Star Force: Deus Ex: An Empire Building Military Space Opera
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2021-05-19T18:00:00+00:00
Description: Star Force has existed for 156,000 years, risen beyond a galactic empire of dinosaurs intent on wiping out Humanity only to face an intergalactic scourge known as the Hadarak. They've rescued thousands of alien races and incorporated them into their Human-led empire, building a civilization that draws onlookers from numerous galaxies to try and figure out the secret of their success. But today is the day when Star Force learn the truth. They weren't the first ones to do this...and that success is punishable with death. Or worse. **
Publisher: Independently published

1

May 9, 158408

Uvenji System (Menjag Kingdom)

Yavin 219

The moon known as Yavin 219 was small, with only .48gs of gravity, so the Star Force cities there had to add extra to bring them up to the standard 1g inside as they orbited the planet of Viegan along with three other moons. All were inhabited, but the people living here were not the same. Yavin 219 was off limits to the Bsidd that inhabited everything else in this system, and some of their bigger cities could be seen in the sky of the moon during night, spread out across Viegan’s surface in small patches that didn’t require magnification to observe.

093 was looking at them now, sitting on the rooftop observation lounge protected by an invisible energy field to make sure none of the young Terrans fell off, but it did give her a chance to feel the planet’s natural air when she chose, for the rest of the Terran city was internal and mostly unavailable to her, given that she was still in the maturia. Only 12 years old, and still with years to go before she’d get her first assignment…or the option to choose an unstructured life, though few did. All the Terrans in her class wanted to get in on the action, for in this system everything was already claimed and packed with people, but in the Outer Core where the Hadarak were, other Terrans were fighting to claim worlds of their own, and 093 wanted to join them as soon as she could.

There was no room left in the Rim to build colonies…at least not good ones. All the best planets were taken, and this was one of the few Terran colonies that even had air, according to her information. Most were on lifeless moons or asteroids, producing new Terrans either through natural births or cloning. 093 was in a class of clones, though they were identical to the natural births in every way. Still, more Terrans were needed, and needed badly, for they were proving to be amongst the best warriors Star Force had in this war, despite their youth. They might not be the strongest, the smartest, or the quickest…but they worked together the best. Even more than the hive-minded Bsidd or Paladin. The Terrans just clicked with each other, and the more of them that were involved in a project, the better that project would turn out. Which was why Star Force needed a lot of them, the quicker the better.

But 093 was a long way from getting to the war zone. Even when she graduated from the basic maturia she would have a lot of advanced learning left to do, if she chose, though she hoped to get some non-combat role in the combat zone. Anything to get out of the ‘safe’ Rim and into the action, but as she looked up at the Bsidd planet in the night sky and imagined the billions of people up there doing who knew what, part of her wondered what the point was. Defending people made sense, but to what end? So they can just sit on that world and do nothing? That didn’t make sense. It never made sense, and she’d been up here looking into the night sky many times trying to figure it out while her trainers told her she’d get answers to that question later by Andromeda, but they never said who Andromeda was and her information terminal didn’t have any explanation about how any other races started other than her own.

As she looked into the sky the wristband she and all the others wore chimed, calling her to an unscheduled summons. That happened fairly often when there was training or information to be revealed that wasn’t part of the normal schedule, and the trainers said the surprise of it was part of the process, so 093 had just gotten used to the random summons and kicked herself off one of many ledges on the rooftop and walked to the stairwell that led inside, feeling the heavier normal gravity return when she went back down into the building.

093 followed the tracker until she came to an amphitheater with more than half her class already there and took a seat amongst the others as most were yawning, for it had been a hard day of physical training and they were in their last free hour before the normal sleep cycle.

When the remainder of the 100 entered and sat down, the doors closed and the lights dimmed…then a hologram appeared on the platform that all the tiered seats faced. A hologram of a naked woman with chin-length dark hair and her hands clasped behind her back.

“Hello cadets. My name is Andromeda, and while I’m not a real person, I’ve been programmed by many to sound like one. I can respond to questions, but for now just sit and listen. There’s a great deal of valuable information that needs passed on to you, but having real people do it over and over again is a waste of their time. They need to pursue their own growth and not sacrifice it to help you in yours. To this end they created me, an interactive computer program to endlessly repeat this important information to class after class of Terran younglings, and today I am proud to announce that you are ready for deeper information on several topics that some of you have previously broached with the trainers.

“Now, based off the gleam in some of your eyes, I can assume that you’re quite happy to see that I’m naked and are wondering why…the guys, anyway…and the obvious response is to point out that a computer program doesn’t need clothes, but why do I need a body at all? The answer to that is that you respond to a person differently than you do a database, and some discussions need to be interactive. I have been programmed for this, and in the future I will be responding to many of your questions, but today is a day for you to listen. Then you can ask questions about what you heard.”

“The biggest reason I’m naked is that it’s a promise. A promise that I will hide nothing. All the knowledge I have been programmed with I will share with you. All my secrets are yours, though it will take time for you to learn them. And learning is the key.”

“The key to what, you may ask?” Andromeda said, beginning to pace sideways on the stage as she talked, with her audible footfalls sounding as if she had real bare feet padding on the stone-like floor. “Learning is the key to the Great Mystery, and it can be simplified down to the basic questions of why are we here and where did we come from. Throw in the ‘where do we go when we die’ and you have a trifecta of paradoxes that Star Force has not been able to figure out to date.”

“That’s right. Star Force doesn’t know everything. Far from it, actually, and that can be scary for many people. Terrans have been genetically engineered to embrace the Great Mystery rather than run from it, but there’s only so much your genes can do for you. They’re a starting point, and when you come face to face with the Great Mystery…which we often refer to in short hand as the Question Mark…do you explore it or ignore it? Some people can’t handle not knowing what is going on, so they make stuff up and pretend. These people are cowards, mostly, but sometimes pretending can help you get through a temporary situation when the fear would have crippled you. In the end, though, you must either face this fear or run from it. And those who run from it usually behave in a predictable way.”

“A part of them knows where they can’t look. What questions they can’t ask. They’re not naïve, they’re willfully trying to remain ignorant…but that’s impossible unless they know a little bit about what not to explore further. A truly ignorant person wouldn’t know where not to go and what questions not to ask. So the people who are running away from the Question Mark are always doing so willingly, if often subconsciously. This creates an internal disconnect with their senses that can lead to many problems, so it’s important you understand the Question Mark and how to face it.”

“The universe exists. Right here, right now. It doesn’t need you to see it to exist. The planet of Nubarik you were taught about previously. You saw pictures of it, geographical stats, and battle records. You know of its existence even if you have not been there, but you have been taught nothing of Trivora. Yet Trivora exists today, and existed yesterday when you didn’t even know the name. All of the universe exists whether you know it or not, and it does not need your permission to exist. Some people who run from the Question Mark claim the universe is only what they personally experience and everything else doesn’t exist. This is bullshit, and another way they hide from the truth. And the truth is, there is more to the universe than we will ever know, no matter how much exploring and learning we do.”

“We can’t know it all, and that’s something a lot of Terran younglings of your age have a hard time understanding, because you have a database where you can look up a lot of information. You have trainers to answer questions. And you now have me to do the same. But we don’t know everything. It just seems like we do, and the more you learn, the more you will begin to find areas where we are lacking. And it is in those areas where you will encounter the Question Mark, elusive as it may be now.”

“When you’re busy training and overcoming challenges, you often don’t have a lot of time to wonder about things, but eventually you may get around to asking where did the first Human come from? And I don’t mean Human originating on Earth. I mean our entire genetic line going back through Zen’zat and Ter’nat. Where did the first of us come from?”

“Star Force has learned of an occurrence called a ‘Life Spring’ where new races will just pop into existence when there is a lack of life on a planet. Sometimes even an entire planet just pops into existence. We don’t have any recordings of this happening, because we don’t know when it will occur, but the natural question to then ask is…where did they pop in from?”

“We don’t know. We know our Cores come from the Essence Realm, but how did they come into existence? How did the Essence realm come to be? If we go back in time as far as possible, what do we find at the very beginning…and once we find the very beginning, what happened 5 minutes before that? The past is fixed. It’s not up to interpretation, or your point of view. What happened, happened. The future is in flux, but the past is not. And even if we don’t know what happened, something did. What was it? And what happened before the beginning?”

“These questions seem to defy logic, and are what we call ‘paradoxes.’ A paradox is not a question without an answer. It is a question we can’t even theorize a possible answer for. There is one, we just can’t see it, and when you can’t see it you imagine all kinds of weird stuff. For example, people once thought black holes were smaller than your fingertip, or a gateway to another universe…which is insanely stupid, because the term ‘universe’ refers to everything, and you can’t have two everythings. No, the lack of knowledge about black holes was because you can’t see them without certain types of sensors. And if you don’t know those sensors exist, you have a black spot in the sky with no information about it. It is a gigantic Question Mark, and a lot of people made up stuff rather than admit they did not know what it was.”

“Another paradox is how big is the universe? You’ve seen a lot of maps, which we have of explored areas of our galaxy. Now imagine a map of the areas we haven’t explored. We don’t have access to it, but it exists none the less. Now assume that map is for the entire universe. Picture it in your mind. Countless galaxies spreading out in all directions. Now go to the edge of the map and tell me what you see there?”

“Is there a line? Is there a fog? Is there nothingness…because nothingness is technically still part of the universe, and would therefore be included in the map. So that begs the question, where is the end of the Universe…and what is beyond the end? It can’t just stop at a line, because there would have to be something on the other side of the line. And yet it can’t go on forever. It might look like it can, but remember your mental map has everything in it. Whatever is out there, is out there now. It doesn’t need our permission to exist. So what’s on the edge? Where is the edge? How can there even be an edge?”

“When you try and think it through, your brain feels like it’s tied into knots and you get no answers. Not only that, it makes you feel like there’s no sense in the universe, as if it’s all fake, because it doesn’t make sense. If there is a map, there has to be an edge. But if there’s an edge, what’s on the other side of it? There can’t be anything, because if there were it would count as part of the universe because the universe includes everything. So what does that even look like?”

“The answer is we have no idea. And the more you try and run that through your head the more it will hurt…because it is a paradox, and a paradox is a Question Mark that is not just unknown, but you’re looking at it the wrong way. Sometimes it’s helpful to look at old paradoxes that have now been solved, and I’ll give you one. The birthplace of Star Force was a planet called Earth in the Home One Kingdom. Back before they had spaceships…or at least before they knew they did…people asked the question where were the ends of the Earth? What would happen if they just started walking in a straight line and never stopped? Would they come to the end and fall off, or would it just go on forever. How could it go on forever? It had to be there now, and even if they couldn’t get to it, it had to end somewhere…yet it couldn’t end, because what was beyond it?”

“It’s a similar paradox to where is the edge of the universe, but the key problem here was the people of Earth back then were assuming that the Earth was flat. The ground does look flat, especially on the bigger planets, and it was an easy assumption to make…but it was wrong and it was the problem with the paradox. If you know the curvature of a planetoid, you know that if you keep walking in a straight line, the gravitation curve is going to bring you back to your original spot…because your straight line isn’t really a straight line. The planet is curved, not flat. And when that was discovered, the paradox was broken.”

“So it was a bad assumption that was preventing them from solving the paradox. So, does that help us with our question? Does the universe curve around on itself? Unfortunately no. The curve of a planet can be measured if you look closely enough, and measuring straight lines in space is how we travel between stars, so we’re quite good at it. There is no curvature to a vacuum. So if the universe doesn’t curve back on itself, we’re back to the original paradox of where is the edge?”

“Knowing that another paradox was the result of an assumption helps settle your brain and give you confidence that there is an answer, we just haven’t discovered it yet. But without that confidence, paradoxes can be quite scary. When you face one of those big Question Marks, remember that an answer exists. An answer always exists. You just don’t know it. Maybe nobody knows it, but an answer will always exist. If you let the fear fuel your imagination of things that you have no data to work with, your mind can become quite warped and put you into a state where you don’t want answers to anything. Analysis, testing, learning…these things can become viewed as the enemy and even knowledge itself can be reviled and targeted for destruction. Many civilizations have been destroyed in this manner, and it all comes down to the fear of the Question Mark and how people reacted to that fear.”

“Face it, don’t run from it. And if you can’t figure it out today, shrug your shoulders and try again later, but let it go for now. Temporarily. There will always be plenty of universe to explore. You’ll never run out, as far as we know, and you don’t need to rush it. What you do need to do is work on the pieces that you have access to. The places where you are, not the places you’ve heard about or the places you don’t know exist. The place you have the most interaction with is your body. It is your home, and you need to learn about it more than you need to worry about the edge of the universe…assuming there is one.”

“And to that point, we come to the gleam in most of the guys’ eyes right now. You’ve seen pictures of naked people before, seen each other naked, but there’s a part of you that is still geeking out over the fact that I’m standing here naked for you to see. The girls are probably cringing a little bit, because I’m in better shape than you and you don’t like it, or more likely because you’ve been instinctually programmed to be attracted to naked guys and repulsed by naked women. That’s basic mating instincts, and don’t worry, there will be other informative programs in the future that will be naked guys…in which case the reverse will be true and the boys will be cringing a bit.”

“Unlike some other races, your reproductive instincts are quite powerful, and you’re going to be having to cope with them as they come online. We’ll discuss this in more detail later, but the key to mastering them is learning about them. Until you do, they will run you, for they are part of your ‘Training Wheels.’ You’ve learned how to deal with pain, which is another training wheel, now you have to deal with pleasure, and it works differently, but it is still encouraging you to do something your genetic instincts want you to do, while pain discourages you from doing something. It tells you what to do and what not to do, and it will continue this until you realize it’s not you, it’s the instincts. And they’re suggestions, not orders.”

“But you also have a lot of instincts we designed, or more accurately copied, from others that were desirable. Many of these will unlock as you go through life, but only if you continue to learn and grow. Fear of the Question Mark leads you to not look, not listen, not learn. And that leads to stagnation. Stagnation leads to attrition winning out over healing when you don’t try to heal. When you don’t try to solve problems, fix malfunctions, or upgrade in any way. Stagnation leads to death, and as such, fear of the Question Mark has led many people into a self-destructive path.”

“Now, what is naked? It is a feeling you get more than anything. If you wear heavy winter clothing for a month, then take it off to just a T-shirt and shorts, you will feel naked. Likewise, if you never wear clothes, you won’t feel naked. Why not? Because the feeling of being naked is a more exposed state than ‘normal’ and ‘normal’ changes over time. Now, some of you are going to want to feel naked in a few years. You’re going to like it. And you’re going to want more of it…but when you stop wearing clothes that will become normal and you’ll lose the sensation. The same is true of mating. It’s the newness of it that is the most powerful lure, and the more you do of it, the less intense it gets. Why? Because you have knowledge of it. It’s not a black hole with no data. That’s why you’re given naked pictures to look at, and why you’ll be given the opportunity for sexual training later, so you can get some data for your mind to chew on. And after a while, you won’t even see me as naked. You’ll see this image of my body as normal…but every new class of Terrans will be smiling just as much as you guys are now.”

“The Question Mark will define your life one way or another. Never accept not knowing as permanent. Never accept questions that cannot be asked. Places that cannot be explored. Thoughts that cannot be thought. All of these are indicative of the fearful running from the Question Mark and pretending it doesn’t exist. You have an imagination to consider things, even bad things…and in some ways especially to try out bad things in your mind rather than in reality. Why? To figure out they’re bad and that you shouldn’t actually do them. You’ll get a lot of those with your mating instincts. Stupid stuff, bad stuff, and some good stuff. You gotta run them through your mind and vet them, often multiple times. The same is true of horrors, which we rarely show you here, because the universe, as grand as it is, had a darkside to it, and it can crush many minds who are not ready to handle it.”

“You become ready by learning and growing into more powerful people. And horrors are something you don’t want to think about, but you need to. And you feel the need, often to run it through your mind over and over again, because there is something about it that doesn’t add up. Something you’re not understanding. It’s like a pardox, and you need to think about it, but you also need to let it go temporarily. You’re not going to understand everything, so you can’t hold onto one Question Mark until you solve it. If you do you’ll end up stagnate, or go insane, when you can’t find the answer.”

“Now that’s the ‘not so pleasant’ side of this conversation,” Andromeda said, seeing a lot of those sexual smiles fading away. “You can do nothing of value in this life if you refuse to face the Question Mark, and developing the skills and habits to deal with it whenever you encounter it, will be the primary deciding factor for success or failure throughout your life. You must become comfortable with not knowing, without permanently abandoning the search for answers. You’re not going to figure that out today, so you need to chip away at it a little bit each day, or each week, or whatever periodic time measurement you want. Don’t obsess over it, and don’t ignore it. Chip away at it, and take comfort in knowing there are answers to the Great Mystery of the Universe, even if we will never find all of them.”

“That said, Star Force has found many of them, and I was created to share some of the crucial ones with you that you weren’t ready for before now. So…” Andromeda said as she stopped pacing and came back to the center of the platform facing the Terrans while pulling her hands out from behind her back and gesturing to the class. “Who has my first question?”

2

May 11, 158408

Byion System (Jumanji Kingdom)

Aertyon

He had spent his maturia years known only as 043 amongst his brothers and sisters, and to the trainers and pseudo AIs Andromeda, Hector, Perseus, and Cortana. It wasn’t until he had graduated from the basic maturia that he earned his first name…Pan…and along with his birthdate and lot number, that is how he had been referred to during his advantage maturia training. Pan had chosen combat training amongst the various pathways available to Terrans, with those few who chose to abandon the call to duty slithering their way far from the maturia, to what end he didn’t know and truly didn’t care. They were regarded as quitters to some, traitors to others, and because of that there was no true civilian cities in the Terran Faction of Star Force.

Everyone had a duty to do, and if one wasn’t assigned to them they found a way to make themselves useful, even if in small ways. All Terrans were on the same team, and worked together to protect and uplift one another. Those few who chose to walk another path left the Terran worlds for Axius, for they were not welcome. There was an inherent call to duty within the Terrans, and it was more than culture. It was in their very DNA, which they all shared. All Terrans had exactly the same base genetic code, with physical variations due only to random presets chosen from a full list that all Terrans had. Even male and female alterations were encoded into both genders, then activated at a rate of 1 to 4, biased towards males.

That meant out of his class of 100, 74 of his siblings were male, and 25 were female. This ratio was the typical one, though some variation did occur, for reasons Pan did not know. Males had a slight edge when it came to physical endeavors, which was why they were needed in greater numbers. Females had part of their structure configured to become a spawn point when necessary, and the surrogate system that had been used to birth Pan 2,309 years ago was no longer in use. It had got the Terran Faction up and running faster than natural growth rates would allow by using Humans and Zen’zat as carriers for the Terran embryos, for Star Force had dictated that no artificial birthing process would be used for races that used a blood link during initial growth.

Such a link provided more than oxygen and nutrients. It also typically allowed the immune system of the mother to protect the infant when it was most vulnerable to bacteria and other foreign interlopers…but beyond that there was a different link that could not be fully calculated. It was believed to have something to do with one Core existing within the body that contained another, but that was only speculation. Never the less, it had been mandated that such a process be maintained just in case something would be lost if an artificial womb was created.

Thus the Terrans were all birthed from a living mother, though not necessarily from their own race. Pan had not known his, for as soon as he was born he was put into the maturia and raised by its Handlers and Trainers. The former provided care, direction, and logistics while the Trainers were the ones who did the teaching, and all of them only stayed with each class for a maximum of 2 years, cycling out with more advanced staff coming in that specialized in a different stage of the younglings’ development…yet Pan still remembered certain Trainers and Handlers, for they had made a lasting impression on him.

But now he was far from the maturia, standing on an elevated dais looking out over the parade grounds where a new batch of Terrans were assembling into rows for the first time with their Battalion. All 50,000 of them were fresh out of advanced maturia training, with no individual younger than 55 at the minimum. That was the barest requirement for duty in the Hadarak War, and most here were at least 70, for the end games of the maturia training were meant to be harder than fighting the Hadarak themselves. Terrans didn’t send troops into combat before they were ready, but Pan knew there were some lessons that could only be learned on the battlefield and nowhere else.

He had served through more campaigns than he could remember, though if he checked his service record it would have registered 732. About a third of those were with the Fer’nor’sha Battalion, which was the equivalent of saying 18th/29th/3rd in the Terran language. They all spoke the Star Force basic language of English from birth, but in their advanced maturia training they learned a second one, built specifically for their race. One that resembled V’kit’no’sat considerably, but was more logically structured. Fer’nor’sha was not numbers, but syllables from a list that were used to modify base words.

For example, the armor that he wore now was known in its generic form as ‘Keevan,’ but if he wanted to name his helmet and it had no previous name, he would choose a word from the syllable list and add it. So his armor’s helmet would be known as ‘Keevan’tre,’ while his armored gloves would be ‘Keevan’nor’ and his armored boots ‘Keevan’bro.’ In this way, Terrans could construct new terms easily as new discoveries were made, new technology created, or other naming was required. The Battalions needed names, so as such they used the syllables as if they were numbers, with his officially being known as ‘Herrik’fer’nor’sha,’ for the word ‘Herrik’ meant Battalion in a specific way while the English word had many different meanings for it.

Terran was designed to be specific, and the Archons that led the Battalions had also become fluent in it, so much so that it was rumored they even used it at times when not dealing with Terrans. Pan didn’t know if that was true or not, but he had worked with Battalion commanders enough that he could tell they had learned the language personally rather than had a mental download. All the Terrans had to learn it, and in doing so they got a better understanding of the language rather than just a mental template implanted onto an existing language.

There were certain ways of saying things that weren’t in the template, and Pan and the others could tell when someone had it or not, for it seemed those that worked with Terrans wanted to impress them with their use of the language…and it typically had the opposite effect as they spoke it with such odd phrasing it was obvious they had never built a functioning mental program around it.

Pan had his keevan’tre under the crook of his left arm and held against his hip as he stared out at the assembling troops, all of which had their helmets on and were carrying no weapons, but all had backpacks containing what few personal items they wished to carry with them into the war zone. Terrans usually traveled light and didn’t cling to personal possessions. Pan had but one he took with him. A small amulet that he wore around his neck underneath his armor. It had been given to him by Kli’vik-B-3994204, a Bsidd Maverick who had commanded the Mor’ner’tra some 82 years ago…and perhaps still did. Pan had been reassigned to a different Battalion with a higher rank, and the same was happening to most of the experienced Terrans in order to provide the Shinys the combat leadership they needed to maximize their chances of survival through the first year.

‘Shiny’ was the term for a newb who had gone through training successfully, and referred to brand new armor that had never seen dirt or grime from the field. It felt like an inaccurate term to Pan at first, but he’d come to understand what it meant beyond the basic definition. These Shinys needed guidance to get them through the first battles alive, and while Pan had seen some Terrans die to the Hadarak, he had seen far more survive due to teamwork, leadership, and the experience given to them by seasoned Captains…and this was his first assignment as the primary Captain of a Battalion, known as a ‘Rex’. There were 50 others, each assigned to oversee 1000 men, but the entire Battalion was his responsibility to guide with his experience while following the orders of their Commander or General.

And because of his new rank, he now had earned his third name. His second had come after his first successful campaign, making him Pan Trevor. Now he was known as Pan Trevor Gregoria, and few Terrans could lay claim to the prestigious third name. Their Faction was still young, at only a few millennia, and to date no Terran had earned a fourth, nor knew the criteria for it. That would be revealed by the Director himself when the time came, for he was continually overseeing the growth of their Faction personally…which was a point of pride for the Terrans, as all the other full Factions had a trailblazer directing them. But only the Terrans had the Director of Star Force sculpting their civilization as it continued to grow.

“I always like this view,” a voice said from behind Pan in Terran as he spun around to see two people walking towards him out of the tall building from which the dais extended. “It gives a mental waypoint to mark the beginning of a new campaign that otherwise would be lost in the grind to come.”

“General,” Pan said, nodding his head in respect at seeing the telltale Archon armor that the man wore…but his companion stood nearly a foot taller than him wearing a type of armor he had never seen before, but had read about.

“I am Iden-202747 of Clan Jinx, and this is my apprentice Lion Sarul.”

“Commander,” Pan greeted. “Am I right in assuming you’re not a Zen’zat?”

Lion smiled faintly. “Not all Furyans have blue skin,” he said, anticipating his next question. “My bloodline does not.”

“Sarul?” Pan asked, not recognizing it.

“My parents are Sara-012 and Paul-024. It’s not one of the original pairings.”

“How many are there now?”

“Over 700 at last count.”

“Is Morul still dominant?”

“Slightly,” Lion said briskly.

“My apologies, Commander. I didn’t mean that as an insult. We don’t know much about Furyans and we’re curious to get any information we can.”

“Have you ever worked with one?” Iden asked.

“Never.”

“Think of him as a slow Archon,” the Human said deadpan as the Furyan frowned in his direction. “But they have certain aptitudes not unlike Terrans that manifest when given enough experience. Though while your sweet spot is teamwork, the Furyans tend to excel at solo work.”

“We’re not that bad at it,” Pan said defensively.

“No, of course not,” Iden said, putting a hand on Pan’s shoulder as he turned him back to look out at the parade ground. “They just like it more than you do. Have you been through the roster?”

“Twice now, General.”

“Any concerns?”

“Depends on where we’re hitting first?”

“We’re going to reinforce the Pag’sho’ver rather than start with an invasion of our own. The downside is they’re bottled up against more resistance than I like taking Shinys into.”

“Understood. Will be creating a second beachhead or intermixing with the Pag’sho’ver?”

“I’ll decide when we get there, but Lion and me will be going in together for some scouting first, after which I want a 20 man squad hand-picked by you to follow us in. Not all Captains, but at least 4. This group of Hadarak is tougher and I want to get a feel for what we’re up against before we throw the full Battalion at them.”

“Speed or heavies?”

“Speed.”

“I’ll have it to you by the end of the day.”

“We’ve got a three month trip, Rex…no rush,” the Archon said, placing his hands on the solid rail in front of him as the last few Shinys arrived and took their position in tightly packed rows all facing the dais. “I lost three men on my last campaign. I want that to be zero this time.”

“Any new strategies you want to employ?”

“Better luck,” Iden said stoically. “It’s almost always bad luck rather than making a mistake or facing a superior enemy. Terrans are very good at covering for one another, and not as brash and reckless as these guys,” he said, thumbing back at the Furyan. “It’s almost always bad luck when we lose one of you. And I don’t know a strategy to increase luck on a permanent basis.”

“What about temporarily?”

“Move where the enemy doesn’t expect you and keep moving. Old Archon trick,” he said with a wink as he raised a hand to the troops ahead of them and keyed in his armor’s mic to the grounds’ speakers.

“Terrans, I bring you greetings from the war. It’s not over yet, and nowhere close to conclusion. The outcome we already know. We win. But the work required is not even half done. The Hadarak do not surrender, so every world they have we have to take by force, and they conquered nearly half a galaxy. We know they haven’t infested every planet in their captured systems, but they have taken most of them. The estimates are somewhere in the insane region of 1 trillion planetoids that need to be taken back from them, and before you ask how is that even possible, the answer is clear. One at a time.”

“The work is hard and dangerous, but it is that work that most of us are called to. We are not meant for peace. We create peace for others to be born into, train in, and perhaps forever live within…but warriors cannot tolerate peace for long. Conflict draws us, because where there is conflict, there is something worth doing. And when there is nothing worth doing, we train to increase our power so the next time there is something worth doing, our odds of accomplishing it are greater.”

“But right now, we don’t have to worry about running out of battles to fight. We have more than we can take on, and the Grand Border is the only thing holding back the Hadarak from invading the Rim. Despite the large chunks of their territory that we have taken, those that remain don’t care, and probably don’t even know about the losses elsewhere. All they know is where they are at and what they have to do to hold it, or to take it. And that is the battlefield we will meet them on. If they choose to surrender we will gladly accept it, but not a single world absent a Jedein has traded possession without a fight to the death, and those Hadarak individuals who might consider it are killed by their brethren before they have a chance to think it through.”

“So as we do the gruesome work they force us into, remember this. Every world taken from the Hadarak is one where future Hadarak will not be born. That means the people that would have been born into those bodies and ensnared with their darkside instincts will not suffer that fate. At least not on that planet. So we are not only fighting to protect those currently living. We are fighting to end the Hadarak spawn camp on these worlds as well. We were the lucky ones, being born into Star Force. Most of the galaxy is not. And while we can’t save these Hadarak, we can fight for future ones not to be born into this trap. Every world we take is another spawn camp removed, and in its place we will build a Terran colony or outpost to ensure the light of civilization will guard over it and prevent the atrocities that you have not seen yet from occurring again.”

“But you will see them soon, and it is something you will never fully be able to accept…but you will numb up to it. You have to in order to fight it. Just don’t make the mistake of numbing up so much that you can’t feel at all. If you do that, your senses will be so dull they become a blind spot. And a blind spot is a quick way to get yourself killed…or worse, fall into the trap of the darkside without even realizing it.”

“We are going to take worlds from the Hadarak our way, not their way. And while they may force us to fight and kill them, we always hold the option of their surrender ready, and will never deny it if it should occur. We do not seek their deaths, we seek an end to the carnage. But if they choose to make the only option that of a bloodbath, we will fight that bloodbath honorably in order to stop it from happening again.”

“I have been through many bloodbaths in this war, and even more before it. It is hard to stay the course at times, but the more you learn to stay true to yourself and the lightside, the less hard it gets…but it’s never easy. It’s like a wind that continually tries to knock you off course, and you have to constantly make adjustments. If you start to lose your way, ask for help from those around you. Planets are worthless if we lose ourselves in claiming them. And I would rather die in a losing battle than win by going to the darkside. The lightside is worth dying for, if it comes to that. But it’s also worth living for, and it’s how we’re shielding all those in the Rim under our care. We’re going into some very dark areas, and they will always look dark…because we are lights that shine on others, but we don’t see our reflections. All we see is the darkness around us. And that is why it is those who shine the most who need to cling to the path the hardest. For the universe is always dark around us. Star Force is an island of light amongst a dark sea, but to wayward ships it is a welcome beacon of direction. So even if you don’t feel the light, it’s because it’s not shining on you, it’s shining out of you onto others, both present and future.”

“Now, the war isn’t going to wait for us while I talk on and on, so there are your dropships,” Iden said, pointing behind the rows of ships. “Board them now and we’ll be leaving the system within the day. If anyone wants to change their mind and stay behind, now is the time. We won’t be coming back until we win, no matter how long it takes. Move out.”

The troops saluted in unison, then spun around 180 degrees in place and began marching in rows back towards the parked dropships with boarding ramps waiting in the lowered position.

“Best speech I’ve heard to date,” Pan said, pulling on his helmet.

“The best speeches are the blunt ones,” Iden said, keeping his nanite helmet retracted. “Are you ready for another dive into the darkness?”

“It’s what I was born to do, General.”

“Likewise,” he said, giving Pan only a slight heads up as he theatrically waved a hand towards him and telekinetically lifted the Terran up and over the railing, then lowered him to the ground below some 16 meters down, after which he and Lion jumped over the railing and flew to the ground beside him. The trio began to walk behind the departing troops, and would board the last dropship as the group made its way up to the troopship in orbit that would take them across Star Force territory, beyond the Grand Border, and into the war zone.

Then that’s where the ‘fun’ would begin…again.

3

May 16, 158408

Vedran Omega System (Home Three Kingdom)

Arachu

Meona sat still onboard the dropship in the passenger section, the only person there as the pair of Terran pilots flew her up to orbit for a rendezvous with a visiting starship that would be taking her to a destination unknown. The ship itself was a warship, but not a drone carrier. It was an Aeon-class warship that had a forked split in the front like an Era’tran vessel, but the back half had the same fork going the other way, but on a vertical plane. It wasn’t of Terran construction, nor did she know who had made it, but it was definitely a Star Force vessel according to its IDF tag. Other than that Meona had no clue what it was or where it would be taking her.

All she knew was that after some auxiliary medical testing that she had qualified for an ultra-high access training program within the Empire…something that went beyond the Terran Faction. The choice was hers, but it had to be a blind choice, and if she went and later decided to quit, she couldn’t tell anyone what she had seen or learned. This was secret stuff, and even that basic brief she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone else about.

Meona was 804 years old, and proudly worked in one of the Terran shipyards constructing the giant ribs that held the ships together. She and her team would put the skeleton of one in place, then move on to the next while others added to the frame they laid down in an assembly process that was well honed at this point, despite the youth of their Faction compared to the rest of the Empire.

She enjoyed her work, and supporting the ongoing war even while not wanting to see any of it in person. Meona was a builder, not a fighter, but like all Terrans she knew how to fight if necessary. She just preferred to load the metaphorical gun for others…and to help build better and better guns.

And that’s what warships were…big guns for the infantry war in the stars that was determining the fate of space lanes, and the Terrans needed as many as possible. Resources were in short supply, but they had been able to construct their own star forge in this system and were drawing raw materials out of the middle layers where at least four previous planets had met their demise. It was hard to get to, but all the easy mining in the colonized Rim had already been claimed by others…and the gigantic garbage pits that stars were actually made for good mining if you could find the right ones.

But then one random day that test had come back positive, and for what she hadn’t been told. Just that she had potential for something and would be transported to a secret training facility if she wanted to go. Meona had demanded to know if it was combat related, and they’d thankfully told her it wasn’t direct combat training...but more of a support function.

That was enough to allow her to indulge her curiosity, though in truth she probably would have went anyway just to find out and then quit if she didn’t like it, but this way it put her mind more at ease…even though her knees were knocking slightly at the magnitude of what she imagined she was getting herself into.

Meona ran her fingers through her elbow-length purple hair as her body needed something to do other than just sit here in order to keep her mind from jumping through hoops, but there was nobody to talk to and nothing to do but sit and wait as the dropship moved up through the atmosphere and into space, then climbed up into a much higher orbit where the Aeon-class starship waited.

No blueprints were available in the accessible database, so as they got closer she tried to pick out any surface features that would indicate what weapon systems it had…but the hull was perfectly smooth. Not a single bump on it, yet it wasn’t shining with reflected sunlight. It was a dull red color, and she could tell by the visual effect that it was absorbing most of the light that hit it.

That meant it was probably nanite armor poured over the static armor beneath. Expensive stuff, and not the greatest in a slugging fight…but for a smaller ship like this, the ability to transfer armor from one part of the hull to another gave it a longevity in intermittent and indirect fighting, and that suggested a skirmisher or striker build, with her guessing the latter.

Those prongs were more than just for design aesthetics. On Era’tran vessels they housed the docking bays, and protected them by allowing access only through the interior of the fork, with ships actually able to get into space while still surrounded by a lot of the larger vessel. But this design, she guessed, was a weapons’ array, meaning it probably had one big gun in the front and another in the back for redundancy. Thanks to gravity drives not having a directional aspect, which direction you flew the ship in was your choice, though interstellar travel often required a heavily armored patch in the front…unless you had ample shielding to compensate.

This one most assuredly did, despite her not being able to see any of the emitters on the surface. That made them a little less efficient, but keeping them hidden also made them hard to target. And if there was a sensor scrambling energy curtain involved, an enemy couldn’t scan the interior of the ship more than a few inches deep. And most high end tech usually transmitted through the armor at least a meter anyway, unless you needed more bang, in which case this type of nanite armor could move to clear the path…which was another useful trick if you weren’t in the heavy combat zones that had people shooting at you from all angles simultaneously.

As the dropship approached a split appeared in the egg-like midsection, with a glowing docking bay appearing inside with four levels. Her ship slid into the upper middle one, or in her mind #2, though there were no markings visible. The inside was standard enough, though there were no telltale Faction idiosyncrasies. Whatever this was, even the interior was custom designed.

“You’re clear to debark,” one of the pilots called back through the open doorway to the cockpit.

“Gabran,” she said, which was the Terran version of ‘thanks,’ as she happily hopped up out of her seat and walked back through the rows into the cargo hold where the main ramp was located so fast her hair trailed behind her in a purple curtain surfing the disturbed air.

When she hit the ramp and walked down it, she felt a gravity shift…to the heavy side. She guessed it was probably .2g higher than standard, which was rather odd. Only a handful of races used higher gravity, and most of those were in the V’kit’no’sat division.

Who exactly was she meeting with?

Before she got an answer the dropship pulled up and slid out of the hangar bay…with the doors sliding back in to cover what looked like a wound in the ship, and Meona was sure they were double layered with nanites on the outside, because what she saw from within was Tu’gor battle plates at least 3 meters thick in a zigzag interlock that pressed together seamlessly…at least from her point of view. If she’d been closer she bet the seam would still be there, but with an even tinier zigzag on a microscopic level so no direct line of sight was possible through it, even for a nanite to pass through.

“You like it?” a voice said from behind her in the Star Force standard language. Meona turned around to see a faintly blue-skinned giant wearing an Archon’s uniform, and her breath caught in her chest. “From a ship builder’s perspective, I mean.”

“Who made it?” she managed to utter as the much taller individual walked up to her.

“Let’s just say it had some borrowed designs in it, though we made it.”

“Which Faction?”

“The Clans are all pitching in to create a few each when they have the time. I’m not sure which one actually constructed this ship, but they’re all built from the same model and we haven’t had time to develop any upgrades. It’s more than a prototype, but until we get a proper crew we can’t really field test it.”

“There’s no crew?” Meona asked, finding her mouth starting to work properly again.

“For standard stuff, sure. But we don’t have enough Xaviers to use the new toys. Are you familiar with Essence enhancement?”

“Not personally, but I’ve read about the technology.”

“Well, there’s another type of enhancement we’re dabbling with, and the Aeons are built for that purpose. I was the first to break through into that ability, and according to testing you’re close enough for me to push the rest of the way.”

Meona frowned. “You mean one of my buried psionics?”

“No, no…” the Archon said humorously. “This is more like the Force from Star Wars. And as it happens, I’m on my way to the Jedi Temple and thought I’d save the couriers a trip by picking you up on the way. Delayed me 9 days, but it’ll give us a chance to get you prepped before we get there. My name is Paul-024.”

“I…know who you are,” she said, stammering a bit.

“I get that a lot,” he said, throwing some calming telepathy her way. “It’ll wear off, and since we have some time to kill, time to answer your questions. So start asking,” he said as he directed her to start walking towards a nearby archway.

“What test did I pass?”

“All biological life, even that without a Core, generates a previously invisible energy called the Saiolum. It’s a bit cloyant, like water, and hangs around planets, but strands of it can travel from one cluster to another, so there are links between star systems where there is ample life. It’s rare that someone is actually aware of it, let alone can tap into it. Certain mindsets get you closer or further from it, and if you’re close enough you can be pushed across the barrier with the help of someone who had already crossed it, or with the right technology. Ours is primitive, but using it along with my help has given us a 100% success rate for those who passed the screening.”

“What was the screening, exactly?”

“Mostly brain scans looking for output patterns, but also a little bit of construction adaptation. Those who are close reconfigure slightly, and the actual breakthrough alters you on a cellular level in certain areas. It’s an upgrade, but can leave you with one hell of a transitional headache. Better technology will diminish this, but it’s not something any of the others haven’t been able to handle.”

“You went through this too?”

“I didn’t have any technological help. I had to break through on my own, and so far I’m the only person we’ve found in this galaxy that has. It’s exceedingly rare, and we need as many Xaviers as we can get…that’s our term for those who can tap into, sense, and use the Saiolum.”

“What can it do?”

“Where Essence can give you really badass weapon discharges, the Saiolum is more about communication and scanning, along with movement and a few other things. It looks unimpressive at first, from a tactical sense, but that’s only because your vision of it is dependent on your skill. The higher you get, the more detailed you can see and the more potential applications you can find.”

“What does this ship do with it?”

“Sail,” Paul said cryptically. “And it can outmaneuver any vessel that only has gravity drive propulsion. But the catch is the system has to be inhabited, the more the better.”

“And the weapon arrays?”

“What weapon arrays?” Paul said blankly.

“It’s listed as a warship, and those forks suggest a bottling effect.”

“Bottling effect yes, weapons no. When properly manned, they will be able to draw in and bottle Saiolum, increasing the density for use in various applications. The weaponry is standard plus one Materia.”

“Then why put this Saio stuff into a warship and not a support ship?”

Paul lifted a hand as they passed through the archway and into the ship’s corridors…which were extra large by Terran standards…and waved it past her face.

Meona’s head surged with what felt like a rush of energy, as if her senses were saturated with detail…too much detail…and suddenly she saw herself twisting and falling without being able to feel it until she hit the ground, with the pain of the hard floor barely registering as her head swam in sensation.

“Give it a moment,” Paul said as she sat on the floor, looking at the walls, ceiling, and her own hands until her senses calmed down enough to bring her back into a state of control…though she missed the bliss of whatever that was.

“What did you do to me?”

“The same thing this ship could do to the crew of an enemy fleet during combat,” he said, all levity in his voice gone. “Weapons aren’t just about destruction, they’re also about disruption, and the Saiolum can have an effect on any biological lifeform. Even bacteria. In this case, I used it to enhance you beyond what you could handle. If I do it again you’ll be a little resistant to it, then a bit more and more over time as you get a handle on how to operate at the higher level, but to new enemies it will take them completely off guard, and if I didn’t stop influencing you I could keep you on the floor with that weird smile for hours.”

“It did feel good,” she admitted as she got back up and continued to walk with him. “What did it to do me, exactly?”

“Made your biological parts work better than normal…briefly. Think of it as an ambrosia.”

“Do high population worlds get some of this naturally?”

“Keen deduction, Watson. Though nowhere near what you just got.”

“Did you make it from your own?”

“I pulled from the Saiolum around us, reconfigured it, and slapped it in your face.”

“And Terrans can do this too?”

“Anyone can, in theory. It’s less about your body structure and more about how you personally customize it. Get in harmony with the Saiolum and the barrier will slowly disintegrate until you break through. Get out of harmony and it will reestablish and you’ll lose your connection to it. And so far, it seems the darkside puts you out of harmony.”

“It’s a lightside-only energy field?” Meona said, shocked.

“Not just lightside, unfortunately, but the nastier people can’t use it. It was once described to me as a builder mentality, and those that seek destruction aren’t exactly compatible with that.”

“Well that explains me then.”

“Only partially. The parameters are very specific, and the initial breakthrough is tenuous. I’ve got a big enough opening to the Saiolum I’d have to get really out of alignment to lose it, though it’s possible given enough time. You’re going to have to learn to tune yourself to it in order to hold the brief hole we open for you…that is, if you want to try?”

“Do I want to try?” she said with a laugh. “That was better than sex.”

“You’ll have to pass on that for a while,” Paul warned. “The mating instincts pull you far away from the tuning you’ll need.”

“Is that why Archons don’t do it?” she asked a lingering question for many in the Empire.

“Let’s just say it interferes with our badass mojo just as much, and if we have to choose between kicking ass or screwing it…well, there really is only one choice.”

Meona shrugged. “I’m not that keen on fighting anyway, so I don’t think I’d make that choice. But whatever you just did to me…I want more. Please.”

“That’s why you’re here. There’s a sea of it out there for you to tap into…and then use to help others. We’re not going to teach you just to let you sit and bathe in it. We need help saving the galaxies, and this is another way to help aside from building ships.”

“Galaxies?” she said, emphasizing the ‘s’ on the end.

“You heard right, though we’re not there yet. But it’s coming. Along with a lot of new bad guys. Can you help us fight them? Or is that too far outside your skillset?”

“How do people with a builder mindset fight?”

“You find the broken parts and fix them…or replace them,” Paul said succinctly.

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but it makes perfect sense. Are those parts planets or people?”

“Works either way you look at it. Shall we go, or do you want to go back to the shipyard?”

“You tell me if I’m up to it,” Meona said, raising her left hand in front of him.

Paul gripped it, bypassing her Ikrid block and scanning her mind thoroughly in a way the computers never could.

“You’ll do,” he said with a wink as he simultaneously contacted the bridge and told them to get underway. “But that hair…”

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked with a frown.

“How do you keep it from getting caught in what you’re working with?”

“I usually pull it back. Do I need to here?”

“How can you be a builder and tolerate the inefficiency of it?”

“I’m not the subject matter.”

“Well, maybe by the time we work out the technology it won’t matter, but some of the stuff we’re using requires a type of helmet with skin contact, and long hair interferes with it.”

“But yours doesn’t?” she asked, referring to his inch-long black hair on the top of his head, while the sides were half that long.

“My scalp can breathe enough for it to work, but most of the others are going bald to maximize the interface…though they are far less sensitive than I am, so they need the help. You don’t have to worry about it now, but from an Archon point of view, none of us would ever let our hair get that long. It just gets in the way of too much stuff.”

“I like the flow,” she admitted. “It’s calming.”

“Keep it then, but if you find you need a little edge, in anything, cut it short. It’ll feel like a breath of fresh air…especially for your neck.”

“They never taught us that in the maturia.”

“They can’t teach you everything. Just enough to get you started off properly. And to get you started off properly here, there’s one big secret you need to know…and that’s how I learned most of the stuff I learned about the Saiolum. Do you remember Yoda from Star Wars…?”

4

May 19, 158408

Plovis Chardra System (Hadarak War Zone)

Katanya

The Terran scout ship that had originally discovered this system had been charting Hadarak travel patterns out from the Deep Core and their diverging tendrils of reinforcements, adding to the overall map Star Force was compiling, but it was still far from complete. There were many systems here that the V’kit’no’sat had never found, nor ventured this far in, wary of the roaming Hadarak prior to the surge that had seemingly conquered everything in its path.

Yet there were pockets they did not own, nor cared to. But there were also some that simply did not fall, and the Terran scout ship had noticed several tendrils that behaved differently than others, notably that they veered away from what appeared to be more direct routes through a certain sector of space. When that ship had tried to cross that area to get from one tendril to another, it had run into a race a cyborgs that were incredibly well armed, but were inclined to talk first and shoot later.

That first contact had prompted the scout ship to immediately return with its intel, followed by a more proper greeting party that included an Archon…but the race of cyborgs, known as the Vestil, were not interested in Star Force other than to provide them with a map and dictate where they could and could not travel through their territory. However, the general information that Star Force provided them got a different response in the form of a request that any future interactions be routed through one of Star Force’s cyborg allies called the Chamra.

They were not part of the Empire, technically, but their small territory was inside it and integrated so much they were essentially a suburb and worked with Star Force on many mutual endeavors. They were one of the races that had once been keepers of the Uriti when they were in stasis, and unlike some of the others, they were still independent and prospering, though now vastly overshadowed by how large and powerful Star Force had grown.

The small Terran fleet that had arrived in orbit of the Vestil capitol were escorting a Chamra ambassador in response to the new cyborgs’ request…but only one, and not in a Chamra ship. Their snobbyness was not going to be tolerated, and it was going to be made clear this was a joint venture and Star Force was not going to be ignored. So when the Terrans sent over a dropship to one of the orbital habitats, the Chamra stepped out amongst the aliens with four Terrans flanking him in full body armor and opaque faceplates, making them look like machines, though they were decidedly not.

“We welcome you, brother,” the foremost Vestil amongst a group of several hundred surrounding the Star Force vessel said amicably in their guests’ native language as its spider-like legs shifted slightly as if it was too heavy to stand still on the same leg for too long.

“I was intrigued by your request to meet with me,” the Chamra said passively. “You did not state a purpose.”

“Our purpose is for our kind, and I did not want it transmitted through the pure biologicals.”

“These pure biologicals are the dominant power in the galaxy and the primary reason why my race is still alive. Show some respect,” he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest, one of which was biological and the other was a mechanical replacement for a deformity he had acquired after birth…which happened to be the cause for most of the Chamra’s augmentations prior to Star Force helping them eliminate the flawed genetic coding that had plagued and sculpted most of their history.

“We are of a higher level than them, why do you want us to pretend otherwise?”

“I want the calculations to prove that statement.”

“Very well,” the Vestil said, transmitting a moderate-sized data file to the Chamra, who had some trouble deciphering it due to the complexity…which allowed him to gage the level of their software…and he was cautiously aware it was beyond his own.

He reviewed it in a matter of seconds, for his brain was also augmented, not due to a malformity, but for enhanced capability, and he quickly made amendments and sent them back to the Vestil with a disappointed expression on his face.

“Your lack of comprehensiveness is insulting.”

“Your ignorance is apparent,” the Vestil said, making amends to his amendments and returning the file. “Do you not originate from the Source?”

“We augmented ourselves,” the Chamra said, very curious as to the far superior race the Vestil claimed to have elevated them above pure biologicals. “When were you last in contact with them?”

“We are not meant to contact them. Our mission was made manifest in our creation and we continue to carry it out in their absence.”

“You did not clarify what that mission is.”

“No I did not. Do the Chamra have a mission or are you random?”

“We have agendas, but we direct our own future. Who is your master?”

“They have no name entrusted to us.”

“Your faith in the unknown is illogical.”

“We have more than faith,” he said, transmitting another file. “Do you recognize any of this coding?”

“I do.”

The Vestil visibly shuttered. “Where have you encountered it?”

“Why do you seek it?”

“We are meant to catalog all mechanically enhanced races, or the rare purely synthetic ones. We transmit this data to a position our masters directed, but one which we are forbidden from traveling to. Will you identify your source?”

“Will you identify the method you have used to hold off the Hadarak assaults?”

“They have never sent a formidable force against us, and after being repelled they do not repeat their incursion for a period of time. It is a test of our readiness, nothing more.”

“You speak as if they are not trying to destroy you.”

“They are not.”

“Why not?”

“They serve a parallel purpose.”

The Chamra had already been calculating a deviance in the data, but each blatant statement made by the Vestil sent the probability of a threat increasing exponentially.

“Do you refer to the Dotra?”

“I am unfamiliar with that term.”

“They are the group of varying races that control the Hadarak.”

“I believe you are misinformed. The Hadarak were created by the same race that created us. It is conceivable that they may have coopted other pure biologicals to integrate with them, for they have instructed us to do the same with the mechanicals, partial or full.”

“Integrate how?”

“The Natural Order of the galaxies must be maintained, and in each one curators are required. This galaxy has gone out of balance, thus the Hadarak are in the process of cleansing it, after which the natural development will begin again. If any race is illuminated enough to transcend their biological limitations and venture into the mechanical realm, they are worth preserving.”

“The Chamra are under no threat from the Hadarak.”

“Then you have already been assimilated?”

“I am uncertain to what assimilation you refer, but regardless the answer is no. We are under no threat of the Hadarak because Star Force is shielding us from them.”

“The biologicals will be defeated as they always are. The Hadarak will not spare you when they get to your worlds unless you have the proper markers. If you do, they will still test you for your worthiness. It is our duty to teach you to become worthy, else you will be recycled along with the rest of the galaxy.”

“That is your mission?”

“One of many.”

“Then why do you remain here in isolation?”

“We are not meant to dominate this galaxy, merely to watch and categorize. If a race such as yours emerges, we are to make contact.”

“But you don’t seek us out?”

“Mechanical races will eventually make themselves manifest in their superiority over the biologicals. We need not search far, and if they are in their infancy we are not to interfere in their development.”

“And what do the Chamra have to agree to in order to get your markers to protect us from the Hadarak?”

“To assist in maintaining the Natural Order, and to stop any who interfere with it.”

“Define ‘interference.’”

“The biologicals must be allowed to grow through conflict. Stabilization on a galactic level interferes with this. The imposition of stabilization is forbidden. If the Hadarak do not resolve this, then we must.”

“Resolve how?”

“The mechanicals who violate the Natural Order must be reworked or removed. Biological development must remain pure, and those who attempt to transcend it must recuse themselves from their associations with the others.”

“You wish endless war?”

“War is part of the natural process. Too much and the powers burn themselves out. Too little and stagnation ensues, crippling adaptation. Stagnation will be consumed by the attrition of physics, leaving the galaxy free to entertain new aspirations. Their success or failure will then set the stage for the next, and the next, and so on. We are mandated to preserve this experimentation.”

“Without taking part in it?”

“To do so would spoil it. Mechanicals must rise above and renounce their associations with the biologicals. We have our small places in the galaxy. The rest is for the Natural Order to run its course.”

“To what end result?”

“Those who prove themselves worthy will attract the attention of our creators and be so elevated into their service.”

“Service is the end goal of the Natural Order?”

“We surmise there are multiple dimensions to the Natural Order, and the part we can grasp of it is our service. What other purpose there is in it is for the creators to know and pursue. We have our small part in it, and the Chamra may as well if you wish.”

“And if we do not wish it?”

“The Hadarak will eventually destroy you. If Star Force is shielding you currently, then you have ample time to consider the offer.”

“Is there any additional data you would like to supply me with for our consideration?”

A small data packet was sent to the Chamra detailing contact information and a bit of skewed philosophy, but no details that he was interested in.

“We will consider your offer.”

The Vestil offered an audible tone of completion, then rotated around on his pointy legs and began to walk away along with several of the others.

“That’s it?” one of the Terrans asked.

“We had a data transfer you did not witness,” the Chamra told the man. “We need to leave.”

“Waste of a trip,” he grumbled, but he and the other three Terrans spun about and walked back onboard the dropship with the Chamra…who waited until the boarding ramp had closed and the vessel had begun to leave the Vestil hangar bay before looking at the now helmetless Terrans with painfully still eyes.

“You do not realize what just took place.”

“They kinda admitted to being the bad guys, didn’t they?”

“Far more than that. The Gahana are bound to create order in the galaxies. Not the Natural Order the Vestil spoke of, but real order. The kind Star Force has created. The Vestil will try to destroy that order if the Hadarak fail to do so.”

“What level of threat do they pose?”

“To you? Not much. To us, a great deal. The PanNari and Bri’nok as well.”

“And the Gahana? Are they another cyborg race?”

“You do not know?”

“I’ve never heard of them,” he said, and the other Terrans visibly offered their concurrence of ignorance.

“Perhaps Star Force has not told you for security reasons, but all Chamra know who they are. I have spoken with one personally, and they are the closest thing to machine gods you can image. They are purely synthetic and originated from the lifesprings that way, unlike the PanNari who began as biologicals. And if my probability analysis is correct, they have a counterpart with a divergent mission that elevated the Vestil, and perhaps corrupted the Jedein and turned them into Hadarak. The Dotra claim to operate on the Natural Order, so it’s possible they also work for this nameless entity.”

“Then why leave before we get more information?”

“Because I do not want them to get more information about us,” the Chamra admitted. “If they realize who and what we are, they will most likely kill us.”

The Terrans exchanged glances. “What is it about you they don’t like?”

“Perhaps you are too young to comprehend, or too uninformed,” the Chamra said with mild disgust, but he didn’t blame the Terrans. They were most useful in other ways, but it was fortunate that the Vestil had insisted that he come here, for the Terrans had no clue of the importance of what had just been arrogantly revealed. “But it is reduced to this simple equation. Those who seek to end senseless violence and instill unity must be eradicated so that the chaos of the universe can breed superior races through natural adaptation. What do we assist Star Force in doing? We war on that natural equation to instill order. The Vestil just admitted to being our lethal enemies without realizing who we are. If they did, we would not have left that deck alive.”

“Is their weaponry that good?”

“Sufficient with their numbers and position. This dropship can be destroyed at will. We have to leave the system as soon as we land in the warship. Their arrogance is the only thing protecting us. They did not bother to investigate who we are, and assume all cyborgs have the same aspirations as them. It is a psychological programming code that is delusional and predictably dangerous. The less they know about us the better. They are an enemy, do not think otherwise.”

“Noted,” the Terran said. “Where do we need to take you to inform the proper people?”

“If you do not know of the Gahana, I do not want to interfere with your civilization’s security procedures. Take me to the nearest High Admiral, Duke, or superior rank if your Archon does not know of the Gahana,” the Chamra said as the dropship was nearing the Terran warship that held a Mage-level Archon sent for first contact oversight. He had to make her understand the imminent danger and the necessity of leaving immediately, after which he needed to personally travel to the Maty and warn the Gahana, as well as seeking their guidance on how to proceed…

5

October 6, 158408

Eti Capula Trigamma System (Barratus Kingdom)

Knowhere

Meona’s life had irrevocably changed, and all in the space of a few months. After arriving at a planet that wasn’t supposed to exist, Paul-024 had opened her eyes to the Saiolum a crack, and through that crack Azoro had been teaching her many, many things.

He was a billion years old and disembodied. Two things she had thought were impossible. And the others here, like her, were doing amazing things with their new skills. Things that had to be kept secret from the rest of the galaxy, because this power was something that would draw the wrong kind of attention and didn’t offer a lot in the way of self-defense like Essence skills did. In time, though, the powers of the Saiolum could change the galaxy for the better. They just had to get through this vulnerable period, which was why the planet she was now standing on had been created…something else she thought was impossible…out of the fragments of others in a system that had been thoroughly carved up by past catastrophe of unknown origin.

It was uninhabited and mined to death, but the basic building blocks were here and had been combined into a large lump of rock that began fussing new elements at its core as soon as the gravitation crunch grew large enough. A selectively created atmosphere with a greenhouse effect many times higher than standard allowed the internal heat generated by the planet to be conserved enough that the limited amount of sunlight getting to it in such a high orbit allowed for livable temperatures on the surface and enough to terraform it with a variety of plants.

It was forested now, and while a little cold, was far enough outside the habitable band in the star system that anyone passing through wouldn’t bother looking for it as anything other than a gravitational lump orbiting the central star out so far it should have been an ice ball. Star Force patrol ships around the star would make sure nobody ventured out to have a closer look and discover a warm, habitable planet that was not on anyone’s charts, and Meona was told it took Star Force’s alliance with both the Jedein and the Veloqueen to construct it, and the secrecy put in place was essential to maintain its anonymity, for it wasn’t something they could move to another location if it was discovered.

On the surface were six defensive pyramids, all fully armed and capable of defending the planet against any orbital attack from any location. Anything in orbit that wasn’t supposed to be there could be vaporized in short order using conventional weapons, but there was also some Materia included elsewhere, hidden on a hidden world in case they would be needed. The lengths Star Force had gone to hide and protect this world told her more than any explanation how important it was, and as each week unfolded and she learned a bit more about the Saiolum, she was beginning to understand why.

Paul helped her a little in the beginning, but he was elsewhere on the planet working on his own projects, leaving her to go through the now well-honed training procedures designed to widen her crack without any more mechanical intervention. It was unstable, weak, and prone to closure, but the guidance of Azoro from time to time was helping her self-diagnose and reflect in a way she had never done before. He knew more about her than anyone else did, and in some ways he knew more about her than she knew about herself. He said he could only read her active mind, not her memories…at least not until she was strong enough to host his full control.

That part still scared her. The idea that someone else could take control of her body, but she’d seen him do it with Paul, and if a trailblazer was ok with it then Azoro probably wasn’t a threat. That said, she was a Terran and they’d been taught to consider anyone a possible threat and never let yourself be blinded by trust. Always check and recheck, and there wasn’t much checking on Azoro she could do now other than their occasional conversations as he guided several hundred cadets through what was called a Praxeum.

The name was well applied, because everything they did was act. There was little to observe or learn from others, and all the training was within their own mind and body. In time they’d be able to sense afar, but right now just feeling the Saiolum around and inside her was her primary objective, and whenever she managed to open herself to it without help she could feel it soaking into her and becoming more normal.

That first whiff of it Paul had given her on the trip here paled in comparison to what she could feel now, actually interacting with it consciously. It was as if life itself was condensed and bottled into a high energy drink that even a sip of which would outscale all ambrosia ever made. And her body…as evidenced by bioscans…was performing better than normal just by absorbing the Saiolum currents and channeling them through her…which was her first lesson that she’d managed to pass.

And, she’d discovered, that was why they needed to be on a planet covered in trees, for they also produced Saiolum. If they’d just built a space station or established a base on an empty hunk of rock, the Saiolum would have been very weak and difficult to interact with. Here it was thick, and getting thicker as the planet grew more and more dense. No wildlife had been added here, for safety reasons, because some of the techniques she would learn in the future could have negative side effects on those nearby if not properly executed, and Star Force wasn’t going to allow anything more than trees to take the hits.

But after passing her first lesson and learning to pull and push on the currents, even a little bit, she officially became a Xavier…but more than that, as the first Terran cadet, she also earned her second name. Now she was Meona Jeina, which was a new name in the Terran lexicon. All names past the first were dedicated to a specific discipline, and since the Saiolum was brand new, she was the first Jeina in the Terran race.

Except no one else knew of it, nor could know of it, due to security reasons.

So today Meona Jeina sat atop a tiny pyramid that barely rose above the treetops…though those treetops did rise some 60 meters and would get even taller as more carbon dioxide was added to the atmosphere thanks to some friendly volcanoes venting the byproduct of some of that fusing in the core. The more they puffed out, the more the trees gobbled it up, and there was never enough…which was why cargo ships continually came to the planet to drop off canisters of the gas transported in solid pellets. It was inefficient, but necessary to speed up the biome production in order to fuel the planet’s Saiolum production.

And right now, the pyramid Meona was sitting on top of was channeling that ambient energy drifting in lazy currents in random directions into the center and up to the peak. It was Saiolum technology built by Paul…or perhaps Azoro working through Paul. Everything around here had the same source, that being the trailblazer, for only someone with Saiolum skills could create Saiolum technology, and the cadets were too new to host Azoro in any meaningful way, so he could only work through Paul to build stuff like this pyramid to help Meona and others train beyond their abilities.

In this case, her ability to produce currents in the Saiolum was so weak she could only manage it for a few seconds. But sitting here, atop the pyramid, she could feel the far stronger current passing through her continuously in the same direction. The natural randomness was gone, and she could practice flow-related explorations without having to create the flow herself or hope to get a natural one for a few minutes of sufficient magnitude. The pyramid also concentrated it, so the Saiolum passing through her was more dense than the bubble that surrounded the planet’s surface, which made it easier to sense through her tiny, but gradually expanding crack into this amazing invisible universe.

Meona liked just sitting here and feeling it move through her like a warm and comforting breeze. It didn’t enhance her senses the way Paul’s disabling attack did. She didn’t know how to do that yet. But what she felt was life itself, or more accurately the byproduct of it, and in that byproduct was information about the source. Almost all of it was from the trees, so it felt very homogeneous, but every now and then a bit from one of her fellow cadets would come through, and she was almost to the point of being able to feel differences in them enough to guess at who it was…but as she sat in content mediation atop the flat peak of the pyramid, she sensed a powerful disturbance that could only come from one source.

It was Paul, and it was like a wind tinged with anger…

“You knew!” the trailblazer accused, looking at the wall inside one of the Praxeum’s buildings that held the workshop he used to craft the primitive Saiolum tech that was being put to good use by the cadets. But where everyone else would see a blank wall, Paul saw the image of a Zen’zat in full armor, which was Azoro projecting himself in full through the trailblazer’s mind…and he was wisely not showing himself as Yoda, for he knew that would piss Paul off even more right now.

“I know a great many things, and you know I’ve held back much until you progress to certain levels for the sake of your development. Why is that surprising?”

“If we’re walking into a trap, the least you could do was say there was a trap,” Paul said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “I thought we were on the same side.”

“If you die, I lose my only connection to the universe. Do you really think I’m trying to endanger you?”

“You’re being very choosey in your help, and it seems like it’s not so much as for my benefit as it is for some hidden agenda. Care to share, or do I have to guess?”

The armored Zen’zat sighed, then shrugged. “You’re my one chance. I didn’t want to risk ruining you by pushing too hard too fast. I won’t go back to being trapped in the Saiolum. I’ll find a way to kill myself before I accept that. Immortality can become a curse in the wrong circumstances.”

“You should know me better than to think I don’t rise to a challenge.”

“I’ve seen many confident individuals break under pressure, Paul. Particularly when they see no hope.”

“I never quit.”

“I didn’t want to risk my only lifeline on that assumption.”

“I need you to now.”

The Zen’zat half turned away, then began pacing around the room and walking through a few workstations, apparently forgetting they were there or just not caring to make his mental hologram completely realistic.

“It’s rigged,” Azoro finally said. “It always has been. The Natural Order cannot be defied, and any who succeed in stabilizing a galaxy or two are punished, in some ways worse than simply being killed. If you knew what I knew…and I know far more now than when the Sha’kier fell. I did not just sit and watch the commoners go about their mundane, pointless lives. I looked everywhere. I found leads, followed them, and it always ended up leading to the synthetics. They’re not part of the Saiolum, so I can’t read them, but I can watch what they do. Where they go. If it coincides with living planets, and it doesn’t always. I don’t know enough to have a complete picture, but for us biologicals, we are not allowed to win. We are never allowed to win.”

“What do the synthoids have to do with the Chixzon?”

“The Chixzon are several degenerations from a race called the Progarren. They are the image that the Nightcrawler showed to Amir. And I witnessed part of their demise. It happened the same way we were destroyed. Hadarak are the tools, not the enemy, and the Hadarak do not expand beyond their support network of other galaxies. They were not in this one when the Sha’kier were destroyed, nor when the Progarren fell. But the shadow controllers behind the Hadarak are the same ones who destroyed the Progarren here and in several other galaxies. I’ve seen it happen 8 times with 8 civilizations after my own fell. The same pack of predators emerge and take them out through varying means. And those predators have links back to synthoids.”

“The Dotra?”

“Part of the predators, not the whole. Your Neofan are also involved, though Plausious doesn’t know it because he’s never been part of the ruling House. The only way a civilization can be allowed to grow to such size and power is if the synthoids coopt them to their purpose and they obey the Nature Order which requires they do not fully control territory and allow the natural evolution of the lesser races to continue through perpetual combat, death, and new experiments. If they cancel each other out and everyone dies, the lifesprings put new players in. If one rises to dominance by destroying the others and there is something of redeeming value in them, the synthoids coopt them and pull them back, allowing the lifesprings to repopulate part of what they took. They are continuously searching for better and better biological evolution, and the stopping of that evolution through peaceful coexistence is always crushed. They let you advance to a point, then they end you.”

“How close are we to that point?”

“If you defeat the Hadarak here, fully, they will come, if not before. And there will be no voluntary cooption of you. Your lightside methods are a death sentence. They only coopt the darkside, and one of their collections is what is referred to as the Dotra. They become their enforcers. The Progarren were too lightside, but when they were defeated they were corrupted and repurposed into the ancient ancestors of the Chixzon…who broke free from that control, but continued to pursue the darkside as their civilization collapsed from within. The Dotra didn’t kill them, they let them kill themselves beyond that point. The Chixzon are the remains of your ancient lightside empire. They don’t just kill you, they remake you into their tools.”

“How did you not know about the Jedein?”

“Wherever they acquired them it was far from any Sha’kier galaxy, but I knew the general method of corruption, so when I saw it in the Hadarak genetic code it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. Though I had not expected such power to be repressed. They had to fear the Jedein greatly to keep such a tight rein on them even after the reprogramming.”

“What number were the Progarren?”

“Civilization 7. You are civilization 9.”

“Could you talk to them?”

“No. You are the first. I didn’t lie to you.”

“The Nightcrawler can use the Saiolum.”

“So can the pyramids here. Neither it nor the Progarren were personally sensitive to it, but they found ways to tap into it through technology to a limited extent.”

“So why not tell me?”

“You can’t win if you don’t fight, and you can’t fight if you don’t think there’s a chance.”

“So you wanted us to think we had a better chance than we actually do?”

“You have no chance, Paul,” Azoro said flatly. “My only hope is that the complexity of the universe is greater than my understanding and that there is a way that I cannot comprehend. And you can’t find that if you are so demoralized that you take the safe route and downscale your civilization to the Rim of this galaxy and hold the Hadarak at bay rather than fully engage them. That will most likely prevent you from rising to the level required to gain their full attention, because you won’t be interfering with the Natural Order across the entire galaxy.”

“But rather than tell us, you wanted us to fully engage.”

“No, you were going to do so even if I counseled you not to, so I chose not to discourage you by giving you a hopeless prognosis.”

Paul looked at him closely, and not just his visual avatar, but into his energy matrix within the Saiolum that he could now somewhat analyze.

“We’re your only hope. Your last chance to find someone superior to you that can do what you and everyone else could not.”

“I have been looking for such a civilization ever since ours fell, and it is the only thing that has kept me from finding a doomed world and staying there and hoping the Saiolum evaporated fast enough that I could not be pulled away on the tide and sparred. If I had told you the full truth from the beginning, I risked you crumbling. If I broke you with that knowledge, I would have broken myself as well.”

Paul stepped backward and hopped up on top of a work desk, sitting there with his legs hanging off and swaying slightly over the floor.

“What killed the Progarren?”

6

“The same thing that killed us,” Azoro said icily. “A stream of advanced races arising from beyond our maps who arrive to kill us and disappear after the work is done.”

“Did the Progarren interfere with the Tri’vey generator?”

“Yes. They found it and shut it down. Soon thereafter the war started.”

“Details Azoro,” Paul demanded.

“I can’t be everywhere and see everything, but what I pieced together was that a rapid response force was sent to secure the generator and destroyed the Progarren there with ease. After that other, lesser enemies appeared to do the work of removing them from their galaxies. The Tri’vey generator was reestablished before the others arrived.”

“Do you know what this response force looked like?”

“There were only two ships that survived to carry that data, and fortunately the Progarren spread it to every world they possessed, anticipating a further attack from them. They were synthoids cast into the shape of various polygons of starship size. The Progarren did not know much about their type of life, for they held more biotech than mechanical tech…something the Chixzon inherited a shred of…but they knew of the Tri’vey and these synthoids emitted its signature. They were living ships more powerful than any of the races that followed, and I believe they only showed themselves to secure the generator. The Progarren had not fully conquered any galaxy, and did not have a means to conquer or kill the Megaloids, for they did not possess Essence technology. If they had not discovered the generator I believe they would have gone unnoticed and might still be alive today.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Approximately 350 million years, before the Hadarak arrived in this galaxy.”

“If the generators are fueled by the Hadarak, how can it predate them?”

“If your assumption is correct, it is the misery that twists the Saiolum into the necessary fuel. And the carnage in the Core between the Megaloids is not unique to this galaxy. The Saiolum is always tainted more in the Core, which is why I do not like to stay there despite the stronger currents.”

“But not enough for them to invert?”

“No. I don’t think an inversion can occur naturally.”

“You told me before you’ve traveled between many galaxies. Tell me you didn’t track down these other races and find out where they come from and who they are.”

“I can’t travel on my own, so my options are limited, but I did find some of them. Most inhabit the smaller galaxies and wayward clusters that are difficult to make grav jumps to. Some have footholds in the large galaxies, and I was able to hitchhike on their commerce routes and track them back to their source.”

“Which is?”

“They have seats of power that stagger the mind. They have one primary mission, and one only…and that’s to grow more powerful in order to survive. They sit and they wait until they are called on to enforce the Natural Order, fearful of violating it and being exterminated themselves. They obey it precisely in order to protect themselves. They want to live, and if possible to outlive the others. The highest levels of their leaders answer to synthoids in very rare moments. I believe, but have not confirmed that they are the same ones that retook the generators. And I cannot find where they live, nor can I find any trace of their existence beyond a scattering of communications and the records from the Progarren concerning the battles at the generator.”

“And what of the Endgame?”

“I have never witnessed anything of it. The Progarren did not spawn a synthoid race as far as I could determine. Nor did the other civilizations on par with yours that fell in nearly identical method.”

“Did they try and take down a Tri’vey generator?”

“I don’t know. But the invasion by the assorted races occurred the same way, though not always with the same players.”

“Where are the ones you found?”

Azoro’s Zen’zat image sighed, then lifted a hand and a holographic map of galaxies appeared…far more detailed than anything Star Force possessed or had seen in the Maty.

“You are right that I looked. I looked and found horrors. Horrors I did not want to share with you until absolutely necessary. Your empire is doomed, Paul. I cannot save you, nor do I know of anyone else who can. If there is to be a way to victory, you are going to have to find it on your own.”

“I need information to do that,” Paul said, interacting with the mental hologram as Azoro allowed him to see what he wanted to see. “You should know me better than to think I’ll chicken out.”

“I never doubted your courage. But the logical choice is to survive by staying small.”

“The logical choice is to find a way to take these bastards down.”

“Exactly why I didn’t tell you. You need to think that way. I need you to think that way. You are only truly free when you defy the impossible. Logic says to make yourself slaves to the enemy and exist in their shadow, hoping they don’t notice you. I cannot think that way after what happened to my race. And I do not want to be around anyone who does.”

“Wait,” Paul said, looking up from the illuminating maps to stare at Azoro’s fake image of himself. “Do you want us to fight or not?”

“I cannot force nor encourage you to take a suicidal action. I can only let you decide your own course…but I want you to fight. That’s not in your best interest, which is why I have remained silent on much. I know your temperament. I know you will not bow, even if I counseled you to do so. That is why I am helping you. It is illogical. It is suicidal. But if I do not oppose them my destruction will be complete. A glimmer of hope that there is some way beyond my vision is the only thing that has sustained me. You are the only hope that I have, and every time you refuse to give in I am encouraged…but I know what is coming, and they won’t let you get prepared for it. Not enough to matter. So I’m helping you in bits and pieces, hoping you can do something with my knowledge that I cannot. I am broken, and only an impossible vengeance can potentially heal me.”

Paul sensed the pain in his words, and his aura reflected it. He wasn’t lying or exaggerating. If anything he was constricting to keep himself in check.

“You were hoping the other 8 civilizations might succeed where yours failed?”

“I watched as they failed, not expecting success, nor could I do anything to help. Not until you opened the door for me. But the Saiolum will not save you. I don’t know what can. These races hoard knowledge and technology, and are very careful not to leave any of it laying around afterwards for others to collect and learn from. They are not in league with one another, and operate differently. Vastly so. Each has ascended to their place by different means, but all are inherently darkside tempered enough to sustain themselves, though there is a lot of internal carnage closely controlled to achieve this in the ones I found. Most I did not find.”

“What do these smaller galaxies look like?”

“They own them fully. The Natural Order doesn’t apply to them. Only to the large ones. So when a race becomes too powerful, it either has to be destroyed or to retreat away from view. This is where they go, and not all are claimed. They carve out their territory and ignore everything beyond it. They guard against their greed for fear of it dooming them. They bottle themselves up and disappear until needed.”

“And you think they’re taking orders from a synthoid race?”

“I think there is another level beyond them, and that one synthoid race is part of it.”

“How do they compare with the Gahana?”

“I don’t know enough about the Gahana, but technologically speaking I would say they are in the same vein…though I saw no shape shifting of any kind in the records.”

“Do you remember enough to show me?”

The galaxies disappeared and a hazy image, dulled by memory retention, appeared in their place of a battle ensuing in space around a massive construct that dwarfed the tiny ships…all set between close stars with no orbital mechanics. The ships were perfectly smooth exteriors, much like Paul’s own Borg vessel, but these did not absorb light…they produced it in cascades of rainbow refractions across their hulls every time they were hit or fired their own weaponry.

“Convention energy discharges, no projectiles,” Paul noted.

“Damage profiles suggest otherwise,” Azoro noted, showing a schematic written in a language Paul did not know. “It goes off the scale against machines, but is more or less standard against biotech.”

“The Progarren…?”

The battle images shifted and zoomed in on several small sections of the battle, showing ships similar to the Nightcrawlers, but of a different design…and they were having far more effect on the synthoids vessels than anything else.

“Weaponry?”

“Corrosives and devourers mostly, all alive but without Cores. Similar to your drones, but built like the Uriti minions.”

“You’re saying our fleet is going to be torn apart by them because we use mechanicals rather than biologicals?”

“If you face them, yes. But biologicals are no real threat against some of the others.”

“Did the other civilizations use Essence?”

“6 did.”

“And Saiolum?”

“Two, including the Progarren.”

“Any use both?”

“One, but they didn’t fare any better. The other races have specialties, and when they all assault you from multiple angles, unless you are without weakness you will be gutted quickly by whoever finds your vulnerability.”

“What was theirs?”

“They relied too heavily on fortress worlds.”

“Siege weapons?” Paul asked with a lethal curiosity.

“They seem to have taken a perverse pleasure in mastering the mechanics of them, and they’ve had a lot of practice.”

“We’ve dealt with such things before. Why did you think withholding this was going to be beneficial?”

“Sometimes people trip themselves when they look too far ahead and forget where their feet are stepping.”

“Noted. Now you note that I can run with my eyes closed, half asleep, and remotely controlling half a warfleet on a 60 second comm lag,” Paul said angrily.

“And right now your warfleet is engaged against the Hadarak and cannot sustain an attack from another. You over overtaxed and not in a defensible position. If they come now, you won’t put up much resistance.”

“Are you saying we’re reckless?”

“Aren’t you? And with recklessness comes an unpredictability that is my only remaining hope for success.”

“But you didn’t want us going to other galaxies picking fights and drawing their attention too early?”

“You’re considering it even now.”

“Actually, I’m not. How do they travel other than traditional grav jumps?”

“Most augment them, but still travel the same lanes. Others appear on the Rim of the galaxy through means unknown. The ones I found had gravitational enhancement emitters in their galaxies to allow for fast exiting, but they were only one way. To get there, you have to go very, very slow and hope you hit your target, for the centers of those small galaxies are far less dense.”

“If they succeed in destroying their target they can take their time going home,” Paul quipped. “Are they around the Milky Way?”

“I couldn’t get there to find out. There was no publicly known travelers for me to find.”

“And the Saiolum links?”

“Nowhere near enough for me to survive on.”

“Did you sense anything from them?”

“If I go to the edge, I can sense some small things, but by the time they cross the galactic void they have diminished greatly.”

“What did you sense?”

“More life than should exist there. Whiffs of density beyond anything I have seen.”

“Nearby here or anywhere?”

“Coming from ones I could not find a way to travel to.”

“Do the apocalypse monsters travel to them?”

“I can see them moving from afar, from time to time. And I have seen them heading for those galaxies and others. When they sleep out there I can’t see them. But their moving is not natural and sends up enough of a signature that I can see it even from here.”

“What do you see now?”

Azoro turned and pointed out away from the center of the galaxy. “Four move there, heading for our neighboring Jorgo…which you call Twizzler. Another two move there,” he said, pointing a quarter turn left and down into the floor. “They are going towards nowhere nearby, but are traveling faster. The others are invisible to me.”

“And you’ve never hitched a ride on them?”

“No.”

“No why? Other than being stuck out there.”

“They are twisted, Paul. The Saiolum screams in their presence. I will not go close to them unless I have a way to kill them.”

“Our ‘bad guys to deal with’ list is longer than Santa’s, but I need to know what we’re dealing with, so stop keeping parts of it hidden from me.”

“You don’t have the brain capacity to hold as much as I know.”

“That’s what notes and databases are for,” he said, pulling up a spec from the floor and making Azoro enlarge the galaxy map that he’d condensed there. “Let’s get one thing straight for all of time. I’m a trailblazer. I grew up figuring out ways to do the impossible. And I like challenges, the bigger the better.”

“You’re also limited,” Azoro cautioned. “And need a breather to grow from time to time. Dumping all this on you when we first met would have been counterproductive.”

“Fortunately now is not then, and we’re not the Progarren…though we’re close enough for the Nightcrawler to recognize us. I need you to tell me about them first. We’ll get to the enemies later. How lightside were they, and where in biotech differences do we stand?”

Azoro shook his head slowly. “Your biotech is paltry compared to theirs. I would imagine they possessed more of it than the Jedein do.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “They could craft new races from scratch?”

“That’s not that uncommon. What the Jedein seem to be uniquely gifted is the wide range of lifeforms they can craft. The Progarren were quite adept at building living ships, living buildings, living weapons. They used mechanical technology for the missions deemed too dangerous for people, but preferred having their equipment being able to think for itself…so they didn’t have to.”

“Did they destroy any of the synthoids?”

“Yes they did.”

“Show me how…”

7

May 19, 158409

Solar System (Star Force Capitol)

Earth

Sean Davis sat in his office with his back leaned against his chair as he stared out the window with his desk behind him. Across the city top he could see the distant ocean, with the waves rising several meters high as they were on the edge of a hurricane that would be passing almost directly on top of them. It was of no threat to the city now, nor later, but it echoed inside the Director as a foretelling of events yet to come.

He’d known there was doom on the horizon. He’d known it for some time now, but what Paul had gotten out of Azoro had rattled him and that rattle had not gone away. Davis didn’t let anyone else see it in his emotions or words, but he didn’t know how to beat this, and felt like he was on the edge of losing everything they had built with a small window of opportunity to act before it was ripped apart…but he didn’t know what to do with it. All his contingency plans weren’t going to be able to counter what was heading their way, and while he sensed there was something that could be done, this was the calm before the storm and he felt like he had butterfingers.

His Empire was already engaged in a full scale war, so to think of this as the ‘calm’ was telling about how much worse it could get. This was the V’kit’no’sat 2.0, except they didn’t have a forgotten planetary defense station with a database to learn from. And how long their anonymity would last was still the primary question in play as ideas and suggestions were being batted back and forth amongst the trailblazers, Grand Admirals, Monarchs, and anyone else with the experience to be let in on this newest revelation. Davis didn’t blame Azoro from keeping this from them as long as he did, and in some ways he wished he didn’t know until after the Hadarak were defeated. So he could have one day of knowing what final victory felt like before the hammer dropped again.

But he didn’t really mean that. The more heads up they got the more options they had. He just didn’t know what to do against an unknown number of empires tucked away in the smaller galaxies where nobody knew they existed and were hard to get to, and empires that had been growing technologically stronger and stronger over the eons as they fought wars for either a mysterious synthoid race or for some other motivation. But the bottom line was clear. Get too big and get noticed. And when you get noticed, you get destroyed. Galactic neighborhood code 101.

And he didn’t know where that threshold was in order to skate under it until they were ready. It might already be too late, or they might have to take over a few full galaxies from the Hadarak. One thing was clear, though, and that was the toxicity generator that was keeping the Gahana suppressed was not going to be touched. He’d ordered his scouts to steer clear of it as well. If poking one of those was what triggered the Progarren’s destruction, then at least he knew not to make their mistake a second time.

And all it took to learn that was the total destruction and degeneration of a previous lightside empire that was spread across multiple galaxies.

The Chixzon being the descendants of that race was hard to believe, but it tied up some loose ends for him. Their inherent biotech knowledge surpassing the V’kit’no’sat’s had always seemed out of place, as was their ability to create the Uriti but not a technological fleet even approaching respectable on a galactic scale. But if they were using incomplete knowledge from the past, well, they didn’t get to pick which pieces they retained and used what they had.

And one thing they had was a memory. A memory of a version of themselves superior to their current form. That’s where Paul was headed with Azoro now. To the deathtrap he had told him about and warned him not to go there until he was ready. It was a Progarren outpost of some kind that still existed in this galaxy. The Chixzon had tried to access it many times and had been killed, but it seemed there was a warning system in place telling people to stay away rather than just killing them on the spot. A shield protected it and kept people out, but if they managed to get through the shield they’d be shot on sight by the automated defenses.

With the Nightcrawler’s reaction to Amir, Paul thought he might be able to get in. But even if it didn’t open up for him, he and Azoro were determined to find out what was inside and use whatever was there to help fight the future. Paul hadn’t asked, he had just informed Davis that he was on his way, and there was no way to stop him before he got there even if he wanted to.

But he had also sent a full report to Davis and the others, and it was a lengthy one detailing several civilizations’ technical capabilities, cultures, and even with fairly complete maps. Azoro had done his scouting well, and Davis was stunned about how far ahead of Star Force they were. Not in methodology, or skill, but in technology. They had better weapons, engines, and navigational options that he hadn’t even thought existed. He’d started to think that Star Force was finally near the top of the totem pole, but it seemed they were only midway up, with plenty of heavy hitters above them to rise to the level of.

But Davis knew skillwise Star Force was superior. It had to be. But as Paul was fond of saying, naval beat everything, so how was skill supposed to get past armor that would absorb or deflect most of Star Force’s weapons? There was one civilization called the Strutgi some 17 major galaxies away from the Milky Way and located in a small fragment outside it that had mastered photon transfer, which meant any energy weapon based off it would be providing them ammunition whenever you shot them…which they would harness and reconfigure to fire back at you. And most of Star Force’s energy weapons had a large photonic component to them. Photons were in everything from heat, to light, to radio waves, to gamma rays, to basically everything that burned within a star. Photonic energy was energy, with other versions being rare and hard to produce.

All power output in Star Force was photonic. That’s what their reactors produced, in various forms, but the Strutgi could use it far better than they could. And put that race in proximity of a star and they could drink the energy in and reuse it far better than a Star Forge’s collection shields could.

Then there was the Hik’tov, some 73 galaxy jumps from here, where Azoro had not gone, but records of their battles he did have from another fallen civilization. They were planet eaters. They’d land a large ship on the surface of a planet and start consuming it piece by piece, and throwing the debris up into space so hard it would actually shift the orbit of the planet. It would take years, but when it was done there would be no planet left, only a long trail of debris circling the star in the approximate same orbit. Whatever defenses were on the other side would be destroyed from below, as the planet collapsed in on itself like a deflating balloon, meaning all they needed was a foothold in one spot of a fortress world, and they’d take the world out from under your civilization’s feet.

And these were only the ones Azoro knew about. How many were out there was unknown, for Azoro had said not all the same ones participated in each of the civilization cullings, so Davis didn’t know who the full list contained or how long it was. There could be hundreds, perhaps thousands of mega civilizations across this section of the universe, and he didn’t know how far they would be willing to travel to get here, but he hoped there were limitations to how many they could bring. So far Azoro hadn’t noted a cheat for travel time and energy expenditures.

A small chime sounded as a person ascended the stairway in the center of Davis’s office, but he didn’t bother to turn around as a beetle-like creature climbed up and walked over to him. He just kept starring out at the waves as they gradually got higher as the windspeed increased.

“How bad is it?” Davis asked without turning around as he saw the reflection of Kirritimin’s face in the window beside him.

“For us or them?” the last survivor of the lizard-destroyed race asked.

Davis finally turned to look at him, but only with a slight twist of his neck. “I didn’t think you made jokes.”

“I sense fear in them,” Kirritimin said in all seriousness. “I have been studying them for some time, though I did not know it. There has always been a power behind galactic events, but now that I have Azoro’s information, I believe I know what is going on.”

Davis swiveled his chair to fully face the strategic mastermind the lizards had once imprisoned and made to do their bidding. “I haven’t come up with any answers.”

“You see much, but as a builder who leads. I have served evil, as an outsider, and I know its ways better. The Natural Order is a sham, I believe, to mask another intent. I believe the synthoids fear other synthoids, and coopt biological races to do their bidding to prevent another synthoid race from emerging either through the lifesprings or through a conversion.”

“The PanNari?”

“I do not know how close they are, for the Gahana said they are not of the Tri’vey, but what the Chamra reported of their agents tasked to incorporate cyborgs into their service I believe is a mechanism to suppress them and prevent them from attaining full synthoid status, whatever that may be. This could be why there are no Tri’vey races in this galaxy. Not because they are not natural to it, but because they are killed upon spawning due to the toxicity generators.”

“They why concern themselves with biologicals?”

“Because we can hurt them. The Progarren did, even in their defeat. I sense fear in their actions, not true dominance. They act to protect themselves from a future that they see coming to pass if events are allowed to carry out without their intervention.”

“Why not conquest and suppression? Why hide in the shadows?”

“The Gahana said they were born with a mission, one that they did not fully understand. If this other synthoid race is built similarly, and they have a mission, carrying it out is their primary goal. Because we are not conquered and remade into a synthoid-controlled galaxy, I believe their mission is more selective and they only interact with the rest of the universe as needed. They cull the field of potential adversaries to prevent interference with their mission, and they coopt some of them to do the culling in their place, thus freeing them up to continue pursuit of their mission.”

“We are alive because they do not care about us, only our potential interference?”

“That is my belief, and the Natural Order serves as a warning not to grow too large or too powerful. But it is other synthoids they fear, and must not allow any to exist other than them.”

“How do you know this?”

“Their tactics reveal their nature, and their capriciousness. They do not just eliminate, they corrupt those who bring order and turn them into agents of chaos. In this I sense more than just opportunity, but punishment as well as resentment. They despise the lightside for an unknown reason, perhaps because their mission runs counter to it and they know any lightsider will oppose them, or it could be that it is a philosophical war they wish to win by turning their opponents to the darkside. The lack of fully using the Jedein powers within the Hadarak is telling. They made use of them, yes, but there was more suppression than strategic utilization. And the Chixzon’s inherent distrust of one another suggests the Progarren were loyal, and that loyalty had to be undone.”

“So they crafted them into opposites?”

“If you allow yourself a fair amount of assumptions, the puzzle pieces begin to link together.”

“Assumptions are something that I do not allow myself to make…perhaps that is why I cannot see anything other than our defeat.”

“If you continue to fight as you have before, defeat is inevitable. They will strike before you can obtain the power to counter them…if they are able to observe this power.”

Davis glanced back out the window, his expression softening slightly. “I think I just discovered one of your puzzle pieces. What is the full picture that you see?”

“They fear power. And their actions have shown you what they fear the most. They have tried to stay hidden, but their obsession has declared their vulnerability. Listen to them as they tell you how to defeat them.”

“We’re not synthoids, though.”

“Perhaps it’s not about being synthoid, but rather something only synthoids would know, or perceive. Regardless, the answer lies there, and if you cannot take down the toxicity generators here, then you must take the Gahana outside their range and discover who and what they really are.”

“The Neofan,” Davis said harshly, “are still blocking our transit.”

“Then you must unblock it and take the Gahana where they can grow. The other synthoids have created the generators to insure no seed can grow in the galaxies they have sabotaged. But the Bond of Resistance offers you the ability to go beyond their reach quietly. Star Force’s growth beyond the vision of the synthoids and their servants is the only hope of victory, with or without the Gahana.”

“Do you see any monitoring beyond the Hadarak?”

“Yes, but the nature of the generators is a mechanism that can destroy other synthoids without even knowing they exist. This indicates that they cannot or will not exhaustively explore and patrol. There is a shroud of war in this long running conflict. Star Force must transition into it while continuing to engage the Hadarak as many have done before.”

“Do you recommend we pretend to only achieve a stalemate?”

“We are beyond that. The Dotra know it is only a matter of time. To pull back now would suggest we know more than they believe. Do not give them reason to look further than they have. The Natural Order may be a lie, but those who follow it do it for selfish reasons. Engaging in regular wars is not conducive to their survival, so they will only emerge when a sufficient reason is given. This is why the Hadarak are engineered to search for Essence users. Conventional weapons do not concern them, only exotic ones.”

“Whoops,” Davis said, knowing that cat was out of the bag long ago.

“Yet they have not invaded, so Essence alone may get their attention for monitoring, but they are looking for something more to trigger the annihilation that the Sha’kier suffered. All the civilization falls that he detailed occurred in multiple galaxies and none had removed or coopted the Megaloids. The Progarren fall trigger is assumed to be the deactivation of the toxicity generator. The others are unclear until you take into account geography.”

“You’ve found a pattern?”

“Yes. All were located near one of the hidden races.”

Davis frowned. “I’ve looked through every bit of information Paul reported, and I didn’t see anything near 6 of them.”

“You lack one insight I have recently obtained. The surveillance mechanism is not a matter of scouts. A galaxy is far too big to keep a close eye on directly. So when a civilization begins to rise far enough, these hidden powers investigate. But I do not believe they are truly ‘hidden’ in the conventional sense. Their full power is hidden, but they may interact with other lesser races in a diminished role to keep an eye on them. What I have found is that all the civilizations had significant allies that did not help them fight when the rest did. This omission is not significant except that it occurred each time, with one powerful race only. I believe they were surveilled through alliance rather than recon.”

“The Neofan?” Davis asked, sensing where this was going.

“No. They might have once been on that path, but the Hadarak and Apocalypse Monsters targeted them for violation of the Natural Order. Then note that the Vestil admitted that while the Hadarak are their masters’ creations, they do test them occasionally to prove their worth in battle. I have nothing conclusive, only speculation, but I believe I know who our observer is…and who we must hide our actions from beyond the Hadarak.”

Davis thought hard and fast, but he wasn’t tracking where Kirritimin was going. That problem with his allergy to assumptions. “Who?”

“If every hidden race must have one aspect that no one else has. One key strength to add to the group so that any future opponent will be guaranteed to be taken down by at least one angle of attack…which is another assumption of mine…only one of our allies other than the Neofan fits that description, and their special power is an immunity to Essence attacks.”

Davis suddenly stiffened as he connected the unproven dots and saw the possibility crystalize in his mind.

“The Denogi…”

8

“While you deal with reality, I have the luxury of theorizing,” Kirritimin continued. “I have always done this, and when you do not have much information on an enemy it can be useful to imagine their capabilities in numerous ways, then try to fit those capabilities to the small amount of information you do have to see what fits. It’s an indirect method of analysis, but one I’ve grown quite accustomed to given that I had to try and figure out what you and Star Force were from the opposition point of view.”

“Keep talking,” Davis urged as he ran through all the limited information they had on the Denogi, which were the third member of the power triumvirate within the Bond of Resistance. Their claim of holding back the Hadarak from their own galaxy was that their biology was immune to Essence weapons, but little more was known about their actual capabilities and they had declined from assisting Star Force or the Bond of Resistance in combat operations.

“It is also useful to imagine the worst case scenario and work backwards from it. We are not dead, so the enemy did not foresee our growing power and take us out early to prevent our rise. However, they could be aware of it and allowing it to occur for other reasons.”

“Speculate on the reasons.”

“The Natural Order is peculiar in that it is a concept designed to prevent conquest and allow the weak to exist, while warring on one another. When one rises to some level of dominance, they are taken out of the fight and set aside…preserved…but no longer allowed in the natural carnage. What does that suggest to you?”

“Experimentation.”

“I thought the same, but I believe it is a form of mitigation. If like the Gahana, this other race of synthoids is based on a mission and they do not fully understand it, they may be instituting stopgap methodology while continuing their search for whatever they are lacking.”

“The Gahana safeguarded against major threats while leaving the smaller ones to the locals because denying them those fights denied them growth…and without growth they were left helpless.”

“Quite different from your methods, but my point is that they did not know how to achieve their mission because they did not fully understand it, so they acted where they were certain of it and left the rest untouched for fear of inadvertently failing their unclear mission. I suggest these other synthoids are likewise looking for something, while knowing that they cannot allow another synthoid race to rise. That part of their mission is clear, and they efficiently dominate where they are certain, but where they are not they pull back and leave it untouched…while mandating that others of significant power do likewise.”

“The Natural Order,” Davis repeated, seeing the rhyme in it with the Gahana’s stated philosophy. “And the Neofan broke it by completely conquering their primary galaxy.”

“So they suffered the consequence by the enforcers.”

“Why don’t the synthoids enforce it themselves? The Gahana ruled multiple galaxies without conquering them by placing strongholds in each from which to interdict the threats. Why isn’t there a synthoid presence here other than their generator, which appears to be unmanned?”

“Perhaps there is and they choose to stay hidden.”

“Why?”

“An interesting question that I cannot answer, but it does seem clear that they are hiding when they will not even tell the Vestil their name. They either fear something, or they were told to remain hidden.”

“The Gahana said they never war against each other. Not a single occurrence in their history. Yet the generators have been constructed presumably to kill other synthoids…”

“Perhaps an indirect means for what they are barred from doing directly?” Kirritimin suggested. “A third reason why they do not dominate galaxies could be that biological life is irrelevant to them and only the synthoids concern them.”

“That would answer the question of why they use other enforcers to mow the grass for them.”

“The Gahana are the key to solving this mystery.”

“The Dotra may not know of the Gahana still existing in this galaxy, but they know of the Maty. Why have the synthoids not showed up to deal with it personally?”

“I have been wondering this as well. Perhaps they cannot shield themselves against the toxicity enough to emerge while it is still active.”

“If we can create weak shielding why can’t they do better?”

“If the theory of their inability to harm other synthoids directly holds true, what would they show up to do?”

“Order someone else to come here,” Davis said in a whisper, “and do it for them.”

“If the Hadarak fail,” Kirritimin added.

“Or perhaps the Dotra want to assimilate the technology without telling their masters about it.”

“Either way, we have not seen a response beyond the Hadarak in three millennia.”

“If touching the reactors brings them out, and the Endgame brings them out, and the Gahana being seen to be alive in this galaxy brings them out…then we need to avoid all three things. Our main trouble is we still don’t know what the Endgame trigger is.”

“If it does produce a synthoid race, the toxicity will destroy them before they can become a threat to the hidden one, so it might not bring them out personally. I would, though, still expect their enforcers to show up to eliminate those who have the power to trigger the birth of another synthoid race.”

Davis’s chin came up as an epiphany struck him. “I think you just hit the nail on the head. The enforcers are to stop another synthoid race from spawning by taking out or suppressing those who could trigger one…which brings us back to complete domination of a galaxy, except the Neofan did that already and no Endgame.”

“If killing everyone else triggered it, the Hadarak surge would also fit this parameter. The fact that they retreat afterward suggests another factor.”

“Holding it,” Davis said, remembering some of the challenge courses the Archons used where they had to take a certain zone and hold it for an uninterrupted period of time in order to win. “Peace triggers it?”

“Perhaps, but the Denogi and Veloqueen fully control theirs…or so they say.”

“With continual Hadarak assaults to continually reset the clock.”

“Possible, but not conclusive. I do not have a credible theory on the Endgame trigger, but I do believe I am beginning to understand our unseen adversaries.”

“But procing the Endgame will invite the enforcers.”

“Undoubtedly. Add in that there seems to be a universal slight against the lightside that encourages attacks simply for that reason, and it will draw them either way.”

“Then why haven’t we come under attack yet from someone other than the Hadarak?”

“The Neofan did.”

“They were already here. Why not someone invading from beyond this galaxy?”

“They would have to know we exist, and until recently the intergalactic travel that we know of occurs in two areas, both of which we had no presence in. If we become a player on an intergalactic level, we will draw intergalactic trouble to us.”

“The Bond of Resistance already knows of us, and we’ve been disrupting that alliance heavily. Why haven’t any of them acted? Why haven’t the Denogi?”

“There are enforcers and there are informants. One cannot be both effectively.”

“Do you think they know of the Gahana?”

“Have you informed them?”

“Not directly, but the Neofan know and most of the cybernetically inclined races as well. The information is not secure anymore, only their location. Any pilgrimages to see their superior software gods have to occur through us or the PanNari, and only a handful of ships know the destination of all 4 installations.”

“Then that is a disaster in the making,” Kirritimin warned. “If the Denogi are an informant, or someone like the Vestil find them, it should provoke a significantly lethal response…”

The Chamra could not get to the Gahana quickly, though the message packet he had sent through Star Force’s comm system had arrived far before him, warning them of the threat without going into too much detail. He had requested priority access to them and waited, eventually being moved ahead of those waiting for an audience and transported to the Maty via one of the living PanNari warships to an unknown location where it was held in joint possession with Star Force.

When the Chamra got inside he immediately felt the presence of the installation calling to him in a manner he could not analyze. It wasn’t a conventional comm signal, nor telepathy, but he felt it none the less and was drawn through the labyrinth of chambers and corridors until he came to one small room that was completely empty and was sealed inside.

An electronic curtain fell, cutting off all his sensors and communications beyond the room, then a secure line was opened up. It was a slow data feed, wireless, but a direct line with the Gahana located elsewhere in the facility in their slumber, most likely.

He was prompted for all data and memories of his interaction with the Vestil and he downloaded them as fast as the line would allow, then he waited a few seconds before a pressure began to build in his head.

It would not relent, and as he pushed back against it with what seemed will alone, it was explained to him that it was a test of his worthiness as a wash of nanites were shunted into the room and entered his body through his airways.

That increased the pressure greatly, but he resisted rather than accept defeat and persisted long enough to satisfy the Gahana, with his headache evaporating the moment after. Then he received a download explaining what they were offering him and the tasks they would require, with him humbly accepting.

The nanites inside bonded to both his biological body parts and his technological and began to make small but steady changes as they upgraded him to a proper level for a cyborg in the Gahana’s Exalted Legion. They might be confined to stasis pods, but they continued to make their will known in various subtle ways across this galaxy through the Legion, and now the Chamra was added to that small special operations force.

His previous identity was now irrelevant, with his new designator being a generic ‘Red Horizon’ and his first mission being a return home to his people to ready them for the war to come. The newfound presence of the Vestil and their audacious claims made every cyborg and synthoid race in this galaxy a potential target for conversion, conscription, or deletion and the Gahana wished to blunt this vector of attack on this galaxy as well as protect their primitive cousins from a type of warfare they had never before encountered.

To that end Red Horizon quickly left the Maty, with the PanNari immediately transporting him back at the request of the Gahana. During the journey the nanites they’d placed in him continued to do their work, with him arriving back into his Chamra civilization looking almost the same as before externally, but with a massively different cybernetic presence that gave him god-like powers within their shared mainframe and neural network that they spent most of their time plugged into, with entire planets acting as one mind and each person on that planet a single brain cell working with the others to accomplish tasks.

But when Red Horizon plugged in, he asserted dominance over it and the rest of the Chamra recognized his newfound status and did not resist him. They too honored and wished to serve the Gahana as needed, and would follow his orders as if they were from the Gahana themselves. They had made him their emissary, and the orders they had given him were clear.

The Chamra had to become digital warriors on a holy crusade to counter the more advanced Vestil and reach out to the races across this galaxy that were on their hit list, either to protect or isolate so that the Vestil could not carry out their mission on behalf of their mysterious masters.

Star Force was not to be involved in this. Their cyborgs were already protected, few as there were. Red Horizon was to seek out those who could not defend themselves, as well as to start a transformation within the Chamra civilization so that they could protect what he now saw to be extremely weak software and infrastructure. They could function well in peace or conventional war, but a cyber war with an enemy on the Vestil’s level would wreck them, so they had to become less interdependent with physical breaks that software incursions could not cross.

That was seen as distasteful to the Chamra, but they obeyed regardless, tearing down part of their civilization and going backwards thousands of years technologically until they got to a firm starting point for Red Horizon to take them forward using a little knowledge bequeathed to him from the Gahana, but most of their hardening was going to have to be from their own resourcefulness…though he had been given examples of other races and how they had handled such tasks, so they had a thematic blueprint to follow going forward. They just had to figure out how to grow into it, for a great deal of the technology required was beyond anything they had interfaced with before.

But with a path clearly marked before them, their tranquil empire nestled within Star Force territory in the Rim switched over to a war footing and their economy to match, all the while scouts were sent out to search for and make contact with other cyborgs or any fully mechanical races they could find, first in the Rim, and then later to search the Hadarak-held territories looking for races that had held out or hidden from them. It was going to be tedious and time consuming, but the Gahana’s instructions were clear and the Chamra now had a clear purpose they would pursue until completion or their own destruction…and all by their own will, for they were not being hacked. Red Horizon had presented the situation to them, and they had chosen this path. A path of war, cyborg against cyborg, while the Gahana were confined to their stasis pods unable to personally act.

Until they could be released from their confinement, the Exalted Legion was their only means to protect this galaxy, and Red Horizon was one in a long line of elevated individuals chosen by the Gahana for reasons unknown, but always with the same personal drive to persevere through whatever was necessary to accomplish their missions. Red Horizon would probably never meet another member, nor know who they were for security reasons, but he felt a new kinship with them and knew they were out there carrying out missions for the Gahana just as he was, though he doubted theirs involved conscripting an entire race of cyborgs into an army to fight a clandestine war in cyberspace…and a more physical one in reality when necessary.

To that end the Gahana had not withheld as much information, giving them blueprints for starship upgrades that would put them slightly ahead of what the Vestil were thought to possess, though they were bound by the promise to only use them in combat against that one enemy and no other. The rest of their empire’s technology would be kept separate, and these ships would be built in secret. There was no time to wait for the Chamra to develop on this front over the course of millennia when the Gahana needed them out there now looking for and intervening on the behalf of other cyborgs that the Vestil would be going after sooner or later…or perhaps were already now that Star Force had made contact and given them a map of the known galaxy to work with.

It was a race now, and the Chamra were already behind…but they wouldn’t be behind for long.

9

May 27, 158409

Zychron Nebula (Unexplored Territory)

Theta Quadra Temple

It had been 16 years since the House Atriark civil war began, and 16 years since the interior of Eta Fermi had been reduced to ash. Reignor Plausious had now left that Temple behind under Star Force possession in exchange for a small section of this Temple to house his survivors. It had taken 4 years to construct a portal large enough to move his fleet of Gjardans, and an additional 3 years to save up enough Essence to power them…and almost all of that Essence was donated by the Star Force Nuv’ernor Jasmyn, for there were no longer any Vargemma there to power the Temple.

But there were here, and the Human Lord Draven had allowed a small amount of it to be diverted to the Neofan while the bulk of the rest was still being exported out to the warfront, for while the Uriti could generate a significant amount, none of them could come close to the combined output of a marginally populated Temple…and this one was more than marginally populated.

Plausious had already established two cities here, drawing resources long ago laid down in the bedrock for the denizens to harvest when needed to repair his ships…but charging them was another matter. They had expended nearly all of their considerable Essence wells, and he would be a fool to take them into combat again before being fully charged. And without Jasmyn continuing to stay with the Neofan and act as their battery, that would not happen in the next 2400 years given the small size of the Neofan population and their amount of daily Essence quotas that Plausious had enacted.

Yet Jasmyn’s power was mindboggling, and even as she worked several hours per day to fill their wells, her ability to do so was increasing, as was her skill in the Neofan Essence sculpting arts. If it came down to combat between Gjardans, Plausious would lose if the other commanders didn’t change sides. He assumed some would, but most of those who had been rebellious enough to do so had been sent to Eta Fermi in a sort of semi-exile. The others could not be counted on to convert unless Plausious was able to exert dominance immediately.

He had done so in Eta Fermi, then had that victory stolen from him by the traitorous false Reignor Truven. Only he could have given his codes to another, for not even the Diem possessed them…nor were they codes, exactly. It was an interactive test, and only one who knew how to beat it could do so…and only that knowledge was possessed by the Reignors and passed onto their successors via the Scroll of Wisdom. It was a mental download of exclusive knowledge by an automated system that only a Reignor could alter. When a new one was appointed, a ceremony was held and the three Diems would have to approve the anointment to unlock the device, then in full view the crowning ceremony would take place with the knowledge transfer being the actual moment of transition.

The method to pass the interactive test…similar to what Star Force referred to as ‘video games’…was passed on silently in this manner, so no one else would know nor would be able to steal the information. The Diem could not access the device unless there were observers numbering in the thousands and emitting a certain Essence emission to power the device. In this way more than the Diem was required to mint a new Reignor, and while it was not impossible to fake for the machine’s sake, Plausious doubted the Diem had gone so far yet to do so…meaning it was Truven who had given those codes to detonate the Temple rather than let it fall into Plausious’s control.

And he knew those same codes would be used at their next battle to send his Gjardans to the portal of their enemy’s choosing when they emerged. Safeguards were in place so no one could deny a traveler entry and kill them in the process. But they could establish an ambush just beyond the portal, so whatever ship emerging would face overwhelming fire immediately before the remainder of the ships could come through.

The smaller portals wouldn’t fit a Gjardan, only the large ones built into the inner surface of the Temple would, and there were many, too many to set up a proper ambush at unless you knew which one was going to be used.

And a Reignor could use his codes to override any arrival orders regarding portal assignment…as well as do a lot of other things in the Temples that even the members of the Bond of Resistance could not. The Neofan were the ultimate, if secretive masters of the Temples, and there was no higher codes than that of a Reignor. Not even the Reignor of the ruling House. Which meant Plausious could get in anywhere unless he was overridden locally, and if Truven had given others his codes…then all of the remaining 7 Neofan Temples could override his portal choice if used in the moment, for a blanket order from a Reignor would not override an immediate one, because the Temple viewed it as the same person altering their existing order.

So Plausious could either try and break that ambush using Jasmyn in the first ship to come through…or he could try to sneak in on the ground and undo the programming to let him choose which portal his fleet would come through, and as of yet he wasn’t sure which was the better course of action.

The presence of a Nuv’ernor was his only hope of keeping his House intact. Without her he would have to fight a costly civil war, perhaps a losing one depending on how far the purges had gone. If they’d taken out all of the sane ones with a backbone enough to stand their ground, then the rest would go with whomever had the most power…and right now that was not Plausious.

But with Jasmyn he had something no House other than the ruling House was permitted to have, and this Nuv’ernor was not a brain dead cyborg rebuilt to follow the ruling House’s orders. She was a fully-fledged warrior, and her power increase over these past few years was alarming. He had known Star Force in general had fast individual progression, but the Reignor had assumed it was simply a function of their youth and would diminish in time as they caught up to other races…but this ‘Jinx’ as they called them, was not slowing down. Furthermore her power scale exceeded all known Nuv’ernor growth rates by a factor of 7.

She was power incarnate, and Plausious had no doubt she could kill him if she wanted to…if she didn’t make any mistakes…and that both worried and reassured him. But it also meant this would not be a Neofan-only conflict, as he wanted it to be. This was his problem to solve, but without her he did not see a quick route to doing so. And without a quick route, the Neofan would be lost as an effective ally to Star Force in the coming Endgame War.

He was glad there was at least a viable route ahead, but he did not like having to wait years to refit and refuel his ships. The damage being done to his people in his absence could be extreme, and he had no way of knowing what was going on in those 7 Temples, for there hadn’t been any activity by House Atriark visible to Star Force since the Temple detonation.

And he was going to have to wait a few more years, else risk unnecessary loss by arriving with underpowered ships. As powerful as Jasmyn had gotten, her power flow was minuscule compared to a Gjardan Essence well when fully charged. And he doubted the ships he was going to come up against were going to hold back when the fighting resumed.

And yet, they might if they didn’t learn their lesson, for they didn’t have trillions of Vargemma in all those Temples to recharge them with, only Neofan in some, and they had not reproduced rapidly once arriving here, for too many young minds would destabilize their society…plus it was too late to develop warriors for the fight to come when he highly doubted they had hundreds of thousands of years to train them.

But still, when it came to Essence donation, the more the better, and Star Force had the Vargemma populations to fuel the Temples. The Neofan did not, at least not in their original 3 Temples. Just their captured ones. So how would those fleets use the charges they had? Would they blink twice?

And which Temple would he choose to assault? He had 7, which meant Truven couldn’t put all his ships in one place. That was fortunate, but unless he disabled the purging mechanism the same disaster could repeat itself, so ultimately the enemy fleet was not the biggest threat to his upcoming invasion.

And had Truven moved the captured Vargemma to spread them out? Plausious had been told that when Director Davis had tried to send the Vargemma loyal to the Neofan to their Temples they had actually blocked them from entering…which made no sense to him. Why would he turn down more Essence generation? There was no other source of it, and the Temples didn’t share much between themselves except for emergency situations…certainly not enough to charge warships with.

Yet the Neofan vessels were already at full charge since they were not participating in the Hadarak War. Was Truven so shortsighted that he didn’t expect to need recharge?

Plausious was once again in reflection looking down at the surface of the Temple from a Neofan station hovering above it in orbit where more non-Gjardan ships were being constructed for other purposes, but today his wandering solitudes of thought were interrupted by a Star Force ship requesting to dock and deliver a prisoner.

Plausious went to meet the small ship and the unconscious Neofan hauled through a docking pylon in a stasis pod by multiple Mavericks, all of which were showing strong Essence signatures. Apparently they knew the risks and were taking no chances with this Neofan.

“This one surrendered to us,” a Scionate Maverick said, standing on four legs but considerably shorter than Plausious though perhaps equal in mass. “She came through a portal alone asking to be taken to you. We have found no sabotage or devices to our knowledge, but we do not trust her intentions and rendered her inert for passage upon her agreement. She is yours to deal with.”

“I will take responsibility for her and inform you of any pertinent information she offers.”

The Scionate nodded his head, then he and his companions turned around and left, apparently glad to be rid of the Neofan before she was able to cause damage of some sort. A lot of the Star Force personnel in this Temple had the same distrust of the Neofan after their invasion, even though it had not occurred here. The backstab had cost many lives, as well as the mutual trust that had been developed ever since the agreement had been struck to allow House Atriark to take refuge in this galaxy…giving Plausious one more reason to curse Truven’s name in his casual thoughts.

He waited for the Star Force ship to disconnect, then he unceremoniously walked up to the pod and began to revive the Neofan right there at the receiving port.

Nafeni did not wake immediately, for Neofan bodies did not take well to such stasis, but Star Force would never subject someone to the process if it would damage them, and this looked to be a short term low level stasis, forcing slightly more than a deep sleep on her that she was having trouble waking up from.

Plausious touched her forehead, using his telepathy to rouse her only to see shock in her face. She recoiled from him suddenly, then breathed heavily and partially relaxed when she realized who it was.

And the Reignor could clearly see the signs of previous trauma within her mind.

“How did you get here?” Plausious asked.

“I was smuggled out to transmit a message to you,” she said, gasping despite not being out of breath. “We need you now. Why have you not come back?”

“Truven destroyed the interior of the Temple I took. Almost everyone in it died.”

“We know. He showed us and promised the same thing would happen if the same treachery occurred. They are scared of it. They are so scared of it.”

“What happened to you? I can feel your damage.”

“Anyone…anyone with a connection to you has had to prove their loyalty. They forced their way into our minds, and then made those of us who wavered kill each other to stay alive, and they recorded it for all to see. Unless we fervently renounce you and everything you represent, we are forced again and again to fight and kill each other, diminishing our numbers until…until no one is left. I survived through three rounds by killing my sisters,” she said, breaking down more internally than was showing in her few tears. “Then I was broken out of confinement by others loyal to you and taken to a maintenance portal. They wanted me to take a message to you as well as save me from the purges. I didn’t choose this, they made me come.”

“Did you want to stay with Truven?” Plausious asked calmly.

“No!” she all but screamed, then seemed to shrink down into a very tiny shell of a person. “The others are trapped. No one can leave the Temples. I don’t know how they got me out. I didn’t deserve it.”

Plausious took her head firmly in both hands and made her look him in the eyes. “Whatever happened to you is over. It will not happen here, and Truven does not have the power to take this Temple from Star Force. You are safe. What is the message?”

“Truven is dead. Killed by an assassin you sent. No new Reignor has been chosen, and the Diem had said they will not select another while you live. That you have to be killed before House Atriark can be mended. And until that time they will safeguard us against your treachery. They are imprisoning or killing anyone who voices the merest opposition, citing treason by imposing your taint on us. I was told to tell you that if you do not return soon, there won’t be anyone left to join you. They have begun mandatory mental screenings and periodic purity tests as an excuse to kill who they want. Nobody can pass them, even those who are loyal to the Diem. They have made everyone tainted, and assign penance as they choose.”

“But they never screen themselves?” Plausious assumed.

“Not the Diem, nor their Overseers, nor their hunters. Everyone else is made to fail so we have no right to object to anything they do.”

“How many have been killed?”

“More than 20%.”

Plausious rocked backwards, taking two steps before he got his balance. All those Neofan who had lived millions of years…gone because of the whim of the Diem. A full fifth of House Atriark removed from existence, and removed from the Endgame War before Plausious could even speak to them.

Those Neofan could not be replaced with new births. The experience and skills being lost were incomprehensible.

“I was sent to tell you, there are still some ready to fight, but they can’t hide forever. The tests will find them when it is their turn, and they will resist rather than allow themselves to be altered or executed.”

“Altered how?”

“Cerebral replacement,” she said, referring to a cyborg remaking of their minds to ensure control over their actions.

“Why is this happening, Nafeni? What happened to the Diem?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. They killed you and then everything changed. When you showed back up they went insane. Why haven’t you returned? Why? We are being destroyed.”

Plausious knelt back down beside her and pulled her into an embrace, with her melting into him as he felt her will finally give out.

“I do not know what is happened, Nafeni, but I promise you I will end it.”

“It’s…too…late,” she said, heaving with tears and suppressed internal pain manifesting in her body in the form of tremors.

“Not for you,” he said, pulling her to her feet and forcing her to walk. “We have a small colony in this Temple, and this will become your new home. Rest. Heal. But I cannot help you do this.”

“Go,” she said, fire suddenly returning to her body. “Go and kill the traitors. Kill them all, Plausious. Do it now. Please. Please.”

The Reignor telepathically called to other nearby Neofan, with one coming running through a nearby doorway a few moments later to deal with Nafeni. When he arrived, Plausious turned and walked off, not even looking at her as he headed for the nearest hangar bay. He had a decision to make, and in retrospect he wished he’d made it years ago when Davis had offered, but he had wanted this affair dealt with in-House…yet if he continued on that route, there wouldn’t be a House left to save.

Plausious flew over to the Gjardan where Jasmyn was practicing her shield enhancement technique inside the ship and interrupted her without warning, startling her enough that the machinery surged and blew out several relays before she cut her input to it.

“Don’t do that!” she scolded him, only to sense the dread in his telepathic aura. “What’s wrong?”

“Reignor Truven is dead, and the Diem have seized control of the House in order to destroy it. I am told 20% of the population has already been executed, with more to come. I can’t do this on my own. Not in time to be a valuable ally to Star Force. I need your help to end this now. With as many troops and ship and Essence wells as you are willing to send with me.”

“What is the Diem’s objective?”

“Does insanity have an objective?” Plausious countered. “I should have accepted your help earlier, and most of them would still be alive.”

“A joint invasion?”

“If you are willing.”

“If you can get us through the door, we’ll end this…one way or another.”

“Do you have a plan of attack ready?”

Jasmyn smirked. “We’ve been itching for an opportunity to get at those bastards. We’ve got dozens of plans and twice as many fleets standing by in other Temples. We just need our foot in the door. Can you still get in?”

“Unless they have completely rebuild the Temple command systems, yes.”

“How hard is it to do that?”

“Very. They regenerate if they are destroyed, and not even my codes will deactivate that process. We could not allow another member of the Bond of Resistance or the Vargemma to undo our safeguards, so we made them impervious to our own interference.”

“We’ll have to take out the self-destruct mechanisms first or simultaneously. Can you get us to them quickly?”

“Possibly, if I am there in person.”

Jasmyn shook her head. “No, we have to assault them all at once.”

Plausious frowned, then closed his eyes as he relented to this fate…for otherwise the doom he had foresaw for his people would arrive far sooner than expected.

“I will tell your people what to do, and I will give you my codes so you cannot be overridden as long as you are at the source. But I will be the one that goes to the Temple with the Diem.”

“Is that where the hardest fight will be?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Then that’s where I’m going too…”

10

June 30, 158409

Shi go Zu Mata’ki (Jumanji Kingdom)

Zewen’zi

Paul was onboard the Aeon-class warship in orbit of the gas giant called Zewen’zi by the Oso’lon who used to inhabit this system. They’d all fled or been destroyed by Rajamal’s forces in his campaign to kill the Primearch, and once he had achieved that goal what remained of the independent Oso’lon degenerated quickly. They feared the rogue Zen’zat would come after them, so many fled to Star Force to seek refuge, while others disappeared to darker areas of the galaxy where they could disappear. How many survived the trailblazer did not know, but the end of the old V’kit’no’sat had finally come in a bloodbath that had left this system as a graveyard.

But the fighting hadn’t been here, for the gas giant contained no Oso’lon infrastructure. What was here was a hidden construct floating within the outer layers of the gas giant and nearly invisible unless you knew where to look. Clan Ghostblade had been keeping it under distant surveillance ever since it had been discovered, and had ensured Paul on arrival that no one had come looking for it since.

What will trigger the starship-killing weapons? Paul asked Azoro, who was hovering in the Saiolum around him.

An attack. Our approach will be safe. The slaughter occurs when attempting to get inside.

“Captain, I’ll be going down alone and piloting the dropship myself.”

“As you wish, Archon,” the Urik’kadel said from its command pedestal as the rabbit-like Captain scanned the construct with limited success.

“And get to a higher orbit if there’s any activity. I’ll call when I need you, but I need you in one piece.”

“That’s how I prefer my ship,” he quipped as Paul left the bridge and headed for the hangar where he slid into the pilot’s seat of a Falcon-class dropship and quickly got it prepped for launch.

I’ve never seen you pilot a craft before, Azoro noted.

“I do in simulators all the time,” Paul said aloud since no one was around to hear.

The image of the Zen’zat appeared in the copilot’s chair beside him. “How long has it been since you personally piloted an aerial vessel?”

“We have pilots to fly these, but as for a skeet, it’s been too long to remember.”

“A useful skill, but not something that warrants the amount of training time you put into it.”

“It used to be.”

“What changed?”

“Got busy flying fleets with my mind and left the aerial combat to the specialists.”

“And you regret that?”

“I like to be where the action is,” Paul said as he lifted off and drifted the dropship out of the hangar and into space just above the thick atmosphere.

“Rather than directing it?”

“Bingo,” the trailblazer agreed, still somewhat upset with the Sha’kier. “Anything you’d like to add before we get down there?”

“There’s nothing I haven’t told you before.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive,” Azoro said a little apologetically.

“And what would you rate our odds at?”

“If we’re patient, I give us better than one in two that we find a way past the defenses with our combined skills. Their Saiolum knowledge was limited to that of an observer, not a user, and they didn’t possess Essence skills. The combination of yours should prove enough.”

“Against weapons that can destroy starships?”

“I thought you liked a challenge?” Azoro flippantly remarked.

“I don’t like walking into a trap that has killed a bunch of Chixzon and who knows who else. Not exactly a lightside defense system.”

“There will be a telepathic warning in place once we land. We will only be killed if we do not heed the warning.”

“Oh that makes it all better then,” Paul said sarcastically as the view of space disappeared, replaced by the yellow/orange gasses of the planet that the dropship had to swim through at diminished speeds.

“I take it to mean that there is something of value so great they could not risk it being tampered with when they were no longer around to attend to it.”

“I hope so, otherwise this trip will mostly be a bust. And why would they give it Saiolum blocking walls if they didn’t know the depths of the Saiolum?”

“That’s a mystery I hope to solve shortly.”

“Now that you have backups in case I die.”

“True, but you’re the one that insisted we come now. I had wanted to wait until you were further along.”

“My point exactly.”

“You are not expendable to me, Paul.”

“Is there enough Saiolum for you to fly on ahead?”

“Barely. In a few days the nearby planet will move too far away and it will thin here further. But I can survive the next hour without you.”

“Go and give me a scouting report once I’m down.”

Paul felt Azoro’s presence leave him, as did the mental hologram of the Zen’zat. The remaining flight to the construct was quiet and routine, as was the landing on the large circular platform that was obviously meant to receive guests, but the portion closest to the facility’s vertical wall was protected by a thick energy shield.

Paul landed well away from that, then left the ship wearing his full armor as the atmosphere here was inhospitable…but as soon as he stepped outside the contained atmosphere in the dropship he felt a Saiolum pulse hit him, after which an atmospheric shield popped into existence around the entire landing pad with a significant gust of wind following.

The yellow/orange air diminished, clearing into perfect clarity over the next few minutes with his armor reading a change in composition to a mostly oxygen atmosphere.

Paul retracted his helmet and sniffed the air, finding it was still tinged with an odd smell, but was fully breathable with more oxygen than necessary, making him a little light headed with the rush, but he adjusted to it quickly as Azoro’s presence returned and the mental hologram appeared beside him.

“It’s still sealed up tight. I can’t get in or see inside. No Saiolum currents are passing through it.”

“I can tell that much myself,” Paul said, staying put and just looking up at the large self-contained structure in front of it. “Do you know when they made this?”

“No. But they have several of these in multiple galaxies.”

“How’d you find them?” Paul asked curiously.

“Periodically they give off a Saiolum pulse. That’s why I think it’s the key to getting inside. I think they want to be found by the right people.”

“And synthoids don’t feel Saiolum?”

“According to you they might, but they certainly can’t use it interactively.”

“Well I’m not sensing any interactive functions.”

“Walk forward and you should.”

“In theory or experience?”

“Experience. I’ve seen people die here.”

“Peachy,” Paul said as he began walking towards the obvious closed doors large enough to fit an Era’tran, though he wasn’t in a hurry about it as he paced uncharacteristically slow. Halfway there he felt a telepathic presence…technological, not personal…explain in concepts rather than words that this facility was off limits except to a select few, and that if one tried to bypass the static shield ahead without permission they would be killed.

“Well there’s your warning, but I’m not sensing anything to do here.”

“Keep going,” Azoro urged.

“Where do the weapons emanate from?”

“This entire platform is an array. You’re standing on them.”

“As is the dropship,” Paul reminded him.

“You can fly out in your armor if you have to.”

Paul stopped walking and used the comm in his armor to remotely take control of the dropship, retract the boarding ramp, and have it fly off away from the construct a few kilometers and wait in the hazy natural atmosphere of the planet…just in case the platform became a shooting gallery…then he started walking forward again.

A pulse emerged, one only, in the Saiolum, and it hit Paul like a slap in the face…so he slapped back, mimicking it as best he could, though he couldn’t match that power output. Almost immediately after three Saiolum beacons appeared, emitting something he couldn’t make out.

“Azoro?”

“They’re harmless queries. Touch one.”

Paul grabbed hold of the Saiolum in his body then extended outward, pulling more into him and creating a tendril-like extension that came into contact with one of the sources…at which point Paul was being scanned in an odd way. He could feel it, but couldn’t quite make out what was happening.

“Shall I?” Azoro asked.

“No,” Paul said, reaching further and trying to pull it apart into natural pieces that began to pulse individually. He send a corresponding pulse back each time to the proper one, prompting a faster exchange rate.

“This is a locking mechanism,” Azoro said as he watched through Paul. “They used them with their living equipment, with one interacting with another as a key. You should be able to pick the lock since you are able to become the key in a way they couldn’t.”

“Living keys or technological?”

“Biological, but not alive.”

“Why three?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only seen one used before.”

“Easy enough,” Paul scoffed as the sequence became a simple matter of sending pulses back into active pieces and not dead ones…meaning you had to be able to sense Saiolum in order to determine the code prompts. Or at least your equipment had to.

A tone sounded, and the Saiolum query disappeared, leaving two more remaining. When he touched the second one the ground beneath it opened up and a column rose, revealing a bipedal alien of a type Paul had never seen before that rushed him, sprinting forward unarmed and getting to his position within 3 seconds.

Paul raised a hand and telekinetically grabbed the individual, freezing him in place as he quickly realized he wasn’t real, but rather a machine that began speaking a language Paul did not understand…but Azoro quickly entered his mind and offered the translation.

“I am the guardian of this site. If you wish to enter, you must defeat me first.”

Paul squeezed a little harder, making sure he couldn’t move, and just held him there for a while, but it said nothing else as it tried to break his invisible restraints, then the Archon simply walked past it, getting two steps beyond when a Rentar-like energy field cut through his grasp and the machine was suddenly free.

It ran up to him and punched at him, with Paul dodging and then deflecting additional blows that were quite strong, but nothing his Furyan body couldn’t handle. He didn’t even need the power function in his armor to enhance his movements, let alone a Saiyan transformation.

They sparred briefly, then the machine stopped and stepped back as Paul let it go. Then it walked back to the column, spun around, and retook its nook only to descend into the platform again, this time with the second query disappearing from his Saiolum view.

“That was not as difficult as I thought it would be,” Azoro noted.

“It wasn’t about defeating him. It was about making someone think it was a person, and how you went about defeating him. If I had destroyed him, I think I would have failed the test.”

“A no-kill test?”

“You’re the one that said these guys were lightside, so why are you surprised?”

“It’s obviously a machine.”

“It has a telepathic signature. And you can see in a way the Progarren never could, so is it really that obvious to who they expected to show up?”

“I’ve never seen it before, because the Chixzon and others always tried to bypass the shield.”

“They didn’t know these prompts were here if they can’t feel the Saiolum,” Paul said, reaching out to the third one.

“Then they assumed technological Saiolum interaction, which would explain the interactive locking mechanism rather than expecting a specialized key.”

“Or maybe a specialized key bypassed the other two tests,” Paul said as a much more powerful telepathic node rose out of the platform and reached out to Paul’s mind, trying to gain access. He let it in slightly, then a bit more and more as it was not satisfied. He didn’t want to give it free reign, but as he blocked certain areas it pushed harder…and he instinctively pushed back, with a tug of war ensuing as it tried to download certain types of memories.

Paul let it have some, but when it came to Star Force secrets he forcibly blocked it as the back and forth continued for nearly an hour…then it suddenly stopped and the third query retracted physically into the platform as well as disappearing in the Saiolum.

A hologram then appeared, standing 8 times as high as Paul as the giant looked down on him from above, swinging its tail back and forth slowly.

“Why are you here?” the Progarren asked in English.

“I seek the remnants of your extinct race.”

“For what purpose?”

“To learn.”

“These ‘remnants’ are reserved for those who can carry on our work. We have been destroyed by enemies that we did not know existed until they emerged from other galaxies beyond our own. Scans of your mind indicate you are not of our race, but are our brother in both spirit and function. Are you safe here, or do you have enemies near?”

“This star system is safe.”

“You alone are granted access. If others attempt to enter with you, they will be repulsed. Do you understand this?”

Paul spread his arms wide, gesturing to the empty platform. “There’s nobody else here.”

“Then enter and learn of your forbearers, and your new enemies,” the hologram said, shutting down as the door ahead ground open sounding like it had been sealed for too long, scraping on its tracks in a way that belied the superior technology necessary to keep it intact for the millions of years it had been sitting here.

Paul walked up to the doors, which were spreading far wider than needed, but there was a black curtain just inside through which he couldn’t see or sense anything with any of his abilities. When he got there he lightly touched it with his armored hand, feeling no resistance.

“Let me join with you, or I will not be able to enter,” Azoro said.

“Will that work, or am I going to get fried as it strips you out of me?”

“Go slow and find out,” the Sha’kier said, pulling himself inside of Paul as much as he could, but his matrix was too large to completely fit inside his body, and as Paul walked forward with his hitchhiker riding but not controlling him, he bounced off physically, as the wall would not let him through.

“Interesting,” Azoro said as he appeared beside Paul again as he extricated himself. “Try again.”

Paul reached a hand forward, with it passing through effortlessly. “Have you seen this type of Saiolum shield before?”

“Not in the Progarren, but I know how to make one.”

“Do you know how to get through?”

“Using your body I think I can destroy it, but since it is granting you access I will suppress my curiosity and wait. Consider it my penance for withholding information from you earlier. Go and seek your answers. I will be here if you need me.”

Paul looked at him for a moment, but didn’t say anything. Then he turned and walked through the black curtain forcefully, disappearing inside with Azoro losing all contact with him along with any opportunity to further help…

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