”

“But you want the others?”

“We can negotiate that. As you already know there are other seeds out there, some that did not wish to partake in this unification. I can wake them up and leave Star Force as is, if that is what you wish.”

“Generous…or cold, I’m not sure which.”

“I was not myself until moments ago, and I am not fully there yet. The Protovic are not Chixzon.”

“Good to know.”

“You would not say that if you understood. Perhaps when the turbulence within my mind settles you will be able to learn from me more quickly.”

Done, Kip said after conferring with Vortison to make sure the capsule was holding. There’s not much of him left elsewhere to save, but the corruption is taking a while to fully unfold. We’ll have to wait and see if the capsule holds, so we need stay here and monitor.

“You need food?”

“My physical transformation will delay until I have sufficient resources, yes. You should know you cannot stop it without starving me to death, so yes, I need more food in larger amounts than previously. I’m guessing you didn’t account for my additional limbs?”

Brad telekinetically lifted the arm up, knowing that there would be more data collection inside the chamber but right now it was a moot point, for they were going to make damn sure no one else went through this transformation.

“Have a seat. We’ll bring you additional foodstuffs while we chat.”

“Thank you, Brad,” Radonon said as he stepped out, his bare feet clicking on the floor for the first time as the stubs of claws or talons were beginning to show. “We do have a great deal to discuss, and I won’t be fully able to answer your questions until my mind is complete. The knowledge is unspooling as I speak.”

“Food first then,” Brad said as he spun around and headed for the door, then hesitated and half turned his head back. “You won’t go anywhere?”

“Yes, we do have a sense of humor,” Radonon said, picking up on and answering the reflexive probe.

“Probably helps make up for the ugliness,” Brad said, glancing at Kip as he walked out. This one’s not dumb.

2

March 2, 3092

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Kip walked into the visitor ‘gallery’ outside the containment shield where Brad and a couple of mages were sitting. Vortison was nowhere to be seen, nor were his typical replacements. Brad knew he had to take breaks, just as the Archons, but he usually left someone else here to actively monitor the data feeds coming in from the biomonitor still attached to Radonon’s head, though it’d slipped off numerous times during the physical transition that was now complete.

The Chixzon was sitting on a stool on the opposite side of the energy shield with its tail wrapped around the vertical pylon, the tip of which was twitching rhythmically against the solid floor and making a dull ‘thud’ every time it hit. It was colored black, but transitioned into splotches of dark green halfway up. Its legs were likewise colored, with its solid torso being blank. Apparently the splotches were badges of merit and would augment the standard ones that were emblematic of their civilization’s achievements once Radonon earned them.

His arms still had hands and five fingers, but coming off the elbow there were spine-like limbs tucked into niches on his forearms that he could pull clear and use whenever he wanted. He had more on his upper arms that ended in telescoping talons while the lower ones were blunted and much thicker, intended to be used for movement rather than attacks. The talons doubled as poison injectors in addition to the ones in the palms, though they each had different types of poison, not all of which were lethal, that could be customized as needed depending on the target race and whether you wanted to debilitate or even just stun your opponent, giving the Chixzon an easy way of taking prisoners when they so wanted.

Radonon’s head no longer looked Protovic, for it had elongated out into a skull twice the size that accommodated the additional brain tissue by stretching out into a cone tapered backwards, leaving the facial structure more or less the same. His nose was covered with a nubby spine that was only a little more dense than the rest of his light armor-caliber skin, and like other segments of his body it was black with dark green splotches. Gone was the Protovic exoskeleton and bioluminescence, replaced by a ghastly and intimidating visage of a being that was almost entirely black save for the green patches, but the most prominent feature was the two limbs coming off his back.

Situated like wings, the two bendable limbs arched up behind his head like ornamental brackets and could bend forward into much larger versions of the talons on his arms. They had enough reach that he could shoot them forward in a stabbing motion or twist them around to do the same in just about any direction, giving the Chixzon a bit of StarCraft’s Kerrigan in his body shape. They did not have poison, but rather armor piercing capabilities in the form of an energy coating that worked like a dull lightsaber blade. They were strong as metal and sharp enough to do damage on their own, but once activated they could tear through just about anything given enough time.

They were the only bioluminescence that the Chixzon had in addition to the eyes, both of which glowed green but could be triggered at will. When not active, both the back spike mandibles and the eyes appeared pitch black, matching the majority of the rest of its body coloration, including the toe talons that were built more like cats’ claws than anything else. They could do damage but were mainly for grip, with the Chixzon being impressive jumpers and would bound more than run from place to place.

Right now that wasn’t being tested, for Radonon was still confined to his private quarters with at least 2 Archon guards stationed here round the clock so he couldn’t tear his way out through the walls or use his limited telekinesis to otherwise escape. He’d made an attempt earlier, right in view of Brad so he knew he wasn’t serious about an escape…then was appalled when he realized that the Human had the ability to disrupt his own telekinesis.

Radonon was learning from them while they were learning from him, but Kip knew he wasn’t going anywhere, as did the Chixzon. But as long as he was stuck here he might at least gain what information he could, with the hopes that Star Force would come to the conclusion that it was better to side with the Chixzon than against them, though Radonon was truthfully allowing a long exploration period without taking offense to insure the Humans and their empire knew what it was that they were being offered…and threatened with.

“Morning sunshine,” Kip said as he sat down next to Brad, though his comment was directed at Radonon. It was hard not to think of him as such, for the Nefron he knew seemed to have been completely replaced by a new person, though he knew that wasn’t technically correct. Visually, and even mentally, he was totally different and didn’t identify himself with his past, with his memories having been converted into useful data while his Chixzon manufactured memories were what he clung to as his sense of self.

“Is it? I seem to have lost track of time. How long then before you let me do some real workouts? The hamster wheel you’ve got in here is insulting.”

“Do you even know what a hamster is?” Brad asked.

Radonon thought for a moment. “I don’t believe so. It’s just a phrase I learned from others. You know well that I have nowhere to go. Even if I broke free and spread the transformation to the rest of the Protovic on the planet you would act immediately to control the situation. There is no hope of success there, so why will you not believe me when I state my intentions? You can confirm them directly, so why not let me have a proper facility to use?”

“One is being built,” Brad answered. “Have to keep the air clear, and we don’t feel like dispossessing others to accommodate you.”

“Or do you intend to withhold it in exchange for my assistance?”

“You should know us better than that,” Kip floated as one of the mages got up and left.

“Farewell, Weyni,” Radonon said, waving a hand at the departing Archon.

“Nefron,” she replied evenly before disappearing.

Radonon made a chirping sound with his teeth clicking together that Kip could sense was a sign of frustration. “Outdated moniker,” he commented, but otherwise let the name drop pass. “So, Kip. What shall we talk about today…or would you like to spar? If your armor has corovon elements my cutting edges will not be able to penetrate it quickly, so there will be no real threat to you.”

“Trying to gage our strengths?”

“The more we understand of one another the better…plus this body is new and needs calibration, so we would both benefit from it. I can promise I will not hold back, so you can accurately ascertain my current strength.”

“Not today,” Kip dismissed. “What were you discussing?” he asked Brad.

“It seems they have learned to create biological starships.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he said icily.

“Constructs only,” Radonon assured him. “They had a similar reaction of distaste. They are not living beings, nor do we rely upon them. They are merely one element in our concord, but one that most other races cannot comprehend.”

“Used for what purpose?”

“Many. We do not build as quickly as Star Force. Your material collection and processing rates are astounding. You should truly be proud of that accomplishment.”

“Lose the patronizing,” Amy said.

“We are superior, so you misunderstand my tone. Until you come to accept that, many things you will misinterpret. You build faster than us, but not better. Our technology is far superior, and a good portion of that is what you would call biotech. Our word for it is ‘Hamjat.’ It will continue to function where mechanical elements will not.”

“Such as when they detonate a certain weapon,” Brad added for Kip’s benefit.

“Ion cannon?”

“More or less,” Brad answered, sensing that Radonon didn’t catch the reference. “The Chixzon don’t always go for the brute force approach. They come at you from the sides whenever possible, and are used to winning that way. I don’t think they do well in a straight up fight.”

“If we are mismatched, why would we fight in such a manner? You should not begrudge us this given your aversion to losing troops.”

“Paul would eat them alive navally,” Brad said, eyeing Radonon.

The Chixzon did an approximation of a smile with his rock-like lips bending ever so slightly. “I remember his reputation, but I am curious to meet him. Is that to ever occur?”

“Not on the schedule at the moment,” Brad said as he sensed another person approaching.

“Ah, the master manipulator is back,” Radonon said a few seconds before Vortison entered the doorway, having sensed him approaching. “Still failing to find a way to do the undoable?”

“I’m fairly confident now,” he said, ignoring the Chixzon and addressing the Archons. “But I can make no guarantees.”

“A new attempt?” Radonon asked curiously but laced with sarcasm and boredom, for he knew there was no undoing what had been done. The Chixzon had made sure of that in their programming, for this had not been a hasty measure. They had fought long and hard to give their scientists enough time to get this right and spread the seeds before they were presumably wiped out in one final grand push, with the surviving Chixzon going to their deaths and hoping to take as many of their enemies with them as possible to create a more fertile future galaxy for their seeds to grow within.

“Do we need to throw you inside or will you walk?” Brad asked evenly.

“I trust in your ethics,” Radonon said, uncurling his tail from the stool and standing up, his claw talons clicking on the floor as he shuffled his way over to the medical station with his tail riding a few inches off ground level and oscillating behind him.

“But don’t share them,” Kip added.

“You are predictable at least, if not fully competent,” he said as Brad lowered the arm bar to seal him in. “That you have accomplished this much is testament to your potential, which with our help you could fully unlock.”

“Still trying to sell us that deal?” Kip asked.

“Attempting to open your eyes to the logic of it, yes,” Radonon said as he placed his black hands on the sphere. “What are you attempting today?”

“Your transformation is complete, correct?” Brad asked.

“It is.”

“And what of your transformation mechanism. Is it still active?”

“If you are attempting to grow additional brain tissue, it will not be affected. Now that I am fully Chixzon the transitional programming has eradicated itself and only exists within other seeds. There is no need for me to carry it any longer.”

“Software too?”

“The full process is complete,” Radonon reiterated. “I carry nothing of the seed.”

“So I believe,” Vortison echoed, “but I’ve been wrong before.”

“You can do a partial?”

The medtech nodded.

“Make it small,” Kip said, giving him the go ahead.

“Am I to guess?” Radonon asked.

“No, you’re to stand still and shut up,” Brad quipped.

Radonon huffed once, but decided there was no point in arguing and did as they wished. A few seconds later he was unconscious and standing within the device like a statue.

“He’s out,” Vortison said, looking at Brad. “I have no idea how this will interface even if it works.”

“Bit by bit then and see what happens. We’re not in a rush.”

Vortison closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. “I suppose I am.”

“Don’t blame yourself. None of us expected this,” Kip said, guessing at his thoughts even though he couldn’t read them.

“He was my responsibility and I failed him. There is no getting around that.”

“Let me rephrase then. Don’t distrust your judgement, for it did not fail. We stumbled across something much larger than we’d ever imagined and it took us all by surprise. It wasn’t lack of skill that created this situation, it was lack of understanding.”

“I still screwed up.”

“Don’t do so again by rushing or second guessing yourself,” Brad said stiffly. “This was our idea too, and Nefron is also our responsibility. If we can’t return him to his original form that is our failure, but we’ve let it go now. We’re not going to abandon him, but we’re going to work the problem for what it is rather than trying to get back to what cannot be. This happened, we lost, now time for the next battle.”

“I’m not getting sloppy,” Vortison promised. “I just don’t like him having to live like this.”

“It’s done…and you didn’t do it. The Chixzon did with their hidden programming. You just didn’t find it in time. They’re to blame, not you. We did screw up, but we’re not the one who caused it. Now we have a lot of work to do to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else, starting with trying to get a little bit of the Protovic back.”

“I don’t need a lecture. I need results.”

“Then let’s get some,” Brad said, gesturing to the control board.

Vortison started working it, with the master holo enlarged enough that the three Archons could follow along, more or less. The capsule that they’d created earlier was being altered, with a tiny portion of it being walled off from the rest with a new barrier being grown. When that was complete Vortison began to slowly remove impediments from that section, allowing it to reconnect with the rest of his now Chixzon brain, though the biochemistry was virtually identical, save for new subsections had been grown to add to what had originally been there.

That allowed the two tissues to match up functionally, and when the first impulses began to travel between the two Vortison saw a spike in mental activity…in the negative. It was a compatibility issue that was essentially grinding his mental gears, but the corruptive flood that had been present previously was no longer here. The exposed bits of the Protovic section were not being compromised, but rather accessed by the rest of his mind and attempting to integrate. Up until now the puzzling functions of Radonon’s mind had been absent, and the Archons had tested as much. The additional brain tissue hadn’t replaced them, leaving him only with the ability to act and remember rather than reason.

He could still do a fair amount of deduction, but the parts of his mind where learning would occur was what the Archons had fought so hard to preserve, and the first bits of that were now trying to integrate with the rest of his Chixzon mind.

“It’s rough, but taking,” Vortison reported, not expecting the Archons to be able to fully interpret the holograms. “Far rougher than I’d expected, but it’s working itself out. If we progress very slowly this might work. Go any faster and I can’t even guess at the problems that could result, but it would be bad.”

“System crash?”

“I don’t know.”

“Segments or do this in one long haul?” Brad asked.

“Having him fully awake with only pieces of this programming would be a bad idea and could cause further complications. I’d like to keep him out until it’s fully accessed then bring him slowly back to consciousness and troubleshoot as we go. We’re talking hours, minimum.”

“How’s he set with food stores?”

Vortison brought up another hologram, imputing multiple commands until he got the scans he wanted. “He needs to eat again soon, but I can supply what he needs through the machine enough to get him through the delay. His digestive systems are still raw and need food to adjust, but that’s a low priority right now. I’d prefer to get this all done first then let him fully acclimate.”

“Do you need anything from us?”

“Just your protection. Even now I’m detecting faint telepathic activity, which is another stark sign that I do not fully understand their biology, for he should be fully unconscious and unable to actively use his abilities. My guess would be this is something automated, but I have no idea what it is and I don’t want to speculate. If his telekinesis also becomes active I’ll need you here to shut it down before someone could get hurt.”

“We’ll stay here permanently,” Kip promised. “The new facility will have insulated walls so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Which he can tear through?”

“We’ll keep a guard on him to make sure that doesn’t happen either. We’ve got your back then and now. He’s not going to misbehave and get away with it. Count on that.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Proceeding with the gradual activation,” he confirmed aloud as he started drawing another line of tissue across the capsule in prep for the next reveal once the first eventually got stabilized.

Kip and Brad exchanged a few thoughts, then excused Amy so she could get some training time in as the pair of trailblazers stayed with and mentally monitored their sedated friend…who had unwittingly become their enemy.

3

Radonon’s eyes slowed opened, with his mind not far behind them. He looked down at his hands on the sphere then out to the pair of Archons and the medtech. “You rendered me unconscious. Why?”

“The procedure took some time,” Kip explained. “You can step out now.”

The arm bar lifted but the Chixzon didn’t move. “What have you done to me?”

“Feel different?” Brad asked.

“I am not the same, but I do not know how.”

“We’ll let you figure that out with time, but for now let’s continue with our chat while you eat.”

“What have you done to me?” Radonon demanded.

“We’re not saying,” Kip said firmly. “Still think the process is undoable?”

“It is, of that I have no doubts. Other alterations can be made, and you have definitely done something.”

“Have a seat,” Brad said, pointing to the stool with a tray of foodstuffs set beside it on a portable tabletop. “One way or another.”

“Our discussion is over until you tell me what you’ve done.”

Brad raised a hand for emphasis, then telekinetically lifted Radonon off his feet and flew him out of the medical chamber and over next to the stool where he dropped him a few inches onto the ground.

“If we have to dig the information out telepathically we will, but as you’ve already pointed out, you have nowhere to go and you cannot stop us, so let’s make this civil.”

“And what harm is there in telling me?” Radonon challenged.

“It’s a puzzle. We’re assessing your abilities in self-analysis, thus we can’t tell you when you have to figure it out yourself.”

“Testing our superiority?”

“You could call it that.”

“Have you damaged me?”

“Not by intent,” Kip promised.

“Yet you are making alterations in a physiology that you do not understand,” Radonon complained as he twitched his head for the third time. “Or is it physical? Perhaps you have done something to my mind.”

“You tell us.”

“Experimentation is beyond the limitations of your scruples, thus you must have a direct purpose. A biomonitor chip buried within my body?”

“We don’t like implants,” Brad said, nixing that idea.

“I feel unbalanced, so a sizeable alteration has been made,” the Chixzon said as he stood in place, twitching his head fractionally to the side again as if trying to reset his thoughts. “Why am I still here?”

“Meaning what?” Kip asked.

“In this room. You know I have the ability to cut through most materials, so why am I not in a fully shielded cell?”

“You’re not doing anything with us here,” the trailblazer said confidently.

“Such a declaration implies an unnecessary risk. You seek to solve most problems through infrastructure, yet you do not now in favor of a personal guard that could potentially lapse in a moment of opportunity for me.”

“You have nowhere to go,” Kip reiterated.

“But I could still cause damage, even kill one or two of you. The medtech perhaps.”

“Only if we get sloppy.”

“But keeping me here is sloppy. That is not your method of operating. You cover your weaknesses, not leave them arrogantly open…unless you’re hoping I’ll attempt to break out.”

“Would we risk our people for that?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Radonon said, glancing at the floor but Kip could sense that his mind was going elsewhere. He was distracted and trying to ‘blink’ himself back into focus. “Which is why I do not understand your recklessness. If you are readying another facility you could keep me sedated until it is complete, just like you previously did.”

“Maybe we think you’re mostly talk with little skill to back it up,” Brad offered.

“You may be ignorant of us, but you are not dumb. Do not expect me to believe so under any circumstance. You are working another angle.”

“Feel free to figure it out,” Kip taunted, tossing his hands up and to the sides in an innocent gesture.

“Eat up,” Brad suggested. “Your body is low on fuel.”

Radonon looked at both Archons, not willing to let go of the problem at hand, but in agreement as to his physical needs. He sat down on the stool, wrapping his tail around it again as he picked a sugar stick up and smashed half of it into his small mouth opening before biting it off.

“Taste the same?” Kip inquired, but the Chixzon didn’t respond.

“Is your superior patience beginning to run thin?” Brad asked.

“Perhaps,” he said, taking another bite and fighting a mental war with himself, the source of which still eluded him.

“Well then, how about we discuss a topic of your choice?”

“Your origins.”

“What about them?”

“You’re hiding something. I didn’t realize how much until just now. Your abilities and aspects of your tech don’t add up. You’re siphoning off of something.”

“We’ll discuss anything that we would with the Protovic,” Brad said evenly. “Certain secrets we will still keep.”

“What did you hope to gain from my transformation? Your current powers are far too advanced, and your understanding of genetics far too simplistic. If you had a handle on your own genome you wouldn’t need me to upgrade the Protovic, you would have simply designed what abilities you wanted to give them. You were looking to gain from a mystery when you already have something far more valuable. How is that possible?”

“We did not add our abilities after birth,” Kip said, throwing him a bone. “We were born with them.”

“Then why does he not have them?” Radonon asked, pointing a black finger towards where Vortison sat.

“We only want those who have earned them to have access to them. So yes,” Kip said, reading his thoughts nonstop, “that makes us biologically superior to you.”

“You have an advantage, we have others. Do not assume superiority.”

Brad lifted the tray of foodstuffs off the tabletop and floated it to the side. Kip took control of it as Brad lifted the table a few inches off the ground then used his Lachka at full force and crushed it down into a ball over the course of three seconds. He continued to compress it even further, then dropped it at Radonon’s feet.

“You were saying?”

Both Archons could feel the wheels moving inside his mind with the analysis portion that was still Star Force developed being pulled on heavily. The more doubts they fed him the more it differed with the limited propaganda that had been downloaded into the rest of his mind. There wasn’t much, for a race as advanced as the Chixzon couldn’t be too deluded or they’d cease to function and self-destruct, but everything about them was tinted with a slight deviance that didn’t exactly match up with the truth.

All of Nefron’s memories had been altered accordingly so they were useful but didn’t conflict with his new culture and knowledge…but the learning portion was untainted and still remained Star Force, developed through all the years spent in the maturia and then further with advanced training and even combat against the lizards. Nefron had been one of the oldest Reds in the Protovic, and the higher level of wisdom that he had accumulated over the years was now fighting with the much older and polished doctrine in the few places where it didn’t match up, with the Archons trying to give him as many corners to peel back as possible.

“You’ve never seen telekinesis that strong,” Kip said as Radonon stared at the ball of twisted polymer. “In fact, you didn’t even consider it possible. Yours is far too weak to ever attain that level, used primarily as a tool. A precision tool for when your fingers are too large.”

“An upgrade we created,” he admitted. “Built to mimic one naturally occurring that we discovered. It was somewhat stronger, but not on this level.”

“Just one?” Brad asked.

“Telepathy may not be widespread, but it is not exceedingly rare. Telekinesis was a myth until we encountered one race that had it.”

“Which you destroyed?”

“They…”

“Deserved it?”

“They would not yield.”

“They were not a threat to you,” Brad continued, pulling more data from his mind as the subject matter floated to the surface. “They had something you wanted. Something you feared not having, so you took it from them then killed them so only you would have it. I can understand your fear now, especially because you can’t get inside my head to see how it works. You must be terrified.”

“Do not mock me. It is a weak tactic that will not work.”

“I mock your cowardice, which I will admit is not your own, only now inherited in memory. The Chixzon destroyed an entire race out of fear, not necessity. Their telekinesis was not strong enough to truly threaten you, it was just something they could do that you could not. You couldn’t stand that. How pathetic.”

“And inferior,” Kip added.

“Perhaps you are correct,” Radonon said, his head complaining against that admission, “but we are not in the habit of leaving potential enemies at our back. Your track record in that is hit and miss.”

“Meaning?”

“You do not pursue the Skarrons. You left their empire intact.”

Brad and Kip exchanged glances. “You do know how big it is, right?”

“No larger than the lizards.”

Brad laughed. “Are you serious?”

“He doesn’t remember,” Kip said with a smirk. “I think he never paid attention in the maturia to that portion of the map.”

“Or did we not give them that much of a map?”

Kip hesitated for a moment. “Good question. Maybe we didn’t.”

“If you withheld knowledge, I am not to blame for that,” Radonon pointed out.

“Well then, let me bring you up to speed,” Brad said, telepathically sending the size and scope of the known Skarron Empire to him while making sure not to include anything else.

The Chixzon visibly flinched, and as he did so Kip could feel his analysis programming digging into it and working all kinds of new angles…and in the process, it was very slowly augmenting the rest of his altered memories and knowledge to bring them into line with logic and reality. That caused even more mental friction, but it was like trying to cut down a tree using a pad of sandpaper…very ineffective, but what wood was scraped away wasn’t coming back, and given enough time and effort the tree would eventually be felled.

Which meant it might take years, or even centuries, but if they could keep exposing Radonon to stimulus that required him to learn rather than just remember and repeat they could undermine the Chixzon in him. They couldn’t bring the Protovic back, but maybe they could free his mind enough for him to chart his own course going forward.

That was the hope, at least, and it hadn’t been squashed by the transformation programming reasserting itself and wiping clean the bit of Protovic now exposed within him. Yet, anyway, with Vortison closely monitoring his mental status in case they needed to yank him back inside the chamber for another quick alteration if some new surprise thwarted their plans, but for the moment it seemed they had a crack in the Chixzon stranglehold on his mind and it was already beginning to widen as the alien imperative to remain in the know and gain the upper hand was actually prompting the analysis and working against itself.

Now it was just up to the Archons to feed that fire and see where it went.

“Their empire did not exist previously,” Radonon said warily. “For them to have grown so large with such inferior capabilities is both alarming and impressive. The Brijderat used to inhabit that region of the galaxy, a part at least that we allowed them to, and they were far more advanced, as were others. What transpired to wipe them off the map? Something major. I know a great deal of time has passed, but there are too many races missing. You know what has occurred. Tell me…or at least confirm that you know and it’s amongst your list of secrets.”

“Why do you assume the forces set against the Chixzon didn’t continue to fight and destroy others?” Brad asked, getting back to a limited point that they’d explored previously.

“They were weak, and only wise enough to exploit a major flaw in our strategic alignment. We relied on the Uriti too heavily, to our gain for such a long time, but their weakness was not one that we could counteract. The Alliance against us could not destroy them, but they did neutralize them…and with that single tactic shattered our entire plan. Our conventional forces were not developed enough to hold their inferior forces back, nor did we have time to augment them. We were running too low on population and could not quickly correct our mistake. Our enemies were far greater in number, but they did not have the power to overtake others that we had previously held under our suppression. No, something else has occurred.”

Kip frowned. “They didn’t destroy the Uriti?”

“They could not, and I do not believe they have found a way to this day, though I have no way of being certain.”

“What did they do?”

“They found a way to pacify them. Attack them and they would undo the restraint.”

“Any chance the Uriti are still out there, or do they have an expiration date?”

“To our knowledge the Klamensh do not expire with time, and when we created the Uriti we did not see nor anticipate that changing. Only two Uriti were ever destroyed, both of which required extreme and unpredictable circumstances. It is most likely that our Uriti are still out there imprisoned, though they are useless to us until we find a way to counteract the sedative.”

“What of the original Klamensh then?”

“I do not know. The sedative did not work on it, and we never discovered why. If the facility that held it was destroyed it is most likely that the Klamensh was released. Hopefully it destroyed the attackers in the process and exacted a small mote of vengeance on our behalf.”

“Didn’t you guys kind of have it coming?” Kip asked, not ignoring the magnitude of what they were just discussing, but not wanting Radonon to pick up on any reaction from him. “I mean, come on, when you go around wiping out entire races for the fun of it, you’re not exactly being the good guys.”

“It was never for fun, Archon. If you are truly in my mind you would know that. Every one we destroyed was out of necessity…” he said, cutting off with a bit of hesitation even though his thought was complete.

“Even you can see the lie in that. Your telekinetic grab didn’t require their extinction.”

“Leaving a weapon such as that for others to find and copy would have been foolish.”

“Oh, so you plan to backstab us later on if we agree to side with you?” Brad asked.

Radonon looked at him and flashed the green in his eyes. “We do not break agreements. Serve us and you will not meet the same fate.”

“Don’t lie,” Kip said, even though he detected no deception within him. “Our abilities are too advanced for the Chixzon not to try and steal from us. Even if you personally did not, the others would eventually. You’d need to find a good way to do it, since we can kill you rather easily if we wanted, but do not deny that the Chixzon would try if they had an opportunity, agreement or no.”

“We are far too dangerous to leave alive,” Brad added. “You would betray us eventually. It’s in your nature.”

Radonon’s mind was in flux again, almost to the point of a headache as he tried to reconcile the actions of his remembered past and the logic thread the Archons were weaving…without success. The two were incompatible, not on their face, but other tenets of Chixzon culture clashed with the facts, most of which the Archons didn’t even know about yet.

“I will not betray you if you are loyal,” Radonon finally said. “And the others are genetic copies of me. We all think and act alike. Our agreements will hold so long as you do not break them.”

“Unless necessity dictates,” Brad reiterated.

“An advanced race cannot exist without some commonality, some binding tethers to give it structure. Chixzon hold to one another and to our word. We may lie as a tool, but when we make a formal agreement it is fixed, we do not alter it unless the other party does first.”

“Has that always held true in Chixzon history?”

“Yes,” he said, though both Archons picked up on a flinch.

“In reality, or rewritten history? Remember, you didn’t observe any of it. You only have manufactured memories. You can only speak for yourself, not others that you have had no actual contact with or knowledge of. You were Protovic, and carry the memories from Star Force, the knowledge you’ve gained, the skills you’ve learned. The others, present or future, will not have that base. If they come from cultures that were deceptive, would the Chixzon in them hold pure or would it be inclined to loosen the loyalty where necessity demanded?”

“As you know, I can only speak of myself and what I know. And what I know is that we hold to our agreements. Join with me and I will honor whatever bargain we strike.”

“But you can’t honestly guarantee, 100%, that any other Chixzon will,” Kip said firmly.

Radonon didn’t answer that for a long moment, but in his mind both Kip and Brad sensed the doubt creeping in…and how the analysis section of his mind fed off it.

4

December 26, 3092

Solar System

Earth

Amy-12199 walked up the circular staircase and into Davis’s office to find the Star Force Director and Greg waiting for her. She paused for a moment on the top stair, stretched her arms behind her back and twisted her neck to the side, rocking her curtain of red hair as she let out a long sigh.

“That bad, huh?” Greg asked from his chair.

“Kip and Brad didn’t want to leave, so they sent me to fill you in,” she said as she walked up and grabbed a seat next to the trailblazer and across from Davis.

“What’s Nefron’s condition?”

“Uncertain. His telepathic ability is increasing, but not to the level where he can block us out so he has no option of duplicity. That said, we’re not totally sure everything he thinks is on the level. If he’s convincing himself to believe and play along now he could change his mind later.”

“He’s cooperating?” Greg asked.

“Yes, if only to inform us of the superiority of the Chixzon so we’ll ally with them. Kip thinks that’s a ruse for himself to give him the option of cooperating with us. I can’t be sure, but there is a lot of internal conflict within him that’s only growing with time. He’s unlearning what they’ve drilled into his head, but it has to occur one tiny piece at a time. We’re driving him on with training that he’s agreeing to go along with, but for every tweak he makes to himself he runs the risk of plateauing. If he’s ever to break free of this programming it’s going to be a very long, cumulative process that I’m not sure he has the will to pursue. Brad and Kip are planning to drag him there if they can, which is why they’re not leaving Nym.”

“But that’s not why they sent you back?” Davis guessed.

“No. They’re still holding out hope of saving Radonon from himself, and we owe it to him to keep trying, but they could have informed you of that process by message. I’m here to discuss what we can’t put into messages.”

“Start by assuming we know nothing,” Greg prompted, “and give us a full summary. We’ll pick at it from there until we get up to speed.”

Amy sighed again, blowing out a long breath that she channeled into a silent whistle. “We can’t get a firm lock on the timeline, but we do know that the Chixzon empire existed prior to the V’kit’no’sat. They controlled most of the galaxy outside the inner half, with what they call the ‘Klamensh’ being a plague on the interior. We’ve confirmed that they are Hadarak, and that the Chixzon did capture one that ventured too far out. They were lucky more than anything, in that it nearly destroyed the fleet sent to battle it.”

“We can’t draw a crude map of the Hadarak territory, for like the V’kit’no’sat database pointed out, the Hadarak don’t stick to borders. They pushed out in tendrils, destroyed and fed off systems almost at random, then retreated back towards greater gravity wells to spawn. The Chixzon knew not to mess with them, but one day a single one made its way out and attacked their third most important system in the galaxy. They were obligated to defend it and only succeeded in saving less than a tenth of the population, but at the end of that battle they had wounded the Hadarak to the point where it couldn’t leave the system.”

“They tried to finish it off and failed, having to call for additional support from their scattered strongholds across the galaxy. Their travel capabilities were subpar so they got really stretched out, and it took some time for even the closest outposts to send them aid,” Amy said, throwing sporadic mental images she’d gotten directly from Radonon at Davis and Greg while she narrated. “When they finally got there a different decision had been made in the interim. They didn’t try to kill it, instead they damaged it further to the point where it was not able to do them much harm, then they corralled it and began to study it as it rapidly healed.”

“They built their prison facility faster, keeping it bottled up but always having to keep it partially injured. They knew what it was capable of, and that it could call for help, so they continuously destroyed various components as it regrew them. Their hope was to find a weakness or to coopt its abilities into their already significant biotech wing. They use machines for the most part, then trick them out with biotech where advantageous. This project was the first true diversion from that, in that they eventually figured out how to force the Hadarak to spawn.”

“They lost all of the offspring numerous times before they were able to get them to survive in an artificial gravity well. When they did they killed them and began to experiment with making alterations. It was a huge project, but they knew it would cement their dominance over the galaxy if they could even partially succeed. At the time they had systems scattered around the galaxy, but no brute force capability for domination. They had negotiated and tricked their way into the forefront in most occasions but for a lot of races that wouldn’t work, so the Chixzon just ignored them inside their borders…much like The Nexus is doing now.”

“When they got their first successful Uriti it was no longer a Hadarak. They’d altered its genetics so much that most of its strengths were gone, but they’d added other things to it. Most important of which was the minion reproduction. Hadarak minions were not effective enough for what the Chixzon wanted, so they altered them to produce what amounts to conventional forces of a biological nature. Fighters, mechs, infantry. The Uriti are sterile, so they can’t reproduce, but they can spawn minions and, more importantly, factory-like independent growths that can then produce more on their own.”

“Colonies?” Greg asked.

Amy nodded. “The Uriti could fly between stars like a Hadarak, and with its resilience could go basically anywhere and plant the seeds of an invasion force. If those seeds weren’t found and destroyed they’d multiply exponentially, creating an army of minions that would do the Chixzon’s bidding upon arrival even if the Uriti wasn’t in the system anymore. It was with those minions that they sought out and conquered the races they feared the most, plucking them from the galaxy one at a time while giving the core a wide berth. They had no intention of ever attacking the Hadarak, merely skirting them and their somewhat predictable incursions into the outer rim. They feared the Hadarak would continue to spread to one day consume the entire galaxy, but they too were choosy and didn’t blanket systems in their path like the lizards do.”

“Radonon was most interested in the current state of the Hadarak. We didn’t tell him of the V’kit’no’sat, but he feared a more widespread presence than there is now. He doesn’t know how long it’s been either, but we’re estimating that they found and captured the single Hadarak at least 12 million years ago, with their eventual defeat no sooner than 5 million.”

Davis whistled.

“That’s why the V’kit’no’sat don’t have any records on them,” Greg added.

“We think there may have been some overlap, but with the blanket of Hadarak covering the core the Chixzon never explored there. They seem to do almost everything out of fear. Not an irrational fear, but a bit of paranoia. The V’kit’no’sat dominate out of ego, while the Chixzon seem to have been motivated by removing threats before they could kill them. They would have destroyed the Hadarak had they a method of doing so, but without one they chose to keep clear of them whenever able rather than embrace the challenge the way the V’kit’no’sat founding races did. There’s no shortage of ego with the Chixzon, but it’s geared towards survival through preemption and subterfuge. The Uriti were the first time they had a blunt force approach, and they used it to conquer the outer rim all the way around the galaxy.”

“Population?” Davis asked.

“We don’t have firm numbers, but from Radonon’s sense it is something less than the V’kit’no’sat. They lived in clusters of systems situated in about the size of the ADZ that could support one another if attacked, and they had thousands of those clusters spread across the galaxy, from which they sought out and eliminated anything they thought was a threat. They also acquired biotech from other races, then destroyed them to deny the abilities to anyone else. This is how they got telekinesis, though their version isn’t very powerful. They didn’t know of anyone else in the galaxy that had it, in any form.”

“Explain these Uriti further,” Greg asked.

“Smaller than Hadarak, but still miles wide. Each one is different, another upgraded version of the previous and often in different shapes. They could only grow one at a time and they needed resources from across the galaxy to do it, but often one was enough to use as a hammer to subdue whomever they wished. The threat of it alone was the equivalent of a Death Star, for they could only unleash it upon a planet. The first model they had almost no control over, and had to stay clear of it when active. They engineered a recall and submissive mode, but when it attacked it basically destroyed everything around it.”

“How many did they have?”

“According to Radonon there were 118 produced, two of which were destroyed by their own error. Both were early models and they threw them against enemies that were too powerful. They did their job in destroying most of their targets, but they were killed in the process. After that the Chixzon were more cautious about their assaults and they never lost one during the culling period that lasted for at least 500,000 years. They basically went around the galaxy knocking off every major power one at a time until there was no one of sufficient strength to actually kill a Uriti.”

“When they had the big players eliminated they used the minions to focus on grabbing more control over their territory. They knew better than to overreach and grow too large, but they bullied and threatened other races into working with them, mostly in terms of tribute that ironically went to growing more Uriti. They’re corovon hogs, like the Hadarak, but there are a number of other very select resources needed to accommodate the skills they built them with…not all of which are the same. Different models different attempts, but they’re all build to be a strong point the enemy cannot destroy and will gut their attacking fleet against if they try.”

“The minions aren’t that strong, not even close, but they use flood tactics like the lizards and with each additional model the minions were also being improved upon. Their most advanced versions were able to conquer whole swaths of territory without even a Uriti supporting them, merely going around and planting them in a location and letting them grow to sufficient numbers. Then a Chixzon command force would come in and assume control, dictating them as they saw fit. It was this reliance on the minions that kept the Chixzon from growing their own forces large enough to make up for the lack of the Uriti when a means of sedating them was discovered.”

“It was a group effort of races that hadn’t been deemed dangerous enough to be tagged for elimination during the culling phase, which meant they had their hands full with just the minions and a very long war took place. Sedating the Uriti was not a simple nor easy process, but once one was locked down the Chixzon’s enemies defended it as a prize and would not let them recapture and wake it. One by one they plucked them from the lineup until they had only a handful left guarding their homeworlds. For fear of them being taken they didn’t send them out, altering their plans for further galactic conquest into survival mode.”

“They fought through a retreat with the minions being churned out at home while they looked for other avenues of attack. Many were tried, all ultimately failed on a grand scheme though massive damage was done to their enemies, which continued to grow as more races joined them in a populist crusade to overthrow the Chixzon. While buying themselves time, the Chixzon worked on many backup plans, including the one that they eventually settled on. It was last ditch, but the only viable option at escaping their enemies. Others were tried and assumed to have failed, though Radonon doesn’t know for sure. He thinks that if they had succeeded the Chixzon would already have rebuilt and returned to glory by now, hence he is fairly sure all of them were hunted down and destroyed.”

“There was a push made at the end, after the Protovic had been quietly seeding across the galaxy, meant to convince their enemies that in one last massive counterattack the Chixzon were finally wiped out. They hoped their enemies would disperse and be destroyed themselves over time by either the Hadarak or events beyond prediction. The split nature of the Protovic genetics was meant to act as an inhibitor to ensure that a massive amount of time passed, with the unlocked varieties responding directly to development, which they also used as a sort of internal clock. They did not want to return so soon that their enemies would be waiting for them. They wanted to disappear from memory, then return to a new galaxy that might not even have record of them. A fresh start, or at least a resetting of the playing field.”

“Radonon expected the Hadarak to still be a scourge on the galaxy. Apparently the idea of someone actually fighting them successfully hadn’t occurred to the Chixzon.”

“Who does he think did it?” Davis asked.

“We left him hanging on that, but gave him access to bits of map to gage his reactions and to spur the analytical circuits in his head. The more he has to learn new things the less hold the programming has on him. It’s pretty much a fool’s errand, given how much Chixzon there is controlling him, but its theoretically possible that he could recover to a semblance of Star Force standards…but it will almost all be new to him. He’s going to have to learn a second time, if it comes to that. Kip and Brad aren’t hopeful, but they’re fighting this one regardless and digging intel out in the process. They insist that the Protovic cannot be allowed to become Chixzon, even if we have to fight a few wars to remove these genetics from the colonies out there.”

“Uriti aside, they’re that dangerous?” Greg asked.

“Very. They won’t hit you in the face, they’ll stab you in the back, misdirect you to jump off a cliff. They come at you sideways and are as sneaky as a Teemo. The Uriti gave them a much larger presence in the galaxy than they were used to. Normally most of their power wrangling occurs quietly, and they don’t have a problem with using biological warfare. Radonon has already offered to build a weapon for us to kill the lizards, citing that they have to be destroyed due to the fact that they’re wiping out everything in their path. If the Chixzon don’t have to do it later so much the better, so he’s more than willing to make it happen.”

“Like hell it is,” Greg scoffed.

“We pretty much said the same thing.”

“These Uriti,” Davis asked warily. “Were they killed after they were captured?”

“No,” Amy said firmly. “They were sedated. Attack them and they wake up. That’s why they had to be guarded as prizes. The Chixzon’s enemies couldn’t destroy them. They’d already taken out those who could long ago, and without the sedative being developed and a lot of gritty war to follow the galaxy would still be in their hands.”

“I think the V’kit’no’sat would have had something to say about that,” Greg added.

“It’s a fight I’d be curious to see play out,” Amy admitted. “But do not underestimate the biological knowledge the Chixzon have. Kip and Brad are confident that it’s superior to the V’kit’no’sat, probably because they’ve never had cause to develop it in that direction. The Chixzon have even less scruples, so they’ve delved into scientific regions where the V’kit’no’sat have not gone and gained a formidable arsenal from it.”

“Not applicable in space battle,” Davis commented.

“No, it’s not. Which is why they come at you sideways.”

“‘Come at you sideways,’ is that a quote from somewhere?”

“Some movie, I don’t remember which,” Amy confessed. “But the metaphor fits.”

“Serenity,” Greg supplied.

Amy frowned. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I must have picked it up from someone else then, but I assume you take my meaning?”

“I do,” Davis said, seeing some of the images of the Uriti as Amy sent them to him and feeling the awe and terror that they invoked…especially when he had a wealth of V’kit’no’sat knowledge on the Hadarak to let him know just how dangerous these things were. “And you’re saying that these Uriti could still be out there somewhere waiting for the Chixzon to come back and free them?”

“After so many years there’s no way to know what happened to them. Maybe they got loose and returned to the core with the other Hadarak. The V’kit’no’sat have no record of them, so it’s possible they’re still out here somewhere.”

“Does Nefron know where to look?”

“No, but there is a short range recall they can use.”

“Define short,” Greg asked.

“Depends how much power you put behind it, but we think no more than 80 lightyears. It seems the Chixzon were able to wake up some of them in this manner, which is why their enemies eventually spirited them away to presumably safe locations.”

“And if one is woke up now, by someone other than the Chixzon, what will it do?”

“It depends greatly on which one is woke up,” Amy emphasized, “but expect it to kill whoever it wakes up and then begin to create minions that will attack everyone they come in contact with. That’s how the Chixzon programmed them in the end as a failsafe. If they operate on intuitive drives then there’s no clue what they might do, though seeking out the Hadarak is a possibility.”

“Would the Hadarak accept them?”

“No clue.”

Davis and Greg exchanged glances.

“What?” Amy asked.

“I think it’s time we worked on our own biological weapon,” Davis said, to the mage’s dismay.

“Without Radonon,” Greg added. “We need to be able to infect Protovic populations with a biological weapon that will delete the primary coding.”

“Can we do that?” Amy asked.

“I don’t know,” Davis admitted, “but we’re going to figure out how...”

“…before these bastards pull a Zilean and come back,” Greg finished.

5

April 3, 3093

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Radonon dipped down a few inches, prepping his muscular legs for a split second before launching himself up and over the 2 meter wall, then dropping arms spread for a moment before hitting the floor and sprinting ahead with his tail smacking the ground on landing as it usually did. His sprint wasn’t a run, but a triple step forward into a horizontal jump/dash that repeated continuously as he moved down the obstacle course towards the turret ahead.

It didn’t fire on him until he passed within the circle outlining it at a distance of 55 meters, but he had to go right by it for the corridor didn’t allow him any other options. The tiny projectiles being fired at him splattered when hit, imbuing a stun effect if he was careless enough. The first three he redirected away from his body with his telekinesis, then as he launched himself into another dash he had to stop one cold in front of him, overstressing his limited power enough that the next two he couldn’t fully deflect.

One bounced off his head, brushing his thick and useless skin. A tiny bit of the stun bled off even though the ‘stinger’ didn’t break, but the one that hit his right leg did. A splotch of ugly yellow paint marked the epicenter of the stun effect that passed right through his bioarmor. His leg went partially numb, but he could still walk on it. Jumping was out of the question, so he hobbled forward focusing on his telekinesis to protect him as he headed straight for the meter high cylindrical turret. The single barrel it held was still firing at him nonstop, but the rate was low compared to the much harder training challenges he’d gone through as a Protovic previously.

The difference was those turrets fired stun energy, not physical goo pellets. He knew the alteration was due to the fact that he now had telekinesis that the Archons wanted to help him develop if only to thoroughly test his abilities, but what was worse was the fact that Brad had gone through this course when he’d first shown it to Radonon and he hadn’t even needed to use his much more powerful ‘Lachka.’ He had been able to dodge the stingers, something that Radonon should be able to do, but now after getting hit that wasn’t going to be possible.

His anger boiled over and he just charged the turret, deflecting a few more stingers wide of his body and tanking two of them. They stunned his chest to the point he felt like he couldn’t breathe, but his limbs still worked and he covered the last few meters up to the turret, taking one more to the throat that sent his head awash with disorientation.

With a frustrated yell his shoulder spikes glowed neon green on the tips and jutted forward on either side of his head, hitting and sinking into the turret’s armor casing like it was made of nothing more than paper. He pulled both tips down through the material and crisscrossed them, eviscerating it only to pass through the ammo pouch. When he did he lost the feeling in his mandibles and the numbness quickly shot down into his torso, with him blacking out a few seconds later.

“Hey genius, that’s not going to work,” Brad’s voice said in Radonon’s head as he suddenly began to wake back up. His senses returned to him enough that he could see the Archon standing beside him and the trashed turret, having just delivered the destunning serum that marked yet another failure on his part. “You have to evade, not crush.”

“You enjoy flaunting your superiority,” the Chixzon grumbled as he slowly stood up.

“At least you admit it now,” the trailblazer said, standing a meter away but with no protection or armor between him and Radonon. That had become standard in recent months, with the Archons making it obvious that they weren’t afraid of him. They still kept him separate from everyone else, but with their skills and ability to monitor his thoughts it was unlikely that he could successfully attack one of them. Plus the fact that even if he did kill one he would end up dead soon thereafter.

He didn’t want to do that though, and not just because of his past association with them. They hadn’t mistreated him since his rebirth, aside from the confinement. He granted that in the reverse position he would have done the same at the minimum, so he didn’t hold it against the Humans. They were even assisting him with his aims to ‘take over the galaxy’ as they called it, offering him bits of current intel on the state of affairs in the galaxy in exchange for training milestones. If/when he completed this course he’d earn another nugget, allowing him to very slowly pursue his genetic imperatives.

“Your anger is untrained,” Brad added. “Emotions are weapons and must be honed. Yours is raw and a hindrance. Your transformation took you backwards in that respect. You’d mastered your Protovic emotions long ago. Can you not remember the process by which you did that?”

“I have the memories, but the emotions are not the same,” Radonon said, kicking aside a piece of the turret that he’d destroyed. “I think you’re prodding them intentionally to force me to learn to control them.”

“Control doesn’t mean restrain.”

“I remember that much.”

“And what do the Chixzon teach about emotions?”

“We operate out of a position of dominance. We are unaccustomed to dealing with failure.”

“You kill the failures?” Brad asked, sensing a memory surface.

“Perhaps that is a long term weakness,” Radonon admitted. “We don’t permit large scale failures to endure, so we never learn from them…personally. We do analyze and learn from others’ mistakes.”

“Can’t do that with emotions, and a great many other things.”

“So I am learning. Do you have another turret?”

Brad smirked. “Get back to the starting point. It’ll be ready before you are.”

“You anticipated this?”

“Yes,” Brad said simply, summoning a hidden door in the hallway to open and pointing Radonon towards it.

The Chixzon flexed his newly destunned muscles and thumped his muscular tail on the floor twice before walking out, with Brad following and studying his mandible spikes closely.

“How long does it take for those to get fatigued?”

“A very long time. If you want to give me a lot of targets I’ll indulge you in finding out.”

“In exchange for another data packet?”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps later. Though I think you just feel like tearing stuff up right now.”

“You shouldn’t have to ‘think,’” Radonon reminded him. “You know well how to frustrate me.”

“It’s something all of Star Force has to learn to deal with. You know that,” Brad said as they came to an intersection that required them to go different directions, Radonon back to the start and Brad to the observation post.

“I am no longer Star Force.”

“Yes you are,” Brad said flippantly. “You’re just in denial.”

“I am not responsible for your ignorance.”

“Nope, just your own. Now get going…and this time, try to focus your aggression into actions beneficial to the task of completing the course.”

“No promises,” Radonon said, walking off.

Brad let him go, suppressing a smile. ‘No promises’ was something Nefron used to say, and this was the first time Radonon had ever chosen to use that Star Force phrase.

Several days later Radonon ducked under a wall, squeezing himself through a narrow gap between it and the floor only to have it fall down upon his back and pin him to the ground a few meters away from the finish pedestal. This was the first time he’d ever laid eyes upon it, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. The rover chasing him was only seconds away from shooting his lower portion that was still behind the wall.

A sense of inevitable failure saturated his frustrated mind, but he chose to resist it. Channeling his frustration into anger and focusing it into physical action, he pressed down his arms, legs, tail, and spike mandibles into the floor and forced the wall back up a few inches. He wiggled a knee down for better leverage then let the wall drop slightly as he jutted further through. Repeating the process he got his hips under it and lifted it further, then jumped through just as a pair of stingers hit his tail.

The wall dropped down with a thud as he tripped ahead of it and in the clear. Standing up with an eagerness he hadn’t felt in a long time, he took a step towards the finish pedestal as the wall suddenly lifted up behind him to give the rover a clear shot.

Shit, he though, being off balance with his tail no longer functioning. He leaned forward and made an awkward jump onto the finish pedestal, falling on top of it as he was carpeted with stingers. He got one black hand on top of the button and pushed it down…with the incoming fire ceasing immediately.

The Chixzon slumped to the ground, most of his body not responding to his brain but he didn’t care. He’d made it, challenge completed, and that was all that mattered.

He sat there in a pile of numbed body parts until Brad appeared beside him and injected him with a specialized probe that could get through his thick skin. Radonon didn’t know how that worked, and it was just another slight nod towards what he was realizing was a considerable technological superiority masked beneath a shell of ineptitude that Star Force apparently hid within well.

“About time,” Brad scoffed, then extended a hand to him. “Good work.”

Radonon looked at it, getting his head to stop spinning more than anything, then he grabbed his hand flesh to flesh with his poison injector literally touching the Human’s skin. He didn’t know if this was a test or if the Archon had some defense against it, for all it would take was a very fast impulse without any real thought to inject him.

Radonon looked him at him, knowing his thoughts were in the open for him to see, then decided to accept the gesture for what it used to be and let the Human help him to his feet. With a very powerful yank Brad pulled him up then looked him in the pure black eyes. “Grip the wall and pull yourself through next time rather than crawling under. It’s faster.”

Radonon released his hand undamaged. “You’ve found a counter to our poison.”

“Long time ago,” the Archon said with a smirk.

“And these?” he asked, raising and activating his spike mandibles over his head and pointed towards Brad. They glowed green, as did his eyes, but the Archon didn’t move.

“Ready for another lesson in true superiority?” he scoffed.

“I’d prefer a straight answer.”

Brad sucked in then blew out a slow breath. “Hit me with one.”

Radonon hesitated.

“Just once,” Brad assured him.

“If this is a test to see if I will…”

“Not a test. Consider it an order if it will help.”

“You think your Lachka can stop them in time?”

“I won’t use Lachka, now stop bitching and hit me.”

Radonon growled. “Very well,” he muttered, then jutted his left spike towards Brad’s shoulder.

The Archon knew he redirected it away from the easy target that was his head and noted the caution, but it was unnecessary. A pale blue energy shield snapped into place around his body and stopped the spike with a very loud crackle/hiss as the two different types of energy canceled each other out.

Radonon took a step back. “You are not wearing armor. Is this being projected from elsewhere?”

“Nope. It’s a bioshield. Jealous yet?”

“Very,” Radonon said on reflex, then hesitated when the Chixzon in him didn’t approve.

“Unless you catch me off guard, you can’t hurt me,” Brad said, eyeing the still glowing spikes. “You can put those away now. Don’t hit me again.”

The two stiff snake-like limbs lost their glow and retreated back behind Radonon’s head like ornamental brackets. “I remember a rumor from long ago. I hadn’t given it consideration because I assumed it was your telekinesis at work. Bioshields are…something I’m curious to see how you manage. That technology is unknown to us.”

“It’s one secret we’re going to keep, sorry.”

“Yet you reveal its existence.”

“Only to let you know how superior we are so you can make an informed choice,” he mocked.

“To join your empire?”

“You’re already a part of our empire, you’ve just forgotten.”

“I have forgotten nothing. I have simply remembered who I truly am.”

“And which empire is superior?”

“Apparently you haven’t been studying my memories as closely as I assumed.”

“We have,” Brad assured him.

“If I am correct in that you have access to technology that you have not created yourself, your strength is partially an illusion. Ours is not.”

“No, you just stole a lot of yours.”

“We learned from others and mastered it. Have you mastered it? I think not, else you never would have permitted my transformation to run its course. Your biological abilities are superior to ours, but they are not your own creations.”

“Still hoping you’ll get to steal them from us some day?”

“It’s high on my priority list,” Radonon admitted. “Though I doubt I’ll ever be able to so much as inform the others of their existence. You’d kill me first.”

Brad raised an eyebrow.

“You would kill me if needed, but perhaps not when perpetual imprisonment would suffice.”

“That’s better. Though you’d lost your head for a moment…say, do you guys ever do that? Cut your own heads off with those?” he said, looking directly at his shoulder spikes.

“No one deserving of the name Chixzon.”

“So some dumbies have jabbed themselves,” Brad said with a satisfied smirk.

“Only the ends cut, which makes it difficult to hit yourself…though some have succeeded,” Radonon said with a bit of irony that was yet another inkling of his Protovic self. The Chixzon in him condemned those individuals to nonexistence and mentally ostracized them rather than just labeling them ‘stupid idiots.’

“I don’t think any race is without morons, though I suppose in some rare cases it could be a plausible accident.”

“Have any of you telekinetically ripped out your own organs on accident?”

Brad stared at him with a gruesome look. “No.”

“Then perhaps it is a good thing that the general Human population does not have your abilities.”

“Eew,” Brad said, thinking that through. “Has that ever happened to the Chixzon?”

Radonon smiled…or at least his stiff faced equivalent, and Brad realized it had nothing to do with the question at hand.

The Archon inclined his head slightly. “Well played.”

“You’re hard to get information out of,” he added, being gracious in his small victory.

“So you can’t affect anything you can’t directly see?”

“Or feel behind us. You can penetrate matter then? Your powers continue to grow more impressive.”

“Our powers remain the same, your understanding of them grows. Consider it a bonus for the obstacle course.”

“More likely it’s due to the fact that you did not know how telekinesis could be line of sight restricted. Have you not found any races with a similar power?”

“We haven’t come into contact with any telekinetic races, other than you.”

“Good,” Radonon said, accepting that Brad wasn’t going to talk about their knowledge of the rest of the galaxy so freely. “Then we both preserve our advantage. We worried that being out of the loop so long might see the galaxy become stronger than before, with worse threats springing up than before we culled it.”

“The Hadarak are still out there,” Brad reminded him, using the Star Force word for the Klamensh.

“In them we have a common enemy, at least,” the Chixzon said as a random thought struck him. “A request?”

“Ask.”

“Substitute whatever packet I earned for a genetic sample from the lizards. If you will not pursue a bioweapon I may still be able to provide some insights that your Vortison has missed. I’d prefer to be of some use to the galaxy rather than a total spectator, and they are another common enemy.”

Brad studied him and his mind closely, then nodded. “Granted.”

6

July 2, 3093

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

“Have you seen this?” Vortison asked as he barged into Brad’s office, holding up a data pad.

“If that’s the overview Radonon provided, yes, I’ve skimmed through it,” the trailblazer said casually. “Was there something significant that I missed?”

“What’s not significant?” the medtech said, pulling up a chair and sliding a chip into Brad’s desk so they could get a fuller view with a meter high hologram popping up in between them as the nighttime cityscape was splayed out behind Brad through the wide window. “First off the length.”

“I only looked through the summary,” Brad admitted. “Too long?”

“He practically wrote a book detailing lizard genetics…and one that the V’kit’no’sat could learn from. A lot of this is over my head, but I’ve learned more in the past 9 hours about their coding than I have in the past 9 centuries.”

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Useful then?”

“As in developing a superweapon against them, no, but in understanding their coding. The genetic stranglehold on their individuality is plain as day to me now. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it once they’re developed…short of cutting out chunks of their brain, programming wise, which Radonon spelled out how to do. We technically have a way to free them from it, but at a loss of a significant portion of their knowledge and abilities. They’d still be functional, not a vegetable, but I don’t see how that’s of any use to us. My point is I can see it now, and I can vouch for the Chixzon’s biotech superiority. They are far more dangerous than I had given them credit for.”

“Did he give us anything practical to use?”

Vortison frowned. “You still don’t get it. He gave us everything about them. They’re an open book now, granted a very complex one.”

“But can we use any of that knowledge in the short term?”

The geneticist sighed. “Militarily…I don’t know, but as far as advancing our understanding of genetics he just gave us a very valuable addition to our database that we will be learning from for centuries to come. It may not help you when you invade their core worlds, or maybe it will. There isn’t a weapon I can give you now, but when you want to do something in the future, something specific, well, let’s just say we have a lot more options now.”

“He also outlined the bioweapon,” Brad added.

“Actually,” Vortison said as he reached across the desk to the trailblazer’s side and sifted through the holographic menu until he found a specific list, “he created, or perhaps recreated, 7 different bioweapons that could be used against them, one of which would render them in a coma-like state.”

“I didn’t see that.”

“We can’t use it…or at least I didn’t think you’d want to. If we didn’t recover those infected they’d starve to death while asleep. You said something a long time ago about what constitutes an ‘honorable’ death, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply.”

“No, you’re right,” Brad agreed. “If we have to kill them it’ll be in battle. We’re not going to starve them to death. So your point is Radonon did us a big favor?”

“Yes.”

“With booby traps?”

“The knowledge is so advanced I’d be lucky to find them if there are any. What I’ve read through so far appears genuine, and even if it’s not there’s enough revelations in it to advance our understanding considerably. He actually helped us, and in a big way.”

“You’re wondering if this is Nefron coming back?”

“You tell me, you’re the one that’s in his head every other day.”

“He’s playing along, and he knows I know it. We can’t trust him, but at the same time I think it’s also giving him an excuse to explore possibilities that his mind was restructured to ignore. The crack we preserved in his mind is allowing him to learn and augment the Chixzon programming, not undo it. Luckily Star Force isn’t based on a lie, so as he goes through the logical progression of subjects he’s essentially changing himself into our model. He’s never going to be Protovic again, but he’s starting to become a Star Force Chixzon in the smallest of ways.”

“You said he was playing along?”

“He has no choice, and it allows his internal priorities to be satiated as he works things through. If he just sat and did nothing he’d go crazy. The genetic imperatives are very strong within him, and despite our prodding it’s to his own credit that he’s been able to create some wiggle room. That takes a very strong will.”

“But it’s not enough?” Vortison asked, sensing something in his tone.

“Enough for what?”

“To break free of the Chixzon programming.”

“Too early to tell. Right now it’s a matter of whether he wants to or not. Or more specifically, if he has a reason to. The more holes we can poke in their culture the more opportunities we give him to make a choice. The problem is their empire isn’t based on lies as much as it is self-interest. As you’ve already noted, they have a great deal of knowledge and that doesn’t occur with delusional people. We’ve got to show him a better way, and so far he’s allowing himself the leeway to consider alternatives. The Chixzon are supposed to be superior, which means verification isn’t avoided.”

“It’s been a year. How long do you think this process will take?”

“It’s not a process, it’s him charting his own course. The Chixzon already have him on one, one that we’re all but denying him. The overlap is something Kip and I are monitoring closely to give him the necessary ‘permission’ to learn while furthering his imperatives. Basically we’re improvising day to day and seeing progress, but he’s nowhere close to earning our trust, let alone his freedom.”

“I know this may sound cold considering what’s happened, but what he just did is probably more valuable to Star Force than the sum total of his entire life as a Protovic.”

“Doesn’t make up for the mistake we made.”

“That I made.”

“We,” Brad emphasized. “But your point is taken.”

Vortison reached into the desk and pulled the data chip out, with the holographic display disappearing. He turned to walk out then hesitated, twisting halfway back.

“If this is still the Chixzon in him, why would he give us something so valuable?”

“Does it help us fight them?”

“It advances our own genetics capability considerably…at least once we absorb the lessons from it.”

“But they’re still far superior?”

“Yes.”

“Then the answer is no. It doesn’t help us defeat them.”

“But why help us at all?”

“Information.”

“How so?”

“He gets to see how we react, and is cagey enough to use it to ferret information out of us, sometimes when we don’t even realize it.”

Vortison considered that. “Then it’s probably best that I don’t speak with him concerning this?”

“Do you need to?”

“Not if it could be used against us, no. I can figure this out with time.”

“But a conversation could advance your timetable?”

“That was my thinking.”

“I agree. Don’t speak with him. We can’t let him know about the V’kit’no’sat or our connection to them, and he’s already deduced some of it.”

“Hello there,” a new voice said as another masked mental presence walked through the entryway into Radonon’s fortress of solitude.

The Chixzon looked up from the isolated computer console that he was using to further study the data on current events that Star Force had provided him and saw another Archon, another trailblazer, but it was not Kip or Brad.

“Are you here in response to my previous request or for another reason?”

“Bit of both,” Paul said as he walked inside and the airlock doors closed behind him, severing his telepathic link with the outside world for the entire chamber was insulated from it, though he could still see the guards outside with his Pefbar. “I was on my way back from the front and figured I’d stop in and say hi.”

Radonon extended a black arm towards a nearby chair designed for the Humans. “Sit…and ask your questions.”

“Do you get bored in here?” Paul said, looking around the spacious quarters that had been redesigned per Radonon’s requests…to a limit. They weren’t going to allow Chixzon cultural alterations, but given his tail some alterations had been made.

“Quite. I believe it’s incentive to do workouts.”

“You would anyway.”

“The body must be maintained.”

“Just maintained? You’ve forgotten much.”

“My priorities lie elsewhere.”

“Lifespan?”

“Unlimited while maintained.”

“But you don’t press training to gain advantages, you engineer weak tissue.”

“Weak?”

“Undeveloped through experiential adaptation. Your telepathy, for example.”

“Yours is obviously stronger by default.”

“And enhanced via training…a great deal.”

“So I’m learning.”

Paul finally sat down, with Radonon pivoting slightly on his stool to face him. “Relearning.”

“Actually no. What I learned from Star Force previously was…inadequate. Now that I have a proper mind I am seeing it for the first time again.”

“Again,” Paul noted. “And what are your second impressions?”

“You have no philosophical mandate. You simply look for what works.”

“Restricted by...?”

“An abundance of caution.”

“It works for us.”

“That it does.”

“But?”

“You are intolerant.”

“Of?”

“What you refer to as the ‘darkside.’”

“What I know of your history makes that comment hypocritical.”

“I wasn’t speaking of the Chixzon, only Star Force.”

“Yet you infer that tolerance is preferable.”

“It is necessary for coexistence.”

“You still don’t want us destroyed, but rather coopted?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“You are not a threat in the conventional sense. You seek to protect rather than destroy, and your conquests are geared towards eliminating threats. We hold a similar philosophy, though we take it to its logical extrapolations.”

“You’re sloppy,” Paul said flatly. “You judge a race to be unfit and do not take into account the individual.”

“Rather than risk our security, yes. Chixzon lives take priority.”

“We don’t prioritize, save for whom we may save first.”

“You don’t embrace sacrifice, and I admire that in you. It is shortsighted and restricts your capabilities, but it also gives you focus and within your restrictions you are…professional.”

“You would have us pacify a region for you,” Paul said, reading his thoughts.

“That is one possibility. We do not seek to possess all star systems. Such an endeavor is folly. The galaxy is too large.”

“Understatement of the millennia. What was your specific interest in me?”

“Your naval skill is unmatched.”

“Liam and Roger would contest that.”

“You have an edge on them. I’ve seen it in your battle records.”

“Elaborate.”

“You can read your opponents well, and make use of inferior forces to overcome dominant ones. You alone are more valuable than entire fleets.”

“It’s not the size that matters, but how you use it.”

“Innuendo?”

“You remember.”

“Yet accurate. Our own dominance does not come through a direct approach, but rather creating and exploiting opportunities. You can enter a disadvantageous fight and find a way to come out victorious. We are envious of this.”

“We?”

“The Chixzon have always wanted to afford a direct approach. Logic dictated that we avoid them.”

“And the Uriti?”

“Our first endeavor, though it was not our own forces. Had we wielded them better I do not believe we would have fallen. Can I assume you have read the information I have given the others?”

“Some of it.”

“The recounts of naval battles.”

“Lacking without actual data, but I thumbed through them.”

“I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Could you have won?”

“Yes.”

“You could have survived by deploying the Uriti defensively, but in order to utilize them as you wished you had to expose them to the thickest of your enemies, and so to the sedative. You should have preserved them, rather you spent them as disposable resources.”

“They are not destroyed.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Nearly.”

“Could you find them now?”

“I could, but I will not help you do so.”

“Why?”

“You might be able to destroy them.”

Paul leaned back an inch in his chair. “You think we’re superior to your previous enemies?”

“Post culling, yes. I would say that’s a fair bet, though only in certain elements. Across the board you are not.”

“And you think we would kill the Uriti?”

“If released, you would have no choice.”

“I make a habit of finding choices where others see none.”

“You cannot communicate them. Our kind are outside their realm of influence.”

“Then how did you direct them?”

“We engineered an avenue, but we never truly controlled them.”

“Control isn’t the issue. Are you saying they are too primitive to communicate?”

“Quite the opposite. They are too advanced. Not in intellect, but in sheer magnitude. Their minds dwarf our own, and as such their perspective is different. We inhabit the same galaxy but view it from different angles. Communication must utilize common ground.”

“Did you ever try?”

“Their telepathic presence is too dangerous for direct connection. The slightest shift could kill us with feedback.”

“So you build transmitters to insulate you?”

“More like a prod to get them to respond in a predictable method. We imprinted those responses into their coding. Communicating with the Klamensh is impossible.”

“Perhaps you were never interested in doing so.”

“You know a way?”

“We have never encountered one to try.”

“I would recommend against it.”

“Therein lies your problem. You ask me to tell you if you could have won, but you do not understand your own weapons. I’m not talking about the Uriti, but your techniques. The darkside is not a fictional element, nor a metaphor. It is a set of tactics and strategies that have some advantages, as you well know since you utilize them…but they also have disadvantages. The lightside is the same. You say we are restricted, and that is true when your objective is to kill someone. Ours is not to simply kill, but do the right thing. In that there is no restriction. And when one holds to the lightside, to doing the right thing, there are unique techniques afforded to us that darkside users cannot possess. Given our lightside advantages, I could easily have found a way for the Chixzon to not only survive, but prosper.”

“You are inferring that our darkside techniques restricted us, channeled us into a no-win scenario?”

“I don’t believe in the no-win scenario, but yes, I think your successes with darkside techniques made you additional enemies. Star Force has many enemies, but far fewer because outsiders see us and judge us by our actions over time. The come to realize that we are honorable and trustworthy…predictable. They know what is required to avoid our wrath, and most usually do rather than fear us. Were we to give them reason to hate us our enemies would multiply greatly and our powerbase would weaken. Do not underestimate the power of the lightside. It is often the indirect methods that it works through, while the darkside takes the easy and obvious direct path to achieving short term goals that sacrifice longevity.”

“Intriguing perspective. I’ve never heard it put that way before.”

“For your situation, I would say that true superiority doesn’t come from killing your rivals, but in growing beyond their ability to harm you.”

“Unfortunately we do not always have that luxury.”

“It is not about luxury. Darkside users are easily enemies of one another, but with the lightside there is a commonality even between those who have never met. By holding to the lightside you are joining a universal team, whereas darkside leaves you with temporary and deceitful alliances at best. Defending yourself is not dishonorable, how you go about doing it can be. Sometimes if you are worthy of saving a stranger will bail you out…if you’re lightside. Not always, and sometimes you do find yourself in untenable situations, but you have to ask yourself what is the utmost priority. Staying alive, or something else…”

“Something else?”

Paul nodded.

“Another test of my intellect?”

“This isn’t something you deduce logically. You have to also feel it out. Trusting in the conscience that genetics do not create.”

“What you call the core?”

“What do you call it?”

“We do not have a name for it since we cannot identify it. We know it exists through inference, not observation. It is simply the individual, or person.”

“Life for the sake of life is not the priority, but the means to continue working towards the priority. You can’t win the game if you’re not in it, but throwing the game in order to prolong it is illogical.”

“Which begets the practice of sacrifice.”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s totally different.”

“I fail to see how.”

“Yes, you fail…”

Radonon’s eyes glowed for a brief moment, barely a dull flash, but it was obvious when the black orbs altered. “You really want me to believe that we were defeated because we were not lightside?”

“I don’t fight using darkside techniques. I fight against opponents who use them, therefore I’m familiar with them and their effectiveness, but I don’t use them. Star Force doesn’t use them. With the skillset we have, and your aforementioned technology, it would not have been overly difficult for the Chixzon to survive, but to exert dominance over the galaxy. Klamensh included.”

Radonon looked at him warily. “I suspect you are lying, yet I know your kind do not without purpose…and I am failing to derive a purpose.”

“I’m not lying. Using the darkside came back to bite you. The short term gains you made with it sacrificed your long term survival.”

“Star Force seeks to challenge the Klamensh?”

“If it comes to that. We don’t back down from a challenge.”

“Then you are ignorant to their true power.”

“Feel free to enlighten me, but from everything we’ve learned from you and others, they are a powerful opponent, not an unbeatable one. You are proof of this.”

“We defeated a single one that mistakenly isolated itself. We would have had no chance at surviving three of them, no matter if we had our full galactic fleet at our disposal.”

“As you have noted, I make a habit of turning what looks like unwinnable fights into victories.”

Radonon slightly smiled in what Paul mentally recognized as a smirk. “I was hoping you would say that.”

“My knowledge will do you little good so long as you utilize darkside methods…and you can’t change back and forth at will.

“Relations aside, I fail to see why not.”

“And that’s why you have much to learn. Darkside techniques are not just different from lightside, they’re also easier because they’re lower level. Mastering lightside requires true superiority…something the Chixzon apparently never even approached.”

“If there is any truth in that, I wish to know. Thus far you have not been hesitant to teach.”

“I just got here.”

“I meant ‘you’ in the plural.”

“You should have said ‘us.’ We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you also weren’t Star Force.”

“Was,” Radonon corrected halfheartedly.

“Once you learn the truth, you don’t unlearn it. And as you said, we’re built on the truth. You’ve just had your memories messed with, leaving you with incomplete pieces.”

“So all of you seem to believe.”

“Like you said, we focus on what works. You’re Nefron with a different name. Different body, altered mind, but same core.”

“If you had been born a Chixzon, your core wouldn’t have mattered. You’d be Chixzon.”

“Perhaps. Would I still have my naval skill? It’s not genetic. They checked.”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“I can.”

“And?”

Paul smiled. “I’m a badass, no matter what race I was born into. I just got a sweet deal landing as a Human in Star Force. You…kind of went the other way.”

“Speculation.”

Paul shook his head. “Intuition. The same way I learned how to fight warfleets.”

“Intuition can’t be taught.”

“But it can lead you to knowledge that is teachable.”

“And you think by teaching me you will undo the Chixzon in me?”

“Augment. I know there is no way to remove the memories. You may be Chixzon, but Star Force isn’t about races. It’s about the individuals.”

“Are you trying to coopt me?”

“Trying to return you to form, perhaps a better one given the benefits the Chixzon have given you.”

“Once I learn lightside techniques?”

“You’re the one who asked.”

Radonon looked at the flat, white ceiling and the likewise bare walls around him. “It seems I have time to kill. If there is wisdom in your techniques, show it to me. I will judge.”

“It only works if you’re willing to learn.”

“I will not block knowledge for the sake of tradition or cultural structure. We were destroyed once for failure. We cannot allow a misstep or oversight to doom us a second time.”

“I’m not going to be here long term, so I hope you learn fast,” Paul said, telekinetically adjusting the console and opening up a new keyboard for Radonon and triggering a second console to rise up from the floor, with him having to move his chair to the side.

“What is this?”

“Best way to teach you is to kick your ass, so we’re going to spar, navally, and I’m going to explain in detail why the Chixzon lost.”

“You anticipated my request?”

“Yep,” Paul said, bringing up the program list and giving Radonon access to it via a temporary code.

7

March 19, 3094

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Radonon stood in a handstand alone in his quarters, save his was a tripod on each arm. That gave him far more stability than a Human or Protovic, allowing him to hold the position for long periods of time. Chixzon didn’t meditate like Star Force did. Theirs involved mantras and other active components, whereas Star Force meditation was just a formal way of saying one quieted their senses and became passive, eliminating unnecessary distractions to provide potential new insights otherwise missed.

Which accomplished nothing. The mantras were necessary to realign the mind, which was what meditation was for. However, as he was meditating in an inverted position keeping focus was a bit more difficult, and to his shame he had picked up a habit of drifting off and finding himself lost in thought. His words would end and his mind would quiet with him slipping into a Star Force meditation and today was no different. Ever since Paul had come here to school him on why the Chixzon had been defeated, Radonon’s mind was plagued with running calculations, variations on what they’d done and not done, seeking to find a way to do what he said was not possible with their ‘darkside’ methodologies.

He couldn’t help himself, so as he was holding his handstand his mind drifted there again but this time it branched off to other thoughts, almost as if he was in a daydream and not in full control of his mind. The chanting would have prevented that from happening, but with the importance of finding the fault in their history overriding everything else he’d stopped uttering the words and allowed himself to become lost in thought.

Radonon couldn’t retrace much of his thoughts in a state like this so he never knew where he’d end up, but something happened this time. Something that shocked him to his core. For a moment he wasn’t Chixzon, and his view of their history, his time as a Protovic, his personal assessments of everything happening in the galaxy today…all of it shifted, as if coming into alignment. It chilled him to the bone, but then it was gone just as fast.

He tumbled over, getting his feet on the deck but not standing up. He sat in a crouch, searching himself in an attempt to determine what had just happened. He was Chixzon again, but for the briefest moment he hadn’t been. He remembered an anger at the Chixzon that he now couldn’t comprehend…but it had happened. It wasn’t a dream or mistake, though he was losing his limited memory of it already. Within a few seconds it was gone completely, leaving him with a mystery to solve that he would not ignore.

Something was wrong and he couldn’t just brush it off. He’d found an error, meaning that everything that seemed in order now was a lie. Something was hiding within his mind and there was no tolerating it…but how to find it again?

There were no Archons here. He was sealed inside his isolation chambers where even they couldn’t sense his mind. He’d learned the walls were made of a material that blocked telepathy. How that functioned was beyond the Chixzon, but yet another item on his ‘to obtain’ list. That meant they hadn’t seen it and could offer him no help. This was something he was going to have to track down on his own.

After several minutes of mental sifting he had no answers, so he did the obvious thing and put himself back into the handstand, hoping to recreate the same situation. To that end he didn’t chant, but tried to think of the same things he had vaguely remembered considering before…which was how to use the Uriti to poke an enemy rather than smash, and what kind of alterations would be needed in their coding to give the Chixzon the necessary control over the beasts.

He tried hard, which was possibly the reason why he failed to encounter the anomaly again. He remained in his pose for the next four hours until the door opened and he righted himself, feeling only a minor head wash from the long time being inverted.

“Busy?” Kip asked sarcastically…then his eyes narrowed, obviously picking up on the Chixzon’s thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

“A mental disturbance that I am unable to recreate, thus I cannot analyze it. I am annoyed.”

“What happened?”

“A shift in perspective is the best I can describe it. My memory has fogged in the aftermath.”

“I sense nothing beyond your vexation.”

“I anticipated as much.”

“If brute force won’t recall a memory, taking your mind off the subject may allow it to resurface.”

“I can’t let this go. It is important.”

“Why?”

“It is dangerous. I cannot leave myself with a weakness.”

“If you have a better idea you would have tried it already. So where does that leave you?”

“I do not know.”

“A superior mind would find it.”

Radonon’s black eyes flashed green for a moment. “Which is why I cannot let it go. Come back tomorrow. I must pursue this.”

“Good luck,” Kip said, oddly not offering any resistance or redirect. He simply turned around and walked out with the door shutting him into his solitudes again.

Radonon stood there for a long moment, considering going back into his meditation or trying something else. He compromised, wanting to maintain his inner search but choosing a different physical stress…one with greater difficulty that might loosen his mind. To that end he left the ‘guest’ room and went down a short hallway that led to his person training sanctum. He went straight to the track and began hop/running laps and attempted to lose himself in thought and time.

Round and round he went until his muscles started to become warm and a bit numb. By then his thoughts were lost again, moving away from the mysterious glitch and back to conquering the galaxy. Most of the thoughts were repeats, with him going down the same mental paths as before and getting the same simulated results. It vexed him that Paul’s analysis seemed so flawless, but that meant the Chixzon were doomed to possibly repeat their own demise if they were faced with a similar situation. They needed greater power, but the darkside techniques they employed were wholly inadequate.

The most obvious solution was to find a way to inoculate the Uriti or future creations against the sedative, but extensive work had been done on that before and there were zero viable options to work there. Radonon didn’t discount that possibility entirely, but even Paul had covered in detail how he could have defeated the Chixzon even with the Uriti holding the same immunity that the Klamensh did, for the same sedatives were not effective against them. It was in the alterations that the Chixzon had made to groom them into weapons that gave the Uriti their weakness, but it had become clear that the Uriti were not the Chixzon’s ultimate solution.

They had to use ‘darkside’ techniques, for they were too useful not to. What Radonon had to discover was a way to access more advanced versions or perhaps repurpose the ‘lightside’ tactics that Paul had proved were effective when conducting galaxy-wide empire building. Trust and predictability were key, and Radonon had to admit that the tendency to backstab others out of convenience undercut that. He had to find a way to work what Paul did into the Chixzon’s lexicon of tactics, despite the Human’s openness and mocking of the Chixzon.

Part of Radonon’s mind knew that was because Paul was right and that darkside users wouldn’t be able to access lightside techniques, but the rest of him would not accept that, with him getting lost in logic loops like this often as he repetitively searched for a way to accomplish that task. Falling into that familiar exercise, Radonon kept making laps and having no more luck solving the riddle than he had previously.

When he wasn’t thinking about tracking down the anomaly and barely paying attention to his hop/jumps he had a sudden and uncontrollable flash that caused him to nearly trip and fall. Radonon coasted to a halt and knelt down on one knee, seeing things clearly again and trying desperately to hold onto the sensation. It lasted a few seconds, long enough for him to realize the magnitude of what had happened to him. All of his memories were still here, but they’d been altered. Like they’d had all the color from them removed, then further distorted to make them fit Chixzon culture.

Whatever had just happened, his mind was seeing them clearly again, while at the same time seeing all the Chixzon memories and knowledge from an almost disconnected perspective. He could see the Star Force in him and the Chixzon, with his mind finally coming to grips with the fact that he had been seeing things incorrectly. What he had been learning from the Archons now made full sense, and allowed him to judge the Chixzon in that moment and see them for what they really were…more than the Archons ever could, for they could only sample his thoughts and memories. He was the only one that truly knew.

He also remembered that he had lost this last time, so he held his crouch and tried to hold on to his true self and cement this clarity in place for at least a few more seconds. He didn’t know what was happening, and neither his old Star Force knowledge nor his excessive Chixzon intellect could make sense of this, but from his perspective it seemed like he was waking up from a long dream and now everything was making sense…horrific sense.

He held still and soaked it in, with more revelations hitting him with each passing moment…but that wasn’t important. He had to hold onto this. Even if he lost it again he needed to make mental notes that he could use later and hopefully retrace his mental steps.

Except that he didn’t lose it, not yet anyway. Feeling as if he was breathing again after being smothered with lies, he took the opportunity to work through things now that seamed painfully obvious, including his most recent vexation. Paul was right because…he was right. The Chixzon were the enemy and rightly so, not victims of bad luck or misfortune. Their methods had served them well in many regards, but they’d also doomed them. Rather than build true strength they sought to destroy those who were stronger, making the Chixzon defaultly ‘superior’ without enhancing themselves.

It was a loser mentality. Knocking others down rather than building yourselves and your allies up. The Uriti were an abomination, a forced Klamensh alteration and deployed like monsters to destroy whatever was in their path while the Chixzon hid and reaped the rewards afterwards, often finishing off opponents when they truly were no longer a fair match. They preyed on weakness and engineered it to happen rather than fight an opponent straight up. They had been effective in what they’d done, with the lost list of the superior races that they’d killed attesting to that, but the Chixzon were scum…and with his Star Force memories and his sanity temporarily restored he could see that and desperately wanted to chisel it into stone so he couldn’t forget it again.

But when this passed he knew his mind would alter again, so at best he wanted to leave himself some bread crumbs to follow back to this moment of clarity. He spent several minutes just looking at the floor, then when the inevitable cloud didn’t immediately fall back upon him he jumped into a run and headed back to the guest room, punching open the comm button.

“Brad, Kip, one of you get in here now,” he said, not knowing how much time he had. “Hurry.”

“Is something wrong?” a guard’s voice answered.

“I need one of them in here immediately. There’s no time to explain. Contact them even if they’re in training. This is extremely important,” he said, trying to freeze up his mind and maintain this until they could get inside his head. “Tell them my name is Nefron.”

8

A handful of seconds later the door opened and Amy rushed in, apparently having been posted outside. “What’s going on?”

“Help me,” Nefron insisted. “I don’t know how long I can hold this.”

“Hold what?” she asked, searching his mind.

“My mind is clear, but I can feel it starting to slip. Help me hold onto it as long as you can.”

“I don’t know what help I can be if I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, diving into his mind aggressively and ready to make changes as needed. “Define ‘clear?’”

“I have the Chixzon knowledge, but my thoughts are Protovic.”

Amy blanched. “How?”

“I don’t know, but I’m fogging up again. Do something. Anything.”

“Here goes nothing,” she said, comparing what his mind felt like now to what her experience with him previously had been. There wasn’t much difference, but he wasn’t the same either, that much she could tell. “Keep talking and explain as much as you can. Don’t go passive.”

“I can see the difference between what I’m told to think and what really is. It’s a very subtle alteration that happened unexpectedly. This is the second time, the first was a brief moment. This has lasted a few minutes.”

“Are there any alterations we can make to assist?”

Nefron thought about that, then shook his head in a gesture that the Chixzon never used. “I don’t know what’s happened. The shroud is there and creeping back in, but I do not know the actual source. This was not supposed to have been possible. The genetic rewrite either takes or does not immediately. There is no lagging effect.”

“Theoretical or actual?”

“Theory only. There was no trial run…” he said, pitching forward and dropping to a knee, suddenly out of breath as a wave of thoughts flooded into his mind coming from Amy.

“Culture war,” she guessed. “Use mine as a counter point. If it’s perspective you need you’ll have to fix yourself, but I can counterbalance the Chixzon a bit.

Nefron’s mind was now awash with two distinctive feels…one being Chixzon, the other Star Force Human and neither being his own, but they did press against each other and leave him a disoriented spectator rather than Atlas trying to hold up his world through might alone. The Star Force in Amy was close enough to his own that he got an echo from it, as well as the relief, and that immediately began to stabilize him…but it also pushed him further into his past than he had been on his own, effectively gut punching him by pulling the Chixzon effect back so much, so fast.

He hadn’t realized how much of an effect it had had on him until now, leaving him a fatigued weakling in the eye of the storm that was surrounding him. He knew his time was limited, so he tried to catch his mental breath and put himself back together as much as he could, but fearing it wouldn’t be enough he instead focused on her request. Was there anything he could tell them to do that would help him fight this?

“How you doing?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you losing ground?”

“Not at the moment,” he said, still taking a knee on the floor and trying not to move or do anything to jostle the precarious position he was in.

“I think I can keep this up for a while. An hour at least. Make use of the time and collect yourself.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“I can’t read much while transmitting, so most of your head is your own right now,” the Archon said as she basically bypassed her own Ikrid block by continuously sending him a copy of her own thoughts moment by moment. “Kick this thing’s ass.”

“I wish I knew what to do. I don’t think I’ll be able to resist it if it comes back.”

“Then breathe the fresh air and store up as much of it as you can. You’ve broken through on your own now, you can do it again later. Plan for the long game and try to construct some advantages for yourself later on. Don’t fall into panic and waste your seconds.”

“Hard not to,” he admitted. “The Chixzon programming sucks the reality out of life. I can see, do, and remember but it’s all tinted. I don’t feel it correctly.”

“But you do now?”

“Yes, more so now with your help.”

“I’m just making counter noise. You’ve managed a disconnect. I don’t know how.”

“You mean you don’t know why I didn’t a long time ago.”

“That too,” she said, realizing he was picking that up from her own thoughts. “Is the programming active or passive?”

“Passive.”

“Then you can fight your way around it…again. Learn to see the truth and remember. It may be like digging yourself out of a snowstorm, but if the snow isn’t actively falling it’s just a matter of time and effort. So pull out your shovel and dig.”

“I’ve never actually done that, but metaphor taken.”

Suddenly Amy’s memories of that activity flooded into him, giving him the proper context to see what she fully meant. “Dig. Find the pieces that are the thickest, the most unlike the Protovic, and start hacking them down to size.”

Nefron pushed his way through his fear and focused on the Chixzon knowledge, hoping that doing so wouldn’t suck him back in faster. Seeing it in the clear now he looked for the points of contention, thinking and analyzing each briefly as he looked for the biggest ones…and when sacrifice came up he knew he’d hit a major sticking point. The Chixzon weren’t quite the lizards, for they didn’t hold to sacrificing themselves so readily, but they didn’t have any reluctance to do so with others if it furthered their goals.

There was no sense of the common good, of right and wrong…only survival, dominance, and subordination. They were essentially hollow and seeking to rewrite the galaxy to fit their assertions rather than facing the truth head on and trying to work the problem. His own imperatives had been skewed to suck away the influence of his conscience. He knew from the Chixzon knowledge that the conscience wasn’t something genetic, but residing in a person’s core. Its effect was known and had to be countered along with any other imperatives that the Protovic form had that differed from Chixzon.

In order to avoid detection, they’d had to create the Protovic to be different in body and mind so that their true destiny could not be guessed at. In order to make the transition into Chixzon, everything that the Protovic were or became had to be altered within well-defined parameters that made the Chixzon Chixzon. Their race had no sense of a conscience because they wished to have none.

Focusing on those memories given to him, he pushed further down that logic thread now that he could think clearly, guessing at the cause and finding it.

The Chixzon, like all people, did have a conscience, but it was engineered out of them, or rather their connection to it was stifled…first with genetic inhibitors self-imposed long ago to give them the ‘steel’ to do what was necessary for survival. They wanted to see the galaxy as a numbers game, resources, assets, and threats that needed to be managed, culled, collected. The idea of non-Chixzon being ‘people’ was an impediment to doing what was required, but once suppressed the Chixzon tested had become solitary, losing their connection and concern for their fellow Chixzon. To counter that they added loyalty imperatives to bind them together into an efficient race that knew no equal, had no division, no backstabbing.

They operated as a single unit, much like the lizards, but on a far greater level…and that wasn’t Chixzon arrogance speaking, for with his mind free now Zefron could come to grasp the sheer magnitude of what the Chixzon were and capable of, while at the same time seeing how they had several blind spots.

Focus on the blind spots, a voice boomed in his mind, and it wasn’t Amy’s. See what they can’t see and it will break the mold. You’ve nibbled your way this far, now bite off a chunk.

“Do you know what is going on? What did you do to me that first day?”

“We preserved a piece of your mind,” he said as he jogged through the open door and up beside Amy. “Encapsulated it until the transformation subsided, then reconnected it with the rest of your mind. There was conflict from the beginning, but now you’ve finally broken through to see a glimpse of the truth.”

“What piece?”

“Analysis and learning.”

When he said that, Nefron’s memories of the past 2 years suddenly crystalized into understanding. That had been the missing piece of the puzzle, for his own mind wasn’t working as it should have been according to the Chixzon’s design and the Archons had never told him what they’d done. Now that he knew he could make a fresh analysis of everything that had happened and was able to size himself up within a matter of seconds.

Kip could feel him gathering his strength, then after a few more moments he stood up and looked at them both with glowing green eyes. “Slowly stop transmitting. I will take it from here.”

“Are you sure?” Amy asked.

“This is my fight. I need to take it head on.”

“As you wish,” Amy said, reducing her mindstate transmissions over the next ten seconds before dropping them off completely after that. Both she and Kip felt him shudder, with the weight of the Chixzon back fully on his mind. Rather than resist it he attacked it, with a whirlwind of conflict stirring up that blinded both Archons from being able to see much of what was happening to him.

Nefron knew the truth now…which is what he had been lacking before, not just because of the Chixzon, but because he hadn’t known about the alteration. Now that he did he was able to correct mistakes and have them take, resetting his mind bit by bit without erasing the Chixzon, which he was not able to do. Knowing a lie and being ensnared by it were two very different things. Seeing its inconsistency and inaccuracy made one doubt, but knowing exactly where it was wrong was what freed one’s mind and he had a lot of material to work through, though with each chunk that was corrected he could feel his own strength growing even as his fatigue increased.

This is your last chance, a very loud voice boomed through the storm and made its way inside to Nefron, which he instantly remembered from one of his favorite Human movies. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill…the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill…you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

“Red always was my favorite color,” Nefron said pithily in response to Brad’s bit of help and recognizing the imperative in it. He needed to go all in and tolerate this no longer. Truth couldn’t be watered down or compromised on. He had to root out these lies once and for all or fall victim to a hybridized prison for his mind…and the truth would never be so fresh as it was now. If he delayed he could numb up a bit again, and he couldn’t afford that. He was Nefron, not Radonon, but he was Chixzon and he needed to assimilate his new race on his terms, not theirs.

Removing the lies hurt, like pulling out shrapnel from his physical body. His mind had to heal and reset itself with each epiphany, but as he did so his connection to reality grew stronger and the risk of relapsing became less and less. He knew he wasn’t going to get through every single bit of memory in him at one time, but he needed to kill the juggernauts and let himself sweep up the rest as an afterthought in the coming days, so he sought them out and forced himself to look at things from an angle his programming resisted. It was raw effort and gave him a monstrous cumulative headache, but he welcomed the pain over the numbness. It was real, not imposed.

His green eyes continued to glow brightly, looking in the direction of the 3 Archons but not seeing them. His eye line remained steady, almost as if he were a statue for the better part of an hour before his spike mandibles suddenly sparked to life and went as green as his eyes. They reached back behind him in coiled positions as his arm struts deployed and fanned out. He raised his head towards the ceiling and yelled…a cleansing reverberation connecting all the mental alterations to his physical form and blasting away the storm in his mind with the effort.

The sound of his voice was low and menacing, but with so much power behind it and his mind that it was evident that this was not a Protovic at all.

When his yell ended he turned sharply and jutted out his glowing spikes into the computer console that he had spent so much time studying trying to figure out a way to ensure Chixzon domination over the galaxy. He slashed through it twice, then pulled back his mandibles and went about beating it into a pulp with his fists, breaking it down into pieces and finally stomping on them with his hardened feet and talons, taking out what seemed like a lifetime of torturous frustration on the device before he casually stood up and walked a couple steps towards the watching Archons.

“My name…is Nefron. And that isn’t going to change.”

Brad, Kip, and Amy were all smiling, and he could feel each of their presences within his mind. Barely wisps of thought, but he could feel them none the less…which they also noticed.

“I am not Protovic,” he said firmly. “And I am not going back. My body could return to its former attractive glory, but this brain won’t fit in my old head and I don’t want to lose the knowledge and capabilities I have now. Not after what it took to get them. I can help you far more as a Chixzon, even teach you a few things you don’t know. That’s such an odd feeling talking to Archons.”

“Welcome back, buddy,” Brad said, making it official.

“Hugs are not necessary,” Nefron said warily. “Don’t want to accidentally poison you. Is Vortison still here?”

“Yes,” Kip answered.

“Get him. I need these poison glands removed. Even the nonlethal ones. I don’t want them at all. We don’t fight like that.”

“And your glowsticks?” Amy asked.

“No…I kind of like those,” he admitted with a weak smile. “If that’s ok with you guys? I’d also like to get out of this box, sanctum or not, and breathe some fresh air.”

“Actually,” Kip said, thinking. “I have an idea. Come with me.”

Vortison sat in his lab as he did most days, just having come back from a workout and wanting to get to the most recent batch of simulations he was running. What had happened to Nefron had been his fault, and until he found a way to change him back, impossible as that was, he wasn’t going to let it go. He knew better than to let himself become obsessed with it, but the truth was that studying the Chixzon biotech was at the top of his to-do list anyway, with other high level Star Force work being delegated to his lesser peers as he committed himself to exploring and potentially solving the mysteries revealed to them here.

He had a suspicion that the Chixzon, with all of their genetic knowledge, could have undone what they did to Nefron, so he held a little hope that if he assimilated enough of their knowledge that perhaps he could one day undo his mistake…and right now that meant studying the lizard genetic code and notes that Radonon had provided him and learning from it.

To that end he was running various simulations based on that work, some with lizard code and a few with others applying similar principles, all accomplished via computers and not live experiments. Star Force never experimented on those who could not give their consent, let alone torturing them to gain insights. That sort of thing prompted Star Force to conquer races that did, with more than one example in their history to that point.

“I used to think you were so smart,” a deep voice said behind Vortison, causing him to flinch and turn around suddenly…then jerk backwards and fall off his chair as he saw Radonon standing behind him.

“Now you’re just a newb,” the Chixzon said as Vortison saw Kip standing behind him at a distance and smiling.

“What’s going on?” the geneticist said, retreating around the other side of his work station and out of range of those spike mandibles.

“It’s ok,” the Chixzon said, staying put. “It’s me. I’m back. I’m Nefron again.”

Vortison stared at him coldly for several seconds, then his eyes flicked to Kip, who nodded. The medtech frowned and looked at the Chixzon again. “How?”

“Not entirely sure, but my mind is back to…somewhat normal. I still have the Chixzon knowledge, which I think you’ll be very interested to investigate. That rundown on the lizards is just an appetizer. I’ll teach you the good stuff, given time. There’s a lot of prerequisites I have to get you up to speed on first.”

“Is this for real?” he asked Kip as Brad and a few other Archons came into the lab.

“Just happened,” the trailblazer said. “And I can confirm that he’s back.”

“Mission accomplished,” Nefron said. “Took longer than we hoped, but I’m here, now, and fully Chixzon.”

“Can you show me how to turn you back into a Protovic without gutting your mind?” Vortison asked, still very reserved.

“I could, but I’m not going back. I have too much valuable information, plus the cognitive upgrades are considerable. But I can go back, and I’ll show you how to do it later, but right now I need you to make the alterations to remove my poison glands. I don’t want them anymore. Afraid I might jab someone on accident.”

Vortison cautiously walked around his workstation and up to Nefron, looking at him closely.

“It’s me,” he promised. “A whole lot uglier, but like I said before, I’m willing to take one for the team.”

A single tear bubbled up beneath the medtech’s right eye, but he kept the emotion out of his voice. “Alright then. Let’s get to work.”

9

May 29, 3094

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Nefron walked into the hangar bay carrying a duffle of personal gear hooked over his right spike mandible to find Brad and Kip waiting for him at the base of his dropship’s boarding ramp. The two Archons were talking with each other as he walked up to them along with some of Vortison’s medtechs that were carrying their own travel kits in addition to pushing some hover crates of more sensitive equipment that was going back to Earth, along with him.

“Is something wrong?” Nefron asked.

“Nope,” Brad said reassuringly. “Just wanted to see you off.”

“Any last orders?”

“You’re on your own from here, but I do want constant updates.”

“You’ll get them,” he promised as Vortison came into the hangar behind him along with the rest of the passengers headed back to Earth.

“You are leaving me someone, right?” Brad asked across the bay.

“You have three medtechs that I’ve cleared to make the alterations to the eggs. I assume that’s sufficient.”

“Take care of your apprentice,” Kip said, talking to Nefron. “He’s got a lot to learn.”

Brad snickered, but Vortison didn’t share their amusement. “Yes, let’s get back to a proper facility where we can be left to our work in peace and you guys can get back to doing your…thing.”

“Thing?” Kip objected, knowing how peeved Vortison had become with his own lack of understanding of the science that Nefron had been exposing him to.

“You do improvise, so ‘thing’ seems a suitable term.”

Brad shrugged. “Can’t argue with that. Is there anything you need from us here, data or otherwise?”

“Just periodic updates as usual until the completion of the program. I don’t anticipate any anomalies but we need to be thorough.”

Brad nodded. “Thank you.”

Vortison cracked a small smile. “That’s what techs are for.”

“You’re welcome,” Kip added.

“For what?” Vortison asked.

The Archon pointed dramatically at Nefron.

“That wasn’t your doing,” he scoffed, turning and headed up the boarding ramp. “Come on, Nefron. Time to get you acquainted with a far smarter peer group.”

“Which he’ll be teaching,” Kip spat back.

“And learning from.”

“Your medical technology is impressive,” Nefron offered. “It’ll open up some new possibilities that the Chixzon never had access to. I’d still prefer to be fighting rather than doing tech work, but I’m looking forward to this, and not just because I get to see Earth and the Director.”

“He’s an Archon too you know,” Kip said, looking at Vortison who was half turned around on the ramp.

“He is?” Nefron asked.

“Yes, and you can ask him about that when you arrive,” Brad said, raising a fist towards Nefron. “See you later.”

The Chixzon raised his own hand and lightly fist bumped the Human so not to hurt his soft flesh. “Later,” he echoed, then offered the same to Kip before following Vortison up the ramp and towards an exciting new chapter in his life. Both Archons retreated a few steps then waited while the dropship lifted off and exited up through the open ceiling port and into the planet’s atmosphere through the energy shield.

“He’ll be fine,” Kip said.

“I know.”

“No, you’re worried about a relapse.”

“If I was I wouldn’t have let him go.”

“But you’re still worried.”

“The knowledge is still there, but he’s owning it now.”

“Yes he is,” Kip said, eyeing him as the dropship moved off laterally and disappeared from view as it made its long trek up to orbit. “So what’s bothering you?”

“There could be Chixzon out there somewhere in the galaxy right now.”

“Our Protovic are getting inoculated, so unless they show up really soon we’re not going to have to worry about it.”

“Thankfully no, but these guys were beat once. I don’t think they’ll make the same mistakes twice.”

“They’ve got the V’kit’no’sat to deal with this time.”

“They could just avoid them and push into the rim again.”

“I’m more worried about them using biological weapons. The V’kit’no’sat can kill Hadarak, so what do you think the Chixzon would do to take them out?”

“I don’t think they can.”

“That’s what worries me. I don’t think they can conventionally, but they’re good at finding roundabouts. I’m not sure how we prepare for that.”

“With him,” Kip said, gesturing at the sky. “He knows everything they know…unless some of the originals survived.”

“I don’t think so. These bastards got wiped out a long time ago.”

“Maybe the V’kit’no’sat finished them off.”

Brad laughed. “That would be ironic, but I doubt it. Core and Rim. They never came out this far. I think the Chixzon were destroyed, and are going to give the galaxy a big coming back party in their own way. And the damn thing is we can’t stop it from happening outside our little slice of the galaxy.”

“We’ve got time. If the galaxy is as rough elsewhere as it is here, the other colonies are probably turtled up trying to just survive…by the way, are we still going to bring in any more that we find?”

“Yes. Same indoctrination program and we’re going to keep looking for more to inoculate anyway. Any that we can bring back, we will. Our population is large enough to absorb them without issue now.”

“Will they do the same?”

Brad considered that. “I’m not sure. Nefron said they didn’t need to, but if there’s a large population of Protovic I don’t see why they wouldn’t convert them all.”

“But will they seek out all the colonies or just leave them be unless they bump into them?”

“You’re thinking that if the Chixzon return, the first we’ll see of them is the Protovic colonies quietly disappearing?”

“Possibly.”

Brad nodded. “Something to look out for, to be sure. I get the feeling they’ll keep a low profile until they’re ready to strike. There could be some records of them out there, and I don’t think they’d risk a backlash they can’t withstand right away.”

“I’m curious as to where these Uriti are.”

“I’m still not sure they’re around. If the V’kit’no’sat never encountered them then…I don’t know. The idea that they could still be sedated after all this time seems farfetched.”

“If Nefron thinks they could be, I’m not going to argue.”

Brad put his hands on his hips in frustration. “That is worrying me. It’s a loose end that doesn’t fit. Plus, where are the races that beat them? There’s no record of any of them in the database. I get the feeling we’re missing a big chunk of the timeline.”

“Maybe we are, but that doesn’t affect the Protovic anymore, does it?”

“You mean our Protovic?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose not. If you’re asking about any more upgrades the answer is no. Their telekinesis is intriguing, but we can’t copy and paste it anyway. Besides, I don’t want to give them any more powers than they’re going to have, and we don’t know how that will all shake out yet anyway.”

“What about special teams?”

“We still don’t know how many final form Protovic we’re going to get. They may end up being our special teams.”

“Nefron said he could do it, in time.”

“Give them telekinesis?”

“Yes.”

“How much time?”

“He didn’t know. I’m sure he could put it at the top of his priority list.”

“No,” Brad said, shaking his head. “He’s got enough to do right now and we’ve got to get the Protovic established as Blues. Maybe someday down the road we’ll look into that with a program similar to the Arc Commandos, but right now we need to get this faction’s identity fixed. There’s been too many changes happening.”

“Sounds like you’re going to be camping out here forever.”

Brad smiled. “Seems like. Don’t need you anymore…save for some advice time to time, but we can cover that via comms.”

“You kicking me out?”

“No, just giving you permission to leave. The big mystery is solved and we’ve got a plan in place for the Blues. Still a lot of micro tinkering to do, but I can handle that on my own. What’s next on your to-do list?”

“Some Clan work. Need to do a little personal overhaul there myself, then I’m going to the lizard front. Not the core worlds, but either up or down on the galactic plane and pick off a bushel of their smaller systems.”

“Dodging the hard stuff?”

“Making do with less ships than others would so they can be used elsewhere.”

“I hadn’t considered that.”

“I’m not counting on the Preema or even the Voku to get the job done, and we can’t afford to let the lizards spread into new areas while we hit their bigger worlds. We need a sweeping team, and I’m going to volunteer myself to that.”

“Want to take along some Protovic units and get them some experience?”

“Definitely. I’m going to be using Clan Protoss and whatever bits and pieces I can scrape up so I don’t put a dent elsewhere. Gonna hit up some of the wards too.”

“Want a few veteran Beyond units thrown in?”

“If you’ve got some that you’re not planning on using elsewhere, yes. Please.”

“What did you mean about the Voku?”

“Just a gut feeling.”

“About?”

“They serve the Zak’de’ron, so you never know what they’ll do since they’re not making their own decisions.”

“You think they’re going to bail?”

“No. I think this is our war to win, with or without them.”

“Our half anyway.”

“Yeah, I still don’t like that, but it can’t be helped. And we’ve got a whole lot of work just to clean out this side of the line.”

“At least Morgan’s doing a fine job of marking it.”

“That she is…and keeping the systems for herself.”

“Suits her.”

“It does,” Kip said, glancing around the hangar. “Any last bits you want me to help with before I head out?”

“No, dude. You’re free and clear.”

“Alright. In that case I think I’ll head out now. No point in delaying. Keep up the good work.”

“Go kick some lizard ass,” Brad echoed, with both Archons fist bumping as they headed for the hangar exit. When they got there they walked down a bit of hallway side by side then went their separate ways. Kip to his quarters for a quick pack before hopping on a dropship and commandeering a ship in orbit to take him back to the ADZ, while Brad headed back to his oversight duties and the continued building of his Protovic faction.

It would be years more until the first of the Blues reached final form, and once they did he’d have to figure out how to fully integrate them into the already existing culture…not to mention the quitters who left the maturia at various stages. There was a lot of balancing work to be done, as well as the construction of new cities, ships, and programs to bring the Protovic up another notch within the empire. They still had a long way to go, but Brad was proud of them and what they’d accomplished thus far, not to mention their potential going forward.

As for the Chixzon and their programming, soon it would be erased from all the Protovic on Nym, and then the ones in Axius and everywhere else in the ADZ, including the independent Protovic whom Brad had already been in communication with. From here on out things should settle down and normalcy resume…at least as much normalcy as there was when building an empire within an empire, to which Brad was going to need to add another system soon.

Details, details, and training in between. That was his path for now and he was comfortable with it. He was going to miss having Kip around, but that’s the way the trailblazers operated…going where they were needed and often on a moment’s notice. He’d get back to doing that one day in the distant future, but for now this was where he was needed. So this was where he was going to stay.

10

July 19, 3096

Ittaru System (Shanplenix territory)

Plentrin

Kara fell into the upper atmosphere of the planet like a bullet, further braking against the planet’s gravity and slowing constantly after having spent more than an hour drifting through space at high speed after being shot off from the Ghostblade Ma’kri that had quietly snuck her into the system. The Shanplenix’s technology was considerably advanced, but there were no sensor systems in the outer half of the system where the Ma’kri had entered. After that it was just a matter of staying away from the inhabited planets and keeping the cloaking shields running, turning the ship into a giant black spot save for a few tiny exceptions where sensors were located.

The ship had gotten Kara as close as it dared, then accelerated for a short stint to give her the propulsion she needed. The honorary trailblazer had flown out of the hangar bay and into the black with the ship decelerating and retreating behind her while she drifted in shadow mode down to the spec of a planet far ahead.

Now that she was here, she was having a hard time bleeding off all the speed with her limited gravity drive, but the calculations were easy enough to make and she knew that she’d get her descent under control within the next 23 seconds, though her friction in the atmosphere was leaving a tiny visible streak. She didn’t care about that or she’d have approached slower, knowing that the Shanplenix weren’t going to be able to track her once she got to ground anyway. They might think she was just a falling rock from orbit or ignore the anomaly altogether. That didn’t matter, nor would it hinder her mission.

As the turbulence abated the view of the varied world became clear in the cloudless skies. The portion that she was descending towards was a barren savannah that separated four large cities, but nothing the size that Star Force typically built. The Shanplenix kept theirs limited and dotted across the planet giving Kara plenty of wilderness regions to come down in, with the Archon eventually choosing a basin that was covered in high grasses that hid her sensor-stealthed black silhouette when she finally touched down…and sank well below head height until her feet finally hit dirt.

Glancing up, she realized that the grass was at least 4 meters high and barely thicker than a straw. The planet’s lower gravity may have factored into that, but she’d never seen any varieties this tall before.

Using her Pefbar and armor sensors she got a feeling for what was immediately around her then scanned the sky, looking for pursuit. After she was satisfied that there was none she took flight again, rising up just above the top of the grass that was swaying in the wind then began skimming it as she headed towards the nearest settlements outside the cities. It took her more than two hours to get to the first native on the planet, seeing an isolated outpost on a hillside.

Deeming it too small she flew by it and continued on until she got to a decently sized village. Approaching quietly she settled back down into the grasses and went in on foot, sliding into the clear cut perimeter and daylight behind several buildings and out of sight of the hundreds of people she sensed on the other side. Moving as a shadow in daylight wasn’t exactly stealthy, but with her able to feel where everyone was she could evade and play whatever tricks were needed to avoid detection.

She isolated one of the yellow-skinned Protovic and took control of her body, walking her around a corner and right to Kara. The shadow disappeared revealing a red armored monster that peeled back it skin to reveal the supply pack that held the numerous doses of the virus Star Force had prepared. Kara pulled out one vile and loaded up the handheld injector, finding a patch of soft glowing skin between the exoskeletal patches on her arm and quickly administering her first inoculation on this planet.

With her mental remote control still working, she spun the Protovic around and returned her to the original course she’d been walking before releasing her hold on her mind. The Protovic stumbled a bit, shaking her head and wondering why she’d blanked for a moment, but was otherwise unaware that anything had happened.

Kara repeated the process with a few dozen more people in this village, knowing the virus would spread quickly to the others but wanting to make sure it had a good hold on this group in order to start the planetary spread. From there Kara flew into the nearest primary city and inoculated a few more, then hit up several more positions in this section of the planet, exhausting her supply before she finally flew back up to orbit, summoning as much speed as she could once beyond the atmosphere, then waiting out the long coast until she got far enough away for the Ma’kri to risk coming in to pick her up.

Deciding to take a nap with her proximity sensors on, Kara just floated on her ballistic course out from the planet hoping that the virus was as impressive as she’d been told. A single inoculation should have been enough to start the spread across the planet, though it had to be from person to person, at relatively close range. Once inoculated, the dormant coding that would change an individual from a Protovic into a Chixzon would be isolated and deleted from the genome thanks to a combination of techniques from the V’kit’no’sat and the considerable knowledge that Nefron had contributed.

There shouldn’t be any visible effects of the virus and it should go unnoticed while being ever present, infecting more Protovic years from now when these crossed their paths. In theory, a single inoculation could spread through all 3 Shanplenix systems given enough mixed travel, but Star Force wasn’t playing those odds. Kara was going to visit each planet they possessed and spread a bag full of goodies out amongst them to get the ball rolling quickly.

One other addition to the virus’s attack and destroy code alterations was the poison upgrade within the yellow genome. These Protovic hadn’t developed it yet, and better that they don’t going forward. Should the virus find its way to one that already had, then it was programmed not to undo that upgrade and just delete the primary coding. With the hidden imperative to assemble present in all the Protovic it was possible that these would be seeking out others later on and would spread the virus to them, further inoculating more and having a chain effect going forward. That was the hope anyway, though Kara and others were going to be visiting every known Protovic colony that Star Force had located to date, with her taking all the difficult ones.

They weren’t going to tell anyone about this, let alone ask their permission. No, they were going to quietly nip this in the bud in this region of the galaxy and potentially see it spread beyond over the course of time. The Chixzon had put down Protovic colonies all the way around the galactic rim, most of which were beyond Star Force’s ability to reach or even detect, and Nefron hadn’t been given knowledge of their initial placements since his transformation had made their existence superfluous…had it fully worked. His ability to overcome it was due, in hindsight, to the isolation of a piece of his mind. Without that he and the others had declared, without exception, that any Protovic transformed into a Chixzon would be beyond their help.

They were a threat that couldn’t be reasoned with, for according to Nefron they did not care about anyone beyond their own race and their ‘allies’ were merely tools for them to utilize. They did hold to their word, mostly, but if they had to go back on it they would, just not for trivial things. The transformation coding was so heavy and well crafted that there was no way Nefron could have worked his way clear of it without the little bit of his mind that had been preserved, and even then it had taken him 2 years with a lot of trailblazer handholding.

Given the importance of making sure the Chixzon did not return, Kara had volunteered to go on as many of these quiet inoculation missions as needed. This was one threat they could stop before it happened, at least here, and the virus gave them the possibility of doing so far beyond their borders if/when the other Protovic did begin to assemble on their own merits, so there was a tiny chance that they could end up inoculating the entire galaxy…though no one actually expected that to happen.

When Kara had drifted far enough her proximity sensors woke her to the sight of the Ma’kri rushing in towards her. Its bay door wasn’t visible, nor was most of the ship aside from a small marker that allowed her to pick it up. Seeing it she was able to get the dimensions of the ship, and vice versa, allowing it to come get her without running into the tiny spec that was the Archon. Still a shadow but for her own marker, the Ma’kri saw it fly around to the back side of the ship where the hangar bay was open and exposed, yet facing away from the distant planet where no one else could see inside.

Kara flew through the atmospheric containment field and landed into a jog that took her across the deck as her armor retracted, revealing her casual uniform beneath and the clear jewel on her left wrist where the red scales had retreated into. She kept jogging out of the hangar and into the ship’s corridors, headed to the nearest restroom to relieve her full bladder before hitting the sanctum and getting some training in before heading to the second planet on her mission list.

Paul stood onboard the starport in Venus orbit, looking over the entire Solar System from the command nexus there as he watched the fleets assemble. Gone were the old drones, now replaced with new models that had Dre’mo’dons from destroyers on up. The cutters, corvettes, and frigates had a new weapon system known as a Bri’mart. It wasn’t something the V’kit’no’sat used, but was something that was built from knowledge in the database. One of the races they had conquered had developed it and it along with the rest of their culture and technology had been thoroughly cataloged before, during, and after their destruction, then relegated to the mass of data the V’kit’no’sat kept around in case it might ever be of use in the future.

The Bri’mart were going to be very useful for Star Force, because they were a low powered system that operated like a shotgun. Not useful at all against advanced shields or armor, but very good at chewing apart lesser tech. These weren’t to be standard weapons for Star Force, but dedicated solely to the lizard war…at least until they could find a way to further shrink their Dre’mo’don designs.

Gone were the maulers and even the Ta’lin’yi. Sammy anti-missile functions were likewise history, replaced by baby Keema batteries that also doubled as long range weapon systems. There were no rail guns or missiles, just a streamlined duality meant for a single purpose…destroying lizard cruisers as fast as the enemy could throw them at you.

In addition to the standard drones there were specialties…shield ships, dedicated missile boats, IDF traps, etc, but this was the first time they were going to reveal their new tech to the lizards. They’d been producing the old models while slowly ramping up production on the new ones and building up their numbers here in Sol, along with the production of upgraded warships, the newest Mk. 78s, and even a handful of brand new command ships, though a lot of others were being brought in to augment this invasion fleet.

Ever since Star Force had cut apart the lizard empire the enemy had been conserving its resources. They still fought and resisted the Star Force advance, but not in the numbers that they could have. Scouting missions had revealed that they were pooling their cruiser fleets at their core worlds in an attempt at a last stand, or maybe a counterattack. With the new Dre’mo’don-equipped drones it wasn’t going to matter, so long as Star Force built enough of them and they didn’t get ambushed with unbelievable numbers…which Paul expected them to.

There had been a considerable amount of traffic heading out of the lizard core systems and across the growing gap to the other half of their empire. It was under continuous attack by the Preema and the Skarrons, but what limited intelligence Paul had on that region said that the lizards were growing as fast as they were losing systems, while the rimward half was shrinking fast on the coreward side. Star Force was now on the doorstep of the core systems while the lizards still had a humongous stretch of territory on the far side that ran all the way out to The Nexus’s H’kar border.

Paul and their allied H’kar fighting partners weren’t going to target those weaker systems, rather they were going straight at the core now that they had it exposed. If/when they defeated the strongest of the lizard systems they could begin sweeping up the others, but so long as these remained, with their orbital ring shipyards pumping out more ships every hour of every day, they would meet heavy resistance. Take out the heart of their empire and the rest would fall much easier, though it would still take centuries to complete, given how many systems had fallen to and been colonized by the lizards. That couldn’t be undone quickly, but it was going to happen one way or the other…and he had a feeling that other parties would be more inclined to jump into the fight once the lizard homeworld fell.

The Preema were not going to help Star Force assault the core worlds, that had already been made clear, but they were still cleansing systems on the spinward side and opposite from Star Force territory. Paul was thankful for the continuing help, even if the Preema were dodging the heavy fighting. The less systems the lizards held the less they could spread, though he knew that completely eradicating them from the galaxy was going to be virtually impossible.

This fight was personal anyway, all the way back to when they first invaded Corneria. Star Force had beat them off with the help of the Hycre, otherwise they would have lost the planet and probably Earth…save for a patch of Antarctica. Their ally had come to save them at a very critical point, with it being fitting that Star Force was now the stronger and had returned all of the Hycre’s captured worlds to them. Their empire was now lizard free and it was the Humans that were leading their multi-racial empire on a crusade to destroy or capture the lizards…with the ‘capture’ part still never playing out, even when the lizards knew they were going to die they never accepted the surrender offers, and Paul didn’t expect any different with their core worlds.

Right now Paul was just waiting to board his new flagship, which right now was officially the beastliest command ship in existence and barely 4 years old. It’d been sitting in Sol undergoing upgrades almost the moment it came out of the shipyards, then was kept here while a proper crew was assembled, both to man his command ship as well as the new warships. This wasn’t a hastily thrown together fleet going off to the front, it was a specially designed one built to be a core world buster…and it wasn’t the only one.

Two others were likewise being assembled, one in Epsilon Eridani and the other in Rotunna. Those were being built up of a combination of old drones/new drones and were drawing from the industrial capability of multiple systems to fill them out while Paul’s was exclusively coming from Sol and tailor made to his wishes under Davis’s care.

The fleet in Epsilon Eridani was going to be under Roger’s command, while the even larger one being assembled in Rotunna going to Liam. The three of them were going to hit the lizard core worlds simultaneously, forcing the enemy to choose where to reinforce and keeping them from throwing ships from all their systems into one to meet them. If they did that the other two fleets would push on from one core world to the other, not even bothering to mount ground campaigns but focusing on destroying the massive ring shipyards.

Paul knew there was an advantage to building ships in space but there was also a disadvantage, and in this case it meant that the Star Force fleets wouldn’t have to fight past ground defense batteries and shield generators to get to them.

But there would be, he suspected, even larger fleets than what the lizards sent to Gvaris guarding those rings. They were the key to the lizards’ only advantage over Star Force, and with the Dre’mo’don-equipped drones that his fleet had it didn’t matter, not to Star Force anyway, but it did matter to the other systems out there that were just coming under lizard attack. Taking out the rings not only helped protect Star Force warfleets going forward but it also protected the anonymous civilizations out there that Paul might never even know about. Deny the lizards their ability to make more ships and you shielded far more people than you could ever count, so they were the prime target and Paul was in the prime slot.

Roger’s and Liam’s fleets were larger than Paul’s, but not as strong. His was to be the primary knifeblade into the core worlds and the other two naval specialists hadn’t objected. They liked the challenge of using the ‘older’ ships to get this done, and were more than eager to get at it. Even though they wouldn’t be in the same system at the same time they were most definitely going to be working as a team, with each invasion fleet bringing a mobile comm relay so they could coordinate with each other.

That amounted to bringing a specialized seda in with each fleet, as well as positioning a few others in nearby systems to add links in the chain, but when they entered combat they were going to adapt as needed, even if it meant abandoning their target system and moving to another if there was an opening to do so, for this wasn’t just an assault on 3 systems. This was to be the first move in a campaign to take out all the core worlds, including their homeworld.

Paul had been fighting the lizards for a millennia, basically his entire life, and finally it was down to this. It wouldn’t end the lizard empire, for they were beyond the coreward no-go line and out of their reach, but this was the seat of their power, the implacable enemy that everyone else fell to or ran from…and he was about to go up on their porch and punch them in the face.

He wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, and he was fairly confident the lizards would have a few surprises waiting for them, but as far as karma was concerned this had been a long time in the making.

The trailblazer looked out through the nexus, seeing every ship in orbit of every planet, every space station, every bit of infrastructure that Star Force had in this very clogged system. The strength of the fleet he was taking with him was a mere fraction of the firepower situated here, most of which was defensive emplacements rather than warships, but the irony of it still amazed him. They’d come very far in a millennia, and were now the dominant faction. With that came responsibilities, primarily to not sit on one’s ass while others were getting theirs kicked, but there was a great deal more to it than that and all the trailblazers realized it. They weren’t just leading Star Force anymore, but this entire region of the galaxy, small as it was on the full galactic scale.

And that was going to remain the status quo unless the V’kit’no’sat came back. Paul’s never-ending nightmare was still on the periphery of his mind, but right now they were the dominant power and it was time they loudly proclaimed that.

A ping on the nexus system told him that his dropship was loaded and ready to depart, so Paul disconnected and powered down the station. He locked it away behind sealed doors then made his way across the massive starport that was off limits to tourists. Venus was still a ‘work zone’ and reserved for people that had actual Star Force business here, so everyone on this station was one of the busy bees building or outfitting his fleet and many others.

When Paul hit the hangar deck there was no fanfare, no well wishes or goodbyes. This was just business as usual, though a piece of him felt the significance riding underneath the surface. What they were about to do was going to send ripples across this galactic arm, and if there was ever a shout to the galaxy that could reveal themselves to the V’kit’no’sat this was it. But the only other choice would be to let the lizards spread and consume everything outside Star Force territory and just stand by and watch them do it.

That was never going to happen, and even if they did just turtle up the V’kit’no’sat could still come for them. No. This little chunk of the galaxy was theirs to dominate and protect, regardless of what would or would not happen with the V’kit’no’sat. Better to go down fighting for what was right than live in apathy.

But Paul intended for neither to happen, and even if the V’kit’no’sat did come back they had plans to deal with them. Plans that he and the others had been working on their entire lives. The odds were not in their favor, but at least they’d have home turf.

Paul walked up into the dropship and gave the pilot the go ahead to take off, sliding into the empty copilot seat and riding over to his command ship there as he got to see with his eyes the array of ships in orbit that he was about to take out of the system once they were fully equipped. It was a full naval fleet, no ground troops, though those ships were being assembled as well under the command of others.

Paul was an Archon and fully comfortable with leading any of the five divisions of Star Force, but he still preferred naval above the others. His peers knew this, which was why they’d politely taken the other duties on themselves and given him the most badass fleet Star Force had ever built. He was to be the tip of the spear in this campaign, and like his nickname stated, this was what he was practically built for.

Grand Admiral Thrawn was now a newb in comparison, and Paul was more than ready to show the lizard core worlds what a true Admiral could do.

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1

April 2, 3098

Menchet System (lizard core)

Middle Zone

The Ma’kri decelerated heavily against the twin stars, using both their combined gravities to pull it out of its jump far from the blockade of cruisers choking the preferred zones around the pair. The Star Force ship came to a stop 138 million miles from the center of the system and far from the three inhabited planets, hopefully dropping undetected into the overpopulated system and engaging its cloaking shield immediately upon entry.

The star’s light bouncing off the hull plates disappeared into a black silhouette, but the Ma’kri immediately repositioned just in case their entry blink had been detected. Coming into the system saw any approaching ship ramming into the solar radiation and bouncing it back faster than light could normally travel, so if the lizard sensors were set up to measure it they could get an indication of which jumpline a ship was entering on.

With the Ma’kri moving laterally and getting off its jumpline it all but assured that the lizards would lose it even if they did see its blink. Moving anonymously through the empty spaces within the system the Ma’kri began passively scanning the cluttered regions…groupings of ships stationed around constructs situated in stellar orbits, parking zones around the pair of stars, and the three inhabited planets, one of which was circled by a ring shipyard and a beehive of ship traffic.

Each of the three worlds were packed with lizard cities so dense that they were literally built on top of one another with little or no land space left on the surface. Huge pillars reached up from the ground on the primary to the near geosync orbit of the shipyard ring, providing some structural support to keep it from drifting out of alignment as well as numerous lifts to carry materials and personnel up and down far faster than dropships or starships could accommodate.

Around their base were huge pits sunk into the ground that were likewise covered by cities. The result of old mining projects, the new infrastructure was built over top of now subterranean mines that probably were laced with even more lizard cities, but the Ma’kri couldn’t get any data on that without active scanning and getting a whole lot closer. Right now it was just here to scout and survey the system ahead of the invasion that was coming, getting Star Force updated intel that would allow their trailblazer warlords to tweak their assault plans accordingly.

If the ship was discovered it could run, for it was faster than anything the lizards had. It couldn’t fight its way out though, for there were so many ships here the computers were having a hard time counting them all. The swarm-like fleets were overlapping and making it impossible to get firm numbers, so the Ma’kri kept changing positions to get different perspectives and hoped for somewhat accurate numbers to report back.

It kept clear of the planets and anything lizard, bouncing around in the doldrums and having to execute heavy thrust on odd angles to do it, but that was far better than risking detection. While they might be absorbing most electromagnetic and other energy types, they were not expelling any. That meant if they passed in front of the distant stars their black spot would stand out instantly. Less so for the background starlight, but even that could be used to detect them if the lizards were close and keen enough to make use of it.

But if the lizards weren’t looking and the Ma’kri kept its distance it should be able to complete its mission without incident, though there were never any guarantees. It had been the only ship sent in, and the Ma’kri had been chosen because of its smaller size and knifeblade profile, which diminished its arrival blink considerably compared to the much larger jumpships Star Force built. One of those could have come in and dispatched a dozen scout drones to look around, though those weren’t typically built with cloaking shields. They were a move obvious means of gathering intel and right now this one needed to be clandestine so the lizards wouldn’t know that this system was the next to get hit.

The Star Force invasion corridor wasn’t right on their doorstep yet, with more than 120 lightyears of systems left for them to conquer before they got right up next to the core worlds…but the trailblazers didn’t want to be predictable, so they were going to hop over that last little line of defense and go straight for the big targets, hopefully catching the lizards at least a little off guard.

From what the Ma’kri was seeing though, that wouldn’t be an issue. This system was so well fortified that it might not even need support if it came under attack, but at the least allowing the trailblazers to enter the system knowing where the enemy ships and battlestations were was an advantage that this scouting party was intending on providing them.

This system has been scouted before, a long time ago, but since then a great many things had changed. The third inhabited planet had filled out considerably, and the first bits of a second ring were being assembled around it. Barely in its infancy and without more than some long structural supports, a few ribs sat in orbit with no connecting pillars down to the ground…and yet, there were no construction crews working on it. The cargo shipments coming in from the outer rocky worlds were going straight to the completed ring, with construction on the other apparently having been halted.

Building even one of the massive constructs was mind blowing, and with Star Force getting close and close to the lizard homeworld it seemed their plans for the second shipyard in this system had been scrapped in favor of building more ships.

That had been the rumor…that the core worlds were fortifying themselves with exterior resources rather than spending them on the defense of their other systems that Star Force and their allies had been hacking apart with regularity for more than a century. There were so many of them to go through that even their defeats were buying the lizard core worlds time…and apparently time well spent, for in addition to the millions of starships present in the system there were thousands of new battlestations spread across planetary orbits and even out into the null zones.

The Ma’kri made sure to get a closer look at those, seeing that they were of varying sizes, but the smallest of them were 54 miles long and 14 miles wide, cylinder-shaped, and covered with weapons, shield generators, thick armored plates, and even a few systems that the passive sensors couldn’t identify. The larger battle stations were bigger than the largest Star Force sedas, with several being truly Death Star size and qualifying as small moons, though mass wise they were but an afterthought compared to the shipyard ring. It was approximately 22 miles wide, with variations at different points, and stretched around the primary planet standing as a testament to the industrial muscle the lizards commanded and their ability and audacity to take on extremely long term projects.

And for as long as it took to build that ring, and how many planets had to be strip mined to provide the resources, they were now churning out starships at an amazing rate, not to mention more battlestations that were attached to the ring like berries on a branch. The Ma’kri wasn’t going to be here long enough to measure construction rates, but judging by the number of slips on the ring the lizards could be producing thousands of ships per day so long as they had a steady influx of resources.

It was suspected that the lizards were using core taps to get mining resources from the planet that the shipyard was around. Dig down deep enough and you’d hit the magma layer and could, with proper technology, continuously suck it into processing stations that could filter out the wanted materials and send the rest back into the slurry. Though that wasn’t visible from the surface, there were several facilities within proximity to the connecting columns that Star Force had guessed were the top port access tubes that connected to the ultra-deep mines, and judging by those the planet was covered with magma siphons.

Take too much material out and you could have planet destabilizing issues, but if the lizards were also dumping waste material back down as well as worthless ore from outer planets in the system then the equilibrium could be maintained and a cracking of the planetary crust could be avoided…and based off the huge chunks of the outer rocky worlds that were missing the scout crew assumed that was just the case, especially when one of those chunks was tucked up against the ring next to one of the big slips that were building the battlestations.

As the survey continued they spotted more and more chunks of planet that had been moved to the ring, and they were almost sure they were waste material being funneled back down to the planet, for most of the incoming cargo was in tradition form. An almost continuous stream of jumpships were coming into all the planet from stellar orbit to deliver what was assumed to be processed materials that the shipyard would then use to construct more starships, including more jumpships, which paled in comparison to the size of the ring itself.

Their larger slips were also visible, with dozens of tiny cruiser slips tucked in around them and dotting the entire surface of the ring all the way around, both facing in towards the planet and facing out. None of the surface area was wasted, with the miles of internal structure presumed to contain the factories necessary for making the parts for the ships out of the raw materials being delivered.

And the convoys bringing in those resources were the reason for the swarms of ships guarding stellar orbit. Blockade those and the shipyard would wither, reduced to only those materials this system could provide, and by the looks of it the lion’s share of them were coming from the rest of the lizards’ empire…and that was saying something, considering how much material had to be coming up those support columns round the clock.

Star Force, in all its infrastructural glory, had nothing even approaching this. This one system alone had to have been built up over millennia, tediously and cautiously, into the ship building powerhouse that it was today…and to think that the lizards had 47 worlds with ring shipyards like these, that Star Force knew of anyway.

But it wasn’t just the shipyards and defensive fleets that were the draw here, for the Ma’kri was also interested in the three planets’ cities. Within them was housed a massive population, and given the part of it that was visible from a distance there were distinctive buildings that by now were known to Star Force to hold specific industries. Spaceports on the surface were active nonstop, and a lot of these were exporting. Given the surrounding structures the Ma’kri assumed they were troop ships, or at least personnel transports, sending out reinforcements to somewhere.

Those ships were tracked back to the stars where they were docked with waiting jumpships that then left in convoy clusters. Their exiting jumplines were noted, but where they were going was unknown. In recent decades it was assumed that the non-core systems were basically left to fend for their own defense while sending resources back to the core worlds, so where these ships were going was a curious mystery.

That said, judging from the visible surface infrastructure, one of the three worlds was geared heavily towards producing more lizards. There were so many hatcheries they appeared like grains of sand dumped across stretches of continents…whose surrounding bodies of water had long since been sucked up. Those lower areas now contained more cities with a Coruscant-like covering to the planets, save these had a predominantly yellow-tan coloration.

It screamed artificial, with whatever native wildlife or plants having long since been eradicated. Why the lizards hadn’t colonized the airless worlds further out in the system seemed like a contradiction, until you realized they were probably saving them for deconstruction later. The sheer magnitude of the plans at work here was chilling, as well as the fact that Star Force was about to come in and bust it all up.

How they would do that the Ma’kri crew didn’t know, for the shipyard ring and the battlestations were so massive it would take forever to chew them apart. There was a rumor about the H’kar having taken down a shipyard ring long ago in a very bloody attack that left them with little more than a victory. The story went that the ring had been severed then pulled down to the planet’s surface in a chain reaction that had brought the whole thing down segment by segment…but after several days’ worth of passive scanning the crew noticed large slits in the ring. They were fully connected, but the various slips that were normally scattered about didn’t sit on any of those lines.

Further passive scanning and some deduction brought about the realization that these were disconnect points, probably instituted as a defense mechanism against a similar tactic to what the H’kar had used. If Star Force managed to cut and push a piece of the ring down to the planet and crash it into the cities below the ring could disconnect from it to minimize the damage, leaving only a tiny bit missing out of the giant ring rather than all of it being destroyed.

That revelation was also chilling, for the lizards had to have instituted that change within the past few centuries, and given the number of the noticeable slits it was not a simple upgrade to make. The lizards’ ability to adapt was showing even on this scale, and it was becoming clear that any invasion of this system was going to be very costly, either in terms of casualties or the sheer size of an invading fleet that Star Force would need.

Making those plans wasn’t the Ma’kri’s job, only gathering intelligence was, and it did so carefully and quietly for some two weeks, getting good passive pulls on the shipyards and the three planets before heading out to the smaller sites around the dead worlds and a pair of asteroid fields. From there they headed in as close as they dared to the pair of stars, one white and one blue, to get as good a ship count as they could, taking a full lap around the system to do it, then they picked a very odd jumpline and got as much gravity as they could without alerting those fleets to their presence.

They dropped the cloaking field a moment before they made the jump, switching back over to shields to protect them as they slingshotted their way out of the system and hoping the lizards didn’t see them leave. If they did their ship placements might change and their data stale a bit, but the bigger pieces weren’t going to move and the majority of the puzzle was set.

The big question was the ship count, not only in this system but in others…and what if one of the others sent its fleets to augment these? The core systems were not that far apart from one another, and given enough jumpships to haul the cruisers they could reinforce one another in short order, making any assault potentially be up against a number of ships that couldn’t be calculated. Given those uncertainties, in addition to the sheer size of the fleet and defensive infrastructure here, the Ma’kri crew knew this would be the most difficult campaign Star Force had ever undertaken, making the fight in the Gvaris System look like a warmup exercise.

The Ma’kri ended its jump in a dead system with no planets whatsoever. Just a single red dwarf star and no one there to give them trouble. From there they made a slow jump into a non-core lizard system that itself was built up considerably, though without a ring shipyard and a much smaller stellar defense fleet. It was still more than enough to kill the Ma’kri if it got close, so the ship came out further away from the star than typical and made a run around orbit to get to their jumpline with a detachment of lizard ships futilely pursing while others were headed to the most likely jumppoints to try and intercept.

The Ma’kri beat them to its jumpline, but had to move further out on it to do so. In close to the star the cloaking shield didn’t work, for there was too much stellar radiation to absorb, but they didn’t need it in this case. With thousands of ships waiting lower on the jumpline for them the Ma’kri just ran up higher and got in position, making a slower than wanted jump out but not having any real difficulty in evading them.

That was because, with all of the advancements the lizards were continually making in their technology across the board, Star Force engines were far and away superior to what the lizards used, and the Ma’kri had been designed with the strongest engine/mass ratio for a jumpship. They could pretty much go where they wanted when they wanted and the lizards would be hard pressed to stop them, but the crew knew better than to take chances and accepted the slower jump rather than risk diving into a lower stellar orbit to try and grab enough gravity for a standard one.

The point of this mission wasn’t speed, but in getting the data back to the trailblazers. A little delay was far better than risking a lucky intercept so prudence was exercised, even if the ship and its pilot were more than capable of outmaneuvering the lizards at closer range.

Another two jumps got them clear of lizard territory and into the occupation zone that Star Force and the Voku had emptied and were now patrolling to make sure no one reentered, which was a task in and of itself so large that both empires were having to dispatch fleets of ships just to that end. There were hundreds of Ma’kri out there on solitary missions, jumping from one system to the other dropped surveillance drones and picking up data from others…all to keep squatters off the territory that the big powers that fought so hard to evict the lizards from.

What would become of it later on wasn’t known, but after the centuries of hard work to clear out those tracts of space the hardest of all lay ahead of them, and while the Ma’kri crew wanted to see how it all went down, they were more than glad to stick to reconnaissance missions, knowing they weren’t outfitted for a heavy slugging match.

And the fight that was about to come was going to take ‘slugging’ to a whole new level.

2

June 2, 3098

Trenchet System (Occupation Zone)

Rennpret

“Well, looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Jack-020 said as he looked over the holographic map of the Menchet System with his fellow 2s. “Those battlestations look nasty.”

“Too bad the scout didn’t get any active scans,” Megan-026 said with a frown. “I’d like to know exactly what weaponry they’re packing and how thick that armor is.”

“Ditto,” Paul said as he conversed with his campaign leaders in a private planning chamber onboard the Excalibur as their assault fleet was parked around the now empty planet of Rennpret, one that had been cleansed of lizards less than three years ago and sat just on the good side of the boundary line between the empty occupation zone and lizard territory. “First priority goes to the star guards though, and I suggest we take them without tackling any of the battlestations first off.”

“They have some in position,” Jack noted.

Paul zoomed the map in with a few telepathic inputs to the control node buried within the holoprojector, then pointed a finger at the dots that represented the string of lizard battlestations in orbit around the pair of stars. “Not where they should be. They’re too far out. We can jump in behind them and force a fight in closer to the stars. If the lizards choose to fall back to them we just sit and blockade the system. My bet is they’ll fight it out.”

“Given the amount of trade going through this system, I’m inclined to agree,” Megan added. “A stalemate works in our advantage.”

“Until they call for reinforcements and spam us out of existence.”

Paul shook his head in the negative. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right…if they can get them into the system. Group their convoys as close together as they like, it’ll still take days to get the amount of ships they need into the system and if we’re smart we can sit on the known jumplines and poach a lot of them on the way in. Unless they take some detours, we know where they will be coming from.”

“You’re right,” Megan agreed. “The fight is going to be over stellar orbit. If we can take and hold it, it’s downhill for the lizards after that.”

“If we don’t lose too many ships doing it,” Jack pointed out. “We’re not going to get any reinforcements so we’ve got to nail this first time out.”

“We’ve got this, barring any surprises,” Paul said, rubbing his smooth chin as his eyes were on the detailed map that he zoomed back out again to get a better perspective of everything in the crowded system.

“The battlestations don’t count?”

“We’ve known they were there for some time, we just didn’t know they’d grown.”

“What if they’re mobile?” Jack asked.

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Then that’s an additional wrinkle.”

“We need an active scan,” Megan insisted.

“I know, but we’ll tip our hand if we do.”

“This isn’t exactly going to be subtle.”

“Like Jack said, we only get one shot at this and we need as many clean, easy kills as we can get. Letting them reinforce before we get there is a bad idea.”

“If they do then we just switch targets.”

“Or…” Jack added. “We sent a scout to pull an active scan in a system that’s not our target. Where do we have confirmation of existing battlestations?”

Paul’s mind altered the hologram again, pulling out to a regional view of the entire lizard core with half a dozen systems being highlighted, all of which were around the edge of the rough sphere. The last time they’d pulled a scouting mission to their homeworld had been before the battlestations had been implemented.

“We could, but we’d have to delay…and I don’t like the idea of letting them know we’re sniffing around. If our scouts have been successful in keeping quiet, I’d rather blindside them entirely.”

“Unless we’re the ones that get blindsided.”

Paul raised a finger in the air. “Let’s assume they’re mobile. How are they going to use them?”

“Blockers,” Megan guessed.

“Distractions for our heavy hitters,” Jack added. “We pay them attention or they unload on us. Either way it keeps their cruiser swarms alive for longer.”

“Kamikaze?”

Megan bit her lip. “Depends how mobile they are.”

“Not for a kill,” Jack said, tilting his head to the side as he thought with the glow of the hologram reflecting off his face in the mostly dark room, “but they can bump us aside. Maneuver us around as they like or just break up our formations. If used properly, and if those things are even remotely mobile, they’re going to complicate things.”

“Starting to wish we’d brought a few Sentinels with us.”

Paul shook his head. “No, we need to stay mobile. We can avoid these battlestations unless the cruiser swarms fall back to them for protection. That’s not their normal procedure and we can slowly snipe them from range if they do, so I think they’d be more of a bait into a trap than a real nuisance. They’re prepped for a slugging war, but that’s not what we’re going to give them. This is a numbers game, so we’re going to whittle them down as quick as we can without making ourselves too vulnerable…and like Megan said, if they pull back to defensive positions we starve their shipyards out, so they have to fight.”

“So their best bet is to get us to do something stupid and bite off more than we can chew,” Jack said, zooming the map back in on stellar orbit. “Which we’re not going to do, so that leaves them with giving us more than we can handle. To do that they have to go on the offensive. You think they’ll pull the fleets guarding the shipyards away to overwhelm us early on?”

“I’ll make sure they regret that decision if they do,” Megan said icily.

“In which case we’ll just bounce around the system and not fully engage,” Paul added. “We’ve got the engine power they don’t, and we’re going to use it effectively. That means more taking advantage of opportunities than a straight up fight, but it can be done.”

“Reminds me of one of those awful naval challenges when we were cadets,” Jack mentioned.

Megan laughed. “You mean before or after we taught them how to train us?”

“After. They threw something at us that even they didn’t know how to tackle and let us figure it out. We wrote the book for everyone else coming through, and I think that’s what you want us to do now?”

“The lizards are used to standard Star Force tactics,” Paul said with a nod. “Those battlestations are designed to interfere with how we normally fight large fleet operations. But we’re not going to fight large scale this time, not tactically anyway. We can do that, they can’t, so we’re going rebel alliance on this. Hit them where you can and pull out, don’t get goaded into a slugging match.”

“Until we hit the big stuff later,” Megan amended.

“Right. Our priority target is the cruiser swarms. Take them out and the big guns are easy to snipe down from range. If the battlestations are mobile that’ll delay the process, but this is all workable so long as we don’t lose our heads. We’re the stronger fleet here, but we can’t fight like it. We have to fight like we’re weaker and can’t handle big engagements.”

“One problem,” Megan noted. “If we do it this way, and it takes a lot of time, will we draw enough reinforcements here or will Liam and Roger get dumped on?”

“Good question. I don’t know, but we will have a head start on them. Hopefully the call for reinforcements will go out before they can analyze our tactics.”

“How many transmitters do they have?” Jack asked, bringing up the target system again.

“They’re out of reach,” Paul said as 8 positions spread over three planets were highlighted. The lizard interstellar communications tech had gotten better over time, but it was still line of sight and made use of surface facilities rather than spacebound transmitters…which meant the rotation of each planet brought the transmitters in and out of alignment with their target systems periodically.

“I agree,” Megan said. “We’d have to take out all of them and we’d lose far too many ships punching through their planetary defense networks. That’s not our job here anyways.”

“A comm blackout would rally more reinforcements.”

Paul altered the hologram again, bringing up the known range of their transmitters and seeing how many nearby systems they could get a message out to. “Damn.”

“18,” Jack said after counting.

“How many jammers do we have?” Megan asked.

“13.”

“Too many systems packed together,” Paul said, noting the density of the lizard core where they’d colonized virtually everywhere they could, including planets that elsewhere they’d typically skip over.

“How much delay could we give them?”

“Some, but we don’t want to tip our hand to those right away. We need to completely black out a system, and right now there are too many relays in play. We gotta knock some out first.”

“Alright,” Jack agreed, “saving those for later. So they’re going to know they’re getting hit. How bad can they hurt us if they wanted to?”

“They could theoretically send reinforcements through dozens of different jumplines so we couldn’t poach them all. The real wildcard is how many ships do we have left. If they’ve hurt our numbers initially then their reinforcements could smother us even if we knocked down half of all that came in before they could leave their jumpships.”

“It all comes down to that first fight,” Megan said, looking at her two peers.

“That it does,” Paul agreed, returning her look.

“It’s curious,” Jack said, changing subjects. “Where are their chess pieces?”

“Probably sent to somewhere they’ll be more effective,” Megan answered. “Skarron territory I’d assume. They know cruisers are their only effective way of battling us.”

“Only known way,” Jack amended. “I think they’re trying out these battlestations for number 2.”

“And a few other things,” Paul said, zooming into planetary orbit around Tess, which was a shortened version of the only known moniker for the planet, which was a long winded lizard name of Tesstraveskinamentenr. No one else had ever known this system, at least within recorded history, so there was no original name to go by and most lizard identifiers were unnecessarily long…though to be fair, they renamed every world they took and that amounted to a huge list of names, not all of which could be short.

“What are those?” Jack asked as he looked at several large space stations situated away from the shipyard ring but obscured within the orbital traffic and auxiliary facilities.

“I think they’re storage sheds that might be holding a surprise or two for us.”

“They’re definitely big enough,” Megan commented as she got a scaling from the map. “Big enough to hold an invoker.”

Paul shook his head. “There are extendable slips for those on the rings, and there’s no reason to shut one up here. They’ve got something else inside, maybe cargo, or maybe something they don’t want anyone else to see.”

“How many of them are there?”

Paul had already gone through this data an hour earlier, but he’d never counted. Using the map functions he quickly tallied up all the facilities around the planets, then discovered a few more out in null space. “289.”

“Nuts,” Megan said, her face scrunching up.

“Like I said,” Paul emphasized. “We’ve got this barring surprises.”

“They’re not defended well,” Jack added.

“Could mean they’re not a priority, or that could just be them hiding them in plain sight. Only one way to find out at this point.”

“Yeah, go in there and crack one open. Permission to add that to my to-do list?” Megan asked.

“If you have an opportunity go for it,” Paul obliged. “Just don’t waste resources if they don’t feel like letting you.”

“I’ll be discrete,” she promised with a smile. Her section of the battle plan called for her to keep the lizard defenders spread out across the system by potentially hitting valuable targets if they all mushroomed into low stellar orbit. To accomplish that she’d be commanding legions of mages who would then be commanding their own task groups. This was a huge operation, and one that Paul hadn’t wanted to carry out himself. Likewise, Liam and Roger also had a few other trailblazers with them to assist with the massive coordination necessary to free up the naval specialists to guide the overall battle flow and adapt faster than the lizards could.

“Well,” Jack added, “they’ve been preparing for this for so long I’d be disappointed if they didn’t try something new.”

“We know the lizards better than anyone,” Paul said, looking at each of them in turn. “They’re not going to go down easy, and if I were them I’d have already evacuated most of the leadership to the Skarron zone.”

“Leaving these systems to do what? Make us pay for taking them?”

“That and to keep pumping out ships as fast as they can.”

“The Voku are seeing a lot of convoys jumping the gap.”

“Plus how many more they’re not picking up on,” Paul said with that ‘supreme intellect’ look he rarely flashed out except when in Admiral mode. “The rats are abandoning ship, but they’re too savvy to let all this go to waste. Even if they only get a fourth of the jumpships across to the Skarron zone those ships will make a huge difference over there and I’d bet they’re getting far more than that through.”

“Making end runs high and low?” Megan asked.

“I would.”

“So you’re saying they’re going to be real touchy about us blockading the system?” Jack wondered.

“They have to keep feeding the factories and sending out convoys, otherwise all this,” he said, pointing at the system map, “is a waste. They know we’ll destroy it all. I’d bet they’re playing big picture here, and there is no usefulness whatsoever in holding out if they lose the ability to export. They will just out of spite, but they need these shipyards operational for as long as possible.”

“So you think they’re going to call our bluff and hit us with everything they’ve got to keep the spacelanes open?” Megan asked.

Paul shook his head. “It all depends on what we bring to bear and how they choose to adapt, but make no mistake, they’re seeing this system and even their homeworld as expendable now. If they’re holding on to some sentimentality I’ll be extremely disappointed. That’s not the enemy we know.”

“Yet you’re assuming they know we won’t go coreward after we finish out here?”

“I think we’ve pretty much broadcast that. They might not know our reasons, but the line in the sand has been cut pretty cleanly by now. If I were them I wouldn’t depend on that, and I don’t think they are. Word is they’re spreading out farther and faster than normal, skipping over systems they’d normally take in order to get distance. They know we’re not pursuing them there now, but they’re going to get so large a footprint that we won’t be able to track them all down even if we do.”

“They’re playing multiple contingencies?” Jack asked.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Honestly, I would have hit the ADZ just as a massive middle finger to us.”

“Unless you had some other path to victory in the works.”

“Like what?” Megan asked.

“Getting far away from us and rebuilding.”

“Like the next galactic arm?”

Paul nodded. “Exactly. The Skarron empire practically gave them a roadmap away from here and plowed the way of any real threats. They know what they have to do to beat them and that’s far better than facing us or pushing out into the unknown…which they’re doing anyway. I think they’re going for Skarron territory hardest because it’s their way to put distance between us and them. We’re not cherry picking like they are and cleaning out everything in our path. That slowness combined with their expansion will put them out of our reach, then they can find a quiet region to build up their forces again.”

“Long term in the extreme,” Megan declared.

“I learned long ago not to underestimate them,” Paul said with a smirk.

“But?”

“They’re still stupid.”

Jack laughed. “To anyone else that would be a contradiction, but I fully understand what you mean.”

“Tactics war?” Megan guessed.

“Experienced savvy units versus spamming weak, inexperienced ones. We may not be able to eradicate the lizards, but we are going to beat them so long as we don’t screw up…surprises or no. We can always pull back and adjust, so don’t get too locked in on any objectives.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jack promised. “We’ve got our work cut out for us this time.”

“Good thing we like challenges,” Megan responded, putting her fist into the hologram. “2 tough.”

Jack followed suit. “2 smart.”

Paul finished the knuckle triangle. “2 beat.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Megan said as she withdrew her arm and headed for the door enroute to the hangar.

“See you on the other side,” Jack said, heading back to his command ship as well.

Paul let them go, shutting down the hologram and following them out a few steps behind. When he got through the door he glanced at the titan waiting for him off to the side in the hallway with her back leaned up against the wall.

“Big kids all done?” she asked sarcastically.

“That we are,” Paul answered as he looked at her new blue locks. “Nice hair.”

“An homage,” Riona said as she fell into step with him. “We ready to kick ass?”

“You got my back?”

“Always.”

“Then we’re ready. Most cruiser kills gets a box of donuts.”

3

June 19, 3098

Menchet System (lizard core)

Inner Zone

Riona stood in an auxiliary command nexus onboard the Excalibur several decks above the bridge where Paul was stationed, but she could feel his presence within the ship’s battlemap systems even though his telepathic presence was mixed in with the rest of the crew. She could contact him that way if needed, but so long as both he and she were plugged into the system they might as well have been standing next to each other, for within the command and control systems that guided both the ship and the entire Star Force fleet they were easily visible to one another.

There were a host of other remote pilots onboard the command ship, but her and Paul were the only senior Archons. The rest of the mages and scattering of titans were spread out across the fleet, most of which were onboard the warships that were carrying the drones to the battle that was just now breaking out. Should the lizards find a way of actually jamming their battlemap systems…which would be nearly catastrophic…they needed to have Archons onboard the various ships so they could use the shorter range backup systems, even line of sight lasers if needed, to keep in control of the drone fleet.

Ship Captains and Admirals could do that with the help of their crews, but they didn’t have the same experience levels as the Archons, let alone the few that actually had Sav. It’d been determined that the ability was going to be gained when one made titan with Jumat and Ubven being reserved until one made the next level up that was going to be called ‘ViLord.’ The latter tier 3 psionic trigger had finally been discovered by Vortison after pouring through the biomonitor data from Rio when he’d gone through his ascension. Thanks to his growing understanding of genetics under Nefron’s tutelage he’d been able to find the needle in the haystack that he’d been missing before, so that now made three tier 3s that they were able to share out of the four currently possessed.

Jason’s Kex trigger was still elusive, but the decision had been made to give new ViLords all tier 3 abilities going forward. Right now that meant two additional ones to the Sav that titans already possessed, but Vortison said he was hopeful to be able to find the triggers for the rest before the Archons even stumbled upon the abilities themselves. Riona wasn’t too sure about that, but would be glad to get the full set…something that no Zen’zat to date had even come close to achieving, though the Archons definitely weren’t following the V’kit’no’sat rules and happily cheating whenever they could.

At present there were no ViLords, with Morgan narrowly holding the top spot with a level 354 titan ranking. She, like the other Archon veterans, had been given Ubven ahead of time and now stood on par with the rest of the trailblazers and a lucky few second gen like Riona who had also been gifted with abilities ahead of her rank, which in her case was the addition of Jumat…which she absolutely loved and now fully understood the new ranking name, which indicated a proficiency in melee combat that the Jumat was oh so good for.

That left the non-privileged titans as the only ones that had Sav, but most mages were so used to using the command nexus system that they were far more skilled and had a telepathic advantage over the more mundane neural interfaces that the naval Regulars used. They were also visible within the battlemap system if Riona wanted to find them, but only the ‘biggies’ were constantly visible, with Paul being the only one at present given that the Excalibur was in the process of decelerating from its interstellar jump into the lizard system at extremely low orbit around the pair of stars at a position that the scout had determined was not heavily defended.

Within a handful of seconds the command ship slowed down enough that sensors began to function and the swarms of lizard ships nearby started to become visible, which she knew would be coming after them as soon as they could, but they had succeeded in hitting a small pocket of space that would give them some maneuvering room prior to the melee to come. They needed that time to set up to cover the incoming fleet, which immediately involved the four Godzilla-class transports that were following the Excalibur dangerously close during the jump.

They came out in single file spaced only a pair of seconds apart. Any deviation in the mathematics of the jump would have seen them ramming into one another, but the jump deceleration had been spot on and the massive transports that dwarfed the Excalibur successfully arrived right behind them and, as per previous orders, immediately fanned out in four cardinal directions as the Excalibur dove closer to the star to move off their entry jumppoint…which it then sent a signal back to the next ships in line to indicate that it was clear and no alteration would be necessary.

The next ships were some 30 seconds back and spaced a bit more carefully, knowing that the arrival point was going to clog up fast, but the Godzillas had been designed and sent specifically at the head of the fleet to do one thing and one thing only…release the Warship-class jumpships that they were carrying in racks and get them into the system far faster than had they made individual jumps single file into the jumppoint.

As soon as they got some distance on each other the massive ships broke apart with a flower petal-like dispersion. Each Godzilla carried 22 warships and had been designed for quick release through three waves, the first of which detached within 20 seconds and got free enough to accelerate further away on their own, clearing the way for the second layer to peel off, then finally the third, leaving a collapsing skeleton of the giant ship reducing itself down into a much smaller vessel that immediately fell back behind the Excalibur as that command ship guarded their rendezvous point.

With the warships fanning out into a more or less spherical defense screen they began releasing their own drones from their racks, putting several thousand of the advanced starships into play within minutes as the first of the lizard cruiser swarms began to close on the jumppoint that was now starting to spit out more warships that belong to Riona’s task force…which was the Excalibur and a chunk of Paul’s third of the invasion fleet. She handled the ship they were on to free him up, then would coordinate the mages in charge of yet smaller task groups, though at the moment she was letting Paul handle the starting moves and just watching until he gave her something to do with so few ships yet in the system.

The titan didn’t have to wait long, for with a thought Paul gave her an immediate mission priority. Even though the Excalibur stayed put to cover the Godzillas with a smattering of drones pulled in from the deploying warships, within the battlemap Riona sat in whatever virtual perspective she wanted and mentally went with 16 warships and their drones in pursuit of an approaching lizard fleet tendril that was further away than three others. For whatever reason Paul wanted her to tackle that one and she wasn’t going to argue the point, sinking her Sav-enhanced mind into the task of repositioning every ship in her group where she wanted it and handing out orders to the three mages in it, ship Captains, and even some specific ones to individual support ships.

She micromanaged ahead of time as much as she could, then when her hastily formed battle group came within weapons range she had to trust in those under her command to handle the duties. She could control a lot of ships and weapon systems simultaneously, but battles of this scale quickly became chaotic and overloaded a person with detail…but for Star Force they never got that far because the commanders shared duties and spread out the work load, as Paul had done by assigning her to this task.

Likewise she let the three mages guide the chunks of this battlegroup as she kept an eye on the larger strategic picture while mostly tuning out what was happening back at the jumppoint and pouring her attention where it mattered most. The lizard fleet tendril was stretched out, with the leading elements trying to get to the jumppoint as quickly as possible. That left her with wider spacings between the enemy ships than they needed to really pound Star Force’s advanced shields and she took advantage of that right away, sending some priority target markings to the battlegroup and letting her subordinates decide exactly how to handle the attack.

The mages likewise did the same, deferring to their ship Captains who then deferred even smaller details down to their remote pilots so a gunner didn’t have to worry about anything other than shooting the target assigned to him, while Riona didn’t have to worry about aiming any batteries or maneuvering ships around to get a better line of sight on targets. She could mentally click a target or fleet move orders with a variety of priorities and her people would carry them out more efficiently than any computer system, given the fact that they could adapt and improvise using their skills and experience.

The lizards, on the other hand, just threw themselves into the chaos. Riona could see some coordination between them, and they no doubt had commanders and probably even masterminds organizing the mess of ships, otherwise they would have literally been running into each other in such large numbers, but when the fighting started she could sense the chaos and its effects in their fleet movements. The coordination lessened into a mob mentality, pursing a single target or order and leaving the fighting to the individual ships. They adapted on that level rather than with fleet tactics…which just let Riona cut them to shreds.

She rotated ships in and out, getting shield-weakened ones away from harm by looking at the surrounding area and anticipating lizard moves. It was all very simple, but in a mess this big there was so much to watch and do that you could easily get blindsided by the simplest of attacks if your attention was elsewhere.

Riona wasn’t overloaded, not on an engagement this small, and neither were her mages with the lizard ships coming in piecemeal. That density increased until some of them tried to make a run around her glob of ships and get in to the jumppoint, but she saw the maneuver coming even before they got parallel to the jumpships, which were sitting mid formation and sniping targets at range with their heavy Keema batteries and bloon launchers.

She diverted a slew of drones out to intercept the blockade runners and successfully got them there in time, though a few managed to ram her drones. Just as she was issuing a recall order for a couple of them the part of her mind that she’d left free to observe what was going on with the rest of the fleet back at the jumppoint she saw a massive flare of shield energy behind them that she recognized as a dampening umbrella.

Riona was glad for the stop, but the fact that the lizards were already trying long range kamikaze runs against them was chilling…and that one had been a jumpship, blocked by a Star Force jumpship specialized not for carrying drones, but for being able to drop a huge interdiction field that would chop down massive amounts of momentum. Paul must have gotten it into place as soon as it came out of the convoy, and it had just saved at least one of their warships, if not several that would have been caught in the debris wake had there been a collision at those insane speeds and that high mass.

Glad that Paul was a step ahead of the lizards already, Riona kept the bulk of her attention on her own engagements and truly forgot that her body was back at the jumppoint inside the Excalibur. Her point of view was fixed inside her own battlegroup as she constantly adjusted their formation to counter the incoming waves of ships. The mages would add their own tweaks to her orders without contradicting them and in effect make her own tactics more effective in doing so…right down to the gunners and helmsman that did the same within their very narrow-focused tasks. The overall effect was immensely damaging to the lizards’ chaotic attacks, but their numbers continued to climb higher and higher, even as they were having to navigate around their own ship debris to get at the Star Force fleet.

Managing that debris was one of Riona’s primary tasks, with her giving specific orders to the support drones in her battlegroup to get to and push it into various positions, some being sent back into the approaching lizard ship flows as slow moving islands that they’d have to divert around and lose some of their grouping over…and the more they could spread out the enemy ships, even if just in a handful of situations, the less firepower they could get on the Star Force shields, whose recharge rate was so impressive that a single cruiser could be firing on a Star Force destroyer and take more than an hour of continuous damage to even bring the shield down…whereas the destroyer could take out the cruiser with three quick Dre’mo’don blasts.

The lizards had to mass against them or they were just wasting ships, so Riona’s primary mission here was to cause them to get into positions where they wasted ships…but even as she watched what was coming towards her battlegroup she could see what was on the horizon as Paul had sent scouts out into the rest of the system and that data was feeding back to her mind via a short delay.

The defense fleets around the planets weren’t holding idle and they were already sending ships their way, with the intent obviously being to smash this incursion before it could get any larger. Neither Megan nor Jack’s command ships were here yet, let alone their portions of the fleet, meaning there was no one to backdoor the lizards and make them pay for lessening their defenses…though at this point Riona figured they probably didn’t care. They just had to stop Star Force from securing a foothold to bring in the rest of their fleet.

Then Riona noted that another battlegroup was sent out, for it went flashing past her position making a small jump under the command of a mage that was actually in one of the warships, unlike Riona who was only here in mind’s eye and was restricted by lag range, so Paul couldn’t send her out to take advantage of the opportunity.

No, she was stuck within an operating range from the Excalibur, which wasn’t going to be an issue here because she got an automated prompt from Paul that went out across the entire fleet that indicated they were going into ‘Alamo’ mode. Riona knew that meant they had to hold this position at all costs, but a quick personal message from Paul indicated that he didn’t want her group just sitting here and shooting ships as they came in.

She agreed, knowing that the situation would snowball out of control if they let them group into insane numbers, so she had her fleet abandon its current battle and fight its way clear of the growing debris field to the point where they could make their own short microjumps in clear space and flank the approaching swarms. There were so many ships that they couldn’t microjump in close, forcing them to move under relatively slow speeds like flood waters choking out a narrow river.

Riona’s battlegroup hit one of those big river tendrils from the side further out, destroying ships and forcing them to fight her there…which would decrease the flow going in to the jumppoint slightly and give them less incoming firepower to soak up.

It also meant that her battlegroup was going to get overwhelmed quickly if the lizards chose to divert enough to pounce on them, but their reaction speed wasn’t great and Riona had a couple of minutes to do a lot of damage before she saw the shift coming from ‘up river.’

Rather than stand and fight, she ordered another quick pullback to clear space and sent her group even further up the flow and hit them again, making the pursuing ships choose between chasing them or letting them keep ambushing their fleet from the flank.

The enemy chose the latter and had the pursuing ships turn back towards the jumppoint, deciding to weather the ambush with almost all the ships that Riona was firing on ignoring the attacks and pushing on ahead. Gritting her teeth she resolved herself to the now obvious mission.

She was getting free shots and had to take as many ships out as she could, for they wanted to shut down the jumppoint and ambush the incoming Star Force ships if possible, and right now they were sending so many ships towards them that it looked like they were not going to be able to hold them back without losing a massive amount of drones, and maybe not even then.

Riona knew she had to change the game, so she dispatched her few support ships to go after the lizard debris that was drifting past their position. Latching on and slowing it down, then hauling it out into the traffic. She was going to build a damn with it if she could and disrupt the flow, and her battlegroup was providing her with plenty of stones to work with, for their Dre’mo’don were literally cutting the cruisers in half on impact and the smaller drones were shredding others with repetitive Bri’mart conical blasts as they tried to fly past.

Riona had her fleet stretched out into a long line and, like an assembly line, chewed the closest ships to bits with the support ships grabbing chunks at the end of the line under her personal command and started building her floating asteroid field that was already starting to bottleneck a bit of the enemy flow. There were so many ships getting past though, without even taking a shot, that she knew Paul was going to have his hands full. If they could just hold out long enough to get their entire fleet here it would be a different story, but right now it was a race for time and position, with Riona easily able to destroy the ships passing her position but with too few guns to take them all out.

Like a school of yellow/tan fish ignoring a predator, they zipped by en mass and poured down onto the defense lines around the jumppoint with Riona unable to watch much of what was happening with her focus being on killing every possible ship that she could to lighten the load on Paul.

4

Ouch, Megan said when her command ship came out of its jump into a small open area that had Star Force ships continuously moving out to clear the path for more to come in. Meanwhile there were entire portions of black sky and the double stars obscured by yellow/tan clouds of ships.

No kidding, Paul replied through the battlemap system along with a waypoint. Get at it.

Happy to, Megan said, immediately diverting her heavily armored donut straight ‘down’ as Paul tagged a few warships and their drones to go with her along with the incoming ships in her task force that would be following along. She knew instantly that there was not going to be any end runs going on right now, for the situation was so dire that holding the jumppoint was the only priority that mattered. If not, the rest of their fleet would get ambushed as they came in, with all the lizards having to do was park their cruisers just outside the jumppoint and let the incoming speeds provide all the destructive power required through collisions.

Keeping them from doing so were large Star Force formations stretching back along the jumpline from the jumppoint, around which the lizards were trying to circumvent. The waypoint Paul had given her wasn’t there though, rather it was a staging point for a quickly transmitted battle plan.

Mentally linking with her growing number of ships, Megan took them away from the jumppoint and into one of the few remaining clear areas, for the lizard swarm was beginning to creep around and would soon encompass the entire area, hitting them from all sides as even more continued to pour in from their parking positions around the pair of stars and a lesser stream coming in from the planets. She should have been going after those with prodding attacks, but it seemed their arrival had drawn more attention than expected…or the lizards had just gotten lucky and had the bulk of their fleet randomly positioned near to the incoming jumppoint.

It was clear to Megan what the lizards were attempting to do, aside from poaching the jumpline…they wanted to encircle the jumppoint so that the Star Force ships would get bottled up and block each other’s firing lines. To be most effective they needed to spread out in a tight blanket and use their weaponry to shoot down the cruisers as fast as possible, not stand in line and take turns getting focused on and damaged before cycling back behind the front lines. They needed everyone on the front lines, and Megan was about to make a new one for them.

Moving her command ship to the head of her little formation she took the brunt of the incoming firepower as she ordered the drones to tuck in behind while the warships held the flanks as they pushed out from the jumppoint and curled back around to form a corner on the incoming swarms that was to their advantage, bottling them up a bit rather than the reverse. Megan dove her command ship into the fray and punched straight into the cloud of ships while leaving the rest of her task force to form the new front and hold it.

She knew her ship couldn’t stand up for long against that many ships at pointblank range, not to mention the slow speed collisions occurring against her shields, but the command ship was fresh and that afforded her the luxury of such recklessness. Plowing into the hoard of ships that had not yet come under Star Force fire, she cut a path through them with every weapon system on the ship activated and shooting in all directions now that there were no friendly ships nearby. Setting a curving course that would bring the ship back out of the swarm, Megan rammed as many ships as were shot down and left a trail of debris in the lizard backlines that was a far cry from what was accumulating around the jumppoint and interfering with both fleets’ abilities to fight.

Paul was having his hands full keeping that debris away from the jumppoint, but now the lizards would have their own navigational hazards to worry about before they even came within firing range on a Star Force ship…not to mention the brief disruption in ship flow that would get to Paul soon.

When Megan’s ship came out of the swarm and into mostly clear space its shields were down and she had a trail of lizard cruisers chasing after her that she led back into her waiting drone fleet. They didn’t seem to care, wanting to get as many hits into her hull as possible and she was willing to make the exchange in order to draw them out to their quick deaths.

The drones parted to let the command ship through, which then took up position behind them and the warships as it continued to snipe with Keema batteries as the shield emitters recharged. As they did Megan’s mind was with her drones, tweaking their positioning and giving them priority targets within the edge of the swarm that was pushing out to try and flank them again. The enemy desperately wanted to encircle them, but had to do so in significant numbers or else they were just giving up easy kills.

That was the trick of it all, and Megan kept working them into situations where they got stretched out and her drones could rip them apart with more aggressive assaults while the bulk of her line was in cycling mode to keep ships from being destroyed. The lizards knew well the tactic by now but had no real way to counter it. If they dived the retreating wounded ships the nearby drones would turn on them and take them out before they could get to their targets, meaning the only way to beat the cycling strategy was to cause more damage than it could counter.

And the best way to do that was to flank the ships so they didn’t have much of a backline to retreat in to.

It dicey, because Megan needed her ships spread out to do maximum damage, but with lines thick enough to accommodate the cycles else she’d be wasting drones. Fortunately she had the perfect point of view to orchestrate the battle from while the lizards seemed to be fighting in an almost chaotic frenzy that she was often able to manipulate to her own advantage through baits and faints.

But for every small victory she had there were more lizard ships arriving, with it becoming clear that this was the battle for the system and everything else after this point would be secondary…though if the lizards did enough damage here and now there wouldn’t be enough ships left to take on rest of the system’s defenses. This was the lizards’ best chance of success and they were taking it before all the Star Force ships could arrive and really put the hurt on them.

“Oh shit,” Jack said as his command ship arrived and he got his first look at the scene. Coming in third in line with his task force he’d expected to come in hot, but the sheer carnage around the jumppoint was beyond anything he had seen before. There was literally a dome of debris encircling them, and it wasn’t all lizard ships.

As soon as he arrived he got waypoints from Paul and didn’t bother distracting him with any chitchat. He could tell the situation was dire and there was no time to delay. A third of their fleet was still in transit and a tendril of the lizard fleet had broken through and was nearly in to the jumppoint with only a scattering of drones and a pair of warships engaging them in a losing effort not far away.

One of Paul’s waypoints was there and it was obviously the highest priority, so Jack diverted his command ship directly to it while sending the next few warships to come in behind him to plug the other holes in their lines. As he did so he saw/felt Megan’s presence within the massive space battle and took that to be a bad sign, for she was supposed to be drawing ships away by making feints against the shipyard ring. If she was still here then their plans had been shot to hell and they were in a scrap just to keep their heads above water.

Which was exactly where an Archon wanted to be, on the front lines in the thick of it, where they could make the most difference.

First priority was to get to those warships and ensure that they weren’t destroyed. Drones were crewless but the big controlling jumpships were not. Heavily armed and armored as they were, they could and would go down under enough pressure and these two didn’t have the luxury of pulling back to survive, for they were nearly backed up to the jumppoint itself and falling back there would put them in danger of collision while running out to clear space through one of the remaining gaps in the shroud of ships around them would leave the jumppoint exposed for the lizards to intentionally do just that.

Jack drove the Middle Claw directly into the swarm of ships surrounding and pounding on the two warships while their drones held the backline to keep the lizards from slipping past, taking a moment to transmit an incoming audio clip that every fleet controller on those ships would hear, using a familiar movie quote from the X-men character Wolverine whom his Clan was named after to let them know that help was on the way and who it was coming to their aid.

A few seconds later his command ship rammed the lines of lizard cruisers, plowing into them with altered shields to accommodate such a task as he ordered the two warships closer together and put the Middle Claw directly over top of both of them, giving them some blocking mass and using his far superior weaponry to chew apart the lizard swarm around them as some of the drones now coming off the warships following him up arrived to bolster the lines. Jack pulled some of them forward and positioned them around the two heavily damaged warships to aid in the covering fire.

He held position there for the few minutes necessary to cut through the bulk of that lizard swarm tendril and preserve the pair of warships until enough of his own task force had gotten in to the system to make them obsolete. Jack ordered them back to the small holding area where the other badly damaged and noncombat ships were clustered, then took his growing task force out of the battle entirely, save for the few holes that still needed plugging, and began pooling his ships outside the brawl but in a position where he could look down on it with the backdrop of the two stars making for an eerily silent, yet epic cinematic.

Needing to wait for enough ships to arrive, he didn’t like sitting out here and just watching but he trusted Paul enough to not argue with the battle plan as more and more of his warships caught up and redirected out to him before they even released their drones. There was so much debris in the area now that both sides were having a hard time navigating around it and finding each other to shoot, with the lizards more than happy to simply push that debris into the jumppoint using their own cruisers to nudge it forward or to make sacrificial microjumps at extreme short range to plow it forward in shotgun style.

As soon as the rest of Jack’s task force arrived they could leave the debris field behind and start fighting this invasion the way they wanted, but until then they had to hold this position and protect the incoming ships.

But then something happened that changed their plans and Jack immediately jumped part of his fleet away from the battle, racing out far from the stars to a group of lizard ships that had just made their own microjump further out. The first few ships were being followed by a new swarm that was so far away from the battle it made no sense at all…except that they were continuing to drift on their momentum and brake against multiple gravity wells in order to get to a null point where no planet, moon, or even asteroid existed.

They were trying to get to the jumpline far out from the jumppoint and mine it with the hulls of their ships.

Jack immediately transmitted a signal back along the jumpline to the incoming ships telling them to alter their arrival path. They didn’t have much wiggle room off the jumpline, but with two stars to push off of they had more options than normal. The message indicated which direction from the line he wanted them to veer, with them having to make a second hard maneuver at the end of their jump to hit the designated jumppoint else they’d fly into the waiting lizard fleet around the perimeter.

Normally they could have told them to brake harder and come out further away from the star, but the entire convoy had had to pass through a lizard occupied system to get here, though they’d timed it so that the rotation of the planet would give them a few hours head start before the lizard interstellar transmitters could come into alignment and send a warning ahead.

To make better time the entire convoy was coming in at almost maximum sustainable speed, which was part of the reason why they were exiting so close to the star, in addition to the strategic value of that position. That meant they literally couldn’t brake much harder and were locked into this jumppoint. Had the lizards not surrounded the jumppoint he could have had them go off it and dip closer to the star in a curving brake line, but that wasn’t an option. A little wiggle was all they could manage right now, and with that message sent he knew he had to get to those lizard ships before they could align themselves in the precise spot to die and take the incoming ships with them…which would also spread ship-sized debris into the jumppoint and damage/destroy even more of the Star Force ships already fighting there.

Had there been a gravity well near that position the lizards would have beat them there, but since there wasn’t and it was just a null point in space, ships coming in from a lateral angle had to use the weaker side gravity to decelerate against. Star Force engines were still superior to the lizards, but Jack also had the advantage of coming out almost in a direct line from the stars, meaning he could use their gravity to get near to that position far faster than the flankers coming from elsewhere in the system.

He could also use that gravity to brake against while the lizards had to essentially coast in, and he did so without putting his own ships on the exact jumpline, but coming far closer to it than he would normally have liked. He had to get between the lizards and the line and the numbers were coming out in his favor, but beating the lizard ships there and stopping them were two entirely different things, for they were fanning out and obviously going to attempt to sprint past them and get at least some ships in the way…and daring the Star Force vessels to follow them into the oncoming traffic.

“Like hell you are,” he said to himself in the command nexus as he tagged individual targets for his drones to go after…but not to destroy. He had all of them that were capable of it reconfigure their shields into dampening mode and had them fan them out like umbrellas, including the Middle Claw, and go after the spreading ships in a blockade formation, intending to stop their momentum and hold them in place.

Some of his drones that were capable of it he sent on ahead to piggyback on the lizard cruisers and wrap an IDF field around them, essentially neutralizing their engine power and allowing them to be towed away even as they fired nonstop into the belly of the drones, with their shields taking the hits as they yanked them away from the jumpline and sent them on slow microjumps in other directions before releasing them and coming back to pick up more.

There were too many to do that with in every case, but for the ones that did manage to slip by Jack had his hunters go in and snag them and send them careening away while his command ship and others slowed or stopped hundreds more like they were pushing their way through an invisible wall of glue…but so long as their engines were active they were making headway, and once they realized this the lizards upped their engine power and tried to punch through via force alone.

Meanwhile Jack had a few ships flying around killing the stuck ones desperately hoping to reduce the strain on the dampening shields. Fortunately most of the lizard ships were too consumed with trying to run that they didn’t bother firing on the more distant targets, for like his command ship they had no convention shields, having put everything into the dampeners and leaving their hulls exposed in order to buy time and protect the incoming convoys.

That’s what had to be done, and Jack made sure to use every trick he knew of to hold the lizards in place long enough for their weapon systems to snipe them down, with his command ship killing many at range with its Keema batteries where the Dre’mo’don wouldn’t reach. It was dicey for a long stretch of time, but eventually Jack got the situation under control as the number of enemy cruisers dipped down into manageable numbers with no more seen to be incoming.

He destroyed them and made sure their debris wasn’t going to float into the jumpline before taking most of his ships back to the main battle, leaving a few behind just in case the lizards tried this again, but for the moment sensors were clear and his ever growing task force back in the main fight needed his assistance and guidance, with his command ship crew and himself picking up priority control over them as they came back into the thick of it and the three trailblazers worked their way through the swarms, gutting them and protecting their own at the same time.

5

As soon as the last ship arrived Paul had the fleet retreat away from the jumppoint, breaking up into small groups and scattering across the system. The lizards did not follow, instead choosing to hold on to stellar orbit for the time being as they picked their way out of the debris field they’d been fighting within. Paul didn’t wait, however, and immediately had the fleet begin attacking the edges of their formation and any other exposed ships across the system.

They did not hit the battlestations, or the ring shipyard, or any other facilities. Their targets were simply the cruisers, and now came the tricky part where skill and navigation were more important than sheer firepower. A lot of lizard cruisers had been destroyed already, but it was a small percentage of what was in the system and unless Paul wanted to destroy his own fleet taking them down he was going to have to go about this in a roundabout fashion.

To that end he personally led several raids, jumping a handful of drones in to snipe down a cruiser or two then pulling back before their shields could be breached. With the Dre’mo’dons it didn’t take much time to kill a cruiser, so all they had to do was get in and out very fast and they would have some clean kills.

But it wasn’t just Paul doing it, for his entire fleet was doing the same and making hundreds of raids simultaneously at different locations and picking away at the enemy fleet in annoying fashion. The lizards did what they had to, bunching up even further to try and mass firepower on the ships when they did jump in and even attempting to ram them, but with dampening shields successfully deployed at the right times those could be blocked and the attacking ships preserved.

Not all were, for there were some slipups and times when the lizards got lucky. Some drones escaped damaged while a handful were caught and destroyed over the coming weeks but the kill counts were decidedly one sided. It was going to take a very long time to chew through the enemy fleet like this, but it would take even long to build new ships if Paul wasted them here. This one system wasn’t his target, for there were others to hit after this and he needed to preserve as much of his fleet as possible, especially for when they got to the shipyard, for it was going to take a whole lot of firepower to destroy that much mass.

But first things first, they had to remove the cruiser swarms and stop the incoming convoys, the latter of which were being received and escorted by the former as they arrived and exited the system. Rather than go after them and take the obvious bait, Paul gave the fleet orders to ignore them and keep hitting the lizard swarms where they were weak and slowly diminishing their numbers.

“My men are nearly ready,” Braskon said, with the Calavari crossing both sets of arms over the chest of his Clan Rwby uniform. “Another couple months and we should have a full 6,000 tested out.”

Rio nodded as the pair looked out over the open air training fields on the planet of Heshor, capitol of Clan Rwby and located on the outer edge of Alpha Region. It had once been a lizard occupied world laid empty after their removal, but Rio’s Clan had won sole possession of the world in a previous trial and had decided to move most of their assets here to develop it, though there were another two planets in the system that did not belong to them. One was a mainline Star Force colony and the other was Scionate.

“Good. We’re going to need them. As it is we’re already stretched thin.”

“May I ask a question?”

“Technically you just did,” Rio pointed out as the wind blew through his neon red hair. “Go ahead.”

“What is our Clan objective, long term?”

“You mean why aren’t we joining the army heading to the lizard core?”

“No…and yes. I meant in a larger context, but that was also a question I had.”

Rio briefly searched the much larger biped’s mind. “As to why we’re not going to the core, others have already claimed those spots. I didn’t because they had it covered and our troops are a lot greener than I like. We need more experience and throwing them against the heaviest lizard worlds isn’t my first choice.”

“The lizards are fierce no matter what their numbers are.”

“True. It’s more the special surprises they might have in store. They typically don’t go to such extremes on their smaller worlds. You’re wondering why we’re not claiming worlds for our own when other Clans are?”

“What are we gaining if we do not?”

“Experience, and it’s not about pure gain. We’re taking these bastards out because it needs to be done. Don’t mistake our trials system for our motivation. We fight to fight, not for reward.”

“I do not mean to argue, but other Clans are doing just that.”

“The Ninja Monkeys?”

“And the RaSeru.”

“Both of them negotiated separate deals with Director Davis and have taken up the role of defensive Clans. Shields that are guarding the coreward wall against the other half of the lizard empire and others. We are relatively safe here, as are the others, and we do not have to devote excessive resources to holding this planet. We’re not going to get careless, but we’re building to attack rather than defend.”

“How then are we to grow other than through trials?”

“Let me worry about that. It’s not so much a competition as a by need basis. We’ll have the worlds we require to fuel our focus…which is building a comprehensive Clan. Others are specializing, but we cannot afford that luxury. We can have no weaknesses. This requires a great deal more effort and a slower pace of expansion that the others. I have accepted this and resigned ourselves to developing stronger units rather than pursuing material gains and war campaigns as others have.”

“But to what eventual end? Are not the lizards our most powerful enemy? If they are falling then what are we patiently building toward?”

“Would it help you to know that they are not our most powerful enemy?”

Braskon twitched, and Rio could sense that he’d never considered that. “The Skarrons?”

“No…others. Others that have not yet reached our borders. The other trailblazers and myself must keep an eye on distant and possible threats in addition to the current ones. You will not be made aware of them until needed, but I must plan ahead with regards to how we develop this Clan. Defeating the lizards here is extremely important, but it is not our highest objective.”

“And may I ask what it is?”

“To prepare to survive against an enemy stronger than us, and wholly superior. Clan Rwby must improve, and it is improvement that is our primary focus. Fighting the lizards accomplishes that and the removal of those bastards, so we achieve two goals with one action, but the larger challenge is in upgrading ourselves. Clans Ninja Monkey and RaSeru are embracing the current threats in a way to grow their battle experience and give us time to focus on development to counter future threats. Do you understand?”

“Not as much as I would like.”

“There are a great many secrets we keep, and we keep them for a reason. It is better for people like you to focus on the tasks at hand and not get distracted with everything else going in Star Force. For the few like me we have to, in order to prepare for the future and not get blindsided. In a way I envy you, but I also understand you needing a purpose beyond just following orders, so I will share this with you, on the condition that you do not speak of it with anyone else…”

The Calavari nodded.

“We have knowledge of many races beyond our borders with technology superior to us. We are not in conflict with them at this moment, but we cannot count on their good graces going forward, or luck. We have to become just as strong, if not stronger, to truly protect our empire…and my plans for this Clan directly tie into that primary objective.”

“How far behind them are we?”

“Too far.”

Braskon considered that. “Is that why the Clans were formed?”

“Partially. We are here not only to fight the toughest battles, but to figure out how to do things that we can then pass on to the mainline and faction troops to strengthen them.”

“I came here because you requested Calavari ground troops, specifically, over Bsidd. Most people see us as inferior to them. What do you know differently?”

“Consider it me playing a hunch.”

“A hunch?”

“You may not realize this, but when making improvements you often must tread a path without knowing where you’re going. You experiment and often fail until you find a means of success. We often go on hunches to decide where to proceed and how, and we’ve gotten good at it.”

“We are better pilots, but in ground combat our scores are not superior to the largest Bsidd.”

“And they reproduce far faster, I know. Still, I sense an advantage with the Calavari that I want to explore in more depth. Hence your invite and our troops needing combat experience against the lizards…without getting in over our heads.”

Braskon looked back out over the training fields from the main observation tower that doubled as a command center and barracks that stood some 34 levels high with the platform they were currently on being an outcropping at the very top. “What have you learned so far?”

“Don’t try to wrestle a Bsidd. They have far too many limbs.”

Braskon huffed, slightly amused. “I meant about us.”

“All those who want to fight should be able to. I have nothing against the Bsidd, but in this Clan we’re focusing on less known troop configurations.”

“Doing more with less?”

“Do you consider me less for only having two arms?”

The Calavari growled. “You have other skills, and are far stronger than you look.”

“And what of the Human Commandos?”

“They are physically inferior to Calavari, but their combat records attest otherwise.”

“Exactly. Brute force is only one way to fight, and each race needs to test and develop their own capabilities, right down to the individual differences. Customization is the key, and Clan Rwby is going customize Calavari more so than your faction has.”

“And then share with them what we have learned?”

“In time, yes.”

“Are the other Clans doing the same, in different ways?”

“We each are pursuing ways to strengthen the empire and testing and developing them in the Clans. This is the way I’ve chosen to proceed, without Bsidd and a few other things. We are one of the few Clans shooting for a balanced alignment. Most others are specializing in something.”

“So we will be the best at nothing?”

Rio raised an eyebrow. “We did win this world over all the others.”

Braskon smiled. “That we did.”

“Trust me,” Rio requested. “This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this.”

“I do trust you, trailblazer. I just don’t see why we can’t keep a planet or two.”

“In time we may, but right now a larger population and more resources is pointless. We have to improve our quality, and only training and combat experience will accomplish that. Let the Ninja Monkeys take as many lizard worlds as they can. We’ll exceed them in the end. Too much combat means too little training. We have the luxury of choosing our fights. Sometimes they do not.”

“So it is a competitive race then, Clan against Clan?”

“It is.”

“To spur improvement to prepare for future wars?”

“If it comes to that, yes.”

“And the lizards are…”

“An enemy we cannot take lightly, and one that must be removed now before they can grow any more powerful.”

Braskon clapped his upper arms together, punching fist into palm. “That is what I needed to hear. May I tell them as much?”

Rio glanced down at the nearest group of Calavari sparring with combat drones on a grassy field. “About the lizards, yes. Don’t worry them about the distant threats. If they come our way I’ll give you the heads up when needed. Best right now to focus on the lizards and your training.”

“That we will. How soon will we depart?”

“As soon as we hit 6,000. The rest of the troops are already at the qualifier marks.”

“Even if we do not lay claim to the planet, we still can claim credit for liberating it single handedly?”

“Oh, we’re definitely keeping count,” Rio assured him. “Gonna build a monument somewhere to post the Clan’s achievements, just haven’t gotten around to picking the spot yet.”

Rio woke up with a yell, his arms burning as he sat up in bed and tore the coverings off him, dumping the thin blanket on the floor as he found himself in a sweaty sheen with a very nasty headache. His hands and forearms were in so much pain he had to hold himself perfectly still for a few seconds to get his panicking mind under control and lock down on his bodily control. After he did that he sat still and tried to figure out what was happening.

As far as he knew he’d gone to sleep after a heavy workout and was out like a light after a few minutes…only to wake up now in a state of agony. Looking around his quarters he couldn’t detect anything amiss, no threats or debris. The ceiling was intact and hadn’t fallen on top of him. Everything seemed normal save for his body. As the seconds went by he began to realize that he felt like he’d just gone through an ascension, but that wasn’t possible when one was asleep, for it required a considerable conscious effort to achieve…plus he didn’t feel that bad, save for his arms, and his next ascension, whatever it might be, would have peaked him into a cascade frenzy that he did not want to even think about, and he would have stopped an ascension from reaching completion multiple times before seeing it through.

Which was why he did not understand what had just happened, or was happening to him. Maybe this was some type of illness or a toxin. Maybe he had been poisoned?

Whatever the case was he had to get to the medbay, so he rolled out of bed and let himself fall to the floor on his hands and knees, thoroughly exhausted and far more than any workout could have accomplished. He was about to force himself into a painful walk when his arms finally got to the point that he could not tolerate any longer. Rio sat back on his heels and stopped leaning on his hands, trying to steady himself and slip into a healing trance right then and there to diminish the damage.

As he did so he glanced down at what appeared to be unmarked flesh with no visible sign of why they were hurting so bad. They weren’t even red, and moving them made it hurt just a tiny bit worse so he tried not to…but then he saw something in his palm and turned his hands over fully to get a better look, for they were totally numb with pain, otherwise he would have felt it when he laid his hands on the floor.

Both of his palms had slits in them, not bloody, but almost like orifices directly in the center of each hand.

“What the hell?” he said with a grimace as he forced himself to his feet and headed for the door.

6

The door into the nearest medical bay opened and Rio stumbled inside, pain evident on his face and his arms held out in front of him as steady as he could manage.

“Help…” he said calmly.

“What’s wrong?” one of two visible medtechs asked as she walked over to him.

“I’m not sure…get me numbed up and under a scanner. My arms are killing me.”

“Over here,” she said, pointing to a nearby bed as the other medtech raced off to get an injector. “What happened?”

“I woke up like this,” Rio said, rolling onto the bed as the scanning equipment extruded itself from the wall and moved out over top of him. “I think it might be ascension based. Pull the data from my biomonitor from the past few hours as well,” he said with a grimace as the other medtech came back with a sedative.

“Local injection,” Rio specified. “Both forearms, and make it heavy. I can handle the rest of it.”

“Hold on a second,” he said as he adjusted the dosage, having to run back and grab a different canister. A few seconds later he was back and pressed the tip of the small cylinder against the top of Rio’s right wrist. A moment later the trailblazer lost all feeling in his right arm below the elbow and most of the feeling all the way up to his shoulder. His arm slumped against the tabletop, with his other soon to follow.

“Ah hell…” Rio said in relief, despite the persistent headache. “Thank you.”

“If this is an ascension, it’s out of our league. Do you want us to call someone with a higher rating?”

“Get Trofsky in here…even if he’s busy.”

The medtechs exchanged glances and the man hurried off, leaving the woman to tend to Rio. “What else can I do?”

“Tell me what is in my palms.”

“Your palms?” she said with a frown, reaching down and turning his numb left hand over. “Oh…that doesn’t look like damage, it looks like a splitting growth.”

“Look inside it…and my forearms. Tell me what you see.”

The medtech focused the scanner on those areas, pulling a more detailed analysis, but that wasn’t necessary to see the large new organs located in each arm. “What the hell?”

“There’s something there?”

“Yes…I don’t know what, but it’s long and large and in both arms. Ends just shy of the elbow and runs all the way up to the wrist…with a connecting tether to those slits on your hands.”

Rio laughed loudly, having no clue how this could have happened.

“Do you know what this is?”

“I think so. Tell me what’s inside those glands.”

“They look like containers, mostly empty right now, but there is some type of fluid. I’ll need a minute or two to identify it.”

“Take your time. I think it’ll be hydrogen based.”

“Why?”

“Just a hunch.”

“You said you just woke up with these?”

“Yeah. Didn’t have so much as a twitch before I went to sleep.”

“I thought ascensions required effort to trigger?”

“They do,” Rio said warily. “Which is why I don’t understand this.”

“But you have a hunch?”

“Yeah I do. Tell me whatever you can.”

“Well, for starters, there’s a lot of microdamage in your arms.”

“Flash growth. Been there before.”

“Was the pain this bad?”

“Ah…no. But this time it’s mostly local to my arms rather than my entire body.”

“How’s your head?”

“Hurting, but tolerable. I need to stay conscious, so don’t numb me up any more.”

“I won’t. Looks like there’s some type of solidified gasses in your new glands.”

“Solidified?”

“There’s some type of a binder keeping them from blowing up like a balloon, but they’re reading as gasses on the second level scan. I can go more sensitive?”

“What gasses?”

“Hydrogen, like you said, but also nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.”

“Variable…son of a bitch,” Rio muttered.

“If you can tell me what this is, please do. If it’s an Archon secret I understand.”

“It’s something new. Something we have no data on.”

“But you know what it is?”

“I think so.”

“Ok…” she said, shrugging.

“Get the regenerator,” Rio said, deciding to find out for himself.

“We don’t have it here, if you’re meaning the special one. It’s on the other side of the planet last I knew.”

“It’s alright. Just get Trofsky here and record as much data as you can in the interim.”

“That I can do,” she said, wishing she could be of more help.

“I think it’s a weapon,” Rio told her.

“A biological weapon?”

“Not in the traditional sense, but yes. I’m hoping it is.”

“That you know nothing about? How did it get inside you in the first place?”

“Sorry, that falls under the secret category.”

“Must be one hell of a secret.”

“It is,” Rio said, staring at the equipment over top of him. “It is.”

“Rio, what happened?” Trofsky asked when he came in and saw him lying on a med table.

“Feels like an ascension, but it happened in my sleep,” he told his Clan’s top medtech. “I need data. Focus on my forearms and hands.”

“I can take it from here,” he said, glancing at the now four other medtechs standing by and watching. “Give us some privacy.”

“Above our clearance?” one of them asked.

“Possibly,” Trofsky admitted. “There’s nothing you can do to help anyway.”

The medtech nodded and the four of them walked out of the room, closing doors behind them as they left.

“Your dreams?”

“I think so, but I can’t remember anything this time.”

“You’ve never had pain before, have you?”

“Never. It’s like I had an ascension in my sleep that I can’t remember.”

“This is incredible,” the medtech said as he looked over the obvious data that had been collected.

“What’s your take?”

“Can you activate them?”

“I had them numb my arms.”

“That bad?”

“Extremely.”

“Well, there is a hell of a lot of new tissue in there…and it looks like some of your other pieces had to be relocated. Jumat particle density in your arms has increased, which I assume is to compensate for the loss of volume in the new areas. Your musculature has also altered to accommodate the pouches. That’s probably where the bulk of your pain is coming from. It didn’t just add muscle tissue, it looks like it tore it apart first to relocate it. How was your range of motion before you got numbed?”

“I was trying not to move.”

“I’m guessing it won’t be an issue. The V’kit’no’sat designed these too well to get sloppy with something like that, but this isn’t one of the psionics listed in the database.”

“I know. I think it’s a tier 4.”

Trofsky raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never mentioned a tier 4 before.”

“As far as we know, it’s never been reached in V’kit’no’sat history. There’s no data on it, just a rumor from Kara’s memory.”

“How many tier 4s are there supposed to be?”

“She didn’t know, but at least 3.”

“Is this one of those three?”

Rio smiled. “I think so.”

“Care to share?”

“You first. I don’t want to jinx myself.”

“That good huh?” Trofsky said as he continued to study the data and gather more. “I see your biomonitor data is here as well. Hoping to find the trigger?”

“Hoping you can tell me when this happened and how long it took.”

“Well that’s easy enough,” he said, pulling up the timeline. “Looks like growth began at 3:34 and ended at…4:02? Ascensions don’t last that long.”

“Not previously, no,” Rio said, still laying on the bed.

“And you have no memory of this?”

“Nothing until I woke up with my arms on fire.”

“Figuratively I assume?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like smooth growth throughout. Had to cannibalize most of your fat stores and some stuff it probably shouldn’t have touched. You hurting all over?”

“Less so.”

“That’s why. It stripped pieces from all over your body to build those. You need supplements and food now.”

“Where’s the regenerator at?”

“On its way. I was told you requested it?”

“It’ll heal the damage enough for me to unnumb and test my theory. How fast are my glands filling up?”

Trofsky adjusted his equipment again. “Just a trickle…of what I’m not sure. Looks like liquid comprised of solidified particulates of…gasses? What’s the purpose of that?”

“Ammo.”

“Volume compression then. With liquefied storage to maintain suppleness of tissue. The only weapon I know of that could operate off of this material is a plasma rifle.”

Rio smiled. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

Trofsky stared at him for a moment. “The V’kit’no’sat engineered a biological plasma weapon into your hands?”

“I think it was the dragons, but yeah. And we know they have one in their mouths. Kara saw that used first hand.”

“The more I look at this it’s genius, but I still don’t understand the triggering of it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Is it possible that they engineered an automatic ascension?”

“As a reward for completing the dream challenge…possible. I would have thought it just would have kicked me out of dream mode with an active ascension prompt.”

“That would make more sense.”

“How much data did we get on the trigger?”

“I’ll have to dig through it later, but right now I’m not seeing anything.”

Rio frowned. “You should at least have a regional ID.”

Trofsky shook his head. “Not showing one at first glance.”

“Are you running the analysis software?”

“Yes, and it’s not showing any sign of a trigger. Since this is new it might just not have the right context to identify it.”

“No, Vortison said it would pick up anything and narrow it down.”

“Well, it’s not in this case.”

Rio sighed. “How long before the regenerator gets here?”

“A few hours. It’s being flown over as we speak.”

“I’m not waiting that long,” he said, throwing his legs forward enough to pull his torso up without the help of his arms. He slid his head out to the side so he didn’t hit it on the scanning equipment and rolled into a sitting position on the very edge of the bed.

“You want denumbed?”

“No, I can do it myself. I need the practice anyway.”

“How exactly?”

“I should be able to use Haemra.”

“Even if you can’t feel your arms?”

“I can feel above them. I think I can work down from there. Gonna try anyway. Have a second numbing dose standing by if this turns out to be a bad idea.”

“If it hurts that bad why try…unless you think you can heal the damage now?”

“I started to earlier but couldn’t concentrate enough. I’m not guessing now will be much different, but if I can do a little so be it. I just need my feeling back.”

“Wait until I get the dose,” Trofsky said, walking off into a nearby supply room.

Rio didn’t, getting a feel for his upper arms and beginning to isolate the numbing serum in his tissue. Once he was able to ‘see’ it he triggered a purging procedure, pulling it out and clearing his nervous system from the interruption. The rest of him numbed up a touch as it hit his blood stream, but he was able to counteract that and essentially eat away the drug a little bit at a time and send it into his waste systems.

By the time Trofsky came back he had his elbows somewhat returned to normal with the beginning of the pain returning and he pushed on from there, relying on his excitement and forced aggression to see his way through it but he was realizing that it was taking too long and that he wasn’t going to be able to maintain focus.

“Forget this. Manually unnumb me.”

“Could have made credits on that,” the medtech scoffed, procuring a separate injector from a pocket on his uniform.

“Just the left arm.”

“Wise…er,” he said, indicating that he still thought this was stupid. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Rio said, bracing himself as best he could.

Trofsky put the tip of the device against his skin and the numbing effect vanished over a handful of seconds, replaced with the blinding pain that was somehow worse than Rio remembered. He dropped to the floor, pulling inwards to try and control it.

“Stand…back,” he ground out between clenched teeth. The trailblazer only had one arm to contend with this time and he managed to temporarily push his mind past it. The sensation was hazy, but he could feel the new part in his arm, though he knew his control over it was going to be questionable given the pain distraction.

“In here?” Trofsky asked, taking two hasty steps back, then circling around to the other side of another med tabled.

Rio half yelled, turning it into a continuous sound that he poured his effort and focus behind. Inside his arm he could feel his Rensiek activate, heating a tiny chamber beneath his wrist in a very specific and automated fashion. The potential within it was small, but building. He could feel it through the pain, hazily, but it was there. He also knew that it was being contained beneath a shield, and that if breached there was no going back.

He knew this from the genetic knowledge that came with the upgrade, as there had been confirmed to be with others, but this one had to be far more complex, for there were different stages to it. Three to be exact, and he knew it even before he moved to stage two.

Increasing his yell after a short pause to collect his breath, he forced the heated material in the holding cell down a short tube to this palm where it pooled. The orifice on his hand split open a bit wider and he could feel an energy field be produced around it, into which a glow flowed. Just a pinprick at first on the surface of his hand, but it grew in size and brightness, as well as oscillating different colors.

“Amazing,” Trofsky marveled from several meters away as Rio held it in his hand, palm up. “Careful,” he also warned, having to yell to be heard over Rio’s own Goku-like guttural trill.

Rio sensed that he didn’t have much ammo to work with, but he pulled what he could into a glowing ball that turned nearly white, then he stood up and angrily pointed his palm towards an empty wall. The pain wasn’t subsiding, and somehow using his ability was even making it worse. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to do this twice, so he went all in and steadied himself a bit more, giving himself as much of a Dragonball Z pose as he could manage with his arm straight out in front of him.

Part of him wanted to say the words, but he didn’t have the luxury. A yell was all he could manage and it was the only thing holding his effort intact, so before he lost control he flexed his arm and his mind, causing the energy field to squirt the white ball the size of a marble forward, condensed down into a narrower stream that stretched out a meter and a half as it flew towards the wall.

The explosion that followed paled in comparison to the pain that Rio was racked with, but he smiled none the less as debris sprayed him and the med bay in a giant poof of dust and fragments…then he dropped to a knee as his focus crumbled.

“Now?” Trofsky asked, coming out of the thinning cloud and kneeling down next to him with an injector.

Rio nodded, and soon the biting pain disappeared along with his feeling and control of his left arm as doors opened and other medtechs came racing in.

“It’s alright,” Trofsky said, raising a hand and waving at them through the lingering dust. “Just a little Archon redecorating.”

“What happened!”

“Don’t worry about it. Just call for a cleanup and repair team.”

“Is he alright?” one of them said as they saw Rio on the ground.

“Yeah, he is,” the trailblazer said, getting his focus back a moment before he did his feet and stood up with his arms drooping lazily to either side. “He is doing real well.”

Trofsky looked at the expression on Rio’s face, then glanced at the medtechs surrounding them.

“Take note, this is what destructive euphoria looks like. It’s rather common in Archons, especially the more powerful ones, and there is no known cure.”

Rio smiled, then began laughing. Not so much at Trofsky or the fact that he couldn’t use his arms right now and probably looked a bit stupid. No, he started laughing and didn’t stop, tuning out everyone around him and just relishing the moment.

He didn’t know how he’d done it, but he’d just achieved something that no Zen’zat in the history of the V’kit’no’sat had ever attained, let alone even known about…well, maybe the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat knew of it, but the rest didn’t, though they all had it hidden within their genetic code.

Rio had stumbled across the tier 4 psionic called Choratrik.

And now he had a real Kamehameha.

7

February 7, 3099

Solar System

Earth

“You wanted to see me?” Wilson asked as he ascended the last few stairs into Davis’s office.

“Sorry to bother you, but we need to have this discussion in person.”

“It’s not a problem. I’ve got a 2 hour window, if that’ll be enough.”

“Possibly. We have a bit of trailblazing to do.”

“Oh?” Wilson said as he sat down.

“Have you heard about Rio?”

“No. Is he alright?”

“Happiest Archon in the galaxy right now.”

“New psionic?”

Davis nodded. “The first tier 4.”

Star Force’s head trainer whistled. “What did he get? We know of 3, right?”

“Kara knows of 3, and Rio got bioplasma.”

“Let me guess, he needs new training challenges?”

“There is that, I’m sure, but what I have you here for is something more long term.”

“You have that look.”

“Which one?”

“A combination of a mastermind and incoming problems.”

“Oh…that one. Fairly accurate. Didn’t realize I was emoting so much. For now let’s keep this between us, alright? The trailblazers have enough on their plate as is.”

“Fine with me, but you haven’t said what it is yet.”

“Rio’s ascension wasn’t a normal one, and there are issues with that that we’ll get to in a minute, but his was a one shot and it really wrecked his arms.”

“Cascade issue?”

Davis nodded. “I don’t know what the V’kit’no’sat had planned, but the Archons are getting so many new tissues that their bodies are literally running out of room. The reorganization is getting more extreme each time, and I’m wondering when or if there is a line where we hit too much.”

“Isn’t that more of a medical question?”

“No, it isn’t. This new revelation aside, I’m not worried about them dying. They can take the adjustments more gradually. But from a tactical viewpoint, are all of the psionics necessary? Should we eliminate some?”

“Unless there is a disadvantage the answer is a flat no. The more capability one has the better.”

“Let me rephrase. We’ve been using the V’kit’no’sat playbook thus far, and given recent developments with Nefron we may one day be able to write our own.”

“Custom psionics?”

“We’re far from it, but I’m looking down the road. I’m sure the V’kit’no’sat had their reasons for developing each of the psionics, but is it the best kit for our needs?”

Wilson’s eyes widened. “Honestly, that is something I’ve never considered before.”

“While you think on that, you should know that the tier 4 ascension happened when Rio was asleep. He woke up in pain with the new ability and no memory of what happened. Apparently he’d been chasing a very specific dream for years, something that some of the other Archons also seem to have. An identical dream that disappears when they wake. Rio was apparently better able to hold onto bits of it and brought it to the others’ attention. They were convinced this was some sort of test, and apparently Rio passed it.”

“Which was why he couldn’t avoid the cascade penalty.”

“Yes, but the important part is that this method had never been used before, or at least activated, in known V’kit’no’sat history. The trailblazers seem to think that the more tier 3s someone has the more access they have to the dream, or at least better able to remember it.”

“Now that is interesting. Our sharing aside, if someone achieved a tier 3 it automatically opened up a…dream challenge?”

“Without information to analyze it’s guesswork, but Rio seemed to think so.”

“The blackout is probably to keep them from adapting to the test. If it’s trying to locate a specific prerequisite then it’s probably a reaction test where foreknowledge would compromise it.”

“Rio said his personal notes said it involved a quest of sorts, as if it was a fully interactive video game.”

“Is he coming back here?”

“Already has. Vortison is working on him now. It seems the trigger isn’t there.”

Wilson frowned. “That means no sharing?”

“That’s what they’re checking on now.”

“If this is a mental test, then the trigger probably lies there and isn’t a physiological state that can be mimicked.”

“But if it’s just an ‘on’ switch it might be medically able to be initiated.”

“That sounds too easy.”

“Yet worth looking into. Down the road we may be able to do more than just turn it on. We could adjust the existing psionics or even create all new ones.”

“And you need to know what we need to look at?”

“This is very long term, but we need a plan in place.”

“That would depend on what is possible. I can probably come up with some modifications to the existing psionics, but as for creating new ones…I’m kind of at a loss. I don’t know what’s biologically possible.”

“Well, like I said, we’ve got time. Another matter I wanted to let you know about is that we think we’ve found a way to wipe the Zen’zat psionic coding from the civilian population. Not all the secondary physical enhancements and not the Ikrid block, we’re not going back to the weaker Ter’nat, but we should be able to eliminate the problem of accidental breakthroughs.”

“Can you add them back for the Archons?”

“Yes, we’ve still got the Zen’zat profiles stored. It’ll be a few more years, but we’ll start wiping the ability from the younglings in the maturia and eventually eliminate the problem altogether.”

“And no more rogues.”

“It won’t stop existing ones, but it would stop any future ones from occurring,” Davis said, referring to a handful of stable breakthroughs that had occurred and escaped their medical radar. Some of those individuals had put their meager powers to less than scrupulous purposes before they were found out, and even a few small bands had been formed of the ‘mutants.’ One had been shut down but Davis knew there was evidence of some others still out there, not to mention other rogue individuals.

“And this upload can be altered, in time, to meet whatever requirements we want?”

“We can’t experiment too much, but we are going to tinker. Long term I was thinking it would be a good idea to have some abilities that the V’kit’no’sat do not know about.”

“Immunities would be the most useful. We already have an Ikrid block, but a semi-permanent Rentar in passive mode would be a big upgrade.”

“To make you immune to telekinesis? That could also be a disadvantage if you need to be lifted or thrown by another.”

“That’s why I said semi-permanent. But even something that only blocks internal organs. The idea of an Era’tran reaching inside and scrambling everything around for a one shot kill, right through our armor, is something we can’t ignore. Our regulars can have psionic resistant armor, but the Archons can’t.”

Davis swallowed. “I don’t recall any mentions in the database of them doing that.”

“They probably didn’t need to, nor wanted to, but it is possible. All you have to do is reach inside and squeeze.”

“And if someone doesn’t get their Rentar up quick enough they’re dead.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re right, we can’t let that stand.”

“And as long as you’re asking for a Christmas list, might go for a skeletal enhancement.”

“Wolverine style?”

“I don’t think metal would be a good idea, but we’re fragile considered to most V’kit’no’sat races. Now that I’m thinking about it, there are a lot of little things that could be improved upon.”

“Keep thinking on it, especially with a mind towards giving us more ‘challenge beating’ potential.”

“How long does Nefron think it will be?”

“Nefron isn’t doing it. He doesn’t know about the V’kit’no’sat and that’s not going to change. He’s trustworthy, but I want a safety in place just in case. He’s teaching our medtechs what the Chixzon know, so it’ll be our people adding that knowledge to what we’ve learned from the V’kit’no’sat.”

“How does the Chixzon compare?”

“I’m told it’s superior in many areas, but not all.”

“That’s why you think we might have the chance to one up them on this?”

“Yes, but I’m more interested in tailoring the psionics to fit our style more than just trying to counter them. Impressive as they are, we don’t need hand me downs anymore.”

“Ingrate,” Wilson said sarcastically.

“Yes, I know. And this all sounds preposterous considering we’ve inherited the most powerful known biological package in the galaxy. Still, if we can improve on it we’re going to.”

Wilson nodded as a stray thought occurred to him. “You said the tier 3s were the bridge to this dream test?”

“A working theory at the moment.”

“What about the eyes?”

“They did mention that. It’s possible it’s a marker to indicate who is playing the ‘game’ and who isn’t, but that’s still largely speculation.”

“Has Morgan had these dreams all this time?”

“If she has she hasn’t been able to remember them. Rio seems to be unique in his ability in this regard. With some coaching a few of the others have been able to remember snippets.”

“But he couldn’t remember anything this time?”

“No, he couldn’t.”

“Has he had the dream again?”

Davis nodded. “At least once.”

“So it’s going to continue until he unlocks them all?”

“Guessing again, but that’s the going theory. Whether or not it’s exactly the same dream is speculation. Rio knew he had another, but couldn’t provide any details.”

“Are these dreams interfering with his rest?”

“Hard to say without baselines to compare with, but there’s a possibility of a little interference. He hasn’t complained though, nor has he noticed any difference when waking from one. It doesn’t seem to leave him exhausted.”

“Wait a sec…are we looking at customizations to Humans or other races as well?”

Davis winced.

“That’s where we could make some huge gains,” Wilson pointed out.

“Those will have to wait, for we’re still pulling off the V’kit’no’sat knowledge of Zen’zat coding. Doing so with another race means we’ll have to draw our own blueprints and that’s far harder.”

“You don’t want to give up our dominance?”

“It’s our backup plan in case of revolt. I don’t want to lose it, but I see your point.”

“We’ve had Human revolts before.”

“But to be truly effective we’d have to upgrade the masses, especially in the case of the Bsidd.”

“Why? We can do it with individuals like we have with the Archons.”

“And make them immune from our Ikrid?”

Wilson leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not worried about dissentious Humans anymore. Why?”

“The rogues do concern me a bit, but otherwise you’re right. I understand Humans far better than I do other races, and I’m still interested in seeing how the Protovic upgrades shake out. That’ll give me a better indication of where we should or shouldn’t go from here. Until I learn more I don’t feel comfortable trusting non-Humans with too much power.”

“That honestly surprises me.”

“How so?”

“Usually you’re ahead of the game.”

Davis smiled, then raised both hands gesturing to his office. “I don’t get out much, and when I do it’s still Humans I’m dealing with.”

“Too much intel, not enough experience?”

“Bingo.”

“There’s only one solution to that, especially now that you have Ikrid and can get inside their heads and look for yourself.”

“You telling me to go on vacation?”

“No, and I’m in the same position you are. Very little contact with non-Humans, but there is a difference in that I’m writing training for them. There are differences between the races, but training is training no matter who or what you are. There’s a commonality there that trumps everything else.”

“Noted. But there’s another issue in play.”

“Leadership?”

“Of a sort. Ethics.”

“I didn’t think Star Force had a problem with that, in any faction.”

“No, but there’s always the Archons there to beat you into a pulp if you go to the darkside. Take that away and I know how Humans react. I don’t know how others will.”

“And there’s no way to test that short of removing Star Force?”

“A blind spot we’re forced to deal with, I’m afraid. Some people are on good behavior because they don’t have the option of misbehaving rather than because they’re lightside…and there’s no genetic marker for lightside.”

“Maybe not genetic, but then that’s what I’m here for.”

Davis raised an eyebrow.

“You told me so from the beginning with the Archons.”

“Yes I did,” the Director said, remembering back to those early days. “I told you to make sure they were trustworthy.”

“And I know ways to bring to the surface corruption if it is there. All in the construction of the challenges.”

“Unfortunately it’s not that simple.”

“Have we had an Archon go bad guy?” Wilson challenged.

Davis raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I get it. You have an insight there that I lack, and without it I’m hesitant to upset the balance we currently have.”

“I’ve been reading Brad’s notes recently. What’s your current take on his plans for the Protovic?”

“He’s making their race stronger than Humans across the board, but the upper level are still grossly inferior to Archons.”

“They’re your backup plan to everything, aren’t they?”

“Yes they are, and I trust the trailblazers to make sure they don’t go bad. Without that linchpin this empire wouldn’t work.”

“Do you really think they’re special?”

Davis looked at him as if he were stupid. “Of course they are.”

“But are they unique? Think about it. Out of everyone in Star Force today, it’s impossible that all 100 of them were born on Earth at the same time. How many other peers do they have out there in the empire now fulfilling other roles?”

“They have no peers that I can see. Even the second gen don’t quite measure up.”

“And there’s a reason for that, but not the one you think.”

“Enlighten me, please.”

“They’ve ascended to another level. That’s what makes them unique, but who and what they were in the beginning isn’t. Part of ethics is learning, the other part is having a pure heart. Pure hearts can be messed up by culture, but at the core they’re still pure. They just have to be uncovered.”

“That’s not news to me.”

“It should be. You’re assuming the trailblazers are the only pure hearts out there.”

“Maybe it’s just the warrior in me now. I can’t see someone who isn’t a warrior as a pure heart. When something bad happens you can’t sit on the sidelines and watch, you have to fight.”

“And others would too, if they knew how. Don’t take this as ego on my part, but the trailblazers are what they are in large part due to me. I set them on a path that they have continued on their own, but that initial training is what others lack. And other Archons didn’t get the same training, which is why they’re not quite up to par.”

“Why aren’t we up to par then?”

“Ascension. They had to build this military and that was an additional type of training the rest of you didn’t get. The second gen got some, but they were never the tip of the spear. The trailblazers have always been the tip of the spear and they’ve not only embraced it, they’ve left the rest of us behind ascending to a level that is, arguably, beyond my understanding. I can train them because I act as an opponent throwing down challenges to them, but I can’t see through their eyes. If I tried I’d screw things up. I have to act like they’re a force of nature rather than peers. Insert myself into their shoes and I’d never push them as hard as they can take.”

“All the more reason why they’re unique.”

“They are, but who they were in the beginning isn’t unique. There are a lot more of them out there that will never be the tip of the spear so they will never ascend to that level, but they can become a great deal more if they want so long as we provide them the path. That has happened with the other Archons and even the Monarchs. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that’s a Human only thing.”

Davis sighed. “I can’t navigate what I can’t see. The trailblazers are the ones building the factions, including the Clans. I’m primarily guiding Human development. As far as ascension goes, I don’t have the path before me to gain the knowledge and experience needed with the other races.”

“Then trust those that do. Brad and Larissa especially. And me with regards to training weeding out the unworthy.”

“If I had trust issues Star Force never would have happened.”

“Then where is your hindrance?”

“Size. We’re growing so big that we’re coming up against new problems. There’s only so much I can see and monitor, and I rely on the Monarchs and Archons to assist in that, but there is still so much room for misbehavior and it’s only getting worse.”

“Because there are so few Humans,” Wilson pointed out.

“Are you advocating non-Human Archons?”

“Why do you have non-Human Monarchs?”

Davis frowned. “Not the same thing, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I’m both, so I should have the perfect perspective.”

“But?”

“But I can’t see going through basic training with a Protovic or Bsidd.”

“Too different?”

“Yes…yes. I guess that is it. There’s a camaraderie of the similar that would be lost. Monarchs operate independently of each other, never in teams, so it’s all about individual skills. Archons need both.”

“And you feel that brotherhood is what binds Star Force together more than anything?”

“Essentially yes.”

Wilson nodded. “Not a problem.”

“What isn’t?”

“Give me some time to play with this. If psionics won’t be a prerequisite in the distant future, then I think I can give you additional options without compromising that brotherhood.”

8

May 1, 3099

Menchet System (lizard core)

Middle Zone

Paul ducked his head underneath the water level in the shower tube, holding his breath and letting the current jets scrub him from head to toe. He stayed under for several minutes, at first holding his breath then pulling on his Hamne for additional oxygen to sustain himself. He let his mind drift as he did so, not thinking of anything in particular but allowing his overstressed mind a few moments to detox.

It was getting close to a year since this invasion had began, and ever since then every day had seen naval combat. Hit and runs designed to destroy a few ships without losing any of their own to diminish the millions of lizard cruisers while the ring shipyard kept pumping out more to replace them. The lizards still controlled stellar orbit, and aside from a few intercepted convoys Paul hadn’t been able to put a dent in their supply chain. He, Megan, and Jack had become a constant nuisance that the lizards were combating through tolerance…for that was all they could do.

No additional fleets had arrived to help in the defense, not that it would have done them much good. The lizards couldn’t force Paul’s fleet to engage for the simple fact that Star Force engines were superior. That gave Paul the ‘high’ ground and let him pick the time and place of each battle. He remembered back to when he’d first seen Star Wars Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, and Obi-wan had told Anakin that their fight was over because he had the high ground. It hadn’t made much sense at the time, but now he understood.

The side that had superior mobility controlled the flow of the fight, and every time the lizards had come after his ships he’d ordered them to flee and not engage in a massive brawl. The small strikes were continuing around the clock, probably even a couple now while Paul cleaned up after a short but intense workout. He trusted his fellow Archons and the fleet commanders enough that he could take breaks from the action and not worry about them getting baited into a trap, which the lizards were constantly attempting to do, even going to the lengths of giving him opening in their defenses to hit.

Paul knew that would favor them, and right now, so long as they kept the status quo, they were killing more cruisers than the shipyard was pumping out. At the rate they were going it would take another 75 years to get through them all but Paul knew it wouldn’t come to that. It was just a matter of withering down the millions of cruisers into manageable numbers, at which point he’d engage them more aggressively and really rack up the ship kills. Unless the lizards screwed up and gave him a real opening to exploit he had to be patient and chip away at their defenses…even as Liam and Roger were engaging the enemy in two other systems.

They were doing the same thing, nipping away at the defending fleets, but they didn’t have the firepower that Paul’s fleet had. The plan was for him to take out this system’s defenders then move on to either another core world or come in to assist them. Right now they were giving the enemy three systems to heavily defend, but this was the one that was expected to fall first…or draw off enough reinforcements that would give Liam or Roger an opening to exploit.

It was tedious work, with even one mistake meaning a chunk of your fleet got destroyed, but so far that hadn’t happened. Ever since the opening battle at the incoming jumppoint Paul hadn’t so much as lost a ship, and he thought that was why the lizards weren’t sending reinforcements. Greater numbers wouldn’t aid them in pursuing an enemy they couldn’t catch, but get their fleet trimmed down enough and he wouldn’t be surprised if more suddenly arrived. That, or they would hoard them on their other worlds and let this one fall to buy time.

Where they were going to make their final stand he wasn’t sure, but they knew and Paul knew that they were not going to win this war. Star Force had the edge, and it looked like they were still going to play it out, but it was just a matter of time and resources before they were wiped out. That could take years or centuries, and it looked like the lizards were aiming for the latter, during which time they’d continue making more ships and tightening their defenses, some of which were being shipped out to other parts of their empire.

They were either playing for time or had aspirations to hold out and force a draw. Paul could see no possibilities of them ever retaking the territory they’d lost to Star Force, and as was their standard practice they were still not responding to surrender offers. They were going to make him wipe them out, and he couldn’t stop the ping-pong game inside his head that kept bouncing back and forth between that being sheer stubbornness or them having a larger game plan that he wasn’t fully comprehending.

Paul pulled his head back up above water level and into the rain-like drops coming from above, breathing the air and stretching his body out. His workouts were tolerable, but he wasn’t making as much progress as he wanted. His priority was the invasion, and the more time he spent out of the command nexus the less chance he had of finding a new inroad against the lizard defenses.

But one had to train and sleep, so when Paul was finally clean he drained and climbed out of the shower tube, drying himself off and dressing before downing a small vile of ambrosia and slipping into bed. He needed to recharge, physically and mentally, and get back at it sooner rather than later. Longevity was the key to an operation like this and one couldn’t let himself get burnt out, but the skillful took their rest in short, efficient brakes that kept them in the game for far more hours than others. To that end he let his mind disconnect from everything and just sleep, a skill he’d developed long ago that had become extremely useful over the years.

While Paul slept Riona was awake, as was Megan in another part of the system and dozens of other high ranking Archons commanding small task forces that were spread out everywhere and were almost always on the move. They weren’t due for a supply run for another two months, so until then they stayed away from stellar orbit and bounced around the system keeping the lizards guessing and hitting them in multiple places whenever possible.

Right now the ships in Riona’s task force weren’t engaged, merely waiting alongside the Excalibur and in a few other nearby places with their drones all tucked onboard. She sat in the bridge command nexus silently, eyes closed while she meditated, monitoring the status of the entire fleet spread across the system which had eyes on everything lizard. She saw their positioning and movements along with their own. Megan’s presence was in the system, noticeable as a distant bright spot within her mind, but within the local ships hers was the dominant persona.

After more than an hour of watching Riona finally sent out a command, a mere thought, and a group of ships further out in the system were given a waypoint to move to. It wasn’t an attack, merely a repositioning that would allow her to gage the reaction, if any, of the lizards. They were fairly sure of their sensor range by now but they didn’t have access to their technology to know for sure. There were dead spaces where they couldn’t sense and right now the Excalibur sat within one of them, out of the enemy’s range but not their own, giving them eyes out and the ‘high ground’ as Riona watched and waited, planning the next hit from her ship group.

Right now there were two others ongoing that she was watching. They’d learned over time not to give the lizards too much respite, for their refueling rates were far inferior to Star Force’s and if you kept them bouncing around from place to place you’d eventually cause them to have to either stop, which would create an opening to exploit, or trigger them to reposition to a supply pickup that could accomplish the same.

And that’s what happened while Riona was watching. It wasn’t a large alteration, but a group of ships were heading out of one of their border positions and moving in towards the largest planet to meet up with a supply depot.

The titan’s eyes opened as she double checked what she was seeing. Megan, tell me this isn’t a trap?

Where?

Riona sent her a few waypoints and waited.

Move quickly. I don’t think they see the weakness.

With a thought she activated not only the Excalibur’s gravity drives, but those of the flanking warships and fed all of their navigational computers coordinates, forcing an almost instantaneous microjump at extreme power to get the acceleration necessary from their null orbit. The Captains of all the vessels barely had time to register what was happening before the stars behind them disappeared and they were suddenly in motion, with Riona sending them a text update as to what was happening, including to the Admiral just on the other side of the wall from her.

A moment later she triggered a ship-wide alarm, with the repetitive klaxon indicating that the command ship was about to come under attack.

Paul was so disconnected from everything else that it took him a moment to recognize what was happening when he sat up in bed at the sound of the alarm…then he realized what it meant and got to his feet, not rushing out the door, but heading over to his information terminal so he could get a situation report to know what was happening.

He pulled up the battlemap data and saw that it was dated, for they were currently mid jump and headed towards one of the lizard battlestations.

Paul activated a direct comm line to the command nexus. “Riona, is this something I need to worry about or can I go back to sleep without fear of a hull breach?” he said sarcastically.

“They blinked, so we had to move. Sorry to wake you.”

“What exactly are you…” Paul said as he looked over the holographic map, then saw the flaw for himself. “Nice catch. I think you got us moving in time too.”

“You want first chair?”

“You’re going to be engaged before I can get to one, so take the lead and I’ll assist when I’m able. Just don’t hold back. This has to be a gut punch.”

“I know what to do, but feel free to chime in when you like.”

“I’m gonna be dark for a few minutes.”

“Then get moving, cause I ain’t waitin for ya.”

Paul smiled, flicking off his console and heading for the door. His shoes flew onto his feet as he jogged out, then he ran through the corridors enroute to the bridge knowing he was going to be late getting to the party.

The battlestation in question was the rendezvous point for a sizeable lizard cruiser fleet, one that was doing little more than covering for part of the convoys coming in and out of the system. So far Star Force had kept clear of all the battlestations and the lizards had been banking on that, using them as little islands of safety to retreat to but always keeping sufficient cruiser numbers in support.

A chunk of those had just left along with even more cruisers from a number of locations, all headed to the supply depot for what was probably a refueling/supply transfer. But what they didn’t realize was that it took the cruiser count around this particular battlestation too low. It didn’t look like that to anyone who had been watching this invasion from the get go, for it wasn’t weak enough for one of their hit and run attacks…at least not to get more than a handful of ships.

But that was also part of the ‘rope a dope’ strategy. Paul and his fleet had been waiting for the right opportunity to really go on the offensive, but without trying to force the issue they’d been patient. The lizards had either gotten used to that or didn’t realize the full capabilities of the ships Riona was about to ram down their throat.

The Excalibur came out of its jump a few seconds ahead of the warships, already having reconfigured its shields into a wide dampening field. It added to this by tipping up on its side so it faced the enemy top on like a pie pan being flung at the swarm of ships floating planetside of the battlestation. They weren’t tightly clustered, but were all in approximately the same position with the cargo ships in between them and the battlestation, leaving the station with clean lines of fire around it for the most part.

Riona had aimed the command ship at the cruisers, allowing some of the jump momentum to remain so that the Excalibur slammed into the center of the formation and put a visible dent in it, dragging a few hundred cruisers with it caught on the dampening shields just as if they had tried to ram the ship and were stopped…for momentum in space was a point of view. Ship hitting shield was exactly the same as shield hitting ship.

That left the Excalibur with only a thin backup shield covering its hull but the ship was tanky enough to be able to take some hits, which it did as soon as the cruisers that hadn’t been pancaked into each other turned and fired on it…but for the moment the cruisers around the hole in their formation were somewhat isolated, enough that the warships that followed could fire into them and fight their way out into those tendrils as they loosed their drones.

Keema and bloon launchers hit them immediately, with more and more warships coming into the gap the Excalibur had drilled into the formation. Its dampening field was now gone, almost entirely eaten up by the effort, but the ship itself was still holding position just inside the debris field it had created and that field was moving forward into the rest of the lizard ships, advancing the corridor of clear space the Star Force warships were entering.

The pancaked lizard ships were damaged or destroyed, but a lot of them hadn’t been taken out of the fight. They were bumping into each other, with a few actually lodged together, but they weren’t too slow in recovering and joining the school-like flow of cruisers as they repositioned to get better firing lines on the attacking ships.

Time was of the essence, for Riona could already see other cruiser swarms leaving position to come join the fight, but they were minutes or tens of minutes away at minimum, leaving her with time to take out a lot of these bastards.

The Excalibur, being on the inside of the enemy formation and totally surrounded, opened up with all its weaponry and tore apart cruisers at all angles, immediately adding to the debris field it had already started to create as the warships’ drones spun out like angry bees from a hive and hit the nearest cruisers in overwhelming numbers…and when Star Force outnumbered lizards, the lizard ships died within seconds under the combined firepower of multiple Dre’mo’dons.

Within 2 minutes a third of the cruiser swarm was junked, leaving them with too few numbers to seriously hurt the attackers. They still had cargo ships to protect and a command ship exposed with its shields down so they didn’t flee. They poured their entire attack against the Excalibur, ramming it from close range in some cases and getting through to imbed their flat ship hulls into the Star Force gray armored plates like playing cards, some of which continued to fire off a few batteries at point blank range.

But the command ship had mass and a fleet of drones to help screen for it, with them blocking or blowing off the ships that had imbedded themselves into the hull while likewise hunting down and ganging up on the cruiser formations, taking them out so fast that they did little shield damage in return and what firepower they did have was directed against the Excalibur.

It was a fair trade but Riona didn’t leave it there, sending flanking units around the cruisers to go after the cargo ships that were scrambling to get away from the fight. There were so many parked close together they were literally tripping over each other, but give them a few more minutes and they’d disperse.

When she sent the drones and two warships after them the battlestation got into the fight, coring one of the drones with a brilliant white beam the width of a dropship. The shields held briefly, then the destroyer suffered hull damage that left a sizeable hole in the hull. A moment later another beam tracked it and burnt all the way through, with most ship functions going offline.

“I saw that,” Paul said, causing Riona to jump.

“Don’t spook me like that,” she said as his finger overlapped her hand on the control sphere they were now both sharing.

“I’ve got the battlestation.”

“All yours,” she said, with the pair of them standing side by side in the command nexus yet all but forgetting they had bodies. Their minds were occupied with the battle through the battlemap instrumentation and the live feeds they were getting. Riona felt Paul take command of a few of her assets, but he left the rest to her as she ignored the battlestation and went about hunting the remaining cruisers even as the ship they were both standing within was getting hammered…on the outer hull.

They were safely inside the redundantly armored inner core with deck after deck of ship blocking for them outside that. The Excalibur would take an awful lot of damage to disable, let alone destroy, and right now the lizards were drawn to it like bugs to a zapper. Riona used that to her advantage, exchanging hull damage for taking out nearly all of the cruisers…in this group anyway, for there were more coming in to add to their numbers and assist the battlestation that was now under attack.

Just then more incoming ships jumped into position nearby, all Star Force, as more of their fleet had been dispatched to the battle. That hadn’t been Riona’s order, for she didn’t think the Excalibur was truly in danger from the battlestation, but it soon became clear that Megan had different plans as another command ship came in leading even more ships and Riona took a moment to look at the bigger picture.

One hole in the lizard lines had been exploited, but now there was a much bigger disruption. Either the lizards abandoned their battlestation or they moved to defend it. Scratch one station if they did nothing, or open up more opportunities for the attackers if they did move in to aid in its defense, for they were coming in in staggered groups rather than one solid mass.

And staggered groups would basically feed Star Force more kills.

“We sticking around?” she asked Paul.

“They’re not adapting quickly enough. We have an advantage and we have to take it,” he said, even as she felt other Star Force ships in distant parts of the system maneuvering…and not to come here.

“Full on?”

“Until they wise up, yes. Don’t give them time to think…and don’t take out the battlestation too fast. It’s the bait right now.”

“All yours,” she said, mentally reconfiguring the ships under her command and incorporating a few more warships that were close by and incoming. This fight wasn’t going to happen in just one spot, but as far as this one was concerned it was going to be a double sided formation, more interested in fighting off what was coming rather than the battlestation that it was arcing around to attack from multiple sides.

9

Jack was on the other side of the system when the move came, deep into a training session that he immediately abandoned. He ran onto the bridge of his command ship dripping sweat, which fortunately didn’t have a negative effect on the nexus equipment.

He logged into the system and saw that they were already moving, Admiral Menti’s orders. He assumed control and modified them, seeing a couple of other weak points in the lizard ship alignments form as they raced to reinforce one another. Jack split his ships to multiple tasks, sending several groups to the main battle while he took another back towards the two stars. A convoy was in the process of arriving and even if he couldn’t get to it he needed to keep the lizard ships pinned there so they couldn’t all flood in to pounce on Paul and Megan.

The longer they could keep the mismatch going the more ships they would kill, and judging by the numbers they’d already taken out more in the past 10 minutes than they had the past month, so even a slight prolongment was going to be advantageous.

The other thing he noticed was the fact that the battlestation had cleansing beams, and big ones at that. So far none of the ships in the system had those equipped, but they were a big step up from the phasers in terms of both range and sheer damage. Perhaps they hadn’t miniaturized them enough to put on the cruisers, but that upgrade alone was a game changer, not just for this invasion but for the overall war and especially for the Skarron region. The lizards were getting more and more technologically powerful as time moved on, making it all the more imperative that Star Force and their allies take them out now.

Jack had a feeling that the coreward border line was going to come back and bite them, but he agreed that they couldn’t go chasing the lizards that direction indefinitely. With the way they spread they could end up following them all the way into V’kit’no’sat territory. In some respects it was ironic that the lizards hadn’t developed the cleansing beams earlier, taking them from either Star Force wreckage or, more than likely, from Hycre or Protovic ships.

But as his command ship coasted through its microjump Jack studied the fresh battle recordings and realized the design wasn’t theirs. The firepower was off, scaled in a direction that Jack knew was one option they’d had in developing the weapon, yet they hadn’t chosen it, opting for a more reliable variety that would give them longevity rather than burstiness in combat.

That meant this wasn’t a copy of their tech, then it also dawned on him that the coloration was wrong. Cleansing beams were invisible, with Star Force having added a visible tracer to it. This beam totally gleamed.

Jack mentally pulled up the weapon files they had, sifting through them at lightning speed until he found a mention in the V’kit’no’sat database of a particular variation that did glow. It was still a cleansing beam, but one that didn’t have as much armor penetration. What it did have was a shield eating function manifesting from an unstable matrix. A binder was used that gave the glow, allowing for longer ranges but shorter than the stable version that Star Force used.

This was definitely not a copy of Star Force or allied tech, and Jack was seriously wondering if the lizards didn’t have access to some sort of treasure trove of their own, for no other known race used that particular type of weapon and between The Nexus’s records and those of the Voku and Preema, they pretty much knew everyone on the block…unless it was a race they’d destroyed millennia ago and were only now figuring out the tech.

Regardless, it meant they had a new weapon that was going to give them serious punching power in short to medium ranges and an upgrade to the phaser range if they adjusted the binder accordingly. Something told him they would, but then he smiled as he saw an addendum within the copy of the V’kit’no’sat files that had been copied and pasted into the Star Force database.

There was a weakness in this version that could countered with a specific shield setting. It wasn’t one that Star Force used, but they’d developed their matrixes to be flexible and Jack knew it wouldn’t take much of a modification, he just didn’t know if they could do it on the fly.

He had to wait for the microjump to end, but as he did he compiled a text message then sent a clear burst signal to the communications seda on the outskirts of the system, then he made a good forward assault against the lizard cruiser swarms in stellar orbit, finding them somewhat out of position as they were feeding ships into the main battle in a long train of microjumps. Those there immediately repositioned, with Jack successfully cutting off that flow of reinforcements via threat alone, then he signaled a couple of his mages to make flanking runs to try and get to the backside of the jumppoint the lizard convoy was using as it rolled in.

He didn’t know if they’d get through, but it was one more poke the lizard commanders would have to deal with and the more he kept them reacting the better. Star Force was organizing better than they were, especially in large scale battles, and get them moving around too much and the lizards’ formations would gap. Do that at the right moment and it’d open up a cascade of ship death if Jack’s fleet was close enough to exploit it…and right now he was getting very close, knowing he was going to lose some drones but comfortable with that so long as he was able to rack up a lot of ship kills and buy Paul and Megan time to do the same.

The communications seda was not Canderian, but rather a Star Force mainline construct geared to be a mobile interstellar relay with enough armor and defenses to defend itself against fairly heavy attack…enough anyway to make a run for it if the lizards came en mass, but ever since arriving in this system it had been sitting so far outside the stars and planets that the lizards couldn’t get to it except at a crawl, with its own superior gravity drives ironically giving the small moon more maneuvering capability than the tiny cruisers.

Being that far out from the stars also gave it better line of sight with the distant systems it was linking to. There were only three within range and it had lines on all of them, monitoring their occasional feeds as well as sending out periodic reports of their own. One of them was Liam’s fleet, with the other two being actual relay stations quietly placed on the danger side of the safe occupation zone border that linked to others in a breadcrumb line all the way back to the ADZ.

When the seda received Jack’s update it immediately sent a burst transmission to the first of the three distant points, then repeated it for the other two. So far no information about the cleansing beams had come in from either Liam or Roger, so it was going to be needed intel if they also had to deal with battlestations in their target systems. Along with the message was a request for modifications to the shields, which was tagged to go all the way to Earth along with any and all shipyards and research facilities within the ADZ.

Someone would determine if it required a hardware rebuild, modification, or just some tinkering with the existing equipment, but when they did find a fix they’d not only be able to block the shield penetrating nature of these alternate cleansing beams, but actually make their shields stronger than normal against them. The raw power they were pumping out couldn’t be negated completely, so they’d still do some damage, but Jack guessed it would be less than the phasers would do, making it a degrade against Star Force while still a powerful new weapon against everyone else.

Paul kept his fleet in the thick of the fight until the numbers began to fall off. They still had an advantage, but not as much of one as he wanted. They were starting to lose a high number of drones, so he called for a retreat and the Star Force ships scattered, leaving behind their drone debris but none of the manned warships.

Immediately upon the withdrawal Paul sent his ships out to hit secondary targets and exploit tiny advantages they had, not giving the lizards an hour of rest after more than a day of pitched fighting. Paul was tired, but not physically. His mind was wore down from nonstop control operations while he’d insisted that the other Archons take periodic brakes and swap out to stay fresh. He was too valuable for that so he’d stuck it out, knowing that the lizards wouldn’t have the same luxury.

How many masterminds were commanding those fleets he didn’t know, nor did he know where they were located. It was possible they were within the cruiser fleets but there were no command ships out there to find. Monitoring lizard transmission was doable, but only in hindsight. They were using encryption that couldn’t be hacked instantaneously and they were good about switching it up. Also, they used a lot of directional transmitters to keep Star Force in the dark completely when they weren’t in combat and had the luxury of pointing their equipment. During battle their transmissions were omnidirectional and able to be monitored, but through all the battles they’d fought thus far Paul’s analysts had failed to identify any commanding ship or signal.

They were out there though. Paul could feel it in the way their ships moved and reacted. They were being guided by more than their standard variety, and the whiff of a mastermind was easy to detect nowadays after having so much experience fighting them in the past. Most planets did not have one, but when they did their ship movements took on a different profile, as did their ground forces. Why every world didn’t grow one Paul didn’t know, but they were definitely the elite commanders, the Grand Admirals of the lizard empire, and he knew for a fact that they had several here.

One was in stellar orbit, another was planetary based, and the others he couldn’t be for sure, but given the reaction times to their own signal lag he had been able to isolate a few of them to specific regions. They could be on the move as well, but so far they were hiding them from him well, for if he knew what ship or station they were on Paul would take them out no matter how many drones he had to lose. Without them controlling the mega fleets he could take their entire cruiser force down within a week. They were what was melding the mass of ‘tiny’ ships into an effective fighting force, whereas normally they just snowballed their opponents with never ending weaponsfire.

That wouldn’t work against the strength of Paul’s fleet, let alone his own tactical experience, and he was pretty sure the lizards knew it. They’d been fortifying their core systems ever since Star Force had cut their empire into two halves, and he was pretty sure that had included mastermind deployment as well as massive ship counts and battlestations.

And the fact that they could hide their placements from him was both impressive and annoying. Too bad these bastards had to be bad guys, for they definitely had useful skills that could be put to better use.

Paul saw the hit and run attacks resume, trying to gage some reaction times off of them and noticed one fleet segment lapse in its mastermind control for a good ten minutes before resuming the normal ‘feel.’ Paul tried to link it up with other ship movements but failed to do so. The lizards were having some type of lag issues, but he couldn’t identify them yet. That was frustrating, but just another problem to solve going forward. They’d bitten a significant chunk out of the lizard fleet this time and that gave them less ships to maneuver around against them. A few more bites like that and the invasion would snowball in their favor, but for now Paul needed rest and the other Archons could handle the standard poking of the enemy lines, so he abandoned the nexus and command of the ship to Admiral Hestin and headed straight to the closest cafeteria, downed a lot of food and liquids, then went back to his quarters and just crashed in bed without bothering to set an alarm.

Liam was in the command nexus onboard his flagship when the interstellar transmission came through. It was routed to him immediately, with him reading Jack’s text message first off and finding it both curious and ominous. In all the years that Star Force had been in existence they’d been researching and building new tech thanks in large part to the V’kit’no’sat database. Even then it was a time consuming process, with him knowing that pure research was even more tedious. For the lizards to have created the phaser tech was a huge upgrade, but now to have also gained the cleansing beams, a completely different type of energy weapon, didn’t feel right.

Either their tech curve was greater than other races or they were getting help, and the nature of this new weapon suggested the latter. Liam’s fleet wasn’t engaged in any heavy action at the moment, just blockading a flew jumplines and poking around the perimeter of a pair of planets, so he dug into the files along with his personal research notes concerning the cleansing beam tech.

His conclusion was simple…this was not a prototype weapon, but rather a fully functional model that had gone through numerous revisions. Knowing the lizards, he didn’t think they’d sit on something this long to put out, which meant they’d gotten it from somewhere. Stealing the blueprints was possible, reverse engineering wreckage was less likely but still feasible, but the fact that these weapons were on the battlestations…which his fleet hadn’t attacked yet…and not on the cruisers suggested to him that they were designed as planetary defense weapons and were gradually being scaled down.

That meant whoever they’d gotten them from had used them in that capacity, and no known race on Star Force’s map was attributed with these cleansing beams. The versions they’d given to the Hycre and Protovic were considerably different, so it hadn’t come from them. Someone else out there had cleansing beams and they were off the radar. Whether they were allied with the lizards or one of their conquests Liam didn’t know, but this was definitely not lizard-inspired tech.

The trailblazer wondered what actually was, or did they get most of their toys from the races they conquered. They definitely had a motif to their equipment, but he wondered what their fleet had looked like thousands of years ago. He’d have to put in a request to the H’kar to see if they had any ancient records, maybe with those he might be able to pinpoint where this ‘help’ had began, though at this point it was irrelevant. They were here, now, and equipped with a new weapon that Star Force had to contend with…and Liam found it very ironic that with a little adjustment their shields could actually make it less effective than the phasers.

To that end he informed the techs he had onboard to start working on the modifications and to get him an estimate on what it would take to implement them.

10

January 31, 3101

Menchet System (lizard core)

Middle Zone

The Excalibur sat side by side with six other command ships as they all targeted a distant battlestation cluster with their Keema batteries, absorbing the firepower coming from some 14 of the lizard stations that had four cleansing beams each, though most of those were not aimed at the command ships. They were covering other angles of attack, which was why Paul had them situated along a single vector. The battlestations, as it turned out, were in fact mobile, and after the defense fleet had eventually been ground down to nothing but a scattering of cruisers running around the system pulling recon the Star Force fleet had begun targeting the battlestations.

A few had been picked off in isolation, then the others had begun redeploying into clusters. They didn’t move fast, but they were the only mobile attack assets left to the lizards…until the shipyard ring pumped out enough new ships. They were pulling off resources stockpiled there and new shipments coming up from the planet below now that their convoys were being intercepted when they arrived in system, but that hadn’t put them out of business entirely.

So far Paul had left the giant ring alone, preferring to pick off the battlestations and wait to see if reinforcements would be arriving now that they’d finished killing the 5.2 million cruisers that had been defending the system. His own force of some 80,149 drones had been reduced down to 62,611 with no warship or personnel losses, which looked like a humongous victory for Star Force, but 17,538 drones was not something you replaced lightly. Still, it was resources well spent to expose this system, assuming they were able to continue here without interference.

Rather than lose more drones Paul was using the command ships to assault the various clusters of battlestations. Their shields could hold up to the pounding of the cleansing beams even without the new rework. Had they the time they could have gone back to a shipyard to get the upgrade, but Paul wasn’t going to waste a single day now that he had their fleet down. Give the lizards time and they’d rebuild, with his first priority being to get the shipyard ring eliminated. To do that he needed to get the battlestations out of the way first then go about tackling the defenses on the ring itself, which were considerable but nothing his fleet couldn’t handle. The trick was to go forward without losing more drones, for they’d need them in the other core systems.

He also hadn’t split up his fleet, sending task groups to aid Liam and Roger. He had to eliminate this ring first, then he could get around to helping them. They weren’t nearly as far along but were chipping away at their own defending lizard fleets with mixed results. Neither trailblazer was pushing the issue, knowing better than to waste resources when it was just a matter of time before Paul broke through here and came to double up with them.

So far none of the three systems had seen reinforcement from the others. Why that was was still a guess, but it looked to Paul like the lizards were just buying time rather than trying to stop the invasion. Fight here and they’d leave their other systems exposed if they lost this engagement. Typically the lizards would have gone for that, putting all their strength into one killing blow that they could then snowball off of later, risky as it was, but they’d learned not to underestimate Star Force and Paul got the distinct feeling that this entire system had been tasked to do nothing more than stall his invasion and do as much damage as possible before they died…hoping to whittle down his fleet enough that he wouldn’t be able to make effective assaults at the other core worlds, at least not for a while.

That was fine as far as he was concerned, for these systems had to fall and them not supporting each other was going to make it easier initially so long as he didn’t let his fleet get beat down. He wasn’t going to straight to the their homeworld with it, but with these ring shipyards the lizards were able to build ships a lot faster than Star Force could and until they got knocked down there was still a slim chance the lizards could build their way out of this mismatch.

And that’s why Paul still couldn’t kick the feeling that help was on the way to keep him from destroying this one, but for now he needed to take out these battlestations so they couldn’t interfere with either the ring takedown or the planetary invasions to come. The latter wouldn’t be accomplished by this fleet, for there were no ground troops in it, but there were units standing by back in the ADZ that could be loaded up and shipped here quickly if/when the time was right.

Paul wasn’t ready to call for them yet because he wasn’t sure that they really controlled the naval situation in this system, but for the moment he was getting to shoot their battlestations down unopposed while the new cruisers coming off the slips were mostly staying put around the ring or headed down to the surface to avoid Paul’s fleet until they could group up again.

The cleansing beams coming at the Excalibur and the other command ships were packing a punch, but at this range they were petering out a bit while the Keema batteries and bloon launchers were not. As for the launchers, they’d been upgraded enough over the years that they were nearing almost railgun range, in that they could be launched and let drift ballistically for several minutes before the energy shells cracked, but attacking with only them would have meant an unbearable waiting time against the heavily armored battlestations.

As it was they were taking quite a pounding, allowing even the lesser powered cleansing beams to hammer the command ships with repetitive hits…the kind of damage the drones couldn’t take, and at this range pinpoint shots were out of the question. Both sides had huge targets to aim at, but picking off individual weapon systems was not possible even for Star Force’s Keema batteries, though Paul’s gunners were trying to disprove that assertion.

Basically it was a grinding war, with the lizards having a lot more mass to play with. If Paul wanted the battlestations dead faster he could close range and take more damage in order to bring his short range weaponry into play but the numbers didn’t add up there. He’d have to use his drones and he’d lose a fair number of them in the assaults, and even if he swarmed the targets the lizards would be able to take down a fair number of them. He didn’t like the delay, but outranging their cleansing beams was the only way to take down the battlestations cleanly, though he had ships standing by to intercept them if they attempted a retreat.

Right now they were just content to stay huddled up nearby each other and exchange fire, which suggested to Paul that they were buying time, possibly for reinforcements to come, but they’d already taken out 573 of the battlestations and no such fleets had arrived. Right now Paul had three different groups of command ships going after more stations while his warships and drone fleets held stellar orbit and continued to ambush incoming convoys. How long that would continue Paul didn’t know, for the message should have already been sent out to stop them from coming. There was a lag issue involved, but soon they should be diverted to other systems now that this one was not accessible.

Maybe that was a reason why reinforcements weren’t coming as well, for they’d lose so many in transit that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long run. Just like Paul’s fleet had to fight their way into the system and hold the jumppoint for a long time so would the lizards. He’d caught a bit of bad luck at having the enemy fleet so nearby when that happened, but he was going to lose drones no matter what and if the lizards were going to make Star Force come to them then they’d have to fight their way into each of the other systems the same way…though there were slower ways to get a massive fleet into a system.

As he let his gunners do their thing he watched as another cleansing beam went offline, hit by weaponsfire that was being thrown at the target battlestation that was not maneuvering around the others for cover. That was sloppy on the lizards’ part, for they could have prolonged this fight by using each other’s bulk to block for one another. Their shields weren’t all that great so it wouldn’t have saved them much damage, but when one was going to die without accepting the surrender offers that were continually going out, you’d think you’d want to get every cleansing beam hit in that you could.

Right now they were just soaking up damage with their armor and mass rather than using their maneuvering capability, but keeping all of the stations in position to attack simultaneously. They hadn’t let Paul come in at an angle to block out a few and had maneuvered around that attempt so they could all be firing at once. And while they were just sitting there throwing energy back and forth, Paul had ordered all firepower on one battlestation, grinding it down until its weaponry stopped returning fire.

It would then rotate around to bring another side into play and the process would repeat until it was totally offline but still floating there more or less intact, for these huge constructs didn’t blow up from within, they had to be worn down over time and the shipyard was going to be even worse…which was why he’d decided not to destroy this one.

Paul stayed at his post in the command nexus for several hours before taking a break and letting the bombardment continue at the hands of others, with the command ships rotating in and out to let their shields regenerate. He got a short workout in then some sleep before finally getting the word that all the stations in this group had had their cleansing beams knocked out.

When that happened they moved in and started targeting the short range weaponry to make sure the stations were completely incapable of harming the fleet. Meanwhile Paul, Riona, and a few mages onboard the command ships got armored up and into dropships that were then sent over to one of the smoking and damaged stations after another surrender offer was ignored.

Star Force might be killing all the lizards, but how they died mattered to Paul and the others. They weren’t going to just let them starve to death out here, so they were going to at least afford them a combat death while saving the excessive firepower that would be required to render each of these battlestations into rumble. To that end the Archons boarded the stations in teams of 6 and proceeded to clean them out personally even though there were thousands of lizards still alive inside each.

Such numbers weren’t an issue to the Archons and they simply took their time fighting their way through level after level and sweeping them with their psionics to make sure they got everyone killed. It wasn’t the kind of job one liked, but if the lizards weren’t going to surrender they had to be taken out and Paul wasn’t about to leave death boats drifting around the system while they made their move on the shipyard. Others might have, but Star Force wouldn’t if they had an alternative.

Paul fought clean, and eliminating these battlestations mean taking out everyone on them either through destruction or surrender. Then when they were clear they had a few surveillance probes left nearby to alert them if the lizards tried to sneak anyone back onboard. They weren’t going to get them in working order again, but if you’d tagged a floating junkyard as enemy free it would make a very good place to hide out if you could get there undetected. The lizards might not take that tactic in space but they had done so on the ground before so Paul wanted to eliminate that possibility by placing a few electronic eyes nearby and then moving on to the next group of battlestations.

Eventually the lizards moved the remaining ones all together after seeing them being specifically targeted. Paul intercepted and delayed some of the movements, but eventually there was a group of 294 left that he had to whittle down very slowly with all the command ships in his fleet poking at them briefly before cycling out to recharge shields. Taking them down was slow going when he wasn’t willing to commit drones to the fight and the lizards knew it, now goading him into doing so or waiting out the months’ long process.

But Paul chose to wait and poke from range while he sent his drone fleets to start engaging the shipyard ring’s defenses. They encountered some cruiser resistance until Paul upped their numbers, at which point what seemed like every cruiser they had left gathered and counterassaulted one point, forcing a conflict that Paul willingly engaged. He ended up losing 8 drones with 52 others being damaged, but he eliminated all the cruisers that the shipyard had been pumping out up to that point and managed to pluck away the defenses around a specific slice of the shipyard ring.

Ships in their slips under construction were the next logical point of attack, but Paul held off. He didn’t even have his fleet continue plucking defenses off the ring, rather just guarding stellar orbit and that particular blind spot while he continued to chew on the battlestations.

Or rather others did, while Paul, Megan, and Jack took a much larger Archon team down into the ring itself and began fighting their way across miles of the facility. There had to be billions of lizards inside the entire ring, far too many for them to kill themselves without camping out here for years, but their point of entry hadn’t been random and one of the support struts was nearby. They fought their way over to it and eventually destroyed the lifts that were running supplies and personnel up and down. It took a lot of destruction for a few hundred Archons to disable it, but once they did they began fanning out into smaller hunter teams and eliminating lizards while locking down entry points and staking out their foothold for the much larger battle to come.

As soon as the lizards knew they were fighting on the inside Paul guessed they’d be sending troops up the other shafts to counter them in a ground war for the ring. That would be a very messy campaign, but so long as they were going to fight the lizards on the ground eventually they might as well take out some of them up here…and the support struts would actually allow a route down to the surface past the anti-orbital defenses so long as the lizards didn’t blow them up to prevent it.

But first things first. Paul, Megan, and Jack sought out the control center for this piece of the ring, giant as it was, to make sure that the anti-grav generators wouldn’t be shut down and the whole thing allowed to fall to the ground. As much destruction as that would have meant for the lizards below, he’d expect nothing less if they knew they could take down trailblazers with it. To that end he also had the gravity drives and their power sources secured next, with teams of Regulars assembled from multiple warships and command ships within his fleet to come in and help hold them while the Archons continued to hunt down and further cleanse their little piece of the ring.

Meanwhile Paul sent the order back to the ADZ to send the army. He hadn’t expected to need them this soon, let alone to be fighting with them, but there was no way he was going to be sitting around and chewing apart this ring for the duration until it was totally junked…and he wasn’t going to crash it down onto the planet either. That was a possibility, at least for the chunk they now owned, but if they were going to have to clean up the planet afterwards they didn’t need to make a mess of it now and recycling this behemoth would be a lot easier if it was still intact in orbit…not to mention that Star Force could probably find a use for it if he was able to capture it rather than destroy it.

So that was the battle plan he set in motion while the battlestation cluster annoyingly defied annihilation. He wasn’t going to waste drones taking them out the quick way and neither was he going to waste ammunition and time killing the shipyard ring the way the H’kar had. It might seem to others that this was taking the hard route, but there was a difference between being a conqueror and a destroyer, and Star Force were definitely conquerors. This ring was a prize that the lizards were going to be denied, and if Paul could actually take it from them it would be that much more of a middle finger in their direction, not to mention the logistical and strategic value.

And on top of that, Paul remembered a similar assault by Anakin Skywalker during the Clone Wars against a space station that circled an entire planet. At the time such a thing seemed preposterous, but here he was doing the exact same thing and for some reason that seemed fitting…even if he didn’t have a lightsaber. That was one bit of tech even the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t figured out how to make, cutting tools aside, but the rest of the similarities held up, even if the lizards weren’t battle droids.

Though they definitely treated them as equally expendable.

Paul and the others had a lot of killing ahead of them, even when they received their reinforcements…which would also be a bigger goad to see if the other lizard systems would respond. Destroying the ring might be expected, but if they were going to take it that might just provoke the kind of reaction the lizards were trying to provoke in him against the battlestations…to come in en mass and waste ships.

As much as he knew about the lizards there was a part of them that was still an enigma and he could never fully anticipate what they would do, so right now he was leaving it in their court. Come in and try to stop the takeover of this station via a massive naval assault or let Star Force fight it out inside and slowly rip one of their painstakingly constructed prize possessions away from them.

Paul didn’t know which way they’d respond, or perhaps even a third option he hadn’t considered, but one way or another this shipyard was now out of business and the industrial might of the lizard empire had just been taken down a measurable notch. This war was already a long one, and the conquest of this system was going to take years more, not to mention the other core systems and the rest of the rimward half of their empire…but it was coming down. There was a lot of work to be done and none of it safe, but this was happening, with this system and this shipyard being the first big hit Star Force had inflicted as opposed to the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy that they’d been consuming them with up until this point.

And from here on out, everything was only going to escalate.

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